Scandinavian Americans

Scandinavia is a cultural region of northern Europe marked by a shared heritage. The term was originally coined in the 18th century to refer to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Because Finland was controlled by Sweden at the time, and Iceland by Denmark, some uses include those countries as well, reflecting the common cultural heritage. This is true when referring to the meaning of “Scandinavia” in the phrase Scandinavian American, for instance, the more geographically accurate term Nordic American never having caught on. There are 11,890,524 Scandinavian Americans as of the 2010 Census, including those who self-identify as Scandinavian American or Northern European American. Such self-identifications are not uncommon—nearly as many Americans call themselves Scandinavian Americans on the census survey as Finnish Americans—and may reflect either an uncertainty about all the nooks and crannies of [Page 1876]one's heritage or the commonality of intermarriage among Scandinavian American groups.

Scandinavia is not just a convenient idea. The idea of a shared heritage among the Scandinavian countries was important in Scandinavism, a cultural and political movement supporting cooperation and mutual facilitation among the Scandinavian countries. At its strongest in the 19th century, when similar movements resulted in the unifications of Germany and Italy, Scandinavism was not successful in its efforts to unify Scandinavia in a single political entity, but it was an important idea in the conception of the ethnic identities of many of the Scandinavian immigrants to the United States in the 19th century. The Scandinavism movement was succeeded by a new Cold War formulation, usually called Nordism because of its inclusion of Finland, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, that emphasizes the economic cooperation of the Nordic Council and a sort of collaborative nationalism in which national identities are distinct but conceived within a larger model of Nordic political identity.