ABSTRACT
The peculiar status of pan-Nordic identity, vis-a-vis other 'pan' identities in Europe, was reflected in the role which the notion of landscape came to play in Norden. The search for the roots of Nordic identity necessarily led back to historical eras prior to the formation of the well defined states that subsequently divided Norden. The landscape districts of Norden thus literally grew out of the intellectual soil of history, and had their intellectual climate in language, as it came to expression in the articulation of the customary laws through which the land was built and shaped. The 'Nordic' approach to geography is characterized by a concern with history, custom/law, and language and culture as they work together in forming a landscape polity and its geographic place. Geographers with a reflexive interest in landscape as an historical expression of language, also belong, the author argues, within this Nordic tradition.
