The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden c. 970–1330

Synopsis: This is the first major piece of scholarship to provide an overview of the lives of Sweden’s earliest documented queens, together with some of their most influential female relatives, who lived between 970 and 1330.

Spanning a period over 350 years, approximately 40 biographies are included from the semi-legendary Viking queen Sigrid Storråda to Duchess Ingeborg of Norway, the first female de jure and de facto ruler of Sweden. 

Rather than merely summarising previous research, this study offers new perspectives on the evolution of queenship in medieval Sweden. It tracks the different religious, political, and socio-economic trends which defined and shaped the office of queen and identifies three main phases of development which led to royal women’s economic and political emancipation by the mid-fourteenth century. 

The study’s main strength lies in its close reading and novel interpretation of the surviving primary sources, enabling readers to understand the importance of these women and wider themes such as state formation, Christianisation, and international politics.

The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden, c. 970–1330 is of interest to scholars of queenship and gender studies, medieval historians in general, those with an interest in ecclesiastical history, and anyone studying medieval Scandinavia.

This Violent, Convoluted Murder Mystery Has Been Published in 30 Countries

From RealClearLife: 

Chapter One: Swedish author Niklas Natt och Dag takes readers back in time for a thrilling whodunnit.

Drunken “watchman” Mikel Cardell is unceremoniously roused from his mid-afternoon slumber on a fall day in 1793 by a group of kids who’ve spotted a body floating in the Larder, a symbolically decrepit lake on Stockholm’s Southern Isle. The gruesomely torn apart corpse that Cardell fishes out forces him to connect with “incorruptible lawyer,” Cecil Winge, perhaps the only person in Sweden who sees value left in Cardell, setting up the adventure the pair will embark upon in author Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman. The book is a race against time from that point on as Winge’s failing health puts an expiration date on their investigation, one that draws them into the underbelly of a crumbling and corrupt monarchy that rules over a paranoid nation divided by money and defined by greed.

read interview with Niklas Natt och Dag here @ RealClearLife

The woman behind Pippi Longstocking

From Independent (Ireland):

A biography of Astrid Lindgren suggests her famous redhead heroine was created to defy Hitler.

When the first Pippi Longstocking book was published in 1945 (there would be three in all), a few conservative commentators in Sweden denounced this merry insubordinate as "depraved". Children instantly saw in her a kindred spirit. A year later, her creator Astrid Lindgren was already talking about her "frightening popularity". "'Tell us about Pippi Longstocking' was all I ever heard wherever I went," she said in 1946. "I felt as though this fantastical character must have hit a sore spot in their childish souls."

read more reviews here

@ Yale University Press

@ Kirkus Reviews

@ The Guardian

read more about Pippi

@ Wikipedia - Pippi Longstocking