From Nordic Romanticism to Nordic Modernity : Danish Tourist Brochures in Nazi Germany, 1929-39

Abstract

This article probes Danish tourist brochures and other promotional material distributed in Germany from 1929-39. Through an analysis of a number of publications, it traces how the Tourist Association of Denmark invoked tourist imaginaries related to Nordic race theory and Nordic romanticism in the material in a variety of ways throughout the decade. Ultimately, however, it is shown that a certain discourse of Nordic modernity would come to dominate towards the end of the 1930s, also in the promotional material distributed in Nazi Germany, a society otherwise highly susceptible to the visual language of Nordic romanticism and Nordic race theory. Thus, the post-war image of the social democratic Norden was powerful already in the tourist marketers’ negotiations of national self-identification and belonging during the last pre-war years.