Where Is Scandinavia
Freshly returned from a great trip to Scandinavia, I can’t help but enjoy the FuckYeahScandinavia tumblr that I was first shown this morning. That said, no fan of northern Europe can avoid observing that several of the countries the tumblr covers aren’t technically “Scandinavian.” Americans often find this a bit confusing but Scandinavia, strictly speaking, only refers to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. If you want to add in Iceland and Finland and miscellaneous extra territories (Åland, Faeroe Islands, Greenland) the word you’re looking for is “Nordic.”
I don’t totally understand why the distinction has been drawn this way—but roughly the point is that Finnish is a very different language from the others and that Iceland is clearly a geographically distinct phenomenon from the rest.
The larger point, however, is that the giant phone in this Robyn video is totally awesome. I also like that in Sweden health care is “under democratic control and financed on the basis of solidarity.”
33 Responses to “Where Is Scandinavia”
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October 13th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
That’s because Swedes only marry within their own species.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I wouldn’t mind if you started posting this kind of stuff on a separate blog.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
They are called Scandinavian countries because they are part of the Scandinavia Peninsula. Iceland being an island is not part of it, nor is Finland and all the other territories you mentioned. It is interesting why Denmark is also part of it, because technically speaking most of its territory is not in the Peninsula. But they are part of the Scandinavian people and historically have been considered part of it.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
No – we like the scandinavian stuff! If you dont like it, dont read it, is my motto…
On the Scandinavia-Nordic distinction I can say that there within “Scandinavia” only the Scandinavians, the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes talk that much about Scandinavia, and the rest of us refer to them as Scandinavians, and ourselves as Nordic, and some even find the constant confusion of Scandinavia with the Nordic countries a bit annoying, as it feeds into the megalomania of the Swedes who think they are the greatest nation in the world…
… when everyone knows that distinct honor belongs to Icelanders who are not only more beutiful (more miss universes per capita than everyone), stronger (more “worlds strongest man” winners per capita), more intelligent (more grandmasters in chess per capita) and OBVIOUSLY the greatest financial wizards in the known universe!
I think the Scandinavia – Nordic confusion is caused by the fact that it was historically recently that the concept of the “Nordic countries” gained any currency – the 1920s at the earliest, but not really until the post war period when the Nordic council was created, and by then it was difficult to chase out the term “Scandinavia”.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Let the right one in is a beautiful masterpiece.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Daniel S: That’s an arbitrary convention in itself, though. The Norway-Sweden-Finland-and-part-of-Russia constitute a peninsula too (”Fennoscandia”) which is bounded on the west by the Gulf of Finland and on the east by the White Sea. The Gulf of Bothnia is bigger than the Gulf of Finland, but there’s no law of geography saying we need to cut it off there.
There are a bunch of reasons why they do it that way aside from just linguistics, but to appeal to geography is over simplistic.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
That map looks like balls.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
What Gmorb. . . @2 said.
I don’t totally understand why the distinction has been drawn this way, but roughly the point is that Finnish is a very different language from the others and that Iceland is clearly a geographically distinct phenomenon from the rest.
Uh, no. Something called history exists, Matt. It’s not like geographical regions got named by rational philosophy majors in the past five years.
Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were united in a personal union starting in the fourteenth century. The Swedish empire separated in the sixteenth century, but the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway were united for another three hundred years until the Napoleonic Wars, when Norway instead joined a personal union with Sweden for the next hundred years. The three countries were in a currency union for the forty years before WWI. The Norwegian national anthem refers to the three as “three brothers”.
The Swedes never “Swedified” Finland beyond the nobility and academia. Moreover, in the nineteenth century, when “Scandinavia” began being used in its modern sense, Finland was part of the Russian Empire.
All this I found out by spending ten minutes looking through Wikipedia and other articles online, starting at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia and going from there. Presumably, you read the Wikipedia article too, because otherwise I doubt you would have heard of Åland, and also the photo at the top of the post is identical to one in the Wikipedia article.
You’re good in a lot of areas; that’s why I read your blog. But if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then don’t talk about it.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
You’re good in a lot of areas; that’s why I read your blog. But if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then don’t talk about it.
Mate, you’re setting yourself up for a major disappointment.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Why is this concept so hard to understand? It’s like asking why Britain refers only to England, Scotland and Wales and not to Ireland, too. (And the answer would be that Ireland is not part of Great Britain.)
October 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Actually things are quite a bit more vague than Matt suggests. I’ve spent a lot of time in Denmark and Sweden, and know quite a few fins. The quickest way to start an argument is to ask, ‘Which countries are Scandanavian’? There is no universal answer, the responses often don’t even match along nationality. The safest answer is what Matt assumes, namely, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But try telling a Fin that. Alternatively, I’ve met a fair share of Swedes who restrict Scandanavia to the Scandanvaian pennisula, as he also mentions. Again, try telling a Dane that s/he is not scandanavian.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Matt’s philosophy of public policy for America is much like the shipwrecked economist’s plan for opening the can of beans: “Assume we have 300,000,000 Swedes …”
October 13th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Anyway, the simplest answer is that the term “Scandinavia” preceded by far the geographic expansion of the people who lived there. I guess you could include Finland for demographic purposes, but it’s clearly odd man out.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Fuck Year Scandinavia is fantastic.
For other fantastic Swedish news, visit The Swedish Wire. It’s the country’s first English-written news website about business and politics.
http://www.swedishwire.com/
October 13th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Jason L. – way to be ridiculously condescending while also being dubious on the merits. Finland was part of Sweden from the Middle Ages to 1809. When the Union of Kalmar was created between the three Scandinavian kingdoms in 1397, Finland was already a part of Sweden, and would continue to be for 400 more years. Swedish is an official language of Finland, and was the main language of the educated classes there until the 19th century – it is still the primary language of the Aland islands.
I’m not sure whether Finland is part of Scandinavia or not, but but the idea that the union of Kalmar unites Denmark and Sweden more closely than a much longer lasting union unites Finland and Sweden seems hard to sustain.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
The Finns consider themselves Scandinavian, and considering the linguistic, cultural, geographical and historical ties there’s a great case to make.
When I went to Talinn, I was suprised to find out that the Estonian language has a lot in common with Finnish. Estonia is clearly Baltic, so it requires more than a linguistic similarity.
If you’re looking for differences, you can find ways to split Sweden, Norway, and Denmark apart. Since I’m inclusive, I consider Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland to all be Scandinavian.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
That map looks like balls.
Actually, Sweden and Finland together look very much like a penis/testicles in profile.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
the idea that the union of Kalmar unites Denmark and Sweden more closely than a much longer lasting union unites Finland and Sweden seems hard to sustain.
It’s more than the Union of Kalmar. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have been mutually inter-related for thousands of years. Only 5% of Finns spead Swedish natively, and there’s no connection between that country and either Denmark or Norway.
October 13th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Icelanders who are not only more beutiful (more miss universes per capita than everyone),
3 Miss Worlds, no Miss Universes. No Miss Earths, either.
October 13th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Re: understand why the distinction has been drawn this way—but roughly the point is that Finnish is a very different language from the others
Hungarian is very different from German (it is in fact a relative of Finnish), yet no one would quarrel with Hungary being considered a “Central Eurpean country”.
Finland was also part of Sweden for centuries until the Tasr grabbed it during the chaos of the Napoleonic era. For that reason Finland counts, culturally, as Scandinavian.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
These arguments have the the distinct ring of quantities of angels dancing on the blunt terminus of sharp objects. That said, I can see an argument for excluding Finland, which is liguistically distinct from the rest. But I really can’t see excluding Iceland – people there are essentially equivalent to Norwegians… and geography is no excuse, or Denmark wouldn’t make the cut either. And isn’t Greenland politically part of Denmark?
October 13th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Then why did you read what I wrote?
October 13th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Swedes, Danes and Finns all asked me if I had “been to Scandinavia before”, leading me to think that some Finns, at least, think of Finland as part of Scandinavia. (It was politically part of Sweden for a long time. Åland and other parts of Finland also speak predominantly Swedish today.)
Interestingly, when I answered, and I always did, that I had only been to Iceland, everyone was universally taken aback, and made some comment about how that wasn’t really Scandinavia, though perhaps it was Nordic.
It was about how I would expect most Americans to react if they asked a foreigner if they’d been to the U.S. before and they answered, “Yes, I’ve been to Puerto Rico.” Even though the populations there are purely Nordic in heritage, (well, a little bit Celtic from female slave raids in the early days) Iceland seemed to be regarded as a colonial backwater and less Nordic than, say, Estonia, with its close cultural and geographical ties along the Baltic coast.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Parts of Finland are Scandinavia. Any argument that says the Åland Islands aren’t scandinavia is just stupid.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Chistopher @10
Everything is simple if you ignore the complexities. At the time of the 1703 Act of Union that created Great Britain Ireland was one of the three Kingdoms included along with Scotland and England (Wales being a principality of England since 1282 (?). It was only after tthe southern counties of Ireland succeeded in separating themselves into Free Ireland in 1912 (?) that the bi-furcation between ‘Britain’ and ‘Ireland’ arise and then only partially as Northern Ireland remained and remains as a part of Great Britain. Looking backwards when what are now known as the British Isles first came to the notice of history with the geographer Pytheas (6th c BC?) they were regarded as a group known as the Prytennic Isles which word has an obvious if somewhat disputed relation to the word Britain.
In between came the Romans who established two provinces in what is roughly known as England calling them collectively ‘Britannia’ while establishing only limited military control over Wales and portions of Scotland while never getting beyond preliminary plans to conquer Hibernia, there term for Ireland which the natives called a number of names including Eriu later Eire and ultimately Ire-Land. Plus at that time the Scotti were a group of tribes in Ulster (now roughly N Ireland) who wouldn’t emigrate to/conquer this portions of Pictland/N Britain that formed the core of what we know as Scotland. Plus maybe we don’t need to bring in the complications that the independent Earls or Orkney and the Lord of the Isles that controlled large parts of the Hebrides owed allegiance to the King of Norway deep into the middle ages.
So maybe we can hold off explaining to Matt how “simple” this whole ‘Britain’ thing is.
As to Scandinavia as pointe out above it is best thought of as representing a personal union and not as a geographic identity, Denmark being physically and to a large degree historically better seem as a part of Northern Germania than naturally connected to Sweden.
October 13th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
@25 but southern Sweden *was* Denmark. You can’t be more connected than that! Denmark is more connected to Germany than Sweden is, but clearly Danish language and culture is more like that of Sweden than of Germany. You can’t possibly argue the opposite.
And the name of the British state was the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.” Obviously two separate islands.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
[...] Yglesias takes a break from blogging politics and culture to clear up a point of some geographical confusion: Americans often find this a bit confusing but Scandinavia, strictly speaking, only refers to [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Now, THIS is why I must go to Sweden. Innovative local public library services like this. Did you see one of these at all?
“Staying in Sweden… Stockholm’s city library and transport authority are importing whole libraries into metro stations. The first one is in Hogdalen station, and will be open by the end of the year – complete with cafe and shop. And people can pick up books they’ve ordered online, on their way into work. Neat.”
http://www.intelligentnaivety.com/2008/10/10/bookomatic-library-a-go-go/
As the above link points out, the only place that has started a similar program has in the SF bay arae. They call is “library a go go” installed at a BART station. So cool.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Now, THIS is why I must go to Sweden. Innovative local public library services like this. Did you see one of these at all?
“Staying in Sweden… Stockholm’s city library and transport authority are importing whole libraries into metro stations. The first one is in Hogdalen station, and will be open by the end of the year – complete with cafe and shop. And people can pick up books they’ve ordered online, on their way into work. Neat.”
http://www.intelligentnaivety.com/2008/10/10/bookomatic-library-a-go-go/
As the above link points out, the only place that has started a similar program has in the SF bay arae. They call is “library a go go” installed at a BART station. So cool.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:58 am
John @15,
Fair enough — I was grumpy this morning for unrelated reasons and took it out on Matt, which wasn’t fair or civil. Minus the condescension, though, my point I think is still valid: sometimes Matt combines a little laziness with typing out of his ass, and it’s annoying in the same way that a poor performance from your favorite sports team or your favorite actor is annoying.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Because the Finns are a pre-IndoEuropean people. Along with the Basques and Estonians, they are one of the indigenous peoples of Europe. The Scandinavians are not.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
For Scandinavian Americans, I would largely say that Scandinavians are considered to be Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.
October 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Because the Finns are a pre-IndoEuropean people. Along with the Basques and Estonians, they are one of the indigenous peoples of Europe.
Umm,this is total hogwash. The Finns and Estonians speak a Finno-Ugric language related to Hungarian and probably distantly related to Turkish and Mongolian. They have no connection to the Basques whatsoever. There is also no evidence that they beat Indo-European speakers to Europe or ever made it much further West than Scandinavia. What little genetic evidence there is suggests they came from what is now China at some point 10-12 thousand years ago when indo-Europeans were already established in Europe.