The "Tides of History" podcast recently finished a whole season (100+ episodes) about Prehistory and the Bronze Age that goes deep into these types of genetic studies. Fascinating stuff, definitely recommended. One highlight for me was the "The Austronesian Expansion".
Definitely Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, which just wrapped up. I recommend you start with the French Revolution (season 3).
Another favorite of mine is "Fall of Civilizations". It takes the almost-audiobook approach of Hardcore History, and almost all episodes have been fascinating. Favorite so far is probably the one about Han China.
The abstract doesn’t touch on the interesting but politically sensitive developments over the last few decades: 20% of the people living in Sweden today were born in another country. In the city I live in (Malmö) only 30% of children have two parents born in Sweden.
That is a very fascinating subject. In addition to the 20% who were born outside of Sweden, another 6% are born in Sweden to parents both born outside, meaning over a quarter of the population today is not ethnically Swedish. It's a radical shift, compared to under 2% before WW2 and under 7% in the 70s. I'm curious how that social experiment will pan out in the end.
huh well. stuff like this just makes me very insecure at times.
My partner is Swedish but she was born in Hungary I'm currently a resident of Australia but originally from India and plan to move to Sweden sometime later. Both of us speak Swedish are fairly integrated into the culture.
Maybe you're implying that only x% of the population must be born outside, non-ethnical Swedes.
I'm not making a personal judgement here. I myself have lived in multiple countries and am a visible ethnic minority in the country I live in now. But you hit it on the head:
> Both of us speak Swedish are fairly integrated into the culture.
Indeed, as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans. There's a good bit of evidence to suggest that the integration of migrants vastly different culturally has been difficult at best. When you go from having negligible amounts of foreign-born people to having a quarter of the country be foreign-born within one person's lifetime, it's hard not to introduce social disturbance. And that's why I am calling it a social experiment: to what end?
Our cultural identity is one of a nation of immigrants, but over the past couple decades many European countries have become just as much if not more so. Among OECD countries the U.S. is middle of the pack: https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm
I've been watching "Viking Valhalla" which is mildly interesting. One anachronism in it is the vikings are speaking modern American English, complete with modern ways of saying things. (Albeit with a Norwegian accent.)
Contrast this with Spartacus, where the dialog was English, but it sounded like it was translated from Roman Latin. Similarly with Deadwood the dialog was in Elizabethan English (or something like that).
Viking Valhalla would have been more fun if the dialog had been written in the language of the Norse Sagas and then been transliterated into English. Or at least sprinkle it with Norwegian words whose meaning could be inferred from the context (like Skol!).
Ye ... Imagine 'Passion of the Christ' in English. It would have been so much worse. What other examples are there? I can only think about the other Mel Gibson movie about Azteks. He seems to have a thing for proper languages.
The miniseries "Shogun" broke ground by not dubbing the Japanese into English. What they did was carefully craft things so you could reliably guess what they were saying.
What I find most interesting, even in the early Viking age 700–800 CE there were people with southern European ancestry in Denmark and a surprising number with >50% by the main Viking age. Viking was more of an occupation than an ethnicity.
The 13th warrior was the first time I remember seeing Viking culture reflected in a "big" movie where I could actually understand what the native vikings were saying.
And I've always enjoyed the transition from when he goes to understanding them and all of a sudden they all speak english.
"I've learned by listening to your filthy mouth.." or however that line goes
As a Scandinavian I think about this scene a lot. I don't know why haha.
I suddenly realize the American show Vikings took this to the next level where English is spoken by POV characters and characters who speak their language and everyone else speaks their foreign language. Kinda cool hearing Brits attempt Old English on television show.
