The successive waves of Avant-Garde experiments throughout the 20th century have been a major source of new developments in all the arts, and in its turn this experimental tradition has left its marks also on the cultural mainstream.
Although the Nordic countries contributed significantly to the early modern breakthrough in late19th cntury, 20th-century international avant-garde movements have often arrived late in the Nordic countries. This late arrival, as well as the geographical location at the Northern outskirts of Europe, have tended to obscure the avant-garde tendencies in the Nordic countries and their influence on the broader cultural history of the arts. There is, however, no doubt that discussions of the avant-garde figure prominently in the cultural discourse of the Nordic countries from the start of the 20th century, and that artists from the Nordic countries have been part of the schools and movements of the European avant-garde. Franziska Clausen from Denmark and Viking Eggeling from Sweden are just two early examples of artists who visited European avant-garde schools and in ttheir later work represented the transnational currents of the avant-garde in the Nordic countries.
Recently there has been a growing interest among scholars in uncovering the importance of the historical avant-gardes in the context of Nordic culture and the Nordic history of the arts, just as technological and media research as well as recent art and architecture have resumed the connection to previous avant-garde traditions. Recent international studies demonstrate that the avant-gardes have mostly been cross-national whereas research has traditionally had a national perspective and has therefore tended to see avant-garde tendencies as more isolated and marginal than they have in fact been. This is certainy true of the Nordic avant-garde movements which have often had strong interconnections. In this percpective it is important to keep an inter-Nordic focus on the ongoing research into the history and actuality of the avant-gardes. A Nordic network will help coordinate and build up the often small and isolated national research centres, encourage exchange of information about similarities and differences among the Nordic countries and make Nordic avant-garde research visible in an international context.
The Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies is supported by Nordforsk 2004-2007. It is an extension of the Danish research network ”The Return and Actuality of the Avant-Gardes” (coordinated by lektor Charlotte Engberg, University of Roskilde, lektor Marianne Ping Huang, Aarhus University and lektor Tania Ørum, University of Copenhagen) supported by the Danish Research Foundation for the Humanities 2001-2004.

The Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies organises a yearly conference for Nordic and European avant-garde researchers, as well as a number of smaller conferences and seminars. Conferences and seminars result in edited publications published by several Nordic publishing houses. The network has also started the editing a four-volume Cultural History of the Nordic Avant-Gardes which will cover the period 1900-2000. This publication will be supplemented by a digital archive of documents from the Nordic avant gardes, a NUBUweb which will include texts, images and sound.

Coordinators
Denmark: lektor Tania Ørum, University of Copenhagen and lektor Marianne Ping Huang, Aarhus University.
Norway: docent Per Bäckström, Tromsø University and Bodil Børset, University of Bergen.
Sweden: lektor Jonas Ingvarsson, Karlstad University and ph.d. Jesper Olsson, Stockholm University.
Iceland: mag.art. Benedikt Hjartarsson, University of Iceland and, lektor Hlynur Helgasson, University of Iceland.

Conferences
Copenhagen 2004:
(Inter)national Research – Transnational Avant-Gardes: New Perspectives on Nordic Avant-Garde Research and Historiography
Arranged by Marianne Ping Huang and Tania Ørum.

Stockholm 2005
Avant-Garde and Technology
Arranged by: Jonas Ingvarsson, Karlstad University og Jesper Olsson, Stockholm University.

Tromsø 2006
Centre-Periphery: Avant-Garde and the Other
Arranged by: Per Bäckström, Tromsø University.

Reykjavik 2007
Avant-Garde and Violence
Arranged by: Benedikt Hjartarsson and Hlynur Helgasson, University of Iceland.