en Finlandia

Finland, Lapland, vikings, Nordic countries, Scandinavia… let’s clear up all these.

Saturday July 18th, 2009. 03:54 PM. [Finland culture, Scandinavia]. 4 Comments.

I started looking what countries belong to Scandinavia… and everyplace they say something different.  So I’m going to try to explain it here from the basis, and also other concepts. And please if you want to correct/add something, leave a comment:

Finland is a country with its own language,  Finnish, and Suomi is the name of the country in the Finnish language. It’s a young country, independent since 1917. Its capital is Helsinki as you know.

Scandinavia is a not-official term and quite ambiguous. Geographically, the Scandinavian Peninsula, includes Sweden and Norway. But normally, in historic and politic terms, Scandinavia it is referred to the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. For example, their governments create the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). Historically these 3 countries also have a common thing: the vikings, an ethnic group from the south of Scandinavia that lived between 789 y 1100.

This common historic past also influenced in their languages: norwegian, swedish and denish share their germanic root and they are quite similar. But not Finnish, that is a Finno-Ugric language, with nothing in common.

Even so, the term Scandinavia is many times referred as a synonym of the Nordic countries, that includes Finland and Iceland.

The Nordic countries is an oficial term, and there is behind this term the forum Nordic Council. It is well defined, Nordic countries includes Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland plus the utonomous territories - Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland Islands.

Nordic countries have in common:
* geography
* lutheran religion
* a low population density (Nordic countries have an aggregate population of 25 million. Comparatively, population of Spain is 46 million).
* a long democracy period
* advanced gender equality level
* welfare state

The flags of the Nordic countries. From left: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. All of them have the “scandinavian cross” and are inspired in the Dennish flag, considered as the oldest state flag in the world still in use.

Lapland is a geographic area in the north of the Nordic countries. Not well defined boundaries but the region stretches over four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia. This area is traditionally inhabited by the indigenous people Sami, who have their own language and a culture based on the reindeer. Nowadays Sami people have been fully assimilated in modern society but still they defend and keep their traditions.

In recent years the European Union could weaken the Nordic identity, due of the fact that Finland, Denmark and Sweden are members of the EU (blue), but only Finland also belongs to Eurozone (dark blue). And Norway and Iceland are not at all part of EU… well, in this moments Iceland is trying to apply to EU membership and adopt the euro. The crisis has collapsed their economical system.

Lastly, even though I will cover it better in other post, I would like to mention that Finland was in the past part of Sweden (1249–1809). Main consequences of this fact are: Swedish is the second official language in Finland and they are mortal enemies in ice hockey