ABSTRACT
In current usage the Nordic region encompasses the monarchies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden and the republics of Finland and Iceland, as well as the Færo Islands and Greenland, which have autonomy under Danish sovereignty, as do the Åland Islands under Finland. Norwegian territory includes the island skerries off its long coastline plus Spitzbergen and the Svalbard group of islands far to the north and the uninhabited Jan Mayen Island near the Greenland coast (important in determining Norway’s extensive fishery zones). Norway is also responsible for Queen Maud Land in the Antarctic. In Nordic languages the region is referred to as ‘Norden’, meaning the North, but there is no precise English equivalent. Politically this usage has been consolidated in the second half of the twentieth century but, as we shall see near the end of this chapter, wider international links have gained strength in the 1990s.
