Northern Europe

Logically, Northern Europe would simply be the northern part of the European continent. When the organized power centers of Europe were in the Mediterranean region during the Roman era, anything north of the Roman Empire was considered Northern Europe. However, the definition has become somewhat more vague over time. In modern times, this region is thought to include Scandinavia and the northeast portion of the continent west of the Urals. Even Greenland, which is geologically a part of North America, is considered to be part of Northern Europe because it is politically part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Technically, the region extends from about 50º north latitude to about 80º north, and it encompasses the volcanic islands of the North Atlantic Ocean in the west and the northeastern plain of Europe in the east. In political terms, Northern Europe includes Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland in the eastern plain, along with northwestern Russia; Denmark and the Scandinavian nations of Sweden and Norway; Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK) of England, Scotland, and Wales; and Iceland, with Greenland included. Added to these countries and territories are countless islands—from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, and from the North Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean.

Historical Perspective

Although the nations included in Northern Europe do not share a narrowly defined common history, their individual histories do, in fact, overlap in many ways. From the prehistoric spread of Celtic peoples to the voyages of the Vikings and the fur trade that linked northwest Russia to the courts of continental Europe, the flow of people, goods, and ideas across Northern Europe has been constant. However, the history of the region is more easily understood when this region is broken into subregions such as Scandinavia, the eastern plain, and the British Isles.

Northwest Russia has as its boundaries Finland, the Ural Mountains, and the Arctic Ocean. To the north and east of St. Petersburg, the region has always been sparsely populated, but St. Petersburg is a large metropolis. When the city was the imperial capital of the Russian Empire, it anchored the entire region, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

These three small nations have been dominated by larger neighbors for most of their histories, and they have struggled to maintain their individual identities and cultures for millennia. The first known mention of Estonia, for example, is in Germania, a first-century CE history written by the Roman historian Tacitus.

The Vikings overran these countries during an extensive period of trading and raiding from the eighth through the twelfth centuries CE. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were at times provinces in the Swedish Empire, the Prussian Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, they became separate Soviet Republics. But in 1991, all three nations finally gained their independence.

Similarly, Finland was under the control of the Swedish and then the Russian empires until the Russian Revolution, but it was never part of the Soviet Union. One remnant of its ancient history continues to exist in its far north: In Lapland, the Sami language and culture survive. The Sami people also occupy the far northern reaches of Sweden and Norway.

The Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians are often lumped together historically with Iceland. Iceland itself was the European outpost in the North Atlantic that may have had Celtic residents before Norwegian and Swedish seafarers settled there in the late ninth century CE. The Vikings also raided the British Isles, but they were not the first people to invade those lands; they were latecomers to the islands. The Celts, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons all preceded them. Viking raids did not begin until 793 CE, but they continued for many years. England was finally conquered by the Normans in 1066.

It was the Vikings who gave rise to the idea that North America’s Greenland was actually part of the Northern European region when their explorers settled there. In time, they turned Greenland into an autonomous territory that belonged to Denmark. However, Greenland’s population is mostly Inuit. These people are descendants of the successive waves of different groups of Inuit who migrated to Greenland over thousands of years. These migrations began around 2500 BCE and continued until approximately 1100 CE.

Geography and Climate

Geographically, Northern Europe is widely varied. In the north, Sweden and Norway split the Scandinavian Peninsula. Across a narrow arm of the North Sea, Denmark fills the Jutland Peninsula. To the east is the Eastern European Plain, or the Baltic Plain, which includes Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, northwest Russia, and much of Finland.

In the far Northwest are the volcanic islands of Iceland and Jan Mayen, and the western edge of the rest of the continent is defined by its mountainous seaboard. This area includes the central mountains of Sweden and the Scandinavian Mountains that stretch through Norway; it also includes the mountainous areas of England and Ireland.

Finland, Sweden, and Norway extend well above the Arctic Circle, with islands in the Arctic Ocean. The UK and Ireland are part of an archipelago that stretches north to the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, and it includes around six thousand smaller islands.

The climate zones of the region are as varied as the topography, but with the exception of the UK and Ireland, the climate is generally cold. The Gulf Stream affects all of the lands of Northern Europe, but only in the UK and Ireland does it mitigate otherwise harsh winters. In most of Northern Europe, the climate is subarctic to Arctic, although in the east, the climate shifts from subarctic to temperate or continental.

Massive ice sheets covered almost all of the region during the last great period of glaciation around twenty thousand years ago. The only remaining ice sheets in the region are found in Greenland and on Severny Island in northwest Russia.

Economy

Northern Europe is generally composed of large, developed economies in which people enjoy some of the world’s highest living standards. All of the countries except Norway and northwest Russia are members of the European Union (EU). According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the twenty-eight EU members benefit primarily from the "framework of a single market with free movement of goods, services, and capital" ("European Union," n. pag.).

All of the countries score very high on the Human Development Index (HDI), a statistic that measures life expectancy, income per capita, and education in a country. In 2015, Norway was ranked first on the HDI. Denmark ranked fourth, Ireland tied with Germany at sixth, Sweden and the UK tied at fourteenth, Iceland ranked sixteenth, Finland was twenty-fourth, Estonia thirtieth, Lithuania tied with Malta at thirty-seventh, and Latvia was forty-seventh. (For comparison, the United States ranked eighth.)

The economies of Northern Europe are fully developed and very diverse. All of the Scandinavian nations enjoy enviable living standards. Although individual countries are world leaders in different industries, all have mixed economies that combine high-tech capitalism with very generous welfare benefits. They also suffer somewhat less income inequality than other developed nations; Iceland has a particularly strong record on income equality.

Finland’s economy is largely free market and highly industrialized. Historically, the country has been very competitive in manufacturing, and, like Sweden and Norway, it is rich in timber. Like the Baltic States, it has become a high-tech incubator to varying degrees.

Estonia is the most successful of the three Baltic nations, having moved quickly from post-Soviet conditions into a modern market economy. Latvia has emerged from the Soviet era a little more slowly, but it benefits from highly developed transit systems and a diversified economy. Lithuania’s story is very similar, and its transition into a market economy was swift.

The UK is the EU’s third-largest economy and one of the world’s primary financial centers. As in other highly advanced economies, the UK boasts a services sector that now constitutes a dominating share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), but the country still derives meaningful portions of its income from manufacturing and energy development in the North Sea.

Ireland, on the other hand, struggled following the 2008 financial crisis. After twelve years of dynamic economic growth beginning in 1995, Ireland’s domestic housing market and construction industry collapsed. In 2010, the country’s budget deficit reached 32.4 percent of GDP; by percentage, this is the world’s largest deficit. In the post-2010 period, the Irish economy recovered dramatically—but at the cost of considerable economic pain for its population.

Demographics

A little over one hundred million people live in Northern Europe; about sixty-four million of them live in the UK. The populations of most of the other Northern European nations are quite small on a people-per-square-kilometer measure.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the European Union is the least religious region of the world. About 72 percent of the continent’s people call themselves Christians, 2 percent Muslim, and 1 percent other world religions. Additionally, 7 percent declare themselves to be atheist, and 16 percent call themselves nonbelievers or agnostics ("European Union," n. pag.).

With the exception of Greenland, where the population is almost all of Inuit ancestry, Northern Europe’s populace is almost entirely Caucasian. Immigration, however, is changing the racial demographics of the region. The most significant demographic trend in Northern Europe is the steadily advancing average age of the population. Most of the Northern European countries have a low birth rate and a steadily improving life expectancy. These factors combine to create an older and potentially shrinking population. Thus, growth in the working-age populations of these countries will come from an in-flow of immigrants.

Bibliography

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