Everything about Scandinavia totally explained
Scandinavia is a historical and geographical
region centred on the
Scandinavian Peninsula in
Northern Europe which includes the kingdoms of
Norway,
Sweden and
Denmark. The other
Nordic countries;
Finland and
Iceland, are sometimes included because of their close historic and cultural connections to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Their inclusion stems from the seemingly interchangeable nature of the terms '
Nordic' and '
Scandinavian'.
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
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 aims of different 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: "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.". 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 usage
In English, a wider definition of Scandinavia is sometimes used, which includes Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. This larger region is by the concerned countries officially known as the Nordic Countries,
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. 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. 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." 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
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). 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. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *
Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English
scathing, German
Schaden). 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. 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. 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'"). 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 isn't Latin), was born on the island of Scandinavia. 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 doesn't 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. 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.
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). 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 of 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
. The form
Scadinavia as the original home of the
Langobards appears in
Paulus Diaconus'
Historia Langobardorum; in other versions of
Historia Langobardorum appear the forms
Scadan,
Scandanan,
Scadanan and
Scatenauge. Frankish sources used
Sconaowe and
Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used
Scani. 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. "
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), (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 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.
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 the segments of the name came from the
indigenous Mesolithic people inhabiting the region.
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
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
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.
(External Link
)
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
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 (
Danish and
Swedish) and a
West Scandinavian branch (
Norwegian,
Icelandic, and
Faroese), 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) 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've 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's still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in the Finnish, Estonian and Sami languages. Sami is divided into two different languages, north Sami, which is linguistically splintered, and south Sami. 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 didn't have its own history before 1809 but was "first and foremost a periphery of western civilisation".
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.
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.. 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
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.Further Information
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