Norden

The frontiers of the Nordic culture area have changed almost as much over the previous century as the frontiers of central Europe. At the beginning of the 20th century, "Norden" was effectively limited to the independent kingdoms of Scandinavia and to the semi-autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under Russia; now, at the beginning of the 21st century, Norden has waxed to include in the west the outlying islands of Iceland and the Faeroes, and in the east the once-Russian Baltic States. The growing influence of global popular culture and 20th century migrations have made it increasingly difficult to define Norden by traditional definitions -- particularly on Norden's fringes -- but Nordic countries do share numerous common elements.

• The Baltic and North Seas that bracket the Scandinavian peninsula have served as major forces for unity, through their functioning as corridors of transportation and migration since at least the 8th century CE and the raids of the Vikings across the northern half of Europe.
• The inhabitants of Norden were converted to Christianity at a relatively late date compared to western Europeans: the first converts to Christianity were made in the 10th century CE in Scandinavia, while many Finns, Estonians, and Latvians were converted as late as the 14th century. This late conversion allowed comparatively more pre-Christian rites to survive than elsewhere in Europe, particularly in eastern Norden. In the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, almost the entire region adopted Lutheran Protestantism. In the early 21st century, despite the general secularization of Norden and the prominence in eastern Norden (Karelia and Estonia) of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Norden is united by at least the legacy of Lutheran Protestantism.
• North Germanic languages--Danish, Swedish, the Norwegian languages of Bokmal and Nynorsk, Icelandic, and Faroese--are commonly spoken throughout Norden. To an extent, Danish, Swedish, and Bokmal are mutually intelligible, while Danish is spoken as a second language in the former Danish colonies of Iceland and the Faeroes and Swedish is a common first language in Finland and Karelia. These languages are exceptionally unlikely to replace non-Germanic languages, much less (as some enthusiasts suggest) coalesce to form a single Scandinavian language; still, they create a rudimentary Nordic linguistic community.
• Norden has been united, if only for brief periods; for longer periods, large sections have been ruled by either Denmark or Sweden. (In the west, Denmark predominated until the 19th century; in the east, Sweden remained the hegemon until its defeat by Russia in the Great Northern War in the early 18th century CE.) This unity has created, in central Norden, a sense of community; over the 20th century, this collective identity has spread to western and eastern Norden.
• The great migrations of the late 19th and 20th centuries have strengthened ties between Nordic nations. Historically, the residents of different Nordic countries and regions have been quite mobile--indeed, Norden has the highest rate of international labour migration of any European region--and a near-majority of Swedish and Danish residents trace their ancestry to immigrants from another Nordic countries. In this, Sweden and Denmark are not alone; by now, every Nordic country has accumulated large populations originating in other Nordic countries. Even in the tiny Faeroe Islands, fully one-fifth of the population is of non-Faroese Nordic origin.
• Perhaps most importantly, in the 19th century a Pan-Scandinavian movement was active in Denmark and in the federated kingdoms of Norway and Sweden. Many aspiring Scandinavian nationalists believed that the Scandinavian states constituted a nation; they hoped that, with the coming extinction of the direct line of the Danish monarchy, the Danish and Swedo-Norwegian crowns could be fused to produce a single Great Power, on the model of contemporary Italy.

The first--and only--notable success of the Pan-Scandinavian movement was the Swedo-Norwegian guarantee to Denmark, in 1863, to intervene on Denmark's behalf if German Confederation forces went north of the river Eider in the Danish-ruled territory of Schleswig. In the Dano-German War of 1864, the Swedo-Norwegian declaration along with quiet French support saved Denmark from total humiliation, by allowing a referendum in north Schleswig--Danish Sonderjylland--that allowed the Danish-populated districts north of the city of Flensburg to be annexed directly to Denmark. This aid failed to unite Scandinavia; it did, however, overcome the legacies of the Dano-Swedish wars of previous generations to allow--at least theoretically--the formation of a political community in central Norden.

Though subsequent movement towards an institutional Nordic structure was halting, remarkable progress was made towards the creation of a non-institutional Norden. In the last quarter of the 19th century, all of Norden rapidly modernized, developing prosperous urban-based industrial economies as government programs and cooperatives alike enfranchised wider national populations. This modernization was not achieved autarkically; all Nordic economies depended substantially upon foreign investment, particulatly British and French capital. The Nordic countries also depended heavily upon foreign labour immigration, to fill jobs in Nordic economies that native-born residents would not want. In Denmark, a low rate of population growth and rapid economic growth combined to attract, in the generation before the First World War, almost 400 thousand Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese immigrants. For similar reasons, in the first quarter of the 20th century Sweden attracted comparable numbers of Finnish immigrants. These very substantial immigrations helped substantially in minimizing erstwhile national boundaries, by introducing Danes and Swedes to their coresidents in Norden and establishing substantial economic and human links across the region.

These strengthened bonds were tested in the First World War, when the three Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway jointly declared their neutrality at the beginning of the war. In that conflict's aftermath, the Scandinavian states maintained their neutrality even as they became founding member-states of the League of Nations. Finland, with its large Swedophone minority and historical autonomy, soon gravitated towards membership in the de facto Scandinavian bloc by the end of the 1920's. (The Baltic States, owing to their proximity to the Soviet Union and their unstable political apparatuses, failed.) Over the 1920's and 1930's, a series of treaties were signed by the Nordic states that renounced the use of force in their mutual affairs and established various international commissions to regulate their affairs. The onset of the Great Depression caused great suffering in industrialized Norden, but the liberal and social-democratic governments of wider Norden were quick to take to Keynesian spending, and played critical roles in the formation of the League coalition of states that coordinated the global Keynesian reflation of the mid-1930's. The signing of the Baltic-North Sea free-trade accords in 1935 created a large northern European market that soon emerged as one of the most economically dynamic areas in the world.

Nordic states played relatively marginal roles in the slow formation of the anti-Nazi coalition in the early 1940's, but during the Greater German invasion of Denmark Swedish logistical support played a vital role in maintaining the freedom of the Danish islands from Nazi terror. The formation of the Nordic Council in 1947 by the five independent states of Scandinavia--the Scandinavian kingdoms, the republic of Finland, and Iceland (independent since 1945)--was partly a reaction to the menacing Soviet military presence on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea and on the Finnish-Karelian border. It was still more the product of a generation of intense and fruitful intra-Nordic ties, grouping together the various binational and regional commissions and fora that had developed over the previous generation.

Modern Norden has changed a great deal since 1947. The three northern Baltic States--Karelia, Estonia, and Latvia-- joined the ranks of the Nordic Council almost as soon as the Soviet Union withdrew its protectorate over the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, while the autonomous Faeroe Islands contemporaneously gained observer status on the Nordic Council and a moderately high international profile. Irregardless of their substantial internal diversity--augmented in almost all cases by substantial immigration from Russia, elsewhere in the Second and Third Worlds, and from offworld--all ten member-governments of the Nordic Council share social-democratic and inclusive sociopolitical values, immensely prosperous economies that provide excellent standards of living for their residents, and a strong tradition of intra-Nordic governmental and non-governmental cooperation. In many respects, the Nordic Council compares to the Franco-German Combine as a cohesive unit inside the European Confederation, though lacking the formality of the Combine. Indeed, the Council's efficient institutionalized intergovernmental exchanges and popularity with Nordic citizens augurs well for the survival of institutional and human Norden.

The Nordic States

	Population (in millions)	Per capita output in écus1	Capital City	Language(s)2
Sweden	14.1	71 900	Stockholm	Swedish 88%, Russian 5%, Finnish 3%
Denmark	8.4	74 800	Copenhagen	Danish 93%
Norway	5.6	81 300	Oslo	Bokmal 76%, Nynorsk 23%
Finland	4.9	69 500	Helsinki	Finnish 96%, Swedish 3%
Latvia	3.3	63 700	Rîga	Latvian 69%, Russian 17%
Estonia	2.1	61 800	Tallinn	Estonian 81%, Russian 13%
Karelia	1.0	57 600	Viipuri	Karelian 81%, Finnish 9%, Russian 3%
Iceland	0.3	73 200	Reykjavik	Icelandic 97%
Faeroes3	0.05	58 700	Torshavn	Faeroese 78%, Danish 11%

¹ As of 1 January 2002, one écu equalled 0.29 Confed dollars.

² All data on language use is taken from Question 23 of the 2001 European Census: "What is the language that you most commonly use in your place of residence?"

³ The Faeroes are a self-governing state voluntarily federated with the Kingdom of Denmark. The Faeroes can accede to full independence on the condition that two-thirds of the Faeroese electorate approve separation from the Danish Crown in a referendum.