Scandinavia is a subregion of northern Europe that most commonly comprises Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which share strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties. It may also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes part of northern Finland). In English usage, the term is also used as a synonym for the Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included, due to their ethnolinguistic ties to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Although Finland differs from the other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors consider it Scandinavian because of its economic and cultural similarities.
The geography of the region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population in the region live in the more temperate southern regions, with the northern parts having long, cold winters.
During the Viking Age Scandinavian peoples participated in large-scale raiding, conquest, colonization and trading mostly throughout Europe. They also used their longships for exploration, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. These exploits saw the establishment of the North Sea Empire which comprised large parts of Scandinavia and Great Britain, though it was relatively short-lived. Scandinavia was eventually Christianized, and the coming centuries saw various unions of Scandinavian nations, most notably the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which lasted for over 100 years until the Swedish king Gustav I led Sweden out of the union. Denmark and Norway, as well as Schleswig-Holstein, were then united until 1814 as Denmark–Norway. Numerous wars between the nations followed, which shaped the modern borders and led to the establishment of the Swedish Empire in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The most recent Scandinavian union was the union between Sweden and Norway, which ended in 1905.
In modern times the region has prospered, with the economies of the countries being amongst the strongest in Europe. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland all maintain welfare systems considered to be generous, with the economic and social policies of the countries being dubbed the "Nordic model".
Geography
The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords, the Scandinavian Mountains covering much of Norway and parts of Sweden, the flat, low areas in Denmark and the archipelagos of Finland, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Sweden have many lakes and moraines, legacies of the ice age, which ended about ten millennia ago.
The southern regions of Scandinavia, which are also the most populous regions, 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: a marine west coast climate (Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, the southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Norway. 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 in Målilla (Sweden). The coldest temperature ever recorded is in Vuoggatjålme, Arjeplog (Sweden). The coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi (Sweden) with a mean of .
Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter. Tafjord has recorded in January and Sunndal in February.
Scandinavia as a concept
Etymology
The words Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden) are both thought to go back to the Proto-Germanic compound , which appears later in Old English as and in Old Norse as .Anderson, Carl Edlund (1999). Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia . PhD dissertation, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English), University of Cambridge, 1999. The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the 1st century AD.
Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes, usually in the form of Scandza. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania.Haugen, Einar (1976). The Scandinavian Languages: An Introduction to Their History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as , meaning "danger" or "damage". The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as , meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania. Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem () combined with -, which means "sandbanks".
Alternatively, Sca(n)dinavia and , along with the Old Norse goddess name , may be related to Proto-Germanic (meaning "shadow"). John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests that the goddess Skaði may have once been a personification of the geographical region of Scandinavia or associated with the underworld.
Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the pre-Germanic Mesolithic people inhabiting the region. In modernity, Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 and 9,500 years ago the southern part of Scandinavia was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located.Uścinowicz, Szymon (2003). "How the Baltic Sea was changing" . Marine Geology Branch, Polish Geological Institute, 9 June 2003. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
Appearance in medieval Germanic languages The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551), the form is the name used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4).Jordanes (translated by Charles Christopher Mierow), The Origins and Deeds of the Goths , 22 April 1997 Where Jordanes meant to locate this quasi-legendary island is still a hotly debated issue, both in scholarly discussions and in the nationalistic discourse of various European countries.Hoppenbrouwers, Peter (2005). Medieval Peoples Imagined. Working Paper No. 3, Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, , p. 8: "A second core area was the quasi-legendary 'Isle of Scanza', the vague indication of Scandinavia in classical ethnography, and a veritable 'hive of races and a womb of peoples' according to Jordanes' Gothic History. Not only the Goths were considered to have originated there, but also the Dacians/Danes, the Lombards, and the Burgundians—claims that are still subject to debate."Goffart, Walter (2005), "Jordanes's Getica and the disputed authenticity of Gothic origins from Scandinavia". Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies 80, 379–98 The form as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paul the Deacon' Historia Langobardorum,Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum , Bibliotheca Augustana but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms , , and .History of the Langobards, Northvegr Foundation Frankish sources used and Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used . In Beowulf, the forms and are used while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan's travel accounts used the Old English .
Possible influence on Sámi languages The earliest Sámi joik texts written down refer to the world as in Northern Sámi and in Skolt Sámi, meaning "Skaði's island". Svennung considers the Sámi name to have been introduced as a loanword from the North Germanic languages; "Skaði" is the jötunn stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology. It has been suggested that Skaði to some extent is modelled on a Sámi woman. The name for Skaði's father Þjazi is known in Sámi as , "the waterman"; and her son with Odin, Sæmingr, can be interpreted as a descendant of , the Sámi population. Older joik texts give evidence of the old Sámi belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as , meaning "the strong one on the island". The Sámi place name means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back".
In recent substrate studies, Sámi linguists have examined the initial cluster - in words used in the Sámi languages and concluded that - is a phonotactic structure of non-Sámi origin.
Reintroduction of the term Scandinavia in the 18th century
Although the term Scandinavia used by Pliny the Elder probably originated in the ancient Germanic languages, the modern form Scandinavia does not descend directly from the ancient Germanic term. Rather the word was brought into use in Europe by scholars borrowing the term from ancient sources like Pliny, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula.Østergård, Uffe (1997). "The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity – From Composite States to Nation States". The Cultural Construction of Norden. Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds.), Oslo: Scandinavian University Press 1997, 25–71. Also published online at Danish Institute for International Studies . For the history of cultural Scandinavism, see Oresundstid's articles The Literary Scandinavism and The Roots of Scandinavism . Retrieved 19 January 2007.
The term was popularised by the linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, which asserted the common heritage and cultural unity of the Scandinavian countries and rose to prominence in the 1830s. The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the 19th century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!.
The influence of Scandinavism as a Scandinavist political movement peaked in the middle of the 19th century, between the First Schleswig War (1848–1850) and the Second Schleswig War (1864).