Scandinavia
For other uses, see Scandinavia (disambiguation).Scandinavia is a
region in
Northern Europe named after the
Scandinavian Peninsula. The most common definition includes continental
Denmark, mainland
Norway and
Sweden. Sometimes,
Finland is included even in official contexts
[ Documents from EU's DEN and/or SWE pages [1][2][3][4] [5] [6] [7]], although since the 1850s, with the rise of
Scandinavism and
Finnish nationalism, this inclusion divides opinions in all of the respective states. This is sometimes reflected with the usage of the term "
Fennoscandia", mainly a
geological term. In the English language, "Scandinavia" is often used as a synonym for the
Nordic countries.
The usage and meaning of the term outside Scandinavia is somewhat ambiguous:
*Finland and Iceland are often counted as parts of Scandinavia.
*From a German point of view, Norway, Sweden and Finland are usually included, but Denmark is not.
*From a British point of view, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are usually included, often with the addition of Iceland and Finland.
The
Nordic Countries are
Denmark,
Finland,
Iceland,
Norway,
Sweden and include the autonomous territories of
Svalbard,
Åland,
Faroe Islands and
Greenland.
|
Red: the three monarchies that compose Scandinavia according to the strictest definition; Orange: the possible extended usage; Yellow: the maximal extended usage that takes Scandinavia as synonymous with The Nordic countries. |
The region consists of the greater part of the
Scandinavian and
Jutland peninsulas and
the islands in between. Smaller portions of the peninsulae belong to Finland and Germany.
Geographically the Scandinavian peninsula includes mainland Sweden and mainland Norway, and also a part of Finland, while the
Jutland Peninsula includes mainland Denmark and a small part of Germany (Denmark has not included any territory on the Scandinavian Peninsula since the middle of the 17th century).
The label Scandinavia today reflects
linguistic similarities (Scandinavian or
North Germanic languages), historical and cultural ties as well as similar
societal developments. These similarities have persisted despite past enmity and competition, opposite policies during the two
World Wars and the
Cold War, and differing stances on membership in
international organizations (e.g.
NATO and the
European Union).
:''See also
Geography of Denmark,
Geography of Finland,
Geography of Norway, and
Geography of Sweden The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied, because of the large extent of the area. Notable are the Norwegian
fjords (
1), the
Scandinavian Mountains, the flat, low areas in Denmark, and the
archipelagos of Sweden and Finland. When Finland is included, the moraines (ice age remnants) and lake areas are also notable. Several of the largest lakes in Europe are found in Sweden and Finland.
[[8]]The climate varies from north to south and from west to east; a marine west coast climate (
Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orthograpic enhanced precipitation of more than 2000 mm/year (max 3500 mm) in some areas in western Norway. The central part - from Oslo to Stockholm and Helsinki - 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, northern Finland and
Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have
alpine tundra climate.
Scandinavia was
Christianized in the
10th-
13th centuries, resulting in three consolidated kingdoms.
* Denmark forged from the
Lands of Denmark (including
Blekinge,
Gotland,
Halland and
Skåne in modern-day Sweden)
* Sweden forged from the
Lands of Sweden* Norway (including
Bohuslän,
Härjedalen,
Jämtland and
Idre & Särna in modern-day Sweden. Also
Iceland,
Greenland,
Faroe Islands,
Shetland,
the Orkneys,
Isle of Man and the
Hebrides.)
The three kingdoms were united in
1397 in the
Kalmar Union[Örjan Martinsson, The Kalmar Union] by Queen Margrete I of Denmark. Divergent interests among the independent nations led to the Union's final dissolution in 1536. Norway remained united with Denmark; Norway's possessions in the North Atlantic (Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands) remained under the Danish crown even after the Dano-Norwegian union was dissolved in
1814. Sweden left the union in 1523 under King
Gustav Vasa.
In the mid
17th century, the
Treaty of Brömsebro and
Treaty of Roskilde permanently transferred some provinces and islands from Norway and Denmark to Sweden.
After the
Napoleonic Wars, Scandinavia was reorganized into two
personal unions:
*Denmark with Schleswig-Holstein (dissolved in
1864; included former overseas provinces of Norway)
*Sweden and Norway (dissolved in
1905)
Scandinavia and
Skåne (
Scania) are considered to have the same etymology. The earliest source is
Pliny the Elder's
"Natural History", dated to the 1st century AD. As the
Goths had already left Sweden four or five hundred years previously and were probably already speaking
east Germanic (Gothic), Pliny's names were of
west Germanic origin.
North Germanic had not yet divided from west Germanic.
Pliny, an admiral, says that there were 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae",
"known to Roman arms", in the Kattegat. His descriptions are not always clear, even though he was speaking of geography he considered revealed by a "clarior fama",
"a clearer story." He begins (4.96) with the mountain of Saevo (mons Saevo ibi), which forms the Codanian Bay (Codanus sinus) surrounding the Cimbrian promontory. These features are the mountainous coasts of Norway and Sweden, the
Skagerrak and
Skagen. Saevo is most likely an early form of Zeeland, which Pliny applied to southern Scandinavia. The Cod- in Codanus is a form of the second element in
Kattegat (lat.
coda "the tail of animals", lat.
ănus "anus" or "old wife, also of feminine animals", dan.
katte "cat" ~ possibly a reference to the group
Felis, esp.
Lynx and dan.
gat in
gatfinn "analfin of a fish", thus
kattegat "tail of a cat" or a "cat's hole" ~
Freya,
Norse goddess of love, fertility and beauty, travelled in a chariot drawn by huge cats).
According to Pliny, the most famous (clarissima) of the islands in the Codanian Bay is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones, who can probably be identified with what is now Halland. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia are the same place.
Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in 8.39 he says that the animal called achlis (given in the accusative, achlin), was born on the island of Scadinavia. Achlis is not Latin. As well as having some mythical attributes, the animal grazes and has a big upper lip. Pliny also uses the name Scandiae to mean some islands near Britain.
The Germanic reconstruction based on Pliny is
Skaðin-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 uncertain, and perhaps will always be so.
Nearly everyone agrees that the second segment is
"island", which the American Heritage Dictionary
[Island, The American Heritage, 2000] derives from
Proto-Indo-European *akwa-,
"water", in the sense of
"watery land". Saevo is probably a synonym, as it resembles Gothic saiws,
"lake", which is one of the Germanic group of words including English sea, German See. The group does not have an Indo-european derivation and is not believed to be Indo-european. However, the word "saevo" in Latin means "raging, mad, furious, fell, fierce, savage, ferocious".
[[9]]It seems clear that the designation of Scandinavia as an island preceded the Indo-europeans there, and that our words for island and sea came from the indigenes in the region. The *awia- translates Saevo and saiws into Indo-european. 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.
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.
One strong derivation is from the Germanic
Skaðin- meaning "danger" (cf. English
scathing and
unscathed, and German
Schaden and
beschädigen):
"dangerous island", possibly referring to the banks around
Skanör (
skan- is the same as in Scandinavia, and -
ör means "sandbanks") and
Falsterbo in Skåne in southernmost Sweden. This root also may not be from any of the
Indo-European languages.
Alternatively, the first element is sometimes attributed to the Scandinavian
giantess Skaði 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 intellectuals thought the
sk was connected to Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. The Scandinavians share some genetical markers with the Basques (as quoted in
The Oldest Europeans).
The original form gave rise to different forms in Germanic languages often transliterated by non-Germanic scribes.
Ptolemy uses the form
Scandia, showing that the n had appeared by then. In
Beowulf we meet the forms
Scedenigge and
Scedeland.
Pomponius Mela used
Codanovia, based on the ancient name of the
Kattegat. This usage appears to support the "sealand" idea. The form
Scadinavia, the original home of the
Langobards, appears in
Paulus Diaconus'
Historia Langobardorum[Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, BIBLIOTHECA AUGUSTANA], but in other versions of
Historia Langobardorum appear the forms
Scadan,
Scandanan,
Scadanan and
Scatenauge[History of the Langobards, Northvegr Foundation]. In Jordanes' history of the
Goths (AD 551) we meet the form
Scandza their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4)
[Jordanes (translated by Charles C. Mierow), THE ORIGIN AND DEEDS OF THE GOTHS, April 22, 1997]. If the -za represents an early form of zee, then it may replace *awia. On the other hand, Jordanes' spelling may just be an attempt to capture the late Latin palatalization of the d by a following i.
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".
Main articles: North Germanic languagesMost dialects of
Danish,
Norwegian and
Swedish (including the
Finland-Swedish dialects), 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 Saxon and
standard German. A substantial amount of that influence was a by-product of the economic activity generated by the
Hanseatic League.
Finns and Icelanders who have studied Swedish and Danish, respectively, as foreign languages often also find it hard to understand the other Scandinavian languages. On the other end of the scale are the Norwegians, who with two parallel written standards, and a habit to hold on strongly to local dialects, are accustomed to variation and may perceive Danish and Swedish as only slightly more distant dialects. In a conversation between a Swedish speaker and a Dane there can be significant difficulties in understanding each other's spoken language, due to differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. 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.
[ Internordisk språkförståelse, Nordisk Sprogråd, November 2002]The Scandinavian languages are (as a language family) entirely unrelated to
Finnish and
Estonian, which as Finno-Ugric languages are distantly related to
Hungarian. This said, there still is a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish language in both the Finnish and Estonian languages. Although Swedish speakers constitute a small, but influential, minority in Finland, and Finnish speakers constitute a minority in Sweden of similar relative size, 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 Finns as a people separate from the
Scandinavian culture group.
The
ethnic nationalist Fennoman movement in Finland fought for equal language rights for Finnish-speakers from the Swedish-speaking elite at the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the
20th century. The Fennoman movement was established by prominent Finns and sympathetic Swedish-speakers in Finland under a period of intense russification efforts from the
tsar, and its motto "Swedes we are no longer, Russians we will never become, so let us be 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. Only in
1902 Finnish language received an equal official status with the other two.
In Finland, the only exception to the equality between Finnish and Swedish languages is made on the
Åland islands, and it is in favour of the Swedish language. According to the county legislation
[[10]], the region is unilingually Swedish-speaking.
|
Scandinavia as a 19th century political vision (scandinavism) |
See also Politics of Denmark, Politics of Norway and Politics of Sweden.The modern use of the term
Scandinavia rises from the
Scandinavist political movement, which was active in the middle of the
19th century, chiefly between the
First war of Schleswig (Slesvig in Scandinavian) (
1848-
1850), in which
Sweden-Norway contributed with considerable military force, and the
Second war of Schleswig (
1864) when Sweden's parliament denounced the King's promises of military support.
The King proposed the unification of
Denmark,
Norway and
Sweden into a single united kingdom. The background for this was the tumultuous events during the
Napoleonic wars in the beginning of the century leading to the partition of Sweden (the eastern part becoming the
Russian
Grand Duchy of Finland in
1809) and Denmark (whereby
Norway,
de jure in union with Denmark since
1387, although
de facto merely a
province, became independent in
1814 and thereafter was swiftly forced to accept a
personal union with Sweden).
Finland being a part of the
Russian Empire meant that it would have to be left out of any equation for a political union between the Nordic countries. The geographical Scandinavia included Norway, Sweden and parts of Finland, but the political Scandinavia was also to include Denmark. Politically Sweden and Norway were united in a personal union under one
monarch. Denmark also included the dependent territories of
Iceland, the
Faroe Islands and
Greenland in the
Atlantic Ocean (which however historically had belonged to Norway, but unintentionally remained with Denmark according to the
Treaty of Kiel).
The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was betrayed when denied military support from
Sweden-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. That was 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 there was a
Scandinavian Monetary Union established in
1873, with the
Krona/
Krone as the common currency, and which lasted until
World War I.
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 Scotland and Ireland) .As with other regions of the world, the usage and meaning of the term 'Scandinavia' can be misunderstood and misused. Therefore some or all of the following geopolitical entities may be considered peripherally Scandinavian, since they may be believed to have had strong political, social, economic, linguistic and/or geographical ties with the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
*
Finland (a
sovereign republic since 1917)
*
Iceland (a
sovereign republic since 1944)
and
*
Faroe Islands (an
autonomous region of Denmark since 1948)
*
Greenland (a
self-governing Danish territory since 1979)
*
Jan Mayen (an integrated geographical body of Norway)
*
Svalbard (under Norwegian
sovereignty since 1920)
*
Åland (an
autonomous province of Finland since 1920)
Putting it another way, Scandinavia can be seen as a subset of the Nordic countries.
The term
the Nordic countries -
Norden in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish,
Pohjola in Finnish,
Norðurlond in
Icelandic - is used unambiguously for the
kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark and the
republics of Finland and Iceland.
The terms
Fennoscandia and
Fenno-Scandinavia have been used either 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.
*
Nordic region*
Baltic region*
Thule*
Northern Europe*
Scandza*
Nordic Cross Flag*
Nordic Council*
NordRegio Statistics - A collection of thematic maps of Nordic and Baltic countries
*
Historical atlas of Scandinavia*
Scandinavian Food, Gifts and Crafts*
Articles about Scandinavian society and culture*
Scandinavia Files - Introduction and facts on Nordic culture and life.
*
Travel Scandinavia - Lot's of information about the Scandinavian countries.
*
Scandinavia House - Scandinavia House in the United States
*
AmScan - The American-Scandinavian Foundation
*
A Railway map of Scandinaviands-nl:Scandinavië
