ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence for the existence of a hitherto rather disarticulated Nordic region, both in politics and scholarship, at the extreme northern and southern peripheries of the world. It also presents some general lines of argument, suggests possible conclusions and proposes the outlines of a new synthesis a big picture history that we can see in the making of the Nordic countries in the Far North. The Nordic nations are part of the Arctic, and the Arctic is part of the Nordic region. Empirically it encompasses Swedish and Norwegian science relations and their contributions to policy and diplomacy, the wider North Atlantic realm with Denmark and its colony, the large island of Greenland, and Iceland, but it also includes the Nordic regions relations with its major Arctic neighbours Russia, Canada and the United States. Science, politics, economics and society are historically dynamic and constitute processes of a larger narrative about nation-state-building under the logic of the Westphalian political system.
