Lesley Riddoch

Podcast – Iceland, the fire island Iceland has a stunning landscape with glaciers galore … but is more properly fire island. Lava, earthquakes eruptions and volcanoes dominate life and w […]

10: Iceland – fire island Iceland has a stunning landscape with glaciers galore … but is more properly fire island. Lava, earthquakes eruptions and volcanoes d […]

Is Gothenburg Sweden's green capital? Gothenburg once boasted the world’s largest shipyards, but faced with Japanese and Korean competition, the oil crisis and a world economic […]

9: Gothenburg – has this former shipyard city become Sweden's green capital? Gothenburg in Sweden once boasted the world’s largest shipyards, but in the face […]

8: Bot-savvy Finns Finland has a particular source of propaganda to deal with in the shape of Russia. Misinformation attacks have focused on familiar […]

PODCAST; Finland – the future is cooperative While Britain struggles with sky-high bills, and private water, electricity and oil companies make record profits, Finland relies on a unique […]

Finland has a 1300 km long land border with Russia, it fought two wars in the 1940s to defend then reclaim lost territory, and is now applying to join NATO. There, most knowledge of Finland ends.Which is a […]

New – The Nordic Horizons Explainer Podcast It’s twelve years since Dan Wynn and Lesley Riddoch set up a think tank to focus on the policy successes of Scotland’s Nordic neighbours. Since then, […]

It’s twelve years since Dan Wynn and Lesley Riddoch set up a think tank to focus on the policy successes of Scotland’s Nordic neighbours. Since then, Nordic Horizons has organised almost 70 meetings – most of them […]

Podcast – Finland's fight against Russian cyber attacks Fake news and cyber attacks are helping undermine democracy, legitimise extremist views, push groundless conspiracy theories and provide cover for […]

Podcast; Jean Sibelius – Finland's musical genius This is a Nordic Horizons podcast with a difference. It isn’t about policy, politics, climate change or kindergarten – it’s about culture. And the […]

‘Finland doesn’t have a long history of Kings and castles. We have always been occupied. When we finally became free the country was built on language, literature, music, paintings. Sibelius created the d […]

Is Scotland set to follow Norway with a shift to kindergarten for the early years and a school starting age 6/7 not the present 4/5?Just 12 per cent of countries send five-year-olds to school. Almost all are […]

4. Podcast: Get oot to play – school can wait How would you measure success in the early years of a child’s education? In the […]

Why did district heating start on farms in Denmark?Are the Norwegians wiser to depend on electrification?Could Scotland do something game changing with smart, local energy networks?Will nuclear help Sweden reach […]

Since Scotland’s ‘local’ elections in May 2022, there’s been much debate about coalitions and control. But there’s a bigger question – are Scottish councils with an average of 175 thousand inhabitants really local […]

This is a podcast edited from the conversation between three Nordic experts talking about Russian aggression in Ukraine and the way it is unravelling 70 years of neutrality and non-alignment in Scandinavia. It […]

PODCAST: NATO membership for Finland & Sweden – the end of Baltic neutrality?? This podcast was produced after a fascinating online Nordic Horizons meeting in March 2022, eight weeks before the Swedish and Finnish premiers […]

NEW PODCAST Powerful pint-sized Nordic democracy Scotland has the largest units of ‘local’ government in the developed world with just 32 councils for 5.3 million folk. Norway has almost 400 councils […]

Heating homes without gas – the Nordic way None of Scotland’s Nordic neighbours depends on gas for heating – but 85% of homes in Scotland do. Why the big difference? How did Nordic nations jump […]