ABSTRACT
The Nordic countries have sent thousands of troops to UN peacekeeping operations since the early Cold War. Steeped in the myths of commemorative politics and the memories promoted by veteran associations rather than research, the ‘birth’ of Nordic peacekeeping in the 1950s has yet to be examined empirically, however. Consequently, this chapter explores the Nordic involvement in early UN peacekeeping, exploring both the geopolitics and everyday dynamics of the first UN operation, the United Nations Emergency Force (1956–1967), making two points. Firstly, it establishes that the deployment of the first UN peacekeeping operation to Egypt initially and subsequently the Gaza Strip, and the Nordic involvement as part thereof, revolved around the re-establishment of the Western oil supply and restoring trust amongst the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) following the Suez Crisis in 1956 and to some degree realised a longstanding aim to safeguard the Suez Canal with an international military presence. Secondly, the chapter also establishes that the UN force, including the Nordic contingents, represented a further militarisation of everyday life for the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, often engendering experiences of insecurity. Against this backdrop, the chapter calls for further empirical research into Nordic UN peacekeeping history to set the record straight.
