Scandinavia

**Scandinavia** is a group of countries in Northern Europe, including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some people also think Finland is part of Scandinavia and that Iceland and the Faroe Islands should also count.

Most of the time, "Scandinavia" is used to mean places whose people speak **Scandinavian languages**, also called North Germanic languages or Nordic languages. The Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese) are very similar to each other, and many Scandinavians partly understand the other languages because they are similar. Finnish is not a North Germanic language.

What people mean when they say "Scandinavia" depends on what they think is important at the time. When people talk about maps, natural land formations and the economy, they may say that Finland is part of Scandinavia but not Iceland. When people talk about history and languages, they may say that Iceland is part of Scandinavia but not Finland.

The Scandinavian Peninsula is a large peninsula reaching west from Northern Europe over the northern side of the Baltic Sea. Norway, Sweden, and part of Finland are on the peninsula. However, Denmark is considered part of Scandinavia in the ethnic sense more often than is Finland because Danish is a Scandinavian language but not Finnish.

The Nordic countries include Norway, Sweden, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands), Finland, and Iceland. The five countries use the Nordic Council to work together on political and cultural activities. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are also members of the European Union (EU), but only Finland is part of the eurozone and so uses the euro as its currency. The other Nordic countries still use their own money, called _krone_ or _krona_ (from the word "crowns"). Norway and Iceland, which are not members of the EU, are members of NATO and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Only Denmark, Sweden and Finland are members of both the EU and NATO.

## Geography

Most of the Scandinavian Peninsula has few people in it. The peninsula has large forests of pine, birch, and spruce trees. Its western and northern parts are mountainous. The Scandinavian Mountains are some of the oldest in the world; the tallest mountain is Galdhøpiggen, in Norway.

Denmark (43,098 km<sup>2</sup>) is the smallest Scandinavian country. It is more densely populated than the others, and most of the country is farmland. Sweden (449,964 km<sup>2</sup>) is the largest Scandinavian country. It has the most lakes, and its landscape ranges from plains in the south to mountains in the west, along the border with Norway, to tundra in the north.

The far north of Scandinavia and of Finland is called Lapland, where the Sámi live. Some Sámi still herd reindeer, but most of them live in modern houses and have modern jobs, like other Scandinavians.

## Vikings

The most famous group of Scandinavians were the Vikings of the Middle Ages. The Vikings attacked and raided in the Middle Ages, but they also were traders who travelled to what is now Ukraine and started trade routes to the Middle East.

The Vikings from Norway were explorers and crossed the North Atlantic in their longships. They came to Iceland and Greenland and built towns and farms there. The Norwegian explorers also came to the Atalantic coast of Canada. They built at least one town there, but it did not last long.

The Vikings from Denmark came to England, where they affected its history, politics, and language. Danish raiders attacked England many times with great violence. Sometimes, the Danes would ask for the English pay them to go away. The payments were called "Danegeld" (Danish gold). The priests and bishops of churches on the East Coast of England wrote a famous prayer: "deliver us, O Lord, from the wrath of the Norsemen!" "Norsemen" is another way to say "men from the north," or the Danes.

## In fiction and theatre

Much later, in the 19th century, Richard Wagner and other artists in the Romantic period made operas and other artwork about ancient Germanic culture. They liked the Vikings because they were not Greeks or Romans. Those artists were the first to have the idea of Vikings wearing helmets with wings or horns on them and drinking out of hollowed-out animal horns. Some ancient Germanic peoples wore helmets with horns on them, but the real Vikings did not. Wagner and his partners dressed the actors in the opera _Ring des Nibelungen_ to look like ancient Germanic tribes so that the audience would feel like modern Germanics came from the meadieval Vikings.

## History

In the 10th to the 13th centuries, Christianity spread in Scandiavia. Modern countries started to form there and came together into three kingdoms:
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Norway
These three Scandinavian kingdoms formed the Kalmar Union in 1387 under Queen Margaret I of Denmark. In 1523, Sweden left the union. That made civil war start in Denmark and Norway. The Protestant Reformation then caused Catholics and Protestants to fight each other. After things had settled, the Norwegian Privy Council was abolished: it assembled for the last time in 1537. Denmark and Norway formed another union in 1536, which lasted until 1814. It turned into the modern countries of Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

The borders between Denmark, Sweden and Norway came to the shape that have today in the mid-17th century. In the 1645 Treaty of Brömsebro, Denmark–Norway gave some land to Sweden: the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland, Härjedalen and Idre and Särna and the Baltic Sea islands of Gotland and Ösel (in Estonia). The 1658 Treaty of Roskilde made Denmark–Norway lose the Danish provinces of Scania, Blekinge, Halland, Bornholm, and the Norwegian provinces of Båhuslen and Trøndelag to Sweden. In 1660, the Treaty of Copenhagen returned Bornholm and Trøndelag back to Denmark–Norway from Sweden..

Finland was part of Sweden until the Napoleonic Wars, when it became part of Russia.