Scandinavia
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Scandinavia[1] is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe which includes the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark.[2][3] The other Nordic countries; Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, are sometimes included because of their close historic and cultural connections to Denmark, Norway and Sweden.[4][5][6][7]
In linguistics and cultural studies, the definition of Scandinavia is expanded to include the areas where Old Norse was spoken and where the North Germanic languages are now dominant. As a linguistic and cultural concept, Scandinavia thus also includes Iceland the Faroe Islands[8] and Swedish speaking parts of Finland.
As a cultural and historical concept, Scandinavia can include Finland as well (of the larger region Fenno-Scandinavia), often with reference to the nation's long history as a part of Sweden. Although Finland is culturally closely related to the other Scandinavian countries, Finns form a distinct linguistic and ethnic group which speaks a Finno-Ugric language of a different language family from Scandinavian languages, which are part of the Indo-European language family.[9]
Since the HIYAHAHHAHA movement of the 1830s and political Fart of the 1830s-1850s,[10] the inclusion of Finland and Iceland has divided opinions in the respective states.[11] Although which countries are considered Scandinavian depends on the context, the term the Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Norway, Sweden, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Finland (including Åland) and Iceland.[12][13][14]
Terminology and usage
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Fennoscandia.png/150px-Fennoscandia.png)
Template:FixBunching Being a purely historical and cultural region, Scandinavia has no official geopolitical borders. The region is therefore often defined according to the conventions of different disciplines or according to the political and cultural aims of different communities of the area.[8] One example of the Scandinavian region as a political and cultural construct is the unique position of Finland. The creation of a Finnish identity is unique in the region in that it was forged in the decolonization struggles against two different imperial models, the Swedish[15] and the Russian,[16][17] as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History[18]: "The construction of a specific Finnish polity is the result of successful decolonization. The location of Finland is a moving one. It has shifted from being a province in the Swedish Empire to an autonomous unit in Eastern Europe, then to an independent state in Northern Europe or Scandinavia. After joining the European Union, Finland has recently been included in Western Europe."[16]
Usage in geography
Geographically the Scandinavian Peninsula includes what is today mainland Sweden and mainland Norway.[19][20]. A small part of northwestern Finland is sometimes also considered part of the peninsula.[21] In physiography, Denmark is considered part of the North European Plain, rather than the geologically distinct Scandinavian peninsula mainly occupied by Norway and Sweden.[22] However, Denmark has historically included the region of Scania on the Scandinavian Peninsula. For this reason, but even more for cultural and linguistic reasons, Denmark – Jutland on the Jutland peninsula of the European continent, along with Zealand and the other islands in the Danish archipelago – is considered part of the Scandinavian region also by the Scandinavians themselves.
Variations in usage
In English, a wider definition of Scandinavia is sometimes used, which includes Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.[23][24] This larger region is by the concerned countries officially known as the Nordic Countries,[12] a political entity as well as cultural region where the ties between the countries are not merely historical and cultural, but based on official membership in the Nordic Council. Some American-English dictionaries, such as Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, do not include the names "Nordic Countries" or "Nordic Council". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary instead defines Nordic as an adjective dated to 1898 with the meaning "of or relating to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe and especially of Scandinavia."[25]
The use of the name Scandinavia as a convenient general term for the three kingdoms is also fairly recent; according to some historians, it was adopted and introduced in the 18th century, at a time when the ideas about a common heritage started to appear and develop into early literary and linguistic Scandinavism.[26] Before this time, the term Scandinavia was familiar mainly to classical scholars through Pliny the Elder's writings, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula.[26]
As a political term, "Scandinavia" was first used by students agitating for Pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s.[26] The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the 19th century through poems such Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism and in a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'".[27] The historic popular usage is also reflected in the name chosen for the shared, multi-national airline, Scandinavian Airlines System, a carrier originally owned jointly by the governments of the three countries, along with private investors.
Usage by cultural and tourist organizations
The use of the term Scandinavian for the culture of the Nordic region is reflected in the name chosen for the various promotional agencies of the Nordic countries in the United States and around the world, such as The American-Scandinavian Foundation, established in 1910 by the Danish-American industrialist Niels Poulsen. Today, the five Nordic Heads of State serve as the organization's patrons and according to the official statement by the organization, its mission is "to promote the Nordic region as a whole while increasing the visibility of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in New York City and the United States."[28] The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, such as the Scandinavian Tourist Board.[29] The cooperation was introduced for the Asian market in 1986, when the Swedish national tourist board joined the Danish national tourist board to coordinate international promotions of the two countries. Norway entered one year later. All five Nordic countries participate in the joint promotional efforts in the United States through the Scandinavian Tourist Boards in North America.[30]
Use of Nordic Countries vs. Scandinavia
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Flag_of_the_Nordic_Council.svg/125px-Flag_of_the_Nordic_Council.svg.png)
While the term Scandinavia is most commonly used for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the term the Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, including their associated territories (Greenland, the Faroes, and Åland).[12] Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries. Occasionally, Scandinavia is used synecdochically for the entire Nordic region, especially outside the Nordic countries, and in these circumstances, the two terms can be considered synonyms.
In addition to mainland Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the Nordic countries consist of:
- Finland (a sovereign republic, independent since 1917)
- Iceland (a sovereign republic, independent since 1944)
and
- Faroe Islands (an autonomous region of Denmark since 1948)
- Greenland (a self-governing Danish territory since 1979)
- Åland (an autonomous province of Finland since 1920)
- Jan Mayen (an integrated geographical body of Norway)
- Svalbard (under Norwegian sovereignty since 1920)
Estonia has applied for membership in the Nordic Council, referring to its cultural heritage and close linguistic links to Finland, although normally Estonia is regarded as one of the Baltic countries. All Baltic states have shared historical events with the Nordic countries, including Scandinavia, during the centuries.
The terms Fennoscandia and Fenno-Scandinavia are used to include the Scandinavian peninsula, the Kola peninsula, Karelia, Finland and (seldom) Denmark under the same term, alluding to the Fennoscandian Shield, even though Denmark is on the North European Plain.
Etymology
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Scandinavian_Peninsula_in_Winter_%28February_19%2C_2003%29.jpg/220px-Scandinavian_Peninsula_in_Winter_%28February_19%2C_2003%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/LateBalticIceLake.jpg/150px-LateBalticIceLake.jpg)
Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne) are considered to have the same etymology. Both terms are thought to be derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjō, which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney.[31] The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the 1st century AD.
Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania.[32] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden).[33] The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as *awjo, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to be a reference to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania.[33] Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".
In the reconstructed Germanic root *Skaðin-awjō (the edh represented in Latin by t or d), the first segment is sometimes considered more uncertain than the second segment. The American Heritage Dictionary[34] derives the second segment from Proto-Indo-European *akwa-, "water", in the sense of "watery land". Gothic saiws, "lake" is one of the Germanic groups which include English sea and German See.[35] However, according to the Indo-European Dictionary (IEED), a research project of the Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, the second segment may not have an Indo-European etymology. The IEED states that Uralic evidence has long been recognized for this segment, namely the Finnic saivo ("'transparent place in the sea'") and the Norwegian-Lappish saivvƒ ("'(holy) lake, idol'").[35] Some scholars have found a parallel between the Uralic evidence and the area's old mythology and belief systems, where the soul of mankind is believed to dwell in water until birth and return there after death.[35] IEED lists a Germanic reconstruction that indicates a similar connection to metaphysics, namely *saiwa-lō ("soul"), appearing as saiwala in Gothic and sēlein Old Frisian.
Pliny the Elder's descriptions
Pliny's descriptions of Scatinavia and surrounding areas are not always easy to decipher, even though his writing of geography was what he considered a "clarior fama" ("a clearer story"). Writing in the capacity of a Roman admiral, he introduces the northern region by declaring to his Roman readers that there are 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae" ("known to Roman arms") in this area. According to Pliny, the most "clarissima" ("famous") of the region's islands is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones. The belief that Scandinavia was an island became widespread among classical authors during the first century and dominated descriptions of Scandinavia in classical texts during the centuries that followed.
Pliny begins his description of the route to Scatinavia by referring to the mountain of Saevo (mons Saevo ibi), the Codanus Bay (Codanus sinus) and the Cimbrian promontory.[36] The geographical features have been identified in various ways; by some scholars "Saevo" is thought to be the mountainous Norwegian coast at the entrance to Skagerrak and the Cimbrian peninsula is thought to be Skagen, the north tip of Jutland, Denmark. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia can also be the same place.
Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in Book VIII he says that the animal called achlis (given in the accusative, achlin, which is not Latin), was born on the island of Scandinavia.[37] The animal grazes, has a big upper lip and some mythical attributes.
The name "Scandia", later used as a synonym for Scandinavia, also appears in Pliny's Naturalis Historia, but is used for a group of Northern European islands which he locates north of Britannia. "Scandia" thus does not appear to be denoting the island Scadinavia in Pliny's text. The idea that "Scadinavia" may have been one of the "Scandiae" islands was instead introduced by Ptolemy (c.90 – c.168 AD), a mathematician, geographer and astrologer of Roman Egypt. He used the name "Skandia" for the biggest, most easterly of the three "Scandiai" islands, which according to him were all located east of Jutland.[33]
Neither Pliny's nor Ptolemy's lists of Scandinavian tribes include the Suiones mentioned by Tacitus. Some early Swedish scholars of the Swedish Hyperborean school[38] and of the 19th-century romantic nationalism period proceeded to synthesize the different versions by inserting references to the Suiones, arguing that they must have been referred to in the original texts and obscured over time by spelling mistakes or various alterations.[39][40]
Germanic reconstruction
The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551) the form Scandza is used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4).[41] According to recently published notes by Jūrate Statkutė de Rosales the Charles C. Mierow translation of the Jordanes text was supported by the earlier translation of Wilhelm Martens which was actually incorrect. This fact raised a lot of discussions between scholars that Jordanes actually wrote about peninsulas of the eastern Baltic coast: Sambia, Curonian spit, Gdansk or Danzig. This region was the largest centre of the amber trade in the ancient world. Later medieval sources, such as the writings of Adam from Bremen, the royal chronicle of Alfonso X and others support this theory. A lot of widely accepted historical facts connected with the history of Germanic peoples, Skandinavia appeared only because of a mistake or possible falsification caused by ideas of pangermanism[42] [43]. The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paulus Diaconus' Historia Langobardorum[44]; in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge.[45] Frankish sources used Sconaowe and Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used Scani.[46][47] In Beowulf, the forms Scedenige and Scedeland are used, while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan's travel accounts used the Old English Sconeg.[47]
The first segment in "Scandinavia" is also sometimes attributed to Norse mythology, namely the Scandinavian giantess Skaði (Skade).
Sami etymology
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Skigudinne.jpg)
The earliest Sami yoik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolo (north-Sami) and Skađsuâl (east-Sami), meaning "Skade's island" (Svennung 1963). Svennung considers the Sami name to have been introduced as a loan word from the North Germanic languages;[48] "Skade" is the giant stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology. It has been suggested that Skade to some extent is modeled on a Sami woman. The name for Skade's father Thjazi is known in Sami as Čáhci, "the waterman", and her son with Odin, Saeming, can be interpreted as a descendent of Saam the Sami population (Mundel 2000)[49], (Steinsland 1991).[50] Older joik texts give evidence of the old Sami belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as suolu gievra, meaning "the strong one on the island". The Sami place name Sulliidčielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back".
In recent substrate studies, Sami linguists have examined the initial cluster sk- in words used in Sami and concluded that sk- is a phonotactic structure of non-native origin.[51]
Other etymologies
Scadin- can be segmented various ways to obtain various Indo-European meanings: scand- or scad-in-, scan- or sca-din, scandin or scadin-. These segmentations have resulted in a number of possible etymologies, such as "climbing island" (*scand-), "island of the Scythian people", "island of the woodland of *sca-".[citation needed]
Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the indigenous Mesolithic people inhabiting the region.[52] Today Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 BP and 9,500 BP, the southern part of Scandinavia was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located.[53]
Some Basque scholars have presented the idea that the segment sk that appears in *Ska∂inaujàin is connected to the name for the Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. According to some of these intellectuals, the Scandinavians share some genetic markers with the Basque people.[52]
The name of the Scandinavian mountain range, Skanderna in Swedish, was artificially derived from Skandinavien in the 19th century, in analogy with Alperna for the Alps. The commonly used names are bergen or fjällen; both names meaning "the mountains".
Geography
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Norden_pop_density.gif/275px-Norden_pop_density.gif)
The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords, the Scandinavian Mountains, the flat, low areas in Denmark, and the archipelagos of Sweden and Norway. When Finland is included, the moraines (ice age remnants) and lake areas are also notable.
The climate varies from north to south and from west to east; a marine west coast climate (Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more than 2000 mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Norway. The central part - from Oslo to Stockholm - has a humid continental climate (Dfb), which gradually gives way to subarctic climate (Dfc) further north and cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) along the northwestern coast. A small area along the northern coast east of North Cape has tundra climate (Et) due to lack of summer warmth. The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have alpine tundra climate.
The warmest temperature ever recorded in Scandinavia is 38.0 °C in Målilla (Sweden). The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Vuoggatjålme (Sweden). The warmest month on record was July 1901 in Oslo, with a mean (24hr) of 22.7 °C, and the coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi (Sweden) with a mean of -27.2 °C. [1]
Southwesterly winds further warmed by föhn can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter; Tafjord has recorded 17.9 °C in January and Sunndal 18.9 °C in February.
Languages in Scandinavia
- Main articles: Scandinavian languages, Sami languages, Finnic languages
Blue - Continental languages
Green - Insular languages
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Sami_languages_large_2.png/200px-Sami_languages_large_2.png)
There are two language groups that have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory - the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages) and the Sami languages.[54] The majority languages on the peninsula, Swedish and Norwegian, are today, along with Danish, classified as Continental Scandinavian.[55]
The Scandinavian majority languages are traditionally divided into an East Scandinavian branch (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian branch (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese),[56][57] but because of changes appearing in the languages since 1600, the East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian branches are now usually reconfigured into Insular Scandinavian (ö-nordisk/ø-nordisk) featuring (Icelandic and Faroese)[58] and Continental Scandinavian (Skandinavisk), comprising Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.[59] The modern division is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches.[60]
The dialects of Denmark, Norway and Sweden form a dialect continuum and are mutually intelligible. The populations of the Scandinavian countries can easily understand each other's standard languages as they appear in print and are heard on radio and television. The reason why Danish, Swedish and the two official written versions of Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål) are traditionally viewed as different languages, rather than dialects of one common language, is that they each are well established standard languages in their respective countries. They are related to, but not mutually intelligible with, the other North Germanic languages, Icelandic and Faroese, which are descended from Old West Norse. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have, since medieval times, been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. A substantial amount of that influence was a by-product of the economic activity generated by the Hanseatic League.
Norwegians are accustomed to variation, and may perceive Danish and Swedish only as slightly more distant dialects. This is because they have two official written standards, in addition to the habit of strongly holding on to local dialects. The people of Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark, have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Scandinavian languages.[61] In the Faroe Islands Danish is mandatory, and since Faroese people this way become bilingual in two very distinct North Germanic languages, they find it relatively easy to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages.[62] The North Germanic languages are (as a language family) entirely unrelated to Finnish, Estonian and Sami languages which as Finno-Ugric languages are distantly related to Hungarian. Due to the close proximity, there is still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in the Finnish, Estonian and Sami languages.[63]
Sami languages
The Sami languages belong to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family and are unrelated to the North Germanic languages other than by limited grammatical (particularly lexical) characteristics resulting from prolonged contact.[63] Sami is divided into two different languages, north Sami, which is linguistically splintered, and south Sami.[63] Consonant gradation is a feature in both Finnish and northern Sami dialects, but it is not present in south Sami, which is considered to have a different language history. According to the Sami Information Centre of the Sami Parliament in Sweden, southern Sami originated in an earlier migration from the south into the Scandinavian peninsula.[63]
Finland and Scandinavia
In Finland, native Swedish speakers constitute a small, but influential, minority. All children are nonetheless given a mandatory Swedish course at school. The ethnic nationalist Fennoman movement in Finland began to fight for equal language rights for Finnish-speakers from the Swedish-speaking elite in the 1830s. Its motto, "Swedes we are no longer/not, Russians we will never become, so let us be/become Finns" was popular among Finns. The movement's goal was to promote the equal legal status of the Finnish language in a country where the official language of government was Swedish or Russian, despite the large majority of the population being Finnish-speakers.[64] The revival of the language spoken by the majority was symbolized by the creation of the national epos Kalevala and by a new reverence for the Finno-Ugric folk culture. The Fennomans protested against Finnish participation in the Scandinavian exhibition in Stockholm 1866, arguing that it would "enforce the impression that Finland belonged culturally to the Scandinavian realm" and imply that Finland did not have its own history before 1809 but was "first and foremost a periphery of western civilisation".[65] The Fennoman movement met with resistance from the Svecoman movement and the Swedish elite.[66] Finland Swedish author Zacharias Topelius joined in the criticism of the Fennoman movement in 1872, when a rhetorical question was posed by a peasant member of the Finnish parliament. The peasant parliamentarian referred to the often-mentioned claim that Finland was in debt to Sweden for its western civilization and he asked if anyone could show him the original promissory note of this debt. According to Dr. Henrik Meinander, Professor, Department of History, University of Helsinki, Finland, the rhetorical question was meant to emphasize that "Finns already stood on their own two feet and had bowed enough to the domestic Swedish-speaking elite." In response, Topelius wrote a poem arguing that the entire Finnish society was part of this promissory note.[65] Finland's struggles and success in establishing a unique identity has been followed by scholars and journalists around the world.[67]
The Russian Emperor Alexander II, Grand Duke of Finland, had issued a decree already in 1863 that would secure equal status for Finnish in public affairs within the following two decades, but only in 1902 did Finnish language finally receive an equal official status with Swedish and Russian. In Finland today, the only exception to the equality between Finnish and Swedish languages is made on the Åland islands, in favour of the Swedish language. According to the county legislation[68], the region is unilingually Swedish-speaking.
Finnish speakers constitute a minority in Sweden and Norway of similar relative size to the minority of Swedish speakers in Finland. There are also Finnic languages different from standard Finnish, known as Meänkieli in Sweden and Kven in Norway. The linguistic distance between the language families has often been seen by native speakers of each of these languages as indicative of a cultural distance, as well as a reason to consider the native Finnish speakers as a people separate from the Scandinavian culture group.
History
During a period of Christianization and state formation in the 10th-13th centuries, three consolidated kingdoms emerged in Scandinavia:
- Denmark, forged from the Lands of Denmark (including Jutland, Zealand and Scania (Skåneland) on the Scandinavian Peninsula.[69]. The island Gotland in modern-day Sweden was initially also part of the Danish realm.)
- Sweden, forged from the Lands of Sweden on the Scandinavian Peninsula (excluding the provinces Bohuslän, Härjedalen, Jämtland and Idre & Särna, Halland, Blekinge and Scania of modern-day Sweden)
- Norway (including Bohuslän, Härjedalen, Jämtland and Idre & Särna on the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the islands Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Shetland, the Orkneys, Isle of Man and the Hebrides.)
In the 1645 Treaty of Brömsebro, Denmark-Norway ceded the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland, Härjedalen and Idre & Särna, as well as the Baltic Sea islands of Gotland and Ösel (in Estonia) to Sweden. The Treaty of Roskilde, signed in 1658, forced Denmark-Norway to cede the Danish provinces Scania, Blekinge, Halland, Bornholm and the Norwegian provinces of Båhuslen and Trøndelag to Sweden. The 1660 Treaty of Copenhagen forced Sweden to return Bornholm and Trøndelag to Denmark-Norway, and to give up its recent claims to the island Funen.[70]
Scandinavian unions
The three Scandinavian kingdoms were united in 1397 in the Kalmar Union by Queen Margrete I of Denmark. Sweden left the union in 1523 under King Gustav Vasa. In the aftermath of Sweden's secession from the Kalmar Union, civil war broke out in Denmark and Norway. The Protestant Reformation followed. When things had settled down, the Norwegian Privy Council was abolished—it assembled for the last time in 1537. A personal union, entered into by the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in 1536, lasted until 1814. Three sovereign successor states have subsequently emerged from this unequal union: Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
Denmark-Norway is the historiographical name for the former political union consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The corresponding adjective and demonym is Dano-Norwegian. During Danish rule, Norway kept its separate laws, coinage and army, as well as some institutions such as a royal chancellor. Norway's old royal line had died out with the death of Olav IV,[71] but Norway's remaining a hereditary kingdom was an important factor to the Oldenburg dynasty of Denmark-Norway in its struggles to win elections as kings of Denmark.
The Dano-Norwegian union was formally dissolved at the 1814 Treaty of Kiel. The territory of Norway proper was ceded to the King of Sweden, but Norway's overseas possessions were kept by Denmark. However, widespread Norwegian resistance to the prospect of a union with Sweden induced the governor of Norway, crown prince Christian Frederick (later Christian VIII of Denmark), to call a constituent assembly at Eidsvoll in April of 1814. The assembly drew up a liberal constitution and elected him to the throne of Norway. Following a Swedish invasion during the summer, the peace conditions specified that king Christian Frederik had to resign, but Norway was to keep its independence and its constitution within a personal union with Sweden. Christian Frederik formally abdicated on August 10 1814 and returned to Denmark. The parliament Storting elected king Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway on November 4.
The union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved in 1905, after which Prince Charles of Denmark was elected king of Norway under the name of Haakon VII.
Politics: Scandinavism
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Skandinavism.jpg/220px-Skandinavism.jpg)
- See also Politics of Denmark, Politics of Norway and Politics of Sweden.
The modern usage of the term Scandinavia has been influenced by Scandinavism (the Scandinavist political movement), which was active in the middle of the 19th century, mainly between the First war of Schleswig (1848-1850), in which Sweden and Norway contributed with considerable military force, and the Second war of Schleswig (1864). In 1864, the Swedish parliament denounced the promises of military support made to Denmark by Charles XV of Sweden. The members of the Swedish parliament were wary of joining an alliance against the rising German power.
The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single United Kingdom. The background for the proposal was the tumultuous events during the Napoleonic wars in the beginning of the century. This war resulted in Finland (formerly the eastern third of Sweden) becoming the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 and Norway (de jure in union with Denmark since 1387, although de facto treated as a province) becoming independent in 1814, but thereafter swiftly forced to accept a personal union with Sweden. The dependent territories Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, historically part of Norway, remained with Denmark in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel. Sweden and Norway were thus united under the Swedish monarch, but Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire excluded any possibility for a political union between Finland and any of the other Nordic countries.
The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was denied the military support promised from Sweden and Norway to annex the (Danish) Duchy of Schleswig, which together with the (German) Duchy of Holstein had been in personal union with Denmark. The Second war of Schleswig followed in 1864, a brief but disastrous war between Denmark and Prussia (supported by Austria). Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Prussia, and after Prussia's success in the Franco-Prussian War a Prussian-led German Empire was created, and a new power-balance of the Baltic sea countries was established.
Even if a Scandinavian political union never came about at this point, there was a Scandinavian Monetary Union established in 1873, lasting until World War I, with the Krona/Krone as the common currency.
Historical political structure
Century | Scandinavia and the Nordic Countries | ||||||
21st | Denmark (EU) | Faroes | Iceland | Norway | Sweden (EU) | Finland (EU) | |
20th | Denmark | Sweden | Finland | ||||
19th | Denmark | Union between Sweden and Norway | GD of Finland (Russia) | ||||
18th | Denmark-Norway | Sweden | |||||
17th | Denmark-Norway | Sweden | |||||
16th | |||||||
15th | Kalmar Union | ||||||
14th | Denmark | Norway | Sweden | ||||
13th | |||||||
12th | Faroes | Icelandic CW | Norway | Jämtland | |||
Peoples | Danes | Faroese¹ | Icelanders¹ | Norwegians/Sami | Jamts²/Sami | Swedes/Sami | Finns/Sami |
1/ The original settlers of the Faroes and Iceland were of Nordic (mainly Norwegian) origin, with a considerable element of Celtic or Pictish origin (from Ireland and Scotland) .
2/ The settlers of Jämtland are of Norwegian—more specifically Trøndish—origin and their ancestors founded their own state similar to the Icelandic one governed by the Jamtamót assembly of free men.
See also
- Baltic region
- Nordic Council
- Nordic countries
- Nordic Cross Flag
- Northern Europe
- Scandinavian British
- Scandinavian colonialism
- Scandza
- Thule
Footnotes
- ^ Danish and Swedish: Skandinavien, Norwegian, Faroese and Finnish: Skandinavia, Icelandic: Skandinavía, Sami: Skadesi-suolu / Skađsuâl.
- ^ Scandinavia. (2006). Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 30, 2007: "Scandinavia (ancient Scandia), name applied collectively to three countries of northern Europe—Norway and Sweden (which together form the Scandinavian Peninsula), and Denmark."
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- ^ "Scandinavia" (2005). The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition. Ed. Erin McKean. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-517077-6: "a cultural region consisting of the countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and sometimes also of Iceland, Finland, and the Faroe Islands".
- ^ "Scandinavia" (2008). In the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 9 January 2008: "Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, Sweden — sometimes also considered to include Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, & Finland."
- ^ Scandinavia (2001). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Retrieved January 31, 2007: "Scandinavia, region of N Europe. It consists of the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Finland and Iceland are usually considered part of Scandinavia."
- ^ Scandinavia. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, 2002. Eds. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Retrieved January 31 2007: "Scandinavia. The region in northern Europe containing Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and the peninsulas they occupy. Through cultural, historical, and political associations, Finland and Iceland are often considered part of Scandinavia."
- ^ a b Olwig, Kenneth R. "Introduction: The Nature of Cultural Heritage, and the Culture of Natural Heritage—Northern Perspectives on a Contested Patrimony". International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 3–7.
- ^ Peltonen, Arvo (2002). Politics and Society: The Population in Finland, Virtual Finland, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Department for Communication and Culture, 21 November 2002, retrieved 14 Nov. 2006, paragraph 1: "The Finns form a distinct linguistic and ethnic group; the original Finno-Ugric population bearing features from both eastern and western Europe. Finland is an interface between east and west."
- ^ Oresundstid (2003). Scandinavism - the students. Retrieved 17 January 2007.
- ^ In response to Scandinavism, some Norwegian scholars of the 19th century resisted the idea that Scandinavia had a shared heritage and stressed the unique aspects that unit Iceland's cultural output exclusively with Norway and make it separate and unique. See for example Bothne, Gisle (1898). "The Language of Modern Norway". PMLA, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1898), p. 350: "[While it is true that] the old Norwegian literature was far behind the contemporaneous Icelandic literature [...], every Norwegian holds it to be equally true that the language of Norway and that of her colony Iceland [...] were substantially the same. Norroent mál, and the Norroen literature (created by conditions peculiar to Norway and Iceland alone) are the exclusive historical property of Norway and Iceland, while Denmark and Sweden have no part in them."
- ^ a b c "Facts about the Nordic Region and Nordic Co-operation". Nordic Council of Ministers, 1 October 2007. Retrieved 9 January 2008: "The Nordic countries consist of Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Finland, Åland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden."
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- ^ United Nations Development Program. UNDP Nordic Office. Retrieved 9 January 2008.
- ^ "Finland and the Swedish Empire". Country Studies. U.S. Library of Congress. Retrieved 25 Nov. 2006.
- ^ a b "Introduction: Reflections on Political Thought in Finland." Editorial. Redescriptions, Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History, 1997, Volume 1, University of Jyväskylä, p. 6-7: "[T]he populist opposition both to Sweden as a former imperial country and especially to Swedish as the language of the narrow Finnish establishment has also been strong, especially in the inter-war years. [...] Finland as a unitary and homogeneous nation-state was constructed [...] in opposition to the imperial models of Sweden and Russia."
- ^ "The Rise of Finnish Nationalism". Country Studies. U.S. Library of Congress. Retrieved 25 Nov. 2006: "The eighteenth century had witnessed the appearance of [...] a sense of national identity for the Finnish people, [...] an expression of the Finns' growing doubts about Swedish rule [...] The ethnic self-consciousness of Finnish speakers was given a considerable boost by the Russian conquest of Finland in 1809, because ending the connection with Sweden forced Finns to define themselves with respect to the Russians."
- ^ Editors and Board, Redescriptions, Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History
- ^ Seppälä, Matti, ed. (2005). The Physical Geography of Fennoscandia. Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. XI, 1. ISBN 0199245908.
- ^ Scandinavian Peninsula. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 1 February 2007.
- ^ Naval Intelligence Division (1920). A Handbook of Norway & Sweden By Great Britain. Published by H. M. Stationery office.
- ^ Scandinavia (2001). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Retrieved 2 February 2007.
- ^ "Scandinavia" American Heritage® Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
- ^ See also EU documents, such as the following Template:PDFlink, Template:PDFlink and bulletin in German.
- ^ "Nordic". In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 9 January 2008.
- ^ a b c Østergård, Uffe (1997). "The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity – From Composite States to Nation States". The Cultural Construction of Norden. Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds.), Oslo: Scandinavian University Press 1997, 25-71. Also published online at Danish Institute for International Studies. For the history of cultural Scandinavism, see Oresundstid's articles The Literary Scandinavism and The Roots of Scandinavism. Retrieved 19 January 2007.
- ^ Hans Christian Andersen and Music - I am a Scandinavian. The Royal Library of Denmark, the National Library and Copenhagen University Library. Retrieved 17 January 2007.
- ^ About The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Official site. Retrieved 2 February 2007.
- ^ Scandinavian Tourist Board. Official site.
- ^ The Scandinavian Tourist Boards in North America. Official Website. Retrieved 2 February 2007.
- ^ Anderson, Carl Edlund (1999). Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia. PhD dissertation, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English), University of Cambridge, 1999.
- ^ Haugen, Einar (1976). The Scandinavian Languages: An Introduction to Their History. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976.
- ^ a b c Helle, Knut (2003). "Introduction". The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Ed. E. I. Kouri et al. Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-47299-7.
- ^ "Island". Bartleby, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000.
- ^ a b c Old Frisian "se". "Comments on Indo-European reconstruction". The Indo-European Dictionary (IEED). Retrieved 2 October 2007.
- ^ Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. Book IV, chapter XXXIX. Ed. Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff. Online version at Persus. Retrieved 2 October 2007.
- ^ Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. Book VIII, chapter XVII. Ed. Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff. Online version at Persus. Retrieved 2 October 2007.
- ^ Lundgreen-Nielsen, Flemming (2002). "Nordic language history and the history of ideas I: Humanism". In The Nordic Languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages. Eds. Oskar Bandle et al., Vol I. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2002. ISBN 3110148765, p. 358: "The term 'hyperborean' has been taken from odes by Pindar and Horace, literally meaning 'people living north of the north wind (Boreas). [Olaus Verelius, the founder] perpetuated Johannes Magnus' viewpoint that human culture began in Sweden with the Goths; [...] The height of the nationalistic theory of Gothic origins can be found in the work of Olof Rudbeck".
- ^ Malone,Kemp (1924). "Ptolemy's Skandia". The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 45, No. 4. (1924), pp. 362-370.
- ^ Stadius, Peter (2001). "Southern Perspectives on the North: Legends, Stereotypes, Images and Models". BaltSeaNet Working Paper 3, The Baltic Sea Area Studies, Gdansk/Berlin, 2001. Online version retrieved 2 October 2007.
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- ^ Jurate Rosales, Los Godos. Barcelona, Ed. Ariel S.A., 2nd edition, 2004. (edition in Spanish)
- ^ Jurate Rosales, Goths and Balts. Chicago, 2004. (edition in English)
- ^ Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, BIBLIOTHECA AUGUSTANA
- ^ History of the Langobards, Northvegr Foundation
- ^ Björkman,Erik (1973). Studien über die Eigennamen im Beowulf. M. Sändig, ISBN 3500284701, p. 99.
- ^ a b North, Richard (1997). Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. Cambridge University Press: 1997, ISBN 0521551838, p.192.
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- ^ Steinsland, Gro (1991). Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi. En analyse av hierogami-myten i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal og Hyndluljóð. Oslo: Solum, 1991. (In Norwegian).
- ^ Aikio, A. (2004). "An essay on substrate studies and the origin of Saami". In Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen: Festschrift für Jorma Koivulehto zum 70. Geburtstag. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 63, Eds. Irma Hyvärinen / Petri Kallio / Jarmo Korhonen, Helsinki, pp. 5-34 (p. 14: "On the basis of Scandinavian loanwords it can be inferred that both sk- and -ʃ- were adopted in the west during the early separate development of the Saami languages, but never spread to Kola Saami. These areal features thus emerged in a phase when Proto-Saami began to diverge into dialects anticipating the modern Saami languages.")
- ^ a b J. F. del Giorgio (2006). The Oldest Europeans: Who Are We? Where Do We Come From? What Made European Women Different?. A. J. Place, 2006. ISBN 980-6898-00-1.
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- ^ Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva (2006). The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0199297347.
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- ^ Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva (2006). The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0199297347.
- ^ Torp, Arne (2004). Nordiske sprog i fortid og nutid. Sproglighed og sprogforskelle, sprogfamilier og sprogslægtskab. Moderne nordiske sprog. In Nordens sprog - med rødder og fødder. Nord 2004:010, ISBN 9289310413, Nordic Council of Ministers' Secretariat, Copenhagen 2004. (In Danish).
- ^ "Urban misunderstandings". Norden This Week - Monday 01.17.2005, Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen.
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- ^ a b c d Inez Svonni Fjällström (2006). "A language with deep roots".Sápmi: Language history, 14 November 2006. Samiskt Informationscentrum Sametinget: "The Scandinavian languages are Northern Germanic languages. [...] Sami belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family. Finnish, Estonian, Livonian and Hungarian belong to the same language family and are consequently related to each other."
- ^ See "Introduction: Reflections on Political Thought in Finland", p. 9: "Fennoman cultural nationalism put an emphasis on the education and elevation of the people, and it became the leading force in the university sphere and in the bureaucracy. In the late 19th century Fennoman politics were more exclusively concentrated on the language question, trying to replace Swedish with Finnish."
- ^ a b Meinander, Henrik. (2002). "On the Brink or Between? The conception of Europe in Finnish identity". The Meaning of Europe. Ed. Mikael af Malmborg and Bo Stråth. Oxford: Berg, 2002. ISBN 1-85973-576-2
- ^ Kolehmainen, John Ilmari (1943). "Antti Jalava and Hungarian-Finnish Rapprochement". Slavonic and East European Review. American Series, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Nov. 1943), pp. 167-174.
- ^ See for example: Agrawal, Subhash. Finland: A Turnaround Success Story, The Financial Express, net edition, Mumbai, India, 1 Jul. 2004.
- ^ Act on the Autonomy of Åland. Published by the Parliament of Åland.
- ^ Olrik Fredriksen, Britta (2002). "The History of Old Nordic Manuscripts IV: Old Danish". Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages. Ed. Oskar Brandle et al. Walter De Gruyter Inc: Berlin, 2002. ISBN 3-11-014876-5
- ^ "Treaty of Copenhagen" (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 9, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
- ^ The Monarchy: Historical Background. The Royal House of Norway. Official site, retrieved 9 Nov. 2006.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Go Scandinavia - Official Website of the Scandinavian Tourist Boards in North America
- Nordic Council - Official site for co-operation in the Nordic region
- Nordregio - Site established by the Nordic Council of Ministers
- Scandinavia House - The Nordic Center in New York, run by the American-Scandinavian Foundation
- Scandinavia News - Scandinavia news and analysis of current events
- Scandinavia Now - Nordic business news in English
- Scandinavica - Monthly magazine about Scandinavia
- Historical atlas of Scandinavia - Personal web site of Örjan Martinsson
- ReRailEurope - A Railway map of Scandinavia (flash file)