Master-Narrative Transitions from the Vikings to Artificial Intelligence: How Fiction Helps Communities Adapt to a Changing World examines how societies survive and transform when their foundational stories begin to collapse. By tracing a millennium of cultural evolution in the Nordic region, it explores the mechanisms through which communities move from one master-narrative to another.
Propelled by artificial intelligence (AI), the Fourth Industrial Revolution is challenging the humanist master-narratives that have structured meaning throughout the modern era. In their place, emerging dataist beliefs appear increasingly adaptive to tomorrow's environment, reshaping how individuals and institutions understand progress. Yet such transitions come with the highest possible stakes.
Drawing on selected works of fiction alongside cultural analysis, this book offers both historical insight and contemporary agency. It ultimately asks what kind of beliefs can sustain social cohesion in the age of AI, and what new societies might emerge if we choose our narratives wisely.
Master-Narrative Transitions from the Vikings to Artificial Intelligence examines how societies survive and transform when their foundational stories begin to collapse. By tracing a millennium of cultural evolution in the Nordic region, it explores the mechanisms through which communities move from one master-narrative to another.
Chapter
1. Bridging the Narrative Abyss
Chapter
2. The Nordic Master-Narrative
Chapter
3. Christianity: From Kinship Societies to Feudalism
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4. The Black Death: Acceleration Toward Humanism
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5. The Reformation: From Theism to Religious Humanism
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6. The Pastoral Enlightenment: A Nordic Secular Humanism
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7. Feminism: Writing Women into the Master-Narrative
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8. Modernity: A Plea from the Urban Poor
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9. Secular Lutheranism: Narrative Continuity Informs Poverty Relief
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10. Humanism: A Nordic Negotiation Between Creeds
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11. Indigeneity: Embodied Assimilation and Sámi Revitalization
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12. Social Democracy: Adapting Through the Gales of Modernity
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13. Postmodernism: Countering the Neoliberal Threat
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14. Posthumanism: Algorithmic Universality as a Nordic Dataism
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15. Overcoming the Gloom of a Collapsing Story
Mads Larsen is a literary scholar who uses evolutionary perspectives to study cultural change. After earning a PhD and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, he became a Postdoc and Researcher at the University of Oslo. Larsen is currently affiliated with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His first research monograph was Stories of Love from Vikings to Tinder: The Evolution of Modern Mating Ideologies, Dating Dysfunction, and Demographic Collapse (Routledge, 2025). Larsen has co-authored a book on evolutionary positive psychology and published over forty articles. He serves on the editorial board of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
