ABSTRACT
This chapter contains a critical discussion of constructions of center and periphery in a Nordic context, and the discursive and material implications thereof. The Nordic countries are often believed to belong to the same welfare and gender regimes with a strong tradition for universal social rights and gender equality, and are consequently often positively evaluated. Sweden, Norway and Denmark are typically branded as modern, gender equal and progressive Nordic welfare states. As the analyses have brought out, global restructurings manifest themselves discursively as well as materially, producing ruptures and also new power constellations at the rims of Nordic societies, well beyond the cushioning politics of the Nordic welfare regimes The chapter draws on examples ranging from newspaper articles, to film, place marketing campaigns, interview material and other modes of representing 'peripheral' regions in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Norrland comprises about 60 percent of the whole of Sweden and covers an area approximately 1,030 kilometers long.
