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This book analyses the contemporary politics of the nation states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and the Home Rule territories of Greenland, Faeroes and Åland that together make up the Nordic region. It covers Scandinavia past and present, parties in developmental perspective, the Scandinavian party system model, the Nordic model of government, the Nordic welfare model, legislative-executive relations in the region, and the changing security environment. The Nordic states have a shared history, common linguistic bonds and a common state Lutheran religion. Of the six Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, whilst Swedish is an official national language in Finland. Turning to a brief overview of nation-building and state-building in the Nordic region, an obvious distinction can be drawn between those 'stateless nations' which went on to achieve statehood and the territories that have not achieved independence. The book presents a brief chronology of events in Norden up to 1922, when Åland achieved autonomy. In Sweden the historic phase of party-building produced a basic two-plus-three configuration and a party system based on five 'isms': communism, social democracy, agrarianism, liberalism and conservatism. By 1930 there was a bifurcated parliamentary left and a fragmented nonsocialist bloc consisting of essentially town-based Liberal and Conservative parties and a farmer-based Agrarian Party. Whilst acknowledging the limitations inherent in the periodisation of party system change, the book focuses on the extent of party system change since the 'earthquake elections' of 1970-73.
civil servants in Helsinki were Swedish- not Finnish-speaking and worked for the Russian czar. Turning to a brief overview of nation-building and state-building in the Nordic region, an obvious distinction can be drawn between those ‘stateless nations’ which went on to achieve statehood (Finland, Norway and Iceland) and the territories that have not achieved independence (the Faeroes, Green land and Åland). Table 2.1 presents a brief chronology of events in Norden up to 1922, when Åland achieved autonomy. Finland: nationalism under czarism The basic structures of the
the humorous side of things! This chapter, however, is not about eagles, still less hens; rather, it focuses on a particular swan – the eight-quilled swan of Nordic co-operation depicted in the logo of the Nordic Council and representing the five nation states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and the three Home Rule territories of the Faeroes, Greenland and Åland. It offers a broad introduction to the (changing) geo-politics of the Nordic region and views co-operation and, more frequently in an historical light, conflict between the member states in
Nordic cooperation involves the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, as well as the autonomous territories of the Faeroe Islands, Greenland and Åland, with a total of 23 million inhabitants. The Parliaments cooperate in the Nordic Council and the governments cooperate in the Nordic Council of Ministers. The cooperation is not supranational but based on voluntary equal cooperation between independent nations. Several Nordic institutions and project activities are funded from a Nordic budget. As a result of the significant levels of
(1833–84) owned a large pharmaceutical firm and had a large egg and bird 6.2 Alfred Benzon, from Henry Dresser’s album of correspondents. 6.3 Kammerråd H. C. Erichsen, from Henry Dresser’s album of correspondents. 104 Dresser.indb 104 03/10/2017 12:49:20 Discovering the birds of Europe, I skin collection, with his own curator (Grouw and Bloch, 2015) (see figure 6.2). Another of Benzon’s circle, Kammerråd (Counsellor) H. C. Erichsen, paid the wages of a collector in Greenland for many years (see figure 6.3). The birds of the Faeroes were dealt with by
seats to their Home Rule territories. In the Folketing both Greenland and the Faeroes are represented by two MPs. In the Eduskunta, the Åland islands elect a single member and, throughout, he or she – for the first time in 2007 a woman was elected for Åland – has joined the Swedish People’s Party’s PPG. The Norwegian Storting had 155 members from the time of the Eidsvoll constitution in 1814 to 1985, when the number was increased by two, and it rose again, to 165, in 1989. The Storting currently comprises 169 members. In both Norway and Sweden there is an
Icelandic security policy throughout the Cold War, much as the 1948 FCMA Treaty had been for Finnish foreign policy. The Keflavík base was initially run by the US air force, its main purpose being to secure intermediate landings between America and Europe. In 1961 the US navy took over the base. The strategic importance of Keflavík, of course, needs little emphasis. It was ideally located for reconnaissance against Soviet naval movements from Murmansk using either the Danish straits between Greenland and Iceland and/or the waters between Iceland and the Faeroes. As for
-west Africa in the transition from Francoism, inherited only two enclaves in Morocco (as well as Spain’s oldest colony, the Canary Islands), and King Felipe still rules over those two Mediterranean cities, Ceuta and Melilla, standing opposite British Gibraltar. The Danish monarch continues to rule over largely autonomous Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, and the Dutch King rules over six island territories in the
Sweden and the Baltic islands of Bornholm and Gotland; northeast over Iceland, Greenland, the Faeroes and Orkney; and south to the German duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. So, ‘as one of the largest political entities on the early modern continent’, the Danish Crown ‘wielded tremendous international influence’, and by the end of the sixteenth century its tolls on Baltic shipping and duties on Norwegian
and the Faeroe islands) ationals to work in another state in the region. Although Finland did not n participate in the work of the Nordic Council until 1956 – and then only on condition that foreign and security matters were not on the agenda for discussion – it was a co-signatory of the Common Labour Market Treaty in July 1954, following which many Finns moved to Sweden in search of work. As George Maude cryptically observed, it may be said without exaggeration that for Finland, a small country with large-scale capital-intensive industry geared to exports, for