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Scandinavia is a term that has been used since classical times to describe the northernmost regions of Europe. Basically encompassing the three modern countries of \TDenmark\t, \TNorway\t, and \TSweden\t--whose histories have been intertwined since earliest times--the sphere of Scandinavian history has expanded during the past 1,000 years to include \TFinland\t, \TIceland\t, and the North Atlantic islands.

Early Prehistory.

Scandinavia was almost entirely covered by continental glaciers during the Ice Age. As warmer weather forced a glacial retreat about 13,000 BC, small bands of paleolithic hunters followed the reindeer northward. By 8000 BC, these hunters had spread into many parts of Scandinavia. Groves of birch, ash, and fir appeared in the south, and forest game arrived. Fishing peoples had appeared among the hunters by 6000 BC. About 2,000 years later the first farmers and herders came into southern Scandinavia, bringing with them the polished stone tools of the Neolithic Age and building monumental megaliths. About 2000 BC, the Battle Axe people, warrior nomads who brought horses into Scandinavia, may also have introduced the Indo-European (Germanic) language that was the ancestor of modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faeroese. (The Finnish language is of the Uralic-Altaic family.)

Powerful Bronze Age civilizations emerged (c.1800 BC) in key areas, such as the shores of the Limfjord. The Bronze Age was a long era of mild climate, when oak and other deciduous forests spread far northward. It lasted more than 1,000 years, until the climate became less temperate--wetter and colder--about 400 BC.

Iron Age.

Bog iron ore was widespread in Scandinavia, and about 400 BC some Scandinavian peoples learned the technique of working iron. The new metallurgy led to a rapid growth of population and clearing of land with iron tools. Late Bronze Age civilizations were overthrown by tribal warriors with long iron swords. Two of these tribes, the Cimbri and Teutons from Jutland, moved southward (c.115 BC) and stormed into the Roman Empire. In the centuries that followed, tribe after tribe poured out of Scandinavia, among them the Ostrogoths and Visigoths (see \TGoths\t), the Burgundians, and the Angles. The great epic \TBeowulf\t reflects the heroic civilization of the Scandinavian homeland during the last phase of this age of migration, which set the stage for the age of the Vikings.

Viking Age.

During the age of the \TVikings\t (AD 800-1100), Scandinavia became a center of civilization for the whole of northern Europe. Scandinavian colonists settled Iceland, the North Atlantic islands, and Greenland, incorporating these areas into the sphere of European culture. Scandinavian rulers held sway over much of England, Ireland, Normandy, and Finland and over the great waterways of Russia. Viking civilization was primarily seaborne, with swift and incredibly seaworthy ships and abundant iron weapons; its ascendancy was based on superior military organization and technology, an expansive population, and economic predominance. Major European trade routes of Viking times ran through the Baltic Sea to the Orient. Along these routes strong local Viking kingdoms grew up around Scandinavian market towns, including Kiev, Novgorod, Birka (Sweden), Hedeby (Denmark), York, and Dublin.

Gradually, national kingdoms emerged in Scandinavia. \THarold I\t (Harold Fairhair) brought most of Norway under his rule by the year 872. Denmark seems to have been united as early as 800, opposing Charlemagne's northward expansion, but then it fell apart and had to be reunited (c.930) by King Gorm of Jutland. A powerful Swedish kingdom emerged around Lake Malaren. Christianity was adopted by these national kingdoms about 1000, bringing Latin literacy to Scandinavia.

By the early 11th century, a new Viking age of foreign conquest had begun. \TSweyn\t of Denmark conquered England. His son \TCanute\t built an empire that included Denmark, England, and Norway; it did not, however, survive long after his death in 1035. A generation later, England came under the control of the Normans, French-speaking descendants of Vikings.

Middle Ages.

In the 12th century Scandinavian dominance collapsed as the northern kingdoms were torn by long civil wars. The \Tsaga\t, a new form of literature, arose in Iceland during this chaotic age. Strong medieval kingdoms eventually emerged out of the conflicts. Their feudal institutions were overlaid on powerful peasant societies, and they were expansive, crusading kingdoms.

Under Waldemar I (1131-82; r. 1157-82), Denmark conquered the pagan southern Baltic coast around 1160, and during the reign (1202-41) of his son, Waldemar II (1170-1241), Holstein and pagan Estonia came under Danish control. Balladry and the Latin histories of \TSaxo Grammaticus\t flourished, and in 1219 Denmark acquired its national flag, the oldest in Europe. Norway built an expansive empire in the 13th century, reaching out to dominate Iceland, Greenland, the Faeroes, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, northern Scotland, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man. A united Sweden expanded into Finland, where pagan Finnish peoples were still migrating in from the east.

By the 14th century, this expansive era gave way to an age of unity. Ties had developed between the ruling classes of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. \TMagnus VII\t (Magnus Ericksson) inherited the Norwegian crown and was elected king of Sweden in 1319. His kingdoms were weakened (c.1350) by the Black Death (see \Tbubonic plague\t), and the center of Scandinavian power seemed to shift toward Denmark. By the end of the century, \TMargaret I\t of Denmark united all of Scandinavia in the Kalmar Union of 1397, stipulating that the Swedish crown should remain elective and that each country should retain its own laws and customs. Her successors of the 15th century, however, became puppets of the great aristocratic families who were the true rulers of Scandinavia. In the years following 1448, \TChristian I\t came to the thrones of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and \TSchleswig-Holstein\t. His grandson, \TChristian II\t, tried to establish a Renaissance state based on commerce and urban growth, but he was deposed (1523) by the aristocrats and their supporters.

Reformation.

The Scandinavian union fell apart with the overthrow of Christian II. \TGustav I\t Vasa seized the crown of Sweden-Finland. He confiscated the wealth of the Roman Catholic church and established a new national unity, based on the Lutheran Reformation, leaving a strong kingdom to his descendants. The younger line of Christian I's descendants gained the throne of Denmark-Norway. \TChristian III\t used foreign mercenaries to crush civil uprisings in the 1530s; he then established a Lutheran state church under royal control and won the support of the mighty aristocrats by giving them a leading role in the royal government. Scandinavian aristocrats like the astronomer Tycho \TBrahe\t became renowned for their wealth and accomplishments during the last decades of the 16th century.

Swedish Age of Greatness.

During the 17th century, the dramatic rise of Sweden-Finland to great-power status became a major event of European history. Gustav I had established the first national standing army in Europe, and the beginnings of a governmental bureaucracy soon emerged in the Lutheran state church. By the early 17th century, Sweden had the most modern army and administration in Europe. Dynastic ties brought the \TVasa\t family into Polish politics, and the disturbed condition of the Baltic provinces led to armed Swedish intervention in that area. The growth of the Swedish empire began in these Baltic struggles. \TGustav II Adolf\t shifted his army from Poland to Germany in 1629. In 3 years, he made himself the master of central Europe. For the rest of the century the empire was governed by a succession of brilliant soldiers and administrators: Count Axel \TOxenstierna\t and Lennart \TTorstenson\t, and the monarchs \TChristina\t, \TCharles X\t, \TCharles XI\t, and \TCharles XII\t. Sweden came to control all the shores of the Baltic and all the great river systems of northern Europe. The trade of this vast region made Sweden rich as well as powerful.

With the rise of Sweden, Denmark-Norway was eclipsed and humiliated. Danish king \TFrederick III\t established a modern absolutist government in 1660, in an attempt to strengthen his tottering realm, and the vast royal estates of Denmark and Norway were sold. These land sales established a free peasantry in Norway but strengthened the aristocracy in Denmark. The Swedish empire remained dominant until the Great \TNorthern War\t of 1700-21, when it came under attack from all sides and was finally torn to pieces by a host of enemies. Sweden's era as a European power came to an end.

Enlightened Despots.

During the early 18th century the Scandinavian countries developed colonial possessions in western Africa and the Caribbean, as Sweden had along the Delaware in North America (see \TNew Sweden\t) in the 17th century. They participated in the growing European trade with China and India. Urban and manufacturing areas grew within Scandinavia.

Society was changing rapidly, leading to demands for political reform; the challenge was taken up by a succession of so-called enlightened despots. In Denmark, a man of the middle classes, Johann Frederick Struensee (1737-72), was court physician to the incompetent Christian VII (1749-1808; r. 1766-1808). He became one of the king's ministers in 1770 and was soon the absolute ruler of the government. Struensee issued more than 600 reforming ordinances. His reforms came too quickly, however, and Struensee was soon overthrown (1772) and beheaded, although the work that he had begun was resumed in the decades to come. In Sweden, the enlightened despot was a king, \TGustav III\t, who seized absolute powers in 1772 and carried through reforms to liberalize trade, strengthen defense, and promote the fine arts. He ruled until his assassination in 1792. In Norway, modernization progressed more smoothly and was associated with a growing sense of Norwegian patriotism.

The Revolutionary Age.

The French Revolution of 1789 had repercussions that spread to the whole of Europe, including Scandinavia. The Scandinavian countries managed to stay out of the \TNapoleonic Wars\t until 1805, when Sweden-Finland joined Russia and England against Napoleon. Denmark-Norway entered the conflict on the other side in 1807. A year later, Sweden invaded Norway but was driven back. Russia changed sides in 1807, allied with France, and conquered Finland in 1808. King \TGustav IV Adolf\t of Sweden was forced to abdicate in 1809; he was succeeded by Charles XIII (1748-1818). Charles--old, infirm, and childless--named a French soldier, Marshal Bernadotte, as his heir. Although Bernadotte did not succeed Charles as king (as \TCharles XIV John\t) until 1818, he took over the reins of government in about 1810.

When the French empire collapsed in 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. The Norwegians rebelled at this cession, declared their independence under the Eidsvoll constitution signed on May 17, 1814, and elected the Danish viceroy, the crown prince Christian Frederick (1786-1848; later King Christian VIII of Denmark, r. 1839-48), as their king. Sweden had to recognize the Norwegian constitution as the price for Christian Frederick's abdication in November. By 1815, when Napoleon I met his final defeat at Waterloo, Finland was in Russian hands, Sweden and Norway were separate countries under the same king, and the Danish empire had shrunk to Greenland, Iceland, and Schleswig-Holstein on the German border.

National Liberalism.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought a long period of economic depression and rising population. In Denmark, an intellectual flowering produced the great storyteller Hans Christian \TAndersen\t, Soren \TKierkegaard\t, the philosopher, and the scientist Hans Christian \TOersted\t. Elsewhere, there were important religious revivals including that begun by Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) in Norway.

During the 1830s the economy revived. National liberal political movements began to demand constitutional government for national states, leading to the Danish constitution of 1849. These movements also led to two wars between Denmark and Germany over the national status of Schleswig-Holstein. Denmark lost both duchies in 1864 but recovered the northern part of Schleswig in 1920. In 1863 the great powers chose a Danish prince to become king of Greece; he reigned as \TGeorge I\t and founded the Danish dynasty in Greece.

National liberalism found expression in a pan-Scandinavian movement toward Scandinavian unity, in the beginnings of folk high schools and the cooperative movement, and in the works of writers and musicians such as Bjornstjerne \TBjornson\t, Edvard Grieg, the young Henrik \TIbsen\t, and the Finnish philologist Elias Lonnrot (1802-84).

Modernization.

By the 1870s powerful social forces were disrupting the idealism of the national liberal movement in Scandinavia. Emigration drained away thousands of families and young people every summer. Political life was polarized between emergent peasant parties and the old ruling groups. Scandinavian socialism and trade union movements were in their infancy. Mass education, mass transportation, modernization of agriculture, industrialization, and urban growth were dissolving the ancient peasant and landlord societies of Scandinavia for all time.

An era of political conflict, economic growth, tremendous social readjustment, and a rapid pace of change lasted until the outbreak of World War I and was punctuated by the writings of social critics like Ibsen and Georg \TBrandes\t. During this period, the Norwegian government severed (1905) its ties with Sweden and became an independent kingdom under the Eidsvoll constitution.

Welfare and Internationalism.

Scandinavia stayed out of World War I. As the war ended, Finland broke free from Russia and established an independent republic in 1917. Socialist parties came into power by free elections in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. During the 1930s these parties inaugurated programs of social legislation that won international acclaim as a "middle way" between communism and capitalism. With leaders like Fridtjof \TNansen\t, the Scandinavian countries all became strong advocates of international approaches to world problems. They were, however, threatened on two sides by belligerent neighbors.

In 1939 the \TUSSR\t launched the Winter War (see \TRusso-Finnish War\t) against Finland and finally won by sheer weight of numbers. On Apr. 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded and soon conquered Denmark and Norway. Iceland declared its independence from Denmark in 1944 and became a republic. Finland allied with Germany in a new war against the \TUSSR\t. All of these conflicts became a part of \TWorld War II\t. Throughout the war, Sweden remained neutral.

Postwar Scandinavia.

Scandinavia continued to give strong support to international institutions. The first two secretaries-general of the United Nations were Trygve \TLie\t of Norway and Dag \THammarskjold\t of Sweden. The Nordic Council was established in 1953 to facilitate cooperation within Scandinavia. Meanwhile, the slow economic recovery from World War II was stimulated by \TMarshall Plan\t aid from the United States. Scandinavian modern design in furniture, home furnishings, and architecture helped to stimulate exports in the difficult postwar years.

Norway, Denmark, and Iceland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, while Finland remained under the shadow of its powerful neighbor, the \TUSSR\t. Sweden maintained a posture of armed neutrality throughout the cold war. During the 1960s plans for a strong Scandinavian economic community, to be known as Nordek, were almost successful, but in 1970 the project collapsed at the last moment when Soviet pressure forced Finland to withdraw. Two years later, Denmark followed Great Britain into the European Economic Community, the Common Market.

The Scandinavian nations in the 1960s and 1970s continued to be world leaders in dealing with such problems as health care, environmental planning, industrial democracy, and the redefinition of age and sex roles. On a broader level, the Swedish Social Democrats worked to transform their country into a "classless society" with a regulated capitalistic economy. The North Sea oil boom made Norway into a major oil nation and led to a Norwegian energy policy that broke new ground in the direction of bringing economic development under public control.

In the early 1980s conservative governments were in power in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, while socialist governments were in control in Finland and Sweden. Problems currently facing Scandinavian countries include repeated Soviet naval infringements in Swedish territorial waters, increasingly a source of irritation to the neutral Swedish government. Economic problems relating to deficit spending, unemployment, and currency devaluation have also been of concern. Scandinavia, however, remains an important corner of the world because of its rich resources and the innovative nature of its societies. J. R. CHRISTIANSON

Bibliography: Bukdahl, Jorgen, et al., eds., Scandinavia Past and Present, 3 vols. (1959); Castles, Francis G., The Social Democratic Image of Society: A Study of the Achievements and Origins of Scandinavian Social Democracy in Comparative Perspective (1978); Derry, T. K., A History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland (1979); Elder, N., and Thomas, A., The Consensual Democracies? The Government and Politics of the Scandinavian States (1982); Gjerset, Knut, The History of Iceland (1924); Hovde, B. J., Scandinavian Countries, 1720-1865, 2 vols. (1948; repr. 1971); Jutikkala, Eino K. I., and Pirinen, Kauko, A History of Finland, trans. by Paul Sjoblom (1962); Larsen, Karen, A History of Norway (1948); Oakley, Stewart, A Short History of Denmark (1972); Scott, Franklin D., Sweden (1977); Shetelig, Haakon, Scandinavian Archaeology, trans. by E. V. Gordon (1937); Timashkova, O. K., Scandinavian Social-Democracy Today (1981); Toyne, Stanley M., The Scandinavians in History (1948; repr. 1970); Turner, Barry, and Nordquist, Gunilla, The Other European Community: Integration and Cooperation in Nordic Europe (1982); Turville-Petre, E. Gabriel, The Heroic Age of Scandinavia (1951; repr. 1976); Wilson, David M., nad Falk, Hjalmar, The Vikings and Their Origins: Scandinavia in the First Millennium (1970).

See also: \TDanish literature\t; \TFinnish literature\t; \TNorwegian literature\t; \TSwedish literature\t.