To the hills, to the hills - the Vikings are coming. Ish.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009From that perennial source of interesting things, English language Swedish daily, The Local (Thanks folks):
Sweden should consider joining its Nordic neighbours in forming a five-country federation in order to increase the region’s weight on the international stage, a Swedish historian proposes.
A union between the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland – would give them a seat at big international gatherings, writes social scientist, historian, and author Gunnar Wetterberg...
In proposing the creation of a Nordic 'bloc of ice', Wetterberg suggests that Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II would be the union’s obvious leader, drawing parallels between the Kalmar Union, which united Sweden, Denmark, and Norway from 1397 to 1523 and was governed by the Danish Queen Margareta.
The Union of Kalmar looked rather like this:
Note that our Scandiwegian friends held both the Orkneys and the Shetlands at the time, so that would stuff Scotland's oil-based dreams in a fairly big way.
Were I Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, or come to that, Harald V of Norway, I'd be a bit miffed that the Danes get the catbird seat. However, if memory serves, Queen Margareta has the distinction of having translated Camus into Danish, which makes her rather more of an intellectual than the average crowned head.
Our doughty social historian has spotted a few holes in his plan, however:
"He admits, however, that language might be a problem. “One solution would be to have all students learn another Nordic language from the start, in addition to their mother tongue,” he proposes. He believes that a unified Nordic region is completely realistic, “not least because of Swedish arrogance has subsided in recent decades”.
Erm, can't say I was aware of that.
Labels: Denmark, Finland, modest proposals, Norway, Sweden
