A United Scandinavia

[storealex]

Danes and Norweigans understand eachother easily. With Danes and Swedes it depends where in Sweden you are. I can go to Skåne (South Sweden) and speak Danish and easily communicate with others, while as if I go to Stockholm we will naturally turn to English because the dialects slows the coversation down. Still, I can watch Swedish television and understand most of what they say.

 

[Leifmk]

Oh, and a united Norden (not Scandinavia) would have been awesome. But it should really have happened after WW2. There were attempts at forming a Nordic defense union at the time, but then Norway and Denmark went with NATO instead.

Geopolitically it would have been like a larger Sweden, staunchly neutral (albeit leaning more toward the West than the East) and powerfully armed for defense (but not equipped to project power outside of its own region). The combined resources, technologies, industrial and cultural elements would have made us a nice little economic powerhouse in proportion to our population.

 

[aronnax]

Hm... who would the head of state for such a union?

The King of Sweden? The King of Norway? or The Queen of Denmark?

 

[Cilpot]

A union? No thanks, not right now.

But Denmark and Sweden are welcome to join Norway if they want

 

[Inhalaattori]

Why not. All scandinavian countries have much in common. All Scandinavian languages are very similar. Im from Finland and I dont feel any connection to Scandinavian countries. Estonians are closest to Finns in every way. Maybe we could form some kind of union with Estonians.

I would also like to see Finland giving up its present flag and going back to old flag. It would be symbol that we are not part of Scandinavia.

Old flag:

 

[Ace of Gold]

Im not from Scandinavia, but I am part Swedish and I say no!

Sweden and Denmark are already in the EU, and all 3 countries have different languages.

 

[Lillefix]

Sweden and Denmark are already in the EU, and all 3 countries have different languages.

Slightly different languages is not much of an issue. I doubt the spoken languages within a such a country would differ much more from each other than they already do in Spain, France, Italy, Germany or the Netherlands.

On the other hand a union would never happen simply because there is no point to it. There simply isn't anything to gain, other than getting slightly more votes in the EU than the Netherlands.

 

[Bill3000]

Hm... who would the head of state for such a union?

The King of Sweden? The King of Norway? or The Queen of Denmark?

The Princess of Sweden, obviously.

 

[History_Buff]

That all depends. The Kalmar Union had such an awful flag.

In all seriousness though, I voted yes. If the people there wanted to do it, who am I to say no?

 

[aronnax]

The Princess of Sweden, obviously.

You have a point

 

[Leifmk]

On the other hand a union would never happen simply because there is no point to it. There simply isn't anything to gain, other than getting slightly more votes in the EU than the Netherlands.

Well no, not with the geopolitical situation being what it is now. As I was saying, it would have been very neat if such a union had come to pass somewhat earlier -- either in the aftermath of WW2 (that would probably have had to start out as a fairly loose confederation, a Nordic mini-EU of sorts) or even earlier (could have had a proper pan-Scandinavian nationalist movement win out in the 19th century, for example).

 

[Winner]

People have been overstating the differences.

Between Danish and Norwegian, the written standards of the languages are very similar indeed. Reading Danish is like reading slightly old-fashioned Norwegian, with a few consistent misspellings, a tiny handful of unusual vocabulary, and too many commas. As for spoken Danish, nobody really understands that anymore, not even the Danes themselves. (Or rather, most dialects have drifted toward a rather slurred pronounciation, so it takes some extra familiarization to be able to decipher the spoken language. Danish kids are now, in fact, among the slowest in the world to master their own native language.)

Swedish is a bit more different both in terms of grammar and vocabulary, but only a bit. In return, the Swedes actually enunciate their words properly, so it is easy to hear what they're saying. For any native speaker of Norwegian (or Danish) it takes very little familiarization to get past most of the "silly misunderstandings" stage. Neighbouring (across the border) dialects of Norwegian and Swedish often resemble each other a lot, both in tone and in vocabulary (which gets swapped back and forth).

Thanks for the explanation. My sister lived in Denmark for a while and she told me similar stories about Danish Still, it sounds like it's closer to the Czech-Polish case, we also find their language a bit archaic (both spoken and in writing). The grammar and writing resembles that of Bohemia in 16th century. I should probably thanks the Germans for liberating us from "w" "szs" etc.

Another story altogether.

To a native speaker of Norwegian with no particular training, Icelandic (and Faroese, which is similar but distinct) sounds very much like some western Norwegian dialect (which is pretty much exactly what it was, a thousand years ago). Except if one actually tries to pay attention, one can maybe recognize every third word, and hardly ever get the meaning of a full sentence. It's sort of like trying and failing to understand Dutch if you have a mediocre grasp of German, only a bit more so.

Icelandic is derived from Old Norse from what I've heard. It must have been really different from modern Norwegian, I guess.

 

[Winner]

Well no, not with the geopolitical situation being what it is now. As I was saying, it would have been very neat if such a union had come to pass somewhat earlier -- either in the aftermath of WW2 (that would probably have had to start out as a fairly loose confederation, a Nordic mini-EU of sorts) or even earlier (could have had a proper pan-Scandinavian nationalist movement win out in the 19th century, for example).

BTW, it really makes sense that Denmark and Norway joined NATO after WW2 and not followed some sort of an union with Sweden. Both Norway and Denmark were likely targets in case of a Soviet invasion - Norway was too important for the control of the North Sea, Denmark because it was a gate to the Baltic Sea. Both countries would have been invaded despite their neutrality, so there was nothing to gain by being neutral.

Sweden, on the other hand, wasn't that important to the Soviets, and neither was Finland, which is why they left them alone (with certain degree of subservience in Finland's case).

Island is a part of NATO for the same reason, even when it has no military.

 

[otago]

BTW, it really makes sense that Denmark and Norway joined NATO after WW2 and not followed some sort of an union with Sweden. Both Norway and Denmark were likely targets in case of a Soviet invasion - Norway was too important for the control of the North Sea, Denmark because it was a gate to the Baltic Sea. Both countries would have been invaded despite their neutrality, so there was nothing to gain by being neutral.

Sweden, on the other hand, wasn't that important to the Soviets, and neither was Finland, which is why they left them alone (with certain degree of subservience in Finland's case).

Island is a part of NATO for the same reason, even when it has no military.

The Soviets left Finland alone, someone has been writing porkies about Finnish, Soviet, history then.

 

[Lillefix]

Victoria's nice, sure. But Madeleine's better.

 

[alcal]

There is an only princess of sweden: Victoria Silvested.

 

[Godwynn]

Perhaps it's just the American in me, but I would get rid of three royal families with the merger.

 

[ArneHD]

Perhaps it's just the American in me, but I would get rid of three royal families with the merger.

Nah, they are a bit like former Presidents; they do humanitarian stuff, attend diplomatic receptions, state occasions and generally keep up appearances abroad. They are for all intent and purpose a group of highly paid and highly trained diplomats with titles.

In this respect they are a bit like old tools: You keep them around because you might need them at some point, and your tool bench would be a bit scrawny without them.

 

[Gabryel Karolin]

On the other hand a union would never happen simply because there is no point to it. There simply isn't anything to gain, other than getting slightly more votes in the EU than the Netherlands.

Ah, but there are reasons, at least theres no reason not to! Besides being a more respectable population size we'd have the heavy industry and forests/natural resources of Sweden, oil, fisheries, shipping from Norway more shipping, agriculture and finally some decent beers from Denmark. All countries have a well developed service sector and international companies and so on.

We would just have to find where the military hid the prototype nukes and finish them and we'd be a self-sustainable, untouchable, viking paradise on earth!!!

Seriously, it would be awesome.

 

[raketooy]

In this respect they are a bit like old tools: You keep them around because you might need them at some point, and your tool bench would be a bit scrawny without them.

I like this.