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For other uses, see Scandinavia (disambiguation).
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Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe named after the Scandinavian Peninsula. In many parts of the world the terms "Scandinavia" and "the Nordic countries" are used interchangeably. The most common definition includes continental Denmark, mainland Norway and Sweden. Finland is often included even in official contexts, although after the 1850s this inclusion divides opinions in all of the respective states. This is sometimes reflected with the usage of the term "Fennoscandia". Due to cultural, economic and linguistic similarities, Iceland and the Faroe Islands can also be included in Scandinavia. The broadest interpretation of Scandinavia may also include the various insular territories that belong to Norway and Denmark, such as Svalbard and occasionally even Greenland.

Terminology and usage

In present usage, the term Scandinavia is often used as a synonym for the Nordic Countries. From the 1850s, Scandinavia came to include, politically and culturally, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 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 three countries that form the core of Scandinavia came to be viewed as a single political and cultural region during the height of the nationalist movements in these countries in the middle of the 19th century (Scandinavism). The region takes its name from the peninsula, which in turn is thought to be named after the historical province of Skåne (Scania in southernmost part of Scandinavian Peninsula, in Sweden). Before the mid-19th century, the term covered a larger area of Northern Europe including adjacent parts of Germany, parts of Russia bordering Finland and Estonia.

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).

Geography

Red the three monarchies, Orange the extended usage, Yellow the maximum extent
See also Geography of Denmark, Geography of Norway and Geography of Sweden.
Map of Scandinavia and Northern Europe.

The region consists of the greater part of the Scandinavian and Jutland peninsulas and the islands in between. Smaller portions of the peninsulas belong to Finland and Germany.

History

Main article: History of Scandinavia

The Scandinavians were Christianized in the 10th-13th centuries, resulting in three consolidated kingdoms.

The three kingdoms then united in the Kalmar Union[1] lasting all of the 15th century when the Union was split into two halves:

  • "Denmark-Norway" (including overseas possessions in the North Atlantic)
  • "Sweden" (including Finland and other trans-Baltic possessions)

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 three personal unions:

  • Denmark with Schleswig-Holstein (dissolved in 1864; included former overseas provinces of Norway)
  • Sweden and Norway (dissolved in 1905)
  • Russia with the Grand Duchy of Finland (terminated in 1917)

Etymology

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).

Satellite photo of the Scandinavian Peninsula, February 2003, with political boundaries added

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[2] 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". [1]

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 Schade 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).

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[3], but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge[4]. 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)[5]. 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".

Languages

Main articles: North Germanic languages, Finnic languages.

Most dialects of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian 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.

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.[6]

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. Oddly enough, texts on some rune stones found in Skåne have been deciphered mixing Finnish words into the "Fornnordiska" (Ove Berg: Runsvenska, svenska finska 2003). 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 short period of russification efforts from the tsar, and its motto "Swedes we are no longer, Russians we will never become, so let us be Finns" was chosen by the Finnish population.

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. As a result, in 1902, Russia granted Finnish language equal legal status as Swedish. Sweden began actions to continue imposing Swedish on Finnish people by creating the Swedish People's Party in the Finnish government. In 1919, the first Finnish constinution was being written with Finnish as the only official language. The Swedish People's Party lobbied intensely and so Swedish was added as another official language in the new Finnish constitution. Despite the relatively similar numbers of native speakers of the Swedish language in Finland and the Finnish language in Sweden, there are extreme differences in the legal and social status of each. Swedish-speakers in Finland are one of the most privileged groups in the world. Although Swedish is considered by the Finnish constitution to have an equal legal position with Finnish in all of Finland, Finnish was granted some rights only as late as 1999 and only in some areas of Sweden, only after Sweden was forced by the EU minority language law.

In Finland, the only exception to this rule is made to the Åland islands, and it is in favor of the Swedish language. According to the autonomy's legislation[2], the region is unilingually Swedish-speaking. The only official language on the islands is Swedish, even in communication between the central Finnish government and the autonomous government of the Åland islands. In public schools on the islands the only langueage allowed by law is Swedish. This, even globally exceptional linguistic position, has continuously raised political issues in the mainland of Finland.

Politics

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 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.

Flag of the Nordic Council.

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.

The modern Scandinavian co-operation after World War I also came to include participation from newly independent Finland and (since 1944) Iceland and Scandinavian as a political term came to be replaced by the term Nordic countries; and eventually, in 1952, by the Nordic Council institution.

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 Sweden-Norway 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) .

The Nordic Countries vs. Scandinavia

Main article: Nordic countries

As with other regions of the world, the usage and meaning of the term 'Scandinavia' can vary depending on defining criteria. Therefore some or all of the following geopolitical entities may be considered peripherally Scandinavian, since they traditionally have had strong political, social, economic, linguistic and/or geographical ties with the three kingdoms.

and

Putting it another way, Scandinavia can be seen as a part 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.

There is a tendency to use the terms Scandinavia and the Nordic countries interchangeably both inside and outside the region.

Scandinavia, Fennoscandia, and the Kola Peninsula.

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, or they may be used in a more cultural sense, more or less as a synonym for the Nordic countries, to signify the historically close contact between all peoples and cultures in the area.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Örjan Martinsson , The Kalmar Union
  2. ^ Island, The American Heritage, 2000
  3. ^ Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, BIBLIOTHECA AUGUSTANA
  4. ^ History of the Langobards, Northvegr Foundation
  5. ^ Jordanes (translated by Charles C. Mierow), THE ORIGIN AND DEEDS OF THE GOTHS, April 22, 1997
  6. ^ Template:Sv icon Template:Da icon Template:No icon Internordisk språkförståelse, Nordisk Sprogråd, November 2002
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