Norway’s election last month brought a landslide shift to the Left, including a parliamentary breakthrough for the socialist Red Party (Rødt). There are now social-democratic governments in all five Nordic countries, with growing formations to their left resisting the further dismantling of the region’s welfare states. After years of retreat and defeats for the Left in the United States and Europe, the Nordic experience again seems to show a way forward.

The first signs of this Nordic left wave came from the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) in Denmark, which has held at least a dozen seats in parliament since its breakthrough general election campaign ten years ago. One of its MPs in this period was Pelle Dragsted, who is also the party’s main strategist. His recent book Nordic Socialism was a surprise bestseller in his homeland, rekindling long-dormant debates on socialism. The book addresses the nature of capitalism and how to transform it by building on the legacy of the Nordic workers’ movements of the twentieth century.

In an interview, Rune Møller Stahl and Andreas Møller Mulvad spoke to Dragsted about the current state of Nordic social democracy and how new left-wing forces can build on its historic achievements.