Nordic countries

Nordic countries, group of countries in northern Europe consisting of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The designation includes the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which are autonomous island regions of Denmark, and the Åland Islands, an autonomous island region of Finland.

The term is sometimes used interchangeably with Scandinavia, a peninsular region of northern Europe that serves as the geographic core of the Nordic countries. Scandinavia is typically defined more restrictively, however, and refers primarily to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

Most inhabitants of the Nordic region speak North Germanic languages (also called Nordic or Scandinavian languages): Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, as well as Faroese and Icelandic. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are mutually intelligible, especially when written, which has enabled the continual exchange of ideas between the Nordic countries. Faroese and Icelandic, which retain many characteristics of Old Norse, have similar orthographies but are not mutually intelligible. In Greenland the Inuit Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) language is the predominant language, but Danish is often used in administration and education. The population of Finland primarily speaks Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language. However, there is a Swedish-speaking minority, and Swedish serves as one of two official languages of Finland. In the north of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, Sami languages, also members of the Finno-Ugric group but not mutually intelligible, are spoken.

Viking era

Nordic historiography generally begins with the Viking era. During this period the settlements of Scandinavia commanded a broad network of trade that stretched as far east as Novgorod and Constantinople and as far west as Greenland and North America. The Vikings’ sturdy longships facilitated both trade and war missions across heavy seas.

The Viking period fostered a literary culture that, although oral at first, proved enduring and rich. The tales exchanged by the Vikings made their way into the written literature of Old Norse, which was composed especially in medieval Iceland and Norway. By that time the Nordic peoples were largely Christianized, and many of the earliest sagas dealt with the lives of Christian saints. But the sagas also became a repository for Norse mythology (see Germanic religion and mythology), preserved perhaps most famously in the works of the Edda.

Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish kingdoms and the Kalmar Union

Meanwhile, the Viking settlements across Scandinavia began to coalesce into kingdoms about the 9th and 10th centuries. Much of the Norwegian coast was united through conquest in the 9th century by a warrior chief, Harald I Fairhair. In the 10th century, Gorm the Old and his son Harald I Bluetooth united the Danes, who at the time were at the centre of the Vikings’ trade network. The historical consolidation of Sweden under one monarch is less clear, although Eric the Victorious and his son Olaf Skötkonung are often credited with establishing the royal line by the end of the 10th century.

In the 13th century the Swedes settled gradually eastward along the Baltic coast. By the early 14th century Swedes had begun administering much of Finland and transplanting Swedish nobility there. The Finns would remain under Swedish sovereignty until the 19th century.

In the late 14th century the entanglement of the royal families of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden led to the formation of the Kalmar Union. It was forged through the marriage of Margaret I, the daughter of Denmark’s King Valdemar VI, and Haakon VI, who was the king of Norway and the son of Magnus Eriksson, the king of Sweden and former king of Norway. By 1389, after the deaths of both Valdemar and Haakon, Margaret had brought all three kingdoms under her regency. The union was formalized when her nephew Erik, whom she had adopted as her heir, came of age and had his coronation in 1397. However, Margaret continued to be the de facto ruler of Scandinavia until her death in 1412. The three countries retained their individual policy-making councils and maintained their distinct identities. Despite the potential this left for the union to be unwound, it managed to remain intact for more than a century, until King Christian II massacred Swedish nobility in the Stockholm Bloodbath (1520). Unified in outrage, the Swedes revolted and established Sweden’s independence under the leadership of Gustav I Vasa.

The Reformation in Scandinavia and the modern era

The dissolution of the union was cemented with the help of the Reformation. Gustav centralized his authority by embracing Lutheranism: the conversion allowed him to confiscate property belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, systematically diminish the church’s political independence, and direct its wealth toward his new state. A similar development took place in Denmark just years later. After Christian III became the victor in a succession crisis that was instigated by the predominantly Catholic Rigsråd (Council of the Realm), he seized church property and established a Lutheran state church that would be tethered to the Danish crown. Despite taking similar directions in the dissolution, Denmark and Sweden became engaged in a rivalry that lasted centuries.

Matters changed in the 19th century, when Sweden lost Finland to Russia (1809) and Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden (1814). Norway drew up a constitution, which the Swedish crown was forced to accept, and became self-governing. Talk of a new Scandinavian union with Denmark gathered clout by the mid-19th century. That union was never realized, however, and Norway became independent in 1905. In 1918 Iceland became self-governing, and in 1944 it became an independent republic after an agreement to remain under the Danish crown expired.

The First and Second World Wars, meanwhile, saw Scandinavia sandwiched between Germany to the south and Russia to the east. Except for Finland, which was under Russian rule until 1918, the Nordic countries maintained neutrality throughout World War I. They had hoped to continue that neutrality during World War II, but the Soviets invaded Finland in 1939, and German forces occupied both Denmark and Norway in 1940. Faced with falling to the same fate, Sweden was forced to grant transit to German troops.

Despite being split up during the war, the Nordic countries shared the common experience of being caught in the middle of two warring powers. In the aftermath of the war, the countries sought to strengthen their cooperation. Attempts at a defense union failed after Denmark, Iceland, and Norway opted to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. An avenue for dialogue and coordination was created in 1952 with the establishment of the interparliamentary Nordic Council; government ministers followed suit in 1971 when they formed the Nordic Council of Ministers. In 2009 the Nordic Defense Cooperation (NORDEFCO) finally brought the Nordic countries into military cooperation, a relationship that was likely to deepen after Finland and Sweden applied for accession to NATO in 2022.