There is a long non-realist tradition in Nordic literature and film that goes back to the Romantic period. This tradition frequently employs typical Gothic tropes, it seeks to evoke feelings of terror and horror, and it negotiates, as Gothic is understood to do, the complex tension between the human subject and Enlightenment modernity. Due to a striking reluctance by generations of Nordic literary critics and scholarship to recognise a Gothic tradition in the region, it was not until the late 1980s that the existence of Gothic fiction in the Nordic countries began to be systematically explored through a number of studies by Yvonne Leffler.1 Since the turn of the millennium, different Nordic writers and aspects of Gothic have been investigated by Scandinavian scholars such as Mathias Fyhr, Henrik Johnsson, Sofia Wijkmark and Kirstine Kastbjerg.2 Some introductions and surveys of the Scandinavian tradition have also been published.3 Building on this scholarship, this chapter will trace the Nordic Gothic tradition from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century to the present moment. The aim is to provide a picture of how the Gothic tradition emerged in the Nordic region and to show how Nordic writers, filmmakers and, towards the end of the twentieth century, game producers, make use of Gothic tropes and themes. Several of the authors and filmmakers mentioned in this chapter will be discussed in more detail in other parts of the book.