It is widely recognized that Europe rose to global power on the basis of the triangular trade with Africa and America. However, often historians fail to acknowledge the extent to which our contemporary world is the product of a triangular cultural circuit between the three continents. 

This panel explores the cultural circulation between Scandinavia, the US and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, during decolonization and the Cold War. These transatlantic exchanges led to the reinvention, renegotiation and reformation of fundamental ideas and practices related to freedom and equality, race and universality, dependence and independence, development and modernization. 

But what kind of symbols, discourses and practices evolved as non-state actors engaged in this exchange, which included creating an image of Scandinavia as a tolerant and progressive region? To what degree did the circuit challenge the Color Curtain and the Iron Curtain, the fundamental divisions at the time?