region in Northern Europe From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
A map of Scandinavia. The red area shows the most common usage: the three monarchies; Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The orange area shows an extended usage: including Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
If maps were shaded like balance sheets, the bottom part of mainland Europe would be deepest red. Italy, Spain and Portugal are heavily in debt. They are also Catholic countries. Their predominantly Protestant neighbours to the north, including Germany and Scandinavia, are in comparatively good shape financially. Is that simply a coincidence, or is Max Weber's theory about the Protestant ethic being intertwined with the spirit of capitalism still valid, over 100 years on?
The fact that Danishbusiness leaders are warning of damage to the nation's brand, it is, however, strangely welcome. Seeming much more unfriendly and closed than other countries is the only path open to desperate politicians facing exploding costs and seemingly insurmountable integration issues. And darker measures may still lie ahead.
The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire. Sixty years later Viking raids would be a painful feature of life not only in the North and Irish Seas but as far away as Lisbon, Seville, and north Africa, as Northmen tangled with Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Umayyads, and Franks. In 860 a band of Viking-descended warriors from what is now northwest Russia even sailed to Constantinople via the river Dnieper and the Black Sea, and laid the city under siege. Although exposed only to a tiny part of this, the chronicler of Noirmoutier wrote what could have been an epigram for the entire age: “The number of ships grows, the endless stream of Vikings never ceases to increase . . . the Vikings conquer everything in their path and nothing resists them.”
Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021).
Gothichistory, as it appears in every modern account, is a story of migration. Traditionally, it begins in Scandinavia, moves to the southern shores of the Baltic around the mouth of the Vistula river, and then onwards to the Black Sea. Depending upon what study one reads, one can find it stated that written sources, archaeology, and linguistic evidence all demonstrate that just such a migration took place, if not out of Scandinavia then at least out of Poland. In fact, there is just a single source for this extended story of Gothic migration, the Getica of Jordanes... It is only the text of Jordanes that leads scholars to privilege the Wielbark connection... The Gotones mentioned in Tacitus, Germania 44.1 and located somewhere in what is now modern Poland would not be regarded as Goths if Jordanes’ migration stories did not exist.
Firstly, I must say, that I personally believe that Russia is not by any means without faults. But the amount of anti-Russian propaganda in our media today is a throwback to the Cold War era. We must ask the question: Is this leading to more arms, a bigger NATO? Possibly to challenge large powers in the Middle East and Asia, as we see the US approaching the South China seas, and NATO Naval games taking place in the Black Sea. Missile compounds are being erected in Romania, Poland and other ex-Soviet countries, while military games are set up in Scandinavia close to the Russianborder to practice for a coldclimatewar scenario.
One of the things that's just clearly evident is that we here in the U.S. are very special in having a developed country that sill has some amazingly dark skies especially in the western half of the United States. To find skies as dark as what we have out here, in say Europe for instance, you'd have to travel to far northern Scandinavia or you'd have to travel down to northern Africa, so we are very lucky here to have a wonderful transportation network as well as dark skies, so take that opportunity to go out and find those parks in the dark places of our country.
I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical leave. I believe that every worker in this country deserves a living wage and that we expand the trade union movement... what we should be doing is creating an economy that works for all of us, not 1%.