This volume of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études scandinaves au Canada, the nineteenth since the journal was founded in 1983, is the first to be dedicated to a single subject—in this case Scandinavian cinema. From the beginning the collection was conceived of as both a journal issue and as a free-standing text. Thus it is being issued with both an ISSN number and an ISBN number. Our hope is that this double publication will make the text available to as wide a readership as possible, an effort that will be enhanced by the open access electronic publication that will follow in due course at scancan.net.

The effort to reach a wide readership attests also to a double conviction: on the one hand, that Scandinavian Cinema matters in the world; on the other, that the articles here included will lead to a better and fuller understanding both of the phenomenon as a whole and of many of the important auteurs, films, national traditions of which it is comprised, not to mention its evolution over time. Most the articles included were invited, but authors were left free to explore the topics of their choice rather than being asked to participate in a more systematic exercise. The result is a heterogeneous set of personal essays, each marked by its own style and approach. Yet taken together they offer a surprisingly coherent conspectus—or so we think.

Collections such as this involve a significant amount of work, and not only for editors and our technical support—to whom our thanks. To the many referees who read these and other essays, our debts of gratitude are real. They are also un-repayable, at least by us, though in the great, anonymous economy of scholarship these readers must doubtless be beneficiaries as well donors. Similarly we are indebted to our contributors, who put up with a good deal of editorial interference and in some cases waited longer than they could have wished for their works to appear. We hope that everyone involved will think the final result a worthy requital of their patient efforts.

For those who wonder at the decision to use Scandinavian rather than Nordic in the title of this volume, we can only say that the association that owns the journal, the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada, has long struggled with its name. We are not unaware that the word choice could be challenged; we trust that our Finnish and Icelandic colleagues will understand.