Nordic Countries

The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. In English, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries (often excluding Greenland), but that term more properly refers only to Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

The region's five nation-states and three autonomous regions share much common history as well as common traits in their respective societies, such as political systems and the Nordic model. Politically, Nordic countries do not form a separate entity, but they co-operate in the Nordic Council. The Nordic countries have a combined population of approximately 25 million spread over a land area of 3.5 million km² (Greenland accounts for around 60% of the total area).

Although the area is linguistically heterogeneous, with three unrelated language groups, the common linguistic heritage is one of the factors making up the Nordic identity. The continental Scandinavian languages – Danish, Norwegian and Swedish – are considered mutually intelligible. These languages are taught in school throughout the Nordic countries; Swedish, for example, is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools, whereas Danish is mandatory in Icelandic, Faroese and Greenlandic schools. Besides these and the insular North Germanic languages Faroese and Icelandic, all belonging to the Indo-European language group, there are the Finnic and Sami branches of the Uralic languages, spoken respectively in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, and Greenlandic, an Eskimo–Aleut language, spoken in Greenland.