ABSTRACT
Right-wing populist parties have gained support and been successful in national elections in the past few decades, including in the formerly stable Nordic party systems. Most vulnerable were the conservative parties and especially their youth leagues, where many members listened to the siren calls from Italy and Germany. In general, the various extreme right-wings groups were not serious challengers to mainstream conservatism in the Nordic countries, except in Finland. The developments in Denmark, Norway and Sweden were quite similar. In Denmark, the party opposition was defeated. The Conservative Youth League kept its loyalty to the main party, and in the end leading opponents had to leave the party. In the middle of the 1930s, the conservative parties had triumphed. Finland has a very different story. The civil war, the communist activities in the 1920s in order to start a revolution and the frontier to the Soviet Union polarized society.
