Norway, Scandinavia, and the North: quick facts

Since I'm finally done packing for tomorrow ("done" as in: I do not think I could fit any more stuff into my suitcase - and believe me, I'm good at cramming things into bags!), I might as well write a short article about Norway and some terms I've been using - seemingly randomly - in the last articles.

You'll probably know most of this (or let's say, you might have heard of it), but just for the sake of completeness:

Norway lies in Europe, but it's not a part of the European Union. (My Norwegian language teacher claims that is because the Norwegians do not want to be together in a union with Sweden yet again.) It is a member of the EEA, i.e. European Economic Area (for the German natives among us: EWR), though. In short: they stick to (most of) the EU's rules but do not have a say in them.

Stating the obvious, Norway does not use the Euro. Instead, their currency is the Norwegian krone/crown (NOK). 10 norske kroner are roughly 1 Euro. So if I'm ever talking about expenses on this blog: first, divide the number by 10 - then, freak out about how expensive that is. ;)

If crowns ring a bell for you: yes, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland use crowns as well. But Swedish Crowns (SEK), Danish Crowns (DKK), and Icelandic Crowns (ISK) are all different currencies! The only country up there in the north using the Euro is Finland.

Speaking of Finland: the country actually does not belong to Scandinavia. That's why I use the terms "Nordic countries" or "the North" from time to time, if I explicitly want to include Finland. Let me just give you a quick overview, including the flags of the countries. (Flags are a thing in the North, both of my Norwegian teachers did not fail to mention. So I don't want you to have the wrong flag before your mind's eye.)

Scandinavia

Norway, of course!

Sweden

Denmark

(That's the culturo-historical view of Scandinavia, not the definition of it.)

Nordic countries / the North
Scandinavia plus:

Iceland

Finland

plus autonomous regions:

Faroe Islands (Denmark)

Åland Islands (Finland)

Greenland (Denmark)

And except for Greenland (whose flag was the result of a flag design competition in the 1970s/80s), their flags all look a bit similar, which is due to the so-called Scandinavian or Nordic cross.

That's it for now. My next post will already be written and published in Norway!

God natt!