Higher education in the Nordic countries may best be understood in view of the idea, widely accepted in scholarly literature, that the Nordic countries make up a special group of democratic welfare states. The term Nordic countries, coined in the interwar period after Finland and Iceland gained their sovereignty (in 1917 and 1918, respectively), describes the territory covered by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The Nordic countries have a long common history of cooperation, but intergovernmental cooperation in a modern sense started in the 1950s following the creation of the Nordic Council, an organization that aims to facilitate the integration of the Nordic region. In addition, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden are members of the European Union (EU), while Iceland and Norway are members of ...