Scandinavia

A man of obsessions, a passionate racialist with a romantic belief in the virtues of the ‘sturdy peasant farmer’, Quisling ruled war-time Norway as a devoted pupil of the Nazi government.

Harold Kurtz introduces one of the French Republic's most successful commanders, who kept his independence in relation to Napoleon and was adopted King of Sweden.

As King of Sweden, writes Harold Kurtz, the former Gascon sergeant never lost his popularity with the Army, middle classes and peasants of his adopted country.

Few European royals, male or female, writes M.L. Clarke, have enjoyed a better education than Christina.

On his visit to England in 1768, the King of Denmark held an elaborate masked ball in London. By Aileen Ribeiro.

Helena Snakenborg came to London in the train of a visiting Swedish Princess. Appointed a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, writes Gunnar Sjögren, she married twice and lived in England for seventy years.

John R. Guy introduces the soldier, churchman, and Royalist Fellow of New College who served Russia and Sweden during Cromwell’s years of power, and who returned to post-Restoration Britain to become a prominent parson in the Church of Wales.

Gwyn Jones remembers a great Northern historian, who met a violent death half way through the thirteenth century, and who has left us a memorable account of a famous Norwegian chieftain, murdered in 995.

Fresh from his defeat by the Russians, Charles XII, the King of Sweden, and a body of faithful adherents took refuge in the Turkish Empire. Dennis J. McCarthy describes how he he remained there for five years, an increasingly unwelcome guest.

Ross Watson describes how, as sovereign of Sweden until 1654 and later as an exile in Rome, Queen Christina was a lavish and discriminating patron of the arts.