1. Mobilizing Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture -- Margareta Dancus, Mats Hyvönen & Maria Karlsson -- Part I: Gendered Bodies and Scandinavian Privilege -- 2. Conditional Vulnerability in the Films of Ruben Östlund -- Asbjørn Grønstad -- 3. The Mother, the Hero, and the Refugee: Gendered Framings of Vulnerability in Margreth Olin’s De andre (2012) and Leo Ajkic’s Flukt (2017) -- Elisabeth Oxfeldt -- 4. Shared, Shamed and Archived Images of Vulnerable Bodies: On the Nexus of Media, Feminism and Freedom of Speech in Scandinavia -- Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen -- Part II: The Vulnerable Subject and the Welfare State -- 5. Nowhere Home: The Waiting of Vulnerable Child Refugees -- Odin Lysaker -- 6. Vulnerability When Fecundity Fails: Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in The Bridge -- Melissa Gjellstad -- 7. Uses of Vulnerability: Two Eras of Social Commitment in Swedish TV-drama? -- Per Vesterlund -- Part III: Societies of Perfection and Resisting Normalcy -- 8. Vulnerability and Disability in Contemporary Nordic Literature: Linn Ullmann’s Grace and Sofi Oksanen’s Baby Jane -- Jenny Bergenmar -- 9. Life of a Fatso: Young, Fat and Vulnerable in Scandinavian Society of Perfection -- Elise Seip Tønnessen -- 10. Vulnerable Viewer Positions: Queer Feminist Activists Watching Paradise Hotel -- Fanny Ambjörnsson & Ingeborg Svensson -- Part IV: Mobilizing the Pain of Others -- 11. The Art of Begging -- Adriana Margareta Dancus -- 12. Partitioning Vulnerabilities: On the Paradoxes of Participatory Design in the City of Malmö -- Erling Björgvinsson & Mahmoud Keshavarz -- 13. Facing War: On Veterans, Wounds, and Vulnerability in Danish Public Discourse and Contemporary Art -- Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielsen -- 14. The Politics of True Crime: Vulnerability and Documentaries on Murder in Swedish Public Service Radio’s P3 Documentary -- Mats Hyvönen, Maria Karlsson & Madeleine Eriksson.

Open Access

In this open access book, seventeen scholars discuss how contemporary Scandinavian art and media have become important arenas to articulate and stage various forms of vulnerability in the Scandinavian welfare states. How do discourses of privilege and vulnerability coexist and interact in Scandinavia? How do the Scandinavian countries respond to vulnerability given increased migration? How is vulnerability distributed in terms of margin and centre, normality and deviance? And how can vulnerability be used to move audiences towards each other and accomplish change? We address these questions in an interdisciplinary study that brings examples from celebrated and provocative fiction and documentary films, TV-series, reality TV, art installations, design, literature, graphic art, radio podcasts and campaigns on social media. .