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Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe. The most common definition includes Denmark, mainland Norway and Sweden, -witch share same languages, culture and history. Sometimes Finland is included, even in official contexts, although since the rise of Scandinavism in 1850s, this inclusion divides opinions in all of the respective states. Also Iceland is occasionally included. The usage and meaning of the term varies:
Terminology and usage The region consists of the greater part of the Scandinavian and Jutland peninsulas and the islands in between. Smaller portions of the peninsulae belong to Finland and Germany. Geographically the Scandinavian peninsula includes mainland Sweden and mainland Norway, and also a part of Finland, while the Jutland Peninsula includes mainland Denmark and a small part of Germany. The Nordic Countries vs. Scandinavia
Etymology Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne) are considered to have the same etymology. The earliest source is Pliny the Elder's "Natural History", dated to the 1st century AD. As the Goths had already left Sweden four or five hundred years previously and were probably already speaking east Germanic (Gothic), Pliny's names were of west Germanic origin. North Germanic had not yet divided from west Germanic. Pliny, an admiral, says that there were 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae", "known to Roman arms", in the Kattegat. His descriptions are not always clear, even though he was speaking of geography he considered revealed by a "clarior fama", "a clearer story." He begins (4.96) with the mountain of Saevo (mons Saevo ibi), which forms the Codanian Bay (Codanus sinus) surrounding the Cimbrian promontory. These features are the mountainous coasts of Norway and Sweden, the Skagerrak and Skagen. Saevo is most likely an early form of Zeeland, which Pliny applied to southern Scandinavia. The Cod- in Codanus is a form of the second element in Kattegat (lat. coda "the tail of animals", lat. ănus "anus" or "old wife, also of feminine animals", dan. katte "cat" ~ possibly a reference to the group Felis, esp. Lynx and dan. gat in gatfinn "analfin of a fish", thus kattegat "tail of a cat" or a "cat's hole" ~ Freyja, Norse goddess of love, fertility and beauty, travelled in a chariot drawn by huge cats). According to Pliny, the most famous (clarissima) of the islands in the Codanian Bay is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones, who can probably be identified with what is now Halland. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia are the same place. Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in 8.39 he says that the animal called achlis (given in the accusative, achlin), was born on the island of Scadinavia. Achlis is not Latin. As well as having some mythical attributes, the animal grazes and has a big upper lip. Pliny also uses the name Scandiae to mean some islands near Britain. The Germanic reconstruction based on Pliny is Nearly everyone agrees that the second segment is "island", which the American Heritage Dictionary derives from Proto-Indo-European It seems clear that the designation of Scandinavia as an island preceded the Indo-europeans there, and that our words for island and sea came from the indigenes in the region. The Scadin- can be segmented various ways to obtain various Indo-european meanings: scand- or scad-in-, scan- or sca-din, scandin or scadin-. These segmentations have resulted in a number of possible etymologies, such as "climbing island" ( One strong derivation is from the Germanic Alternatively, the first element is sometimes attributed to the Scandinavian giantess Skaði from Norse mythology. If it is she, it is even less likely to be Indo-European, as a people moving in among another people typically take on their gods and goddesses (not quite daring to reject them). Some Basque intellectuals thought the sk was connected to Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. The Scandinavians share some genetical markers with the Basques (as quoted in The Oldest Europeans). The original form gave rise to different forms in Germanic languages often transliterated by non-Germanic scribes. Ptolemy uses the form Scandia, showing that the n had appeared by then. In Beowulf we meet the forms Scedenigge and Scedeland. Pomponius Mela used Codanovia, based on the ancient name of the Kattegat. This usage appears to support the "sealand" idea. The form Scadinavia, the original home of the Langobards, appears in Paulus Diaconus' Historia Langobardorum, but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551) we meet the form Scandza their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4). If the -za represents an early form of zed, then it may replace The name of the Scandinavian mountain range, Skanderna in Swedish, was artificially derived from Skandinavien in the 19th century, in analogy with Alperna for the Alps. The commonly used names are bergen or fjällen; both names meaning "the mountains". Geography
Languages Main articles: North Germanic languages Most dialects of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish (including the Finland Swedish dialects), are mutually intelligible, and Scandinavians can easily understand each other's standard languages as they appear in print and are heard on radio and television. The reason why Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are traditionally viewed as different languages, rather than dialects of one common language, is that they each are well established standard languages in their respective countries. They are related to, but not mutually intelligible with, the other North Germanic languages, Icelandic and Faroese, which are descended from Old West Norse. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have, since medieval times, been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. A substantial amount of that influence was a by-product of the economic activity generated by the Hanseatic League. Finns and Icelanders who have studied Swedish and Danish, respectively, as foreign languages often also find it hard to understand the other Scandinavian languages. On the other end of the scale are the Norwegians, who with two parallel written standards, and a habit to hold on strongly to local dialects, are accustomed to variation and may perceive Danish and Swedish as only slightly more distant dialects. In a conversation between a Swedish speaker and a Dane there can be significant difficulties in understanding each other's spoken language, due to differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. In the Faroe Islands Danish is mandatory, and since Faroese people this way become bilingual in two very distinct Nordic languages, they find it relatively easy to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages. The Scandinavian languages are (as a language family) entirely unrelated to Finnish and Estonian, which as Finno-Ugric languages are distantly related to Hungarian. This said, there still is a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish language in both the Finnish and Estonian languages. Although Swedish speakers constitute a small, but influential, minority in Finland, and Finnish speakers constitute a minority in Sweden of similar relative size, the linguistic distance between the language families has often been seen by native speakers of each of these languages as indicative of a cultural distance, as well as a reason to consider the Finns as a people separate from the Scandinavian culture group. The ethnic nationalist Fennoman movement in Finland fought for equal language rights for Finnish-speakers from the Swedish-speaking elite at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The Fennoman movement was established by prominent Finns and sympathetic Swedish-speakers in Finland under a period of intense russification efforts from the tsar, and its motto "Swedes we are no longer, Russians we will never become, so let us be Finns" was popular among Finns. The movement's goal was to promote the equal legal status of the Finnish language in a country, where the official language of government was Swedish or Russian, despite the large majority of the population being Finnish-speakers. Only in 1902 Finnish language received an equal official status with the other two. In Finland, the only exception to the equality between Finnish and Swedish languages is made on the Åland islands, and it is in favour of the Swedish language. According to the county legislation, the region is unilingually Swedish-speaking. History Scandinavia was Christianized in the 10th-13th centuries, resulting in three consolidated kingdoms. The three kingdoms were united in 1397 in the Kalmar Union by Queen Margrete I of Denmark. Divergent interests among the independent nations led to the Union's final dissolution in 1536. Norway remained united with Denmark; Norway's possessions in the North Atlantic (Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands) remained under the Danish crown even after the Dano-Norwegian union was dissolved in 1814. Sweden left the union in 1523 under King Gustav Vasa. In the mid 17th century, the Treaty of Brömsebro and Treaty of Roskilde permanently transferred some provinces and islands from Norway and Denmark to Sweden. After the Napoleonic Wars, Scandinavia was reorganized into two personal unions: Denmark-Norway Denmark-Norway is the historiographical name for a former political entity, union, consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Following the strife surrounding the break-up of its predecessor, the Kalmar Union, the two kingdoms entered into another personal union in 1536 which lasted until 1814. The corresponding adjective and demonym is Dano-Norwegian. Three sovereign successor states have subsequently emerged from this unequal union: Denmark, Norway and Iceland. In the aftermath of Sweden's definite secession from the Kalmar Union in 1521, civil war and Protestant Reformation followed in Denmark and Norway. When things had settled down, the Privy Council (Rigsraadet) of Denmark became weakened, and finally abolished in 1660. The Norwegian Privy Council was assembled for the last time in 1537. Norway kept its separate laws and some institutions, such as a royal chancellor, and separate coinage and army. Being a hereditary kingdom, Norway's status as separate from Denmark was important to the royal dynasty in its struggles to win elections as kings of Denmark. After the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway was defeated and had to cede the territory of Norway proper to the King of Sweden, formally effected at the Treaty of Kiel. Norway's overseas possessions were kept by Denmark. In the mid 17th century, the Treaty of Brömsebro and Treaty of Roskilde permanently transferred some provinces and islands from Norway and Denmark to Sweden. Politics
Historical political structure 1/ The original settlers of the Faroes and Iceland were of Nordic (mainly Norwegian) origin, with a considerable element of Celtic or Pictish origin (from Scotland and Ireland) . See also Footnotes | ||||||||||||||
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