Scandinavian Arts & Culture

Most recent stories in Scandinavian Arts & Culture

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  The Soviet Union invaded Finland in the winter of 1939 expecting the job done inside two weeks, and the Finns held the line for 105 days at temperatures below minus 40 degrees. One farmer turned sniper is credited with more than 500 Soviet dead in 100 days, on iron sights.

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Standard Brief

  On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union sent roughly a million men across the Finnish border, and Moscow was working on a short clock. When the Soviet …

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  A 44-year-old mathematician who had posted his proof of the Poincaré conjecture as three arXiv preprints totaling 68 pages refused the Clay Institute’s $1,000,000 Millennium Prize on July 1, 2010. He never published the proof anywhere else himself, though other mathematicians spent years elaborating and republishing it in peer-reviewed form.

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Standard Brief

  On July 1, 2010, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced that Grigori Perelman, the Russian mathematician who had solved one of the seven Millennium …

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  Squatters moved into abandoned military barracks in Copenhagen in 1971 and declared Christiania a free town, and after 40 years of political and legal battles they created a foundation that bought part of the enclave and leased most of the rest from the Danish state under a 76.2 million kroner deal.

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Standard Brief

  On 26 September 1971, Christiania was born inside an abandoned military complex in Copenhagen. But it was not quite a case of hundreds of squatters …

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  In Sweden, Friday evenings follow an unofficial national script so consistent it has its own word — fredagsmys, or Friday cosiness — built around tacos or crisps, dimmed lights, and a couch, and the ritual is common enough that Swedish supermarkets plan entire product lines around it

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Standard Brief

  An ordinary Friday night can become a national ritual. Not a holiday, not a festival, nothing marked on the calendar. Just the end of the working …

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  Swedish compresses into one word what English usually needs a phrase to express: lagom means neither too much nor too little, but just right—and where “just enough” can sound grudging, lagom usually sounds approving.

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Balance

  A cup of coffee can be lagom warm. A jumper can be lagom thick for the weather. A child can be given a lagom amount of Saturday sweets, and a guest can …

• 

  Scandinavia Standard

  

  Every July in a small Finnish town, the winning couple of the wife-carrying world championship is paid in beer — exactly as much as the wife weighs.

  scandinaviastandard.com - The Standard Brief

  The origin story Finns tell involves a 19th-century outlaw named Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen, or Ronkainen the Robber, who supposedly tested new recruits …