Promoting Norden and Nordic Cooperation in the 1930s: Social Democratic Visions and Transmedial Manifestations

Abstract

The 1930s represent a pivotal period for reinventing and consolidating Norden as a distinct region, characterized by increasing inter-Nordic cooperation. This chapter examines how modern mass media, in particular radio, was combined with older communication channels, from public mass meetings to newspapers, posters and pamphlets, in successfully promoting and propagating Nordic ideas to broader segments of the population. Two interrelated transnational and transmedial events are of particular interest: The public meeting of the Scandinavian social democratic leaders in Copenhagen in 1934 and the massive and spectacular celebration of Nordic Day 27 October 1936. This manifestation of Nordic cooperation was a joint effort by the Social Democratic parties, building on a longer tradition of what was termed labour Scandinavianism and the transnational network of the Norden Associations.

The image of Norden as a unified entity of five flying swans—later to be the visual brand of official Nordic cooperation—was introduced as a poster, inspired by a poem, promoting the massive celebration of “Nordic Day” in 1936.¹ The transmedial and transnational literary and visual celebration of Norden that day was accompanied by a radio soundtrack of chiming church bells, singing schoolchildren, musical and cultural events, and political speeches, culminating with three kings and a president speaking together to an all-Nordic audience. National radio broadcasting and newspapers across the region covered the celebration, and the planning of it, heavily, contributing significantly to spreading the key message of the value of Nordic cooperation.

The five free Nordic swans, it will be argued in this chapter, flew particularly high during the mid-1930s, due to the joint efforts by social democratic political leaders and the transnational network of the voluntary non-political Norden Associations (Foreningen Norden), utilizing modern technologies and ideas of what was perceived as propaganda and agitation to reach broader segments of the population and to foster a sense of Norden as a cultural community. The 1930s thus represent a pivotal period for reinventing, redefining and consolidating Norden into a distinct political and cultural transnational region, characterized by increasing inter-Nordic cooperation and coordination. The comprehensive transnational cooperation within the labour movement gaining power across the region and their conscious use of communication strategies and technologies are important features of the time. The contemporary understanding and use of concepts such as “propaganda” and “agitation” is, it seems, in line with recent scholarly definitions of propaganda, as “the deliberate attempt to influence public opinion through the transmission of ideas and values for a specific purpose […] Modern political propaganda is consciously designed to serve the interests, either directly or indirectly, of the propagandists and their political masters.”²

This chapter asks how modern mass media of the time, such as radio and film, were combined with older channels of communication, from public mass meetings and festivals to newspapers, posters and pamphlets, in what may be seen as an interwar breakthrough of Nordic ideas, culminating with the multimedial celebration of Nordic Day in 1936. It will be done by focusing on two interrelated transnational and transmedial events that contributed to putting Nordic cooperation high on the political and public agenda in the 1930s by disseminating the image of Norden as an entity with a distinct political content across the region and beyond. The events in question, both main examples of the “media Nordism” of the 1930s,³ are the public and broadcast meeting of the Scandinavian social democratic leaders in Copenhagen in late 1934 and the massive and spectacular celebration of the Nordic Day on 27 October 1936. Both cases illustrate the intensification of Nordic cooperation—at all levels of society—during the 1930s and the creative use, both from pan-Nordic oriented politicians and civil society actors, of a broad spectrum of available communication channels to promote this development.

The redefinition of Nordic cooperation in the 1930s is closely connected to increasing political conflicts and tensions in the surrounding world, with European crises of several kinds representing an external pressure that underlined the need for a united “Nordic front”.⁴ The manifestation of Nordic cohesion and cooperation which the celebration of Nordic Day represented took place—not by coincidence—at the same time as the Social Democratic parties had gained power in the three Scandinavian countries and had a dominant influence in Finland and Iceland as well. This development meant that the message of Norden as a political entity, characterized by close Nordic cooperation and a widespread feeling of togetherness, could be intensively propagated, not mainly by civil society actors, as in previous decades,⁵ but also from above. In transforming Norden into a united community, the citizens of the different Nordic countries had to be informed, engaged and involved. Enhancing Nordic cooperation and solidarity—built on mutual knowledge and friendship—thus became a joint task for the Norden Associations and the social democratic leaders governing the Scandinavian countries from the mid-1930s. The Nordic labour movement consciously agitated the ideas of Nordic solidarity and Nordic democracy to strengthen their position,⁶ by utilizing available communication technologies to reach across the region and beyond. The Nordic “model” presented was one of democracy, freedom, peace orientation and transnational cooperation, both on an intergovernmental and a people-to-people level. During the 1930s, Nordic region-building was embraced by the governments in all the Nordic countries, actively facilitating inter-Nordic cooperation and connections, leading eventually to stronger institutional ties across the region, for example the establishment of the Nordic Council in 1952.

The belief in Norden and Nordic cooperation—and in communication and propagating these values to a broad audience—reached a peak in the mid-1930s. These renewed Nordic ideas of unity were, however, contested among nationally minded groups, especially in Norway and Finland, and they were met with counter-efforts through what may be termed anti-Scandinavian agitation, arguing against pan-Scandinavian endeavours. In Norway, “Nordic cooperation” was claimed to be too reminiscent of “Scandinavianism” and “Amalgamation”, ghosts of the nineteenth century still rousing strong emotions (see below).

The Nordic region-building project of the 1930s, and the reactions and resistance it met, must also be understood in the broader historical and transnational context of rival nation-building projects, on the one hand, and the pan-Scandinavian movement and ideas, on the other hand, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. References to the pan-Scandinavian project were indeed frequently made, both by the labour movement and as part of the anti-Scandinavian counter-rhetoric. This tradition will therefore be presented in the following part of this chapter, before discussing the transnational and transmedial dimensions of the two public events.

Region-Building and the Development of Nordic Cooperation

Regions are historically contingent and, much in the same way as nations, imagined communities.⁷ Although Norden is often defined as a distinct historical region, Scandinavia and Norden can mean different things and may be called upon for different purposes, as Johan Strang reminds us.⁸ Iver Neumann underlines that the existence of regions is “preceded by the existence of region-builders, political actors who, as part of some political project, imagine a certain spatial and chronological identity for a region, and disseminate this imagined identity to others”.⁹ Regions are therefore “talked and written into existence”.¹⁰

This region-building approach may be fruitful when examined within a given political-ideological, social, cultural and technological context. The active region-builders and the actual political projects within the Nordic region have differed over time, from the pan-Scandinavian, national-liberal political and cultural project of the mid-nineteenth century, to the more practical and culturally oriented neo-Scandinavianism at the turn of the century, to the social democratic one of the 1930s—developing alongside a more conservative-oriented approach—and to the official region-building institutions developing after World War II. The potential for politicization of Norden as a concept and idea was demonstrated on several occasions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are some interesting similarities between the project of the mid-nineteenth century and that of the mid-twentieth century, including the contested nature of certain key concepts and the complicated and controversial role of the German-Danish borderland. While old and new inter-Nordic visions and conflicts were interwoven parts of the renewed discourse on Norden and Nordic cooperation in the interwar period, the media channels available to capture public opinion were technically more advanced and varied and could reach most of the population simultaneously across the region. These possibilities were discussed and utilized in the Nordic region-building of the 1930s.

The talking—and organization—of the Nordic region into existence started from below—or rather from the middle, from intellectuals, students and other groups seeking togetherness across national boundaries. Scandinavian cooperation, as idea, concept and practice, was developed during the nineteenth century, closely connected to the pan-Scandinavian movement and what was termed “Scandinavianism”.¹¹ Newspapers, journals, pamphlets and other printed material, as well as political toasting and speeches performed at different kinds of Nordic meetings, disseminated pan-national ideas within the region. Political ambitions for a Scandinavian union were promoted mainly by Danish national-liberal activists, seeking support in the ongoing conflict regarding the nationally divided Duchy of Schleswig in the German-Danish borderland, eventually leading to two wars. Schleswig was lost after the Second Schleswig War in 1864, and political Scandinavianism was thus in general perceived as dead and buried.¹² The Nordic region-building project, however, continued by other means, concentrating on cultural and pragmatic Scandinavian cooperation. Meetings, associations, institutions, publications, networks and practices with a pan-Scandinavian scope, with Nordic participants and with the aim of strengthening Scandinavian cooperation and a Scandinavian identity became gradually more widespread after 1864, disseminating ideas of Scandinavian unity.

During the period 1839–1905, as many as 100 different types of Nordic meeting series were regularly held in Scandinavian cities.¹³ This means that broader parts of the population—all kinds of professions, popular movements, organizations and institutions of different types—had some sort of regular Nordic exchange. The motivation behind this kind of transnational cooperation could differ, as could the degree of its ideologization and politicization. A revival in the interest of what was then termed “neo-Scandinavianism” was noticeable around 1900, with new pan-Scandinavian associations and a range of literary and practical collaborating initiatives, but this trend did not last for long.¹⁴ The dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905 had a devastating effect on most of these transnational contacts and turned the recent Indian summer into a cold Nordic winter, not least played out in Swedish conservative newspapers.¹⁵ In 1906, in a typical Swedish conservative reaction, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet warned against Nordic collaboration and the term “Scandinavian cooperation” as such.¹⁶ Once again, “Scandinavianism” as a project was deemed dead and buried.

The World War I experience brought a return to Nordic cooperation, gradually also on a political and official level. While nineteenth-century “Scandinavianism” had strong political connotations, twentieth-century Nordic cooperation and “Nordism” were firmly based on mutual respect of national sovereignty. An early prominent example is the meeting of the three Scandinavian Kings, in Malmö in December 1914, an event—and a highly mediated event—of significant symbolic importance.¹⁷ Shortly after the war, the Norden Associations were established in the three Scandinavian countries in 1919, Iceland in 1922 and Finland in 1924, as explicitly non-political organizations. Although having an explicit pan-Nordic ambition, these voluntary associations were nationally based, connected in a transnational network with annual joint meetings of representatives. They became central hubs within Nordic civil society in promoting Nordic cooperation in the interwar period.¹⁸ A main function was to disseminate knowledge on Nordic cultures and societies by utilizing a range of different channels of communication, through lectures, meetings, travel and publications, both among their members and aimed at a wider public, and to promote cooperation between the Nordic countries in general.¹⁹

“Nordic cooperation” was reintroduced as a political concept in the interwar period, reflecting a renewed belief in inter-Nordic engagement. In the Nordic encyclopaedia Nordisk familjebok, the Swedish conservative and Nordist activist Nils Herlitz, professor of constitutional law and member of the Norden Association in Sweden, defined “Nordic cooperation” in 1925 as the term “commonly used to summarize the current very strong movement for cohesion and cultural exchange between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Overall, Nordic cooperation in all parts (of society) in the four countries is met with sympathy and interest”.²⁰

While Nordic cooperation mainly took place within a civil society context in the nineteenth century, the interwar era included stronger political interaction in addition to and interacting with the civil society engagement. Old established Nordic meeting series were resumed, and new Nordic meetings and conferences were established during the 1920s. This tendency continued and expanded during the 1930s, with more than 160 different kinds of Nordic meetings held during the years 1930–1934.²¹ Some of the meetings were old established series of meetings, such as the natural scientists’ meetings, and the meetings among Nordic jurists, teachers, national economists, academics and professionals of numerous kinds. Reports from these kinds of meetings continued to merit considerable attention in Scandinavian newspapers.

New institutions and professions, not least within the increasing media and information industry, commonly sought cooperation at a Nordic level in the interwar period, causing new groups of practitioners to travel across the region. Among these were the Nordic annual meetings of programme directors at the national broadcasting companies, starting in 1935.²² Advertising companies, publishing houses and film distributors were also establishing regular Nordic meetings in the 1930s. Nordic journalists continued their meeting series, dating back to the late nineteenth century. At a Nordic press conference in Finland in July 1939, against a backdrop of increasing international tension, Nordic cohesion was strongly underlined during the negotiations and around the dinner table, especially by the Danish and Finnish representatives, their countries constituting, as newspaper reports put it, the “outer boundaries of the territory that in everyday speech is now commonly termed Norden”.²³

The range of associational endeavours, organizations and institutions reflected and contributed to the imagining of Norden as a region. Alongside meetings with civil society actors, there was also a growing amount of intergovernmental and interparliamentary cooperation, for domestic and international purposes.²⁴ Nordic ministerial conferences were held frequently: Nordic Social Political Meetings since 1919,²⁵ while Nordic Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Meetings were held regularly from 1932. Joint delegations for Nordic economic cooperation (Nabolandsnevnden) resumed their activities in 1935. The Nordic Inter-Parliamentary Union, founded in 1907 as a semi-private forum, an “organized peace movement among Nordic parliamentarians” within the worldwide Inter-Parliamentary Union, organized annual meetings.²⁶ This activity, Knut Larsen claims, represents a remarkably long tradition of regional cooperation: “This tradition is longer and more intense than in any other region of the world.”²⁷

“The Nordic model of transnational cooperation”, Strang states, has been crucially important in creating the political and social arrangements commonly known as “the Nordic Model” or “the Nordic Welfare State”.²⁸ Characterized mainly by bottom-up, civil society-driven cooperation, with numerous ties across the region, it has also had significant political influence and contributed to the development of permanent intergovernmental cooperation after World War II.²⁹

The importance of this intra-Nordic dimension of civil society has varied profoundly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the significance has differed strongly between the Nordic countries. Periods of success in practical cooperation have often, as Götz, Haggren and Hilson underline, been times when “the perception of the unity of the region was particularly strong”.³⁰ It may be added that this perception, and the tendency towards more “intense Nordic cooperation”,³¹ often increased in times of external pressure felt as a common threat against the region, as was indeed the case in the 1930s and, furthermore, that this perception was strengthened through communicative means. The strengthened perception of Nordic unity in the interwar period also prompted national, anti-Scandinavian reactions.

Nordic Conflicts, Old and New: anti-Scandinavianist Agitation

Several inter-Nordic, bilateral conflicts had marked the 1920s and early 1930s, such as the Swedish-Finnish conflict over the Åland Isles and the Danish-Norwegian Greenland conflict.³² By the mid-1930s, these obstacles to closer cooperation had more or less been resolved. The Nordic integration initiatives celebrated in speeches, at festivals, in newspapers and by the governments were still contested in certain quarters, especially among the newcomers as sovereign nation-states within the region: Norway and Finland. In Finland, some of the resistance was connected to the Åland question and the language question, which continued as a conflict during the 1930s. In Norway, anti-Scandinavian agitation was especially connected to the Greenland question in 1921–1931 and to Danish efforts to make the revised southern borders with Germany after the referendum in 1920, still not officially accepted by German authorities, into a shared Nordic issue.³³ Anti-Danish sentiments were explicitly expressed in Norwegian conservative-agrarian circles as a reaction to Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning’s speech to the Danish Parliament in 1933, followed up in subsequent years, when he declared that Denmark’s southern border was the common boundary of Norden, indirectly anticipating support from the Nordic countries in the event of conflict with Germany.

Modern Nordic cooperation could still be associated with the political Scandinavianism of the nineteenth century. This concept lived on as a ghost—as it was put in both Norway and Denmark. Scandinavianism as a concept was continuously used during the 1920s and 1930s, connected to various forms of Nordic interaction, mostly positive in Danish newspapers, but in Norway more often in a negative context. Edvard Hagerup Bull, the first chairman of the Norden Association in Norway, stated in 1928 that political Scandinavianism has had even more influence in Norway after its death, as a ghost or a haunting experience.³⁴ Norwegian conservative newspapers, journals and magazines argued critically in the mid-1930s that Norden as a concept had become fashionable in recent years as a slogan utilized by leading politicians.³⁵ This position was formulated most explicitly by Gustav Smedal, the main activist to front Norwegian historical claims on parts of Greenland, as the island was traditionally perceived as belonging to the historical Norwegian state, but remaining as part of Denmark since the separation of the Danish-Norwegian dual monarchy in 1814. In what may reasonably be termed Smedal’s propaganda book, published in 1938, connecting the Greenland conflict and Scandinavianism, he simply proclaimed, as a warning, that “Scandinavianism and Nordic cooperation are one and the same thing”.³⁶

Scandinavian Social Democracy, Labour Scandinavianism and Nordic Cooperation

During the first part of the 1930s, the labour parties took over the governments in Denmark (1929), Sweden (1932) and Norway (1935), became a majority in the Finnish parliament (1936) and gained a strong position in Iceland. From the mid-1930s the Social Democratic parties thus dominated the Nordic political landscape. After elections in all the countries during 1936, concluding with the election in Norway in mid-October 1936, they were able to jointly celebrate their positions, not only within the nation-state framework but also as a hard-won common Nordic effort, internationally recognized. The social democratic stronghold in the Nordic region represented a rare transnational example of democratic, cooperating, peace-oriented states, in a world where anti-democratic tendencies were strengthening their position. The “Northern States […] are the guardians of peace”, Lord Cecil of Chelwood argued in his preface of the joint yearbook of the Norden Associations, Nordens kalender for 1937.³⁷

The social democratic political elite demonstrated strong confidence in the merits and future of Nordic cooperation in general, building on a long tradition of Nordic cooperation on their own. There had been close relations within the labour movement, both politically and not least organizationally, since the late nineteenth century, with collaborative networks and Scandinavian labour congresses dating back to 1886. The Nordic labour movement was closely interconnected from the start and developed Nordic cohesion and cooperation within their field. Whereas many Swedish conservative-oriented neo-Scandinavianists turned against the Norwegians, in particular, and Nordic cooperation, in general, after the Norwegian initiated dissolution of the union in 1905, the labour movement in Sweden supported their Norwegian counterpart and the Norwegian cause and continued their contacts and collaboration.³⁸

From 1932, the cooperation was formalized and extended through the Nordic cooperation committee of the labour movement, SAMAK (Arbeiderbevægelsens Nordiske Samarbejdskomite) between the Danish, Finnish, Icelandic and Swedish Social Democratic parties.³⁹ The SAMAK conferences coordinated Nordic policies towards international organizations and were a “significant meeting place and channel of communication between the social democratic prime ministers” from the mid-1930s.⁴⁰

The close social democratic collaboration also concerned the development of information strategies aimed at reaching the broad masses. In these efforts, terms such as “propaganda” and “agitation” were commonly used, building on contemporary experiences and practices—both in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. For example, from 1937, “Nordic agitation weeks” were jointly organized by the four Nordic labour youth organizations.⁴¹ There were also educational organizations for dissemination of knowledge, with the Worker’s knowledge association (Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund) in Norway inspired by the same sort of organization in Sweden (Arbetarnes Bildningsförbund). The Swedish organization, led by Foreign Minister Richard Sandler, initiated the first Nordic conference among these organizations, held in Stockholm in 1935.⁴² The organizations exchanged lecturers and study material. In 1934, the Norwegian association published a Curriculum in agitation and propaganda, calling for more systematic and scientific propaganda activity by referring—in fact—to the success of the “fascistic agitation”.⁴³ The main points in this curriculum included reaching out to a broad audience by appealing to emotions, using symbols and through the use of agitation lectures, agitation meetings, the labour press, theatre, film, posters and printed matter.⁴⁴ In a handbook on agitation and propaganda, published by the same organization in 1938, “propaganda” is defined as “making known”, through dissemination of knowledge, “our opinions, thoughts and ideas, programme, slogans and symbols”, and “agitation” as “put in action”, meaning swaying people’s opinion by convincing them.⁴⁵ Propagation and agitation must, first and foremost, appeal to emotions, it is further underlined.⁴⁶ The general belief in the power of modern publication techniques in persuading the masses was strong.⁴⁷

Nordic Cohesion and Unity: Propagating Nordic Cooperation in 1934

The meeting of the three Scandinavian social democratic leaders in Copenhagen in December 1934 sparked the renewed propaganda and agitation of Norden and Nordic cooperation in the 1930s, and was a textbook example of appealing to emotions, using symbols and agitational lectures, distributed by radio, newspapers and pamphlets to reach a broad audience across the region and convince them of the value of Nordic cooperation. The meeting was organized by the Workers’ reading society (Arbeidernes Læseselskab), founded in 1879 with the aim of disseminating knowledge to the working class. The Prime Ministers of Denmark and Sweden, Thorvald Stauning (a member of the reading society since 1900) and Per Albin Hansson, and the President of the Norwegian Parliament, later Prime Minister in Norway, Johan Nygaardsvold, were standing together to speak about Nordic cooperation to a numerous and enthusiastic public at the Sports Centre in Copenhagen, decorated for the occasion with Nordic flags. The event and the message of Nordic social democratic unity, based on Nordic self-government and freedom, were communicated to a wider audience than those present: the speeches were broadcast on national radio, printed and commented on in national newspapers across the region, and published and distributed as a separate pamphlet.⁴⁸

The meeting was followed by similar gatherings and speeches on Nordic cooperation and Nordic democracy—used as interrelated terms—over the following years and from late 1935 also involved the social democratic leader in Finland, Väinö Tanner (see below).⁴⁹ At these high-profile social democratic meetings several references were made to the pan-Scandinavian movement of the nineteenth century and to what was termed “Labour Scandinavianism” in particular.⁵⁰

In the preface to the published account, the publisher Johannes Lehmann presents the meeting, gathering thousands of participants, as a historical event, aligning it with the famous historical Scandinavian student meeting of 1845. In 1845, the Danish national-liberal leader, pan-Scandinavian activist Orla Lehmann, made the students from Denmark, Sweden and Norway swear to defend the pan-Scandinavian idea, with their own blood if necessary. Only a few of them felt obliged to participate in the two following Danish-German wars, 1848–1851 and 1864. The publisher Lehmann (probably not a relative) only referred briefly to this historical meeting, focusing instead on the present speakers, three of the most prominent politicians in the Nordic region talking that evening on the important message of brotherly unity.⁵¹ Lehmann describes the meeting as an unforgettable event with an enthusiastic audience, receiving the speeches with a storm of applause.

The speeches of Hansson and Stauning strongly emphasized the importance of Nordic cooperation and the place of the labour movement within this broader project. Per Albin Hansson in particular focused on what he termed “labour Scandinavianism”, placing the labour movement as part of the broader, practically oriented pan-Scandinavian movement, contributing to a strong and coordinated Scandinavia. A Scandinavian social democracy, Hansson underlined, may play a leading role in the cooperation between the states and also in international politics. He emphasized that there were no visions of a Scandinavian political union, the aim had been and still was just a confident practical cooperation based on mutual trust, respecting each country’s independence.⁵² In his speech, Hansson presents a reinterpretation and re-evaluation of Scandinavianism through the labour movements and the Social Democratic parties in power, building a strong Scandinavia, based on solidarity, freedom and practical cooperation, aiming at securing democracy.

The concept of labour Scandinavianism was frequently used by labour politicians and authors in the 1930s.⁵³ It referred to a longer and more or less unbroken tradition of Nordic cooperation within the labour movement, with regularly organized labour congresses since 1886. When Scandinavian cooperation in general was heavily affected by the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905, a main exception was the cooperation within the Scandinavian labour movement, which continued with cooperation and meetings after 1905 and pointed to “labour Scandinavianism” as the way forward, thus appropriating a concept strongly miscredited in Swedish national-conservative circles after 1905. When labour Scandinavianism was reintroduced in the 1930s, it contributed to a social democratic narrative of Nordic cooperation as a success story based on a longer historical tradition. The conceptual changes were commented on in Danish newspapers in connection with the meeting in Copenhagen. Social democratic newspapers argued that “Scandinavianism”, or “the new Scandinavianism”, had come to be a socialist and social democratic concept, based on the labour movement, while conservative newspapers opposed this kind of political class-based misuse of the concept.⁵⁴

In his speech, Stauning also underlined Nordic cooperation as based on the independence of each nation.⁵⁵ He referred to the old saying that war is inconceivable between the Nordic brothers, taken from Swedish-Norwegian King Oscar I’s speech at the Scandinavian student meeting in Uppsala in 1856. The Nordic nations are “distinctive democratic nations”, Stauning emphasized, with a strong tradition of freedom. As a final point, he declared that the meeting taking place was of considerable interest and that the participants would help to disseminate the spirit of the meeting across the Nordic region.⁵⁶ The message from the Norwegian social democratic leader Johan Nygaardsvold was, however, more cautious, reflecting the historically based opposition in Norway against what could be perceived as Danish or Swedish dominance. He referred to the threatening international situation, calling for Nordic and international cooperation, and the need of a united Nordic front against dictatorship and preparations of war. An organizational cooperation between the Labour parties in Norden was therefore necessary. On the concept of “Nordic cooperation” Nygaardsvold admitted, indirectly referring to the former union, that in Norway “this word has a bad connotation for many. It is feared that instead of cooperation, there will be amalgamation.”⁵⁷ He believed, however, that the working class had nothing to fear but much to gain through strong organizational cooperation and unity.

The three speeches reflected different national experiences and attitudes towards Nordic cooperation as a political project. The common message of Nordic cooperation and togetherness based on social democratic unity was, however, strongly communicated across the region.

The aim of promoting Nordic cooperation by reaching broader segments of the population was shared by the Norden Associations. At the annual meeting of delegates, at Hindsgavl in Denmark in early 1934, the idea of a major joint effort involving mass media was put forward.⁵⁸ At the next meeting, in Oslo in 1935, it was decided that there should be a celebration of “Nordic Day” the next year in cooperation with the press, broadcasters and schools in the Nordic countries, to make the associations more visible, attract new members and promote Nordic cooperation. The initiative reflected the pro-Nordic sentiments in general at this time and the self-confidence among these associations. They were also able to build on older traditions and an increasing number of festival “Days” celebrating different topics. A “Nordic feast” in remembrance of the forefathers had been celebrated in the Nordic countries since the 1840s, based on a Norwegian initiative, and this feast was still celebrated in Sweden at the beginning of the twentieth century. A more recent tradition was “Nordic weeks”: Stockholm had organized a Finnish week in 1925 and a Norwegian week in 1930. From 1935, a “Nordic Housewife Day” was organized in March.⁵⁹ In August 1935, the “Day of Nordic Democracy” was organized in Malmö by the Swedish Social Democratic Youth organization, as a follow-up to the Copenhagen meeting in 1934, with speeches by the four Nordic social democratic leaders, discussed in the newspapers and published as a pamphlet.⁶⁰ The leading conservative daily newspaper in Finland, Uusi Suomi, stated that the word democracy on this occasion was brutally misused “for the purpose of party propaganda” and that the “day of Nordic democracy was in fact the day of Nordic Social Democracy”.⁶¹

Nordic Day 1936: A Day of Nordic Propaganda

The combined efforts of civil society and state-based actors culminated in “Nordic Day” on 27 October 1936, simultaneously and synchronically celebrated—and broadcast through the national radio stations—in the five Nordic countries. Nordic Day in 1936 was intended to be a manifestation of Nordic solidarity and interdependence—aimed at the outside world as well as the Nordic population, “a united Norden in a Europe in disagreement”, as a Danish newspaper put it.⁶² Although initiated and coordinated by the primarily conservative-oriented Norden Associations, it partly became a day of Nordic social democracy—with social democratic ministers featuring prominently, and the idea of Nordic cooperation was powerfully popularized and demonstrated by the state of heads, all joining the celebration through a synchronized cross-national performance at the national broadcasters. It thus indeed became a pan-Nordic manifestation.

The aim of organizing a specific “Day” dedicated to all things Nordic was to increase interest in Nordic cooperation and an understanding of the “practical and idealistic” importance of this cooperation.⁶³ As a Norwegian newspaper stated, “it is difficult to name any branch of civic life that has not organized its own Nordic cooperation.”⁶⁴ To reach a broad spectrum of the population, including new generations, it was decided to involve media channels such as national radio broadcasters and the press, later also cinemas, and schools. In the massive news coverage of the planning and celebration of Nordic Day through most of 1936, the propaganda aspect was regularly commented on, and the day was described as “a joint Nordic day of propaganda through the press, school and broadcasting”, and as powerful propaganda for the idea of common Nordic understanding (samförståndstanken).⁶⁵

The time was, as indicated above, ripe for a Nordic festival. The Nordic newspapers covered the event carefully, through the planning process in 1935 and 1936, with news coverage on the day and reports the following week, confirming a general interest. Searching “Nordic Day” (Nordens dag) in Nordic newspaper databases illustrates a broad interest, naturally peaking in October. During 1936, there are 346 hits (247 in October) in Swedish newspapers, 328 hits (216 in October) in Swedish-language newspapers in Finland, 1041 mentions (704 in October) in Norwegian newspapers and 2273 mentions (1866 in October) in Danish newspapers.⁶⁶ The celebration of Nordic Day in 1936 was thus an outstanding and spectacular example of the propagation of Norden and Nordic cooperation in the 1930s, staged as a transnational and transmedial event involving almost all parts of society: the church, the schools, new and old media institutions, cultural and political life, civil society and state authorities, topped by three kings and a president.

It started early in the morning with chimes from four selected Nordic cathedrals, in Aalborg, Turku (Sw. Åbo), Trondheim (Nidaros) and Gothenburg, broadcast across the region. A short devotional followed from Norwegian Bishop Eivind Berggrav, speaking from Tromsø in Northern Norway, greeting Icelanders, Finns, Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, and underlining the Nordic region as a region of peace in the world. Nordic schoolchildren greeted each other in a special radio production by the Educational broadcasting service, as part of the Nordic educational marking of this specific day. In Denmark, all pupils were given a Nordic songbook, specially produced for the occasion. Newspapers like the Norwegian conservative daily Aftenposten published special editions packed with everything Nordic. A Nordic short film, Norden in Pictures and national tunes, a film potpourri consisting of scenes of Nordic landscapes accompanied by appropriate music,⁶⁷ was also produced for the occasion and shown at cinemas across the region. In Denmark, a sound film of the new Swan poem written to mark the festival, illustrated with Nordic images, was shown at cinemas. The day was filled with cultural activities, political speeches by visiting Nordic Foreign Ministers and many others,⁶⁸ and all sorts of public celebrations of Norden. The streets were decorated with Nordic flags and the specially produced Swan poster, displaying the Nordic countries as five swans flying high over the territory and the surrounding ocean (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

The Danish-produced poster for Nordic Day, 27 October 1936, displayed five Nordic swans—allegorically presenting the free Nordic nations now in peace with each other—was inspired by a poem written for the occasion. In 1985 and 2004 it was redesigned, condensed to only one Swan, as the official logo for the Nordic Council and Nordic Council of Ministers. From Foreningen Norden (the Norden association), Norway

Nordic Day on 27 October 1936 culminated with a synchronized radio event in the evening, broadcast across the region and even beyond, to the Scandinavian diaspora in the United States.⁶⁹ The Nordic heads of state, three Scandinavian kings and the Finnish president,⁷⁰ all gave their speeches, underlining the value of Nordic cooperation, less than five minutes each including national anthems, to an all-Nordic public, thereby constituting a transnational Nordic public sphere.⁷¹ The highly symbolic event was an auditory repetition of the 1914 royal meeting in Malmö—which was also pointed out by the King of Denmark (and Iceland) Christian X in his speech—expanded with the president of Finland and reaching out throughout the region. It demonstrated the mutual understanding of the languages—the Finnish president delivered his speech first in Finnish and then in Swedish—and the degree of state support of the Nordic idea. The royal and presidential speeches were introduced and concluded by national anthems in a programme totalling 24 minutes.

The royal radio show was included in the cultural celebration that evening, demonstrating the transmedial dimension of the day. At the Royal Opera in Stockholm invited guests gathered for a Nordic cultural evening. For the first half-hour the audience listened, all standing, to the broadcast speeches, before Swedish King Gustav V left the royal office and the microphone to join the celebrations at the Royal Opera.⁷² President Svinhufvud’s speech was broadcast directly from Helsinki’s main exhibition hall (Messuhalli), and his and the broadcast royal speeches were a vital part of the cultural event there, open to everyone interested.⁷³ The Nordic radio evening continued with a Nordic cultural programme and a “radio ball” with Nordic dance music performed by the national orchestras in the capitals. The Swedish broadcasting company was in charge of the radio programme for the whole day, in what was a unique and technically advanced joint Nordic production.⁷⁴

In Denmark, one of the main events on this day was the unveiling of a monument at Dybbøl in commemoration of 1000 Nordic voluntary soldiers—from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland—who fought for a common Nordic cause during the two Danish-German wars. In Norway, an initiative from the Norden Association to revise history textbooks in order to obtain a less nationalistic historiography of Nordic history had resulted in a Nordic commission, which presented its report too late to be a part of the Nordic Day celebrations, as originally planned, but nonetheless merited international acclamation and proved to have a longstanding effect.⁷⁵

Nordic Day in 1936 was an extraordinary event, criticized by some as being too over the top,⁷⁶ forcefully promoting Norden and Nordic cooperation to a domestic and an international audience, through a well-prepared and comprehensive joint effort by civil society and state actors, and by innovatively utilizing modern mass media.⁷⁷ The event also represented a peak. World War II demonstrated the predominance of national interests and the lack of binding Nordic cooperation at a political level in times of national and international crises.

Conclusion

The image of the five flying swans, introduced on the Nordic Day poster in 1936, is a main legacy of the spectacular interwar celebration, never fully paralleled later on, as the logo of the official main forums of Nordic cooperation today, the Nordic Council (1952) and the Nordic Council of Ministers (1971).⁷⁸ In 2019, they agreed on a common vision for the Nordic region as “the most sustainable and integrated region in the world” by 2030.⁷⁹ In a short animated video, launched on the official Nordic social media sites on another Nordic Day, 23 March 2021,⁸⁰ the main message states: “We are the Nordic Region. On our way to becoming the most sustainable and integrated region in the world. And that didn’t just happen by itself.”⁸¹ The 2030 vision echoes former dreams and imaginations, starting in the late 1830s among Scandinavian students and widely propagated in the mid-1930s by civil society actors and social democratic politicians. Today’s ongoing branding of Norden reflects a renewed reinvention, redefinition and rebranding of the region,⁸² and of the still ambiguous project of Nordic integration, from below and above. The Nordic institutions, and the dense web of Nordic cooperation and transnational relations characterizing the region,⁸³ did not, to be sure, “just happen by itself”, and the idea of Nordic unity is still in need of agitation on new and old media platforms. The transnational and transmedial propaganda of Norden and Nordic cooperation in the 1930s, culminating, as argued in this chapter, with Nordic Day in 1936, is a part of inter-Nordic media histories of propaganda and persuasion, and an important feature of the history of Nordic cooperation and region-building, characterized by grand visions, regular setbacks and, it seems, continuous new beginnings.