Information about Scandinavian Countries

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe which includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.^[1][2] The other Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, are also often included because of their close historic and cultural relations to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.^[3][4][5]

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 and the Faroe Islands.<ref name="olwig" />

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, the majority of Finns form a distinct linguistic and ethnic group, with a Finno-Ugric population that has incorporated features from both Eastern and Western Europe.^[6]

Since the Fennoman movement of the 1830s and political Scandinavism of the 1830s- 1850s,^[7] the inclusion of Finland and Iceland has divided opinions in the respective states.^[8] Although it depends on context which countries are considered Scandinavian, 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 aims of different communities of the area.^[9] 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^[10] and the Russian,^[11][12] as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal "Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual history"^[13]: "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."<ref name="redescriptions" />

Usage in geography

Geographically the Scandinavian Peninsula includes what is today mainland Sweden and mainland Norway.^[14][15]. A small part of north-western Finland is sometimes also considered part of the peninsula.^[16] In physiography, Denmark is considered part of the North European Plain, rather than the geologically distinct Scandinavian peninsula mainly occupied by Norway and Sweden.^[17] 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

A wider definition of Scandinavia, sometimes used in the English-speaking world, includes Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.^[18][19] However, this larger region is by the concerned countries officially known as the Nordic Countries, 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.

The use of the name Scandinavia as a convenient general term for the peninsula region is fairly recent and according to some historians, it was adopted and introduced only in the 18th century, at a time when the ideas about a common heritage took root and started to appear as literary and linguistic Scandinavism.^[20] 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.<ref name="Ostergard" /> The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became more firmly 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!'".^[21] 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."^[22] The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, such as the Scandinavian Tourist Board.^[23] 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.^[24]

The 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 is thus a subset of the Nordic countries. All of the Nordic regions are occasionally listed as part of Scandinavia, especially outside the Nordic countries. More precisely, 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

Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne) are considered to have the same etymology. 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.^[25] According to some leading scholars in the field, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skağan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden).^[26] 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.<ref name="Helle" /> Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".

The belief that Scandinavia was an island became widespread among classical authors during the first century. This idea, along with the name "Scandia" which was used by Pliny for a group of Northern European islands located north of Britannia, dominated descriptions of Scandinavia in classical texts during the centuries that followed. The idea that Pliny's "Scadinavia" may have been one of the "Scandiae" islands was 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.<ref name="Helle" /> Scandia as used by Ptolemy, likely included areas north of today's Scania, but 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^[27] 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.^[28][29]

Pliny the Elder's descriptions

Pliny 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." He 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.^[30] As described, Saevo and Scatinavia can also be the same place. 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 of Jutland, Denmark.

Pomponius Mela used Codanovia for the region. The "Cod-" in Codanus has been identified as a form of the second element in Kattegat, (Latin coda, "the tail of animals", Latin ănus, "anus" or "old wife, also of feminine animals"). Danish katte (cat) is possibly a reference to the group Felis, especially Lynx; and Danish gat as in gatfinn ("analfin of a fish"). Thus Kattegat is "tail of a cat" or a "cat's hole". This may be related to the myth about Freyja, Norse goddess of love, fertility and beauty, who travelled in a chariot drawn by huge cats). Pliny, who was an admiral, wrote that there were 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae", "known to Roman arms", in this sea. According to Pliny, the most famous (clarissima) of the islands is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones.

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.^[31] The animal grazes, has a big upper lip and some mythical attributes.

Germanic reconstruction

The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in Germanic languages, often transliterated by non-Germanic scribes. In Beowulf the forms Scedenigge and Scedeland are used.

In the reconstruction *Skağin-awjo (without the n, which can be seen as a later assimilation to the second n, and with the thorn, which might be represented in Latin by t or d), the first segment is sometimes considered more uncertain than the second segment, which is thought to be "watery land" or "island". The American Heritage Dictionary^[32] 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.^[33] According to The Indo-European Dictionary (IEED), a research project of the Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, the word does not have an Indo-European etymology. The IEED states that Uralic evidence has long been recognized: "Finnic saivo 'transparant place in the sea', Norwegian-Lappish saivvƒ '(holy) lake, idol'".<ref name="IEED" /> IEED further mentions a possible inner-Germanic connection *saiwa-l¡ ("soul"), Gothic saiwala, Old Frisian sŒle. Some scholars have found a mythological parallel, expressed in ideas from old belief systems stressing that the souls of mankind dwell in the water until birth and return there after death.<ref name="IEED" /> In Latin, the word saevo means "raging, mad, furious, fell, fierce, savage, ferocious". ^[34]

The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paulus Diaconus' Historia Langobardorum^[35], but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge^[36]. 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).^[37]

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-". Another possibility is that all or part of scadin- came from the indigenes along with achlis and sea.

The designation of Scandinavia as an island may have preceded the Indo-Europeans there, and the words for island and sea may come from the indigenes in the region. Today Scandinavia is not an island, but the indigenous Mesolithic people inhabiting the region may have remembered Ancylus Lake and preceding times, when water exited the Baltic through what is now Stockholm and the lakes called saiws by the Goths.

Alternatively, the first element is sometimes attributed to the Scandinavian giantess Skaği from Norse mythology. If it is she, it is even less likely to be Indo-European, as a people moving in among another people typically take on their gods and goddesses (not quite daring to reject them).

Some Basque scholars thought the sk was connected to Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. According to some of these intellectuals, the Scandinavians share some genetic markers with the Basques.^[38]

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

See also: , , and

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 (max 3500 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.

Scandinavian languages

Main articles: North Germanic languages

The codified standard languages of Scandinavia are often classified as belonging to either an East Scandinavian branch (Danish and Swedish) or a West Scandinavian branch (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). ^[39]

Most dialects of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are mutually intelligible, and Scandinavians 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 Norwegian 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 Nordic languages.^[40] In the Faroe Islands Danish is mandatory, and since Faroese people this way become bilingual in two very distinct Nordic languages, they find it relatively easy to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages.^[41]

For foreign people, who are studying Scandinavian languages, it's often common that they learn the basic Norwegian first. This is because Norwegian as a language, is very similar to written Danish, and also very similar to oral Swedish. They can thus easily expand their knowledge further [1][2].

The Scandinavian 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.

Finland and Scandinavia

In Finland, native Swedish speakers constitute a small, but influential, minority. All children are nonetheless taught Swedish 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.^[42] 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".<ref name="meinander" /> The Fennoman movement met with resistance from the Svecoman movement and the Swedish elite.^[43] 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.^[44] Finland's struggles and success in establishing a unique identity has been followed by scholars and journalists around the world.^[45]

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^[46], 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

Main article: History of Scandinavia

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.^[47]. 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.^[48]

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,^[49] 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. 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			Norway and Sweden		GD of Finland
18th	Denmark-Norway				Sweden
17th
16th
15th	Kalmar Union
14th	Denmark	Norway			Sweden
13th
12th		Faroes	Icelandic CW	Norway
Peoples	Danes	Faroese¹	Icelanders¹	Norwegians	Swedes	Finns

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 Scotland and Ireland) .

See also

• Nordic countries
• Baltic region
• Thule
• Northern Europe
• Scandza
• Nordic Cross Flag
• Nordic Council
• Scandinavian colonialism
• Scandinavian British

Footnotes

External links

• 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)