by Lorelou Desjardins is the very funny tale of a French woman’s first year living in Oslo. The book chronicles her desire to figure out the Norwegian lifestyle, from the obsession with the outdoors to the passive aggressive workplace.
It’s another book that’s part travelogue as Desjardins visits Norway’s very own ‘bible belt’ in the rural south and meets the Sami people of northern Norway on her quest to find her own place in Norwegian life.by Robert Ferguson is another book aiming to uncover the truth of Scandinavian people. He poses the question of how the 2011 Norway terror attacks could take place in a society held up as an ideal, but answers it by way of many twisting turns through history and modern lifestyle.
The author has lived in Norway for almost four decades, so is well placed to compare the outsider’s view of Scandinavia with the everyday truth. In fact, Norwegian actress Liv Ullman claimed there can be “few outsiders who know as much about the Scandinavians as Robert Ferguson.”by Lola Akinmade Åkerström may seem like an attempt to build post-hygge buzz around a new Scandinavian lifestyle concept, but there's a key difference.
Written by a foreigner living in Stockholm, the book explores how one single word sums up so much of what makes Swedish society work. Everything in moderation, just enough—and no more. Appropriately enough, the book itself comes in a compact format making a perfect stocking filler.