Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne, is the southernmost of the historical provinces () of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skåne County, created in 1997. Like the other historical provinces of Sweden, Scania still features in colloquial speech and in cultural references, and can therefore not be regarded as an archaic concept. Within Scania there are 33 municipalities that are autonomous within the Skåne Regional Council. Scania's largest city, Malmö, is the third-largest city in Sweden, as well as the fifth-largest in Scandinavia.
To the north, Scania borders the historical provinces of Halland and Småland, to the northeast Blekinge, to the east and south the Baltic Sea, and to the west Öresund. Since 2000, a road and railway bridge, the Öresund Bridge, bridges the Sound and connects Scania with Denmark. Scania forms part of the transnational Øresund Region.
From north to south Scania is around 130 km; it covers less than 3% of Sweden's total area. The population is over 1,418,000. It represents 13% of the country's population. With , Scania is the second most densely populated province in Sweden.
Historically, Scania formed part of the kingdom of Denmark until the signing of the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, when all Danish lands east of Öresund were ceded to Sweden.
Name Endonym and exonyms The endonym used in Swedish and other North Germanic languages is Skåne (formerly spelled Skaane in Danish and Norwegian). The Latinized form Scania is an exonym in English. Sometimes the endonym Skåne is used in English text, such as in tourist information, even sometimes as Skane with the diacritic omitted. Scania is one of the few Swedish provinces (as also Dalarna) for which exonyms are widely used in many languages, such as French Scanie, Dutch and German Schonen, Polish Skania, Spanish Escania, Italian Scania, etc. For the province's modern administrative counterpart, Skåne län, the endonym Skåne is used in English.
In the Alfredian translation of Orosius's and Wulfstan's travel accounts, the Old English form Sconeg appears.North, Richard (1997). Heathen Gods in Old English Literature . Cambridge University Press: 1997, , p. 192.Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, 2003 Frankish sources mention a place called Sconaowe; Æthelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, wrote about Scani;Björkman, Erik (1973). Studien über die Eigennamen im Beowulf . M. Sändig, , p. 99. and in Beowulf's fictional account, the names Scedenige and Scedeland appear as names for what is a Danish land.
Etymology The names Scania and Scandinavia are considered to have the same etymology.Haugen, Einar (1976). The Scandinavian Languages: An Introduction to Their History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976.Helle, Knut (2003). "Introduction". The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Ed. E. I. Kouri et al. Cambridge University Press, 2003. . p. XXII. "The name Scandinavia was used by classical authors in the first centuries of the Christian era to identify Scania and the mainland further north which they believed to be an island."Olwig, Kenneth R. "Introduction: The Nature of Cultural Heritage, and the Culture of Natural Heritage—Northern Perspectives on a Contested Patrimony". International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2005, p. 3: "The very name 'Scandinavia' is of cultural origin, since it derives from the Scanians or Scandians (the Latinised spelling of Skåninger), a people who long ago lent their name to all of Scandinavia, perhaps because they lived centrally, at the southern tip 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. The southernmost tip of what today is Sweden was called Scania by the Romans and thought to be an island. The actual etymology of the word remains dubious and has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjã, which appears 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. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden, Swedish skada).Helle, Knut (2003). "Introduction". The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Ed. E. I. Kouri et al. Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".
Administration
Between 1719 and 1996, the province was subdivided in two administrative counties (län), Kristianstad County and Malmöhus County, each under a governor (landshövding) appointed by the central government of Sweden.
When the first local government acts took effect in 1863, each county also got an elected county council (landsting). The counties were further divided into municipalities.
The local government reform of 1952 reduced the number of municipalities, and a second subdivision reform, carried out between 1968 and 1974, established today's 33 municipalitiesRegion Skåne. Municipalities in Skåne. Official site. Retrieved 24 August 2007. () in Scania. The municipalities have municipal governments, similar to city commissions, and are further divided into parishes (församlingar). The parishes are primarily entities of the Church of Sweden, but they also serve as a divisioning measure for the Swedish population registration and other statistical uses.
In 1999, the county council areas were amalgamated, forming Skåne Regional Council (Region Skåne), responsible mainly for public healthcare, public transport and regional planning and culture.
Heraldry
During the Danish era, the province had no coat of arms. In Sweden, however, every province had been represented by heraldic arms since 1560.Clara Nevéus, Bror Jacques de Wærn: Ny svensk vapenbok. Riksarkivet 1992. (In Swedish) When Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660 a coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. After an initiative from Baron Gustaf Bonde, the Lord High Treasurer of Sweden, the coat of arms of the City of Malmö was used as a base for the new provincial arms. The Malmö coat of arms had been granted in 1437, during the Kalmar Union, by Eric of Pomerania and contains a Pomeranian griffin's head. To distinguish it from the city's coat of arms the tinctures were changed and the official blazon for the provincial arms is, in English: Or, a griffin's head erased gules, crowned azure and armed azure, when it should be armed.
The province was divided in two administrative counties 1719–1996. Coats of arms were created for these entities, also using the griffin motif. The new Skåne County, operative from 1 January 1997, got a coat of arms that is the same as the province's, but with reversed tinctures. When the county arms is shown with a Swedish royal crown, it represents the County Administrative Board, which is the regional presence of central government authority. In 1999 the two county councils () were amalgamated forming Region Skåne. It is the only one of its kind using a heraldic coat of arms. It is also the same as the province's and the county's, but with a golden griffin's head on a blue shield.Vårt vapen. Region Skåne. (In Swedish). Retrieved 4 April 2008. The 33 municipalities within the county also have coats of arms.
The Scania Griffin has become a well-known symbol for the province and is also used by commercial enterprises. It is, for instance, included in the logotypes of the automotive manufacturer Scania AB and the airline Malmö Aviation.
Coat of arms
History
Scania was first mentioned in written texts in the 9th century. It came under Danish king Harald Bluetooth in the middle of the 10th century. Situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula, it formed the eastern part of the kingdom of Denmark. This geographical position made it the focal point of the frequent Dano-Swedish wars for hundreds of years.
By the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, all Danish lands east of Öresund were ceded to Sweden. First placed under a Governor-General, the province was eventually integrated into the kingdom of Sweden. Denmark occupied parts of the province (1676–1679) during the Scanian War and again briefly in 1710 during the Great Northern War. The last Danish attempt to regain its lost provinces failed after the 1710 Battle of Helsingborg.
In 1719, the province was subdivided in two counties and administered in the same way as the rest of Sweden. In July 1720, a peace treaty between Sweden and Denmark again confirmed the status of Scania as part of Sweden.3 juli 1720 - Riksarkivet - Sök i arkiven . Sok.riksarkivet.se. Retrieved on 24 June 2015.Fredstraktat, tillige med dend: over bemelte Freds-tractat forfattede ... - Google Břger . Books.google.dk. Retrieved on 24 June 2015.
Politics During Sweden's financial crisis in the early and mid-1990s, Scania, Västra Götaland and Norrbotten were among the hardest hit in the country, with high unemployment rates as a result.McCallion, Malin Stegmann (2004). The Europeanisation of Swedish Regional Government . Policy Networks in Sub National Governance: Understanding Power Relations. Paper 8, Workshop 25, European Consortium of Political Research. 2004 Joint Sessions of Workshops, Uppsala, Sweden. In response to the crisis, the County Governors were given a task by the government in September 1996 to co-ordinate various measures in the counties to increase economic growth and employment by bringing in regional actors. The first proposal for regional autonomy and a regional parliament had been introduced by the Social Democratic Party's local districts in Scania and Västra Götaland already in 1993. When Sweden joined the European Union two years later, the concept "Regions of Europe" came in focus and a more regionalist-friendly approach was adopted in national politics. These factors contributed to the subsequent transformation of Skåne County into one of the first "trial regions" in Sweden in 1999, established as the country's first "regional experiment".Peterson, Martin (2003). "The Regions and Regionalism: Regionalism in Sweden" . CoR Report Sweden. The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences, EUROPUB Case Study (WP2).
The relatively strong regional identity in Scania is often referred to in order to explain the general support in the province for the decentralization efforts introduced by the Swedish government.Kramsch, Olivier and Olivier Thomas (2004). Cross-border Governance in the European Union . Routledge, 2004, . On the basis of large scale interview investigations about Region Skåne in Scania, scholars have found that the prevailing trend among the inhabitants of Scania is to "[look] upon their region with more positive eyes and a firm reliance that it would deliver the goods in terms of increased democracy and constructive results out of economic planning".Peterson, Martin (2003). "The Regions and Regionalism and Regionalism: Regionalism in Sweden" . CoR Report Sweden, The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences, EUROPUB Case Study (WP2). Final Report.
On 28 November 2017, Region Scania ruled that the Scanian flag would become the official regional flag of Scania.
Transport