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- See also The Nordic Countries.
Scandinavia is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sources often use the term Scandinavia to describe only the three kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, but it is sometimes extended to cover Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland; or Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland; or, at its greatest extent, the nations of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and their associated territories: The Faroe Islands, The Åland Islands, and Greenland. Regardless how the word Scandinavia is defined, the term Nordic countries is used to denote all of the above-mentioned nations and territories as one collective group.
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.
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- See also The Nordic Countries.
Scandinavia is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sources often use the term Scandinavia to describe only the three kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, but it is sometimes extended to cover Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland; or Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland; or, at its greatest extent, the nations of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and their associated territories: The Faroe Islands, The Åland Islands, and Greenland. Regardless how the word Scandinavia is defined, the term Nordic countries is used to denote all of the above-mentioned nations and territories as one collective group.
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. Thus, as a linguistic and cultural concept, Scandinavia does include Iceland and the Faroe Islands 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.
Since the Fennoman movement of the 1830s and political Scandinavism of the 1830s-1850s, the inclusion of Finland and Iceland has divided opinions in the respective states. 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.
Terminology and usage
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 communities of the area. 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 and the Russian, as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History:
Usage in geographyGeographically the Scandinavian Peninsula includes what is today mainland Sweden and mainland Norway.. A small part of northwestern Finland is sometimes also considered part of the peninsula. In physiography, Denmark is considered part of the North European Plain, rather than the geologically distinct Scandinavian peninsula mainly occupied by Norway and Sweden. 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 usageIn English, a wider definition of Scandinavia is sometimes used, which includes Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. political term, "Scandinavia" was first used by students agitating for Pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s. 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!'". 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 organizationsThe 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." The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, such as the Scandinavian Tourist Board. 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.
Use of Nordic Countries vs. Scandinavia
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). Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries.
In addition to mainland Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the Nordic countries consist of:
and
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.
Sami etymology
The earliest Sami yoik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolo (north-Sami) and Skadsuâl (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; "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 Cáhci, "the waterman", and her son with Odin, Saeming, can be interpreted as a descendent of Saam the Sami population (Mundel 2000), (Steinsland 1991). 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 Sulliidcielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suolocielgi 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.
Other etymologiesScadin- 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-".
Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the indigenous Mesolithic people inhabiting the region. 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.
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.
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
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 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 the 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.
Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind 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
There are two language groups that have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory - the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages) and the Sami languages. The majority languages on the peninsula, Swedish and Norwegian, are today, along with Danish, classified as Continental Scandinavian.
The Scandinavian majority languages are traditionally divided into an East Scandinavian branch and a West Scandinavian branch, 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 and Continental Scandinavian (Skandinavisk), comprising Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The modern division is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches.
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. 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.
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.
Sami languagesThe 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. Sami is divided into two different languages, north Sami, which is linguistically splintered, and south Sami. 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.
Finland and ScandinaviaIn Finland, native Swedish speakers constitute a small, but rather influential, minority. All children are given a course of their second official language at school; for Swedish-speakers, this is Finnish, and for Finnish-speakers, Swedish. 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. 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". The Fennoman movement met with resistance from the Svecoman movement and the Swedish elite. 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. Finland's struggles and success in establishing a unique identity has been followed by scholars and journalists around the world.
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, the region is unilingually Swedish-speaking. In most other areas of Finland, Finnish is the "lingua franca".
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.
HistoryDuring 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.. 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.
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, 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
- 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 and Sweden. 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 | |
