Scandinavia , historically Scandia , part of northern Europe , generally held to consist of the two countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula , Norway and Sweden , with the addition of Denmark. Some authorities argue for the inclusion of Finland on geologic and economic grounds and of Iceland and the Faroe Islands on the grounds that their inhabitants speak North Germanic or Scandinavian languages related to those of Norway and Sweden.
The term Norden has also come into use to denote Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, a group of countries having affinities with one another and a distinctness from the rest of continental Europe.
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Among their distinguishing characteristics are thinly populated northern regions, a relative wealth of fish resources, long life expectancies, and high levels of literacy. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.
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Scandinavia region, Northern Europe. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Scandinavia n governments moved toward increasing liberalism by expanding the power of parliaments, a development that was completed in the late s; the Dutch monarchy did the same. Elsewhere, the next major step resulted once again from a series of revolutions in , which proved to…. The Vikings from Norway are best known as explorers, crossing the North Atlantic in their longships and settling Iceland and Greenland.
The Norwegian explorers even reached the east coast of what we now call Canada , where they set up a colony , but it only lasted a few years. The Vikings from Denmark, however, left the biggest mark on the English.
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Danish raiders attacked England repeatedly and brutally, demanding payment that came to be called " Danegeld " Danish gold. The priests and bishop s of churches along the eastern coast of England had a famous prayer, "deliver us, O Lord, from the wrath of the Norsemen!
During a period of Christianization and formation of states in the 10th—13th centuries, numerous Germanic kingdoms were unified into three kingdoms:. However, Sweden left the union in Because of this, civil war broke out in Denmark and Norway. The Protestant Reformation followed. When things had settled, the Norwegian Privy Council was abolished—it assembled for the last time in A personal union, entered into by the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in , lasted until Three sovereign successor states have subsequently emerged from this union: Denmark, Norway and Iceland. The borders between the three countries got the shape they have had since in the middle of the seventeenth century: In the east, Finland was a part of Sweden since medieval times until the Napoleonic wars, when it became part of Russia.
Media related to Scandinavia at Wikimedia Commons. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sweden has many lakes and moraines , legacies of the ice age , which ended about ten millennia ago.
Scandinavia
The southern and by far most populous regions of Scandinavia have a temperate climate. Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle , but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Many of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate.
The climate varies from north to south and from west to east: 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 the North Cape has tundra climate Et as a result of a lack of summer warmth.
The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and the 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 Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter. Tafjord has recorded Two language groups have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory—the North Germanic languages Scandinavian languages and the Sami languages. Denmark also has a minority of German -speakers. More recent migrations has added even more languages. Apart from Sami and the languages of minority groups speaking a variant of the majority language of a neighboring state, the following minority languages in Scandinavia are protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Yiddish , Romani Chib, Romanes and Romani.
The modern division is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have since medieval times been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. That influence came from not just proximity but also that Denmark and later Denmark-Norway ruling over the German speaking region of Holstein, and in Sweden with its close trade with the Hanseatic League.
Norwegians are accustomed to variation and may perceive Danish and Swedish only as slightly more distant dialects. This is because they have 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.
This causes Faroese people as well as Icelandic people to become bilingual in two very distinct North Germanic languages, making it relatively easy for them to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages. Although Iceland was under the political control of Denmark until a much later date , very little influence and borrowing from Danish has occurred in the Icelandic language. Danish was not used for official communications, most of the royal officials were of Icelandic descent and the language of the church and law courts remained Icelandic.
The Scandinavian languages are as a language family unrelated to Finnish , Estonian and Sami languages , which as Uralic languages are distantly related to Hungarian. Owing to the close proximity, there is still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in the Finnish and Sami languages. Finnish-speakers had to learn Swedish in order to advance to higher positions. Finland is officially bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish having mostly the same status at national level.
The Swedish-speakers live mainly on the coastline starting from approximately the city of Porvoo in the Gulf of Finland up to the city of Kokkola in the Bay of Bothnia. Children are taught the other official language at school: Finnish speakers constitute a language minority in Sweden and Norway. The Sami languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia. According to the Sami Information Centre of the Sami Parliament in Sweden, southern Sami may have originated in an earlier migration from the south into the Scandinavian peninsula.
During a period of Christianization and state formation in the 10th—13th centuries, numerous Germanic petty kingdoms and chiefdoms were unified into three kingdoms:. Sweden left the union in 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, the Norwegian Privy Council was abolished—it assembled for the last time in A personal union , entered into by the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in , lasted until Three sovereign successor states have subsequently emerged from this unequal union: Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
The borders between the three countries got the shape they have had since in the middle of the seventeenth century: In the east, Finland, was a fully incorporated part of Sweden since medieval times until the Napoleonic wars, when it was ceded to Russia. Despite many wars over the years since the formation of the three kingdoms, Scandinavia been politically and culturally close.
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Denmark—Norway as a historiographical name refers to 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 [65] in , but Norway's remaining a hereditary kingdom became an important factor for the Oldenburg dynasty of Denmark—Norway in its struggles to win elections as kings of Denmark.
The Treaty of Kiel 14 January formally dissolved the Dano-Norwegian union and ceded the territory of Norway proper to the King of Sweden, but Denmark retained Norway's overseas possessions. 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 The assembly drew up a liberal constitution and elected Christian Frederick to the throne of Norway. Following a Swedish invasion during the summer, the peace conditions of the Convention of Moss 14 August specified that king Christian Frederik had to resign, but Norway would keep its independence and its constitution within a personal union with Sweden.
Christian Frederik formally abdicated on 10 August and returned to Denmark. The influence of Scandinavism as a Scandinavist political movement was in the middle of the nineteenth century between the First Schleswig War — and the Second Schleswig War The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single united kingdom. 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 and Norway de jure in union with Denmark since , although de facto treated as a province becoming independent in , 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 , 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.
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