The foundation stone for the creation of IASS: International Association for Scandinavian Studies, was laid at
the First International Conference on Scandinavian Studies which
took place at the University of Cambridge, England, in July 1956. Few
months later, the world woke up to the news of the Soviet invasion
in Budapest on November 4th, a defining moment in the history of
the Cold War, which sent political shock waves and a flow of nearly a
quarter-million Hungarian refugees to Western Europe. But how did
this tense political situation affect the emerging field of international
Scandinavian studies? Drawing on the vast literature of published
proceedings from IASS conferences and personal interviews with
members of the organization, this article examines how the Cold War
geopolitical conflict between the communist East and the capitalist
West left its imprint on the activities of IASS in the period from 1956
until the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union in 1989/1991.