Originally posted by Harleqin
You've got to be joking! How can you possibly justify the Swedes being the most important nation in Scandinavia? Your history is nothing but wasfare against your neighbours, most notably us. The "purification" of Skåne/Scania was worse than what the Serbs have done in the former Yogoslavia!
YOU got to be kidding. Take a look at Scandinavia. Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Norway, a nation rich of oil and natural assetts, but has not made any real impact on the world. It was for a long time a part of Denmark and Sweden. Finland then? Same thing there, an old region, which has been a part of both Russia and Sweden. Many of the important finnish cities has names after swedes (Wasa, for instance.)
And left we have - Denmark and Sweden. Denmark is a tiny nation, with only 4 million people and has not made a very big impact in the history. Except for starting wars against Sweden, but hey, that didn't count for nothing, remember?
And Sweden then? Biggest areal and with largest population in Scandinavia. The first modern war ship, the Monitor, was constructed by a swede. Important industrial components such as the bearing and the spanner are swedish inventions. Dynamite is an other important swedish invention, the modern type of matches was made by the swede Ivar Kreuger. In 16th century, Carl von Linné organised, re-named many of the worlds plants to a latin-based system and his ideas is still used today in modern research.
What has Denmark contributed to world history? Stockholms Blodbad? ("The Blood Bath of Stockholm")
Where Christian Tyranns men carried out a extensive massacre, where lots of people got decapitated - brutally murdered, to insure that power of Stockholm and Sweden was in the hands of the king of Denmark.