ABSTRACT
Scandinavia is in many ways different from other parts of the world. At least that is how we tend to think of ‘Norden’, as Scandinavians like to call the place themselves, thereby including Finland and Iceland (see Wiberg 1993: 209). Among other things, it was what we usually refer to as a security community long before the rest of Western Europe, or for that matter, before the term became part of political science dictionaries (see Wæver 1998: 72-4). This security community manifests itself, as Håkan Wiberg (1993, 2000) has aptly illustrated, in the peaceful resolution of conflicts that could have led to war elsewhere (in Wiberg’s terms, ‘non-wars’, see Wiberg 1993: 210). Examples include the Norwegian secession from Sweden in 1905, and the political and cultural autonomy enjoyed by the (mostly Swedish-speaking) Åland Islands after they became part of Finland following the First World War (Joenniemi 1997). The islands have set an example for a peaceful settlement that is nowadays often quoted when discussing the Cyprus conflict (see Diez 2002: 207; Emerson and Tocci 2002: 38-9).
