The Aestheticization of Place, Politics and Products Selling ‘The Nordic Way of Life’

Aestheticization is a pervasive force in consumer culture (Featherstone 2002); it is central to the invention and reinvention of symbolic resources that structure current market economies (Reckwitz 2017). A recent example with a complex nexus of consumption, identity, politics and nostalgia, is the reinvention of ‘Nordicness’ and ‘The Nordic Lifestyle’, with sub-fields such as (New) Nordic Cuisine, (New) Nordic Design and (New) Nordic Cinema (Leer 2016, Andersen et al. 2019, Skou and Munch 2016). This paper investigates the aestheticization of ‘The Nordic Way of Life’ as commodified and marketed in the form of the magazine Oak - The Nordic Journal.