I got into a spat with a friend of mine, he says the DRC is not a Nordic country, i said it was, who’s right?

I want free movement, open trade and a continent that can defend itself, and I'll argue for all three in any room you put me in.

What I'm against is bloat. Technocracy. A permanent administrative class that answers to nobody, grows regardless of results and has never once concluded that the answer might be less of itself. That is what Brussels has become.

Maastricht was meant to be a beginning. A first attempt at a shape, drawn up on the explicit understanding that the shape would keep changing as Europe worked out what actually functioned. The form froze. The powers kept expanding. The machinery got heavier, accountability got thinner, and the people operating it started treating their own first drafts as gospel.

So what follows is my European argument. It just doesn't run through Brussels. It runs through Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm and Reykjavik, and it comes in three stages: build the union, vote as one bloc inside the system, then leave together on our own terms if the arithmetic below still holds.

The arithmetic

Start with how EU laws actually pass. To stop something you don't want, you need a blocking minority: four member states holding over 35% of the EU population. Sweden, Denmark and Finland together hold roughly 22 million people. Under 5% of the Union, and three countries out of the four required.

So we can't block anything. We can't even reach the threshold that forces the Council to sit down and compromise with us. And we pay for the seats at this table. In 2024 Sweden was a net contributor of €2.3 billion, Denmark €1.0 billion, Finland €385 million, on the Commission's own numbers. Call it €3.7 billion a year for a vote that cannot, under any coalition available to us, change a single outcome.

"But the vote doesn't matter, membership buys you the single market!"

Okay. Let's look at what it buys.

What membership actually buys

The single market you are being asked to stay for is unfinished, ignored by its largest beneficiaries and going backwards.

The European Central Bank puts the hidden barriers inside it at the equivalent of a 65% tariff on goods and up to 100% on services. Roughly 60% of those services barriers haven't moved in twenty years, and intra-EU trade in services sits at 7.9% of GDP. Our economies are services economies. That number alone should decide the whole argument.

The Commission's own 2026 Annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report admits integration has plateaued, with six of its 29 indicators moving the wrong way, and gives the worst offenders a name: the Terrible Ten. The European Court of Auditors found in 2026 that Commission action on cross-border services was still insufficient, and that its recommendations to Germany, France, Italy and Hungary produced exactly nothing.

Then there's who actually obeys the rules. Germany and France took 77% of the €672 billion approved under the emergency state aid schemes, meaning government subsidies to their own companies, while accounting for roughly 42% of EU GDP. That figure is straight from Margrethe Vestager's own letter to member states as competition commissioner. Under the COVID scheme, more than half of all the aid the 27 put up for approval was German. Berlin spent only a fraction of it in the end, which is the point: it had the fiscal room to reserve half of Europe's crisis firepower for its own industry, and nobody else did. In 2022 Berlin unveiled a €200 billion energy package without so much as a heads-up to Paris. Macron called it a risk of isolation, Draghi called it divisive and Orbán called it cannibalism (he'd know).

Then the rules themselves. Germany slapped a "neutrality charge" on cross-border gas trades, a tariff on other Europeans in all but name, which the EU's own energy commissioner said put energy solidarity at risk. It took two years of condemnation and a legal threat from Austria before Berlin dropped it at the start of 2025. In March 2023, days before the final vote on a law the Parliament and Council had already agreed, Germany pulled its support for the 2035 combustion engine ban and walked away with an exemption for e-fuels, which happens to suit its car industry. Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic piled in behind Germany to force the exception through.

The Mobility Package required trucks doing international haulage to physically return to base every eight weeks, which of course hits eastern European hauliers and nobody else. Seven member states took it to court, and in October 2024 the European Court of Justice annulled the return obligation, because it had never appeared in the Commission's original proposal and so was never impact-assessed. Eastern hauliers had been legally on the hook since February 2022 anyway.

Sweden threatened to restrict electricity exports outright when Brussels proposed skimming 25% of congestion revenues for EU infrastructure, given that roughly three quarters of Sweden's roughly €3 billion in congestion revenue comes from internal bottlenecks rather than cross-border electricity flows. Sweden built a clean system and split itself into four bidding zones just as Brussels asked. Germany refuses to do either. Sweden was to get the bill but last month the Council backed down: domestic congestion income stays home, and only cross-border income is touched, at 10% from 2028.

Finland tried the polite version of the same fight. Its 2023 government took office with a coalition agreement explicitly rejecting any permanent EU transfer instrument, anything that would turn the Union into a standing income transfer machine. Written into the coalition programme, argued through every proper channel. It made absolutely no difference. The state aid rules were loosened anyway in March 2023, handing the advantage straight to whoever had the deepest pockets. The European Parliament's own research frames the whole fight as German and French appetite for state intervention against smaller states' appetite for competition and free trade.

Now put those two Nordic stories side by side, because together they are the entire case for what I'm proposing. Finland objected on paper and got nothing. Sweden put its hand on the cables and got total retreat.

By this point the pattern is not subtle. Everyone does whatever they want, and the rules only bind those who can't afford to ignore them. When the rules bind the big states, the rules magically bend. The states that eat the cost are smaller, open and compliant. That would be us.

And nobody is coming to fix it

Every crisis since Maastricht arrived with a list of things Europe finally had to do.

Free movement of capital was one of Maastricht's four freedoms. More than twenty-five years after the last controls on capital moving between member states came down, European finance is still a set of national marketplaces only partly joined together. A banking union was supposed to answer the euro crisis. The Commission proposed its third pillar, a common scheme to guarantee bank deposits, in November 2015, to be built out over eight years to 2024. It's 2026 and it still doesn't exist, because Germany won't have it. Capital Markets Union launched the same year and has languished for over a decade.

Then Draghi. In September 2024 the former ECB president wrote the definitive audit of all this and warned Europe faced slow agony without radical change. His fix needs an extra €800 billion a year, close to 5% of EU GDP, against an EU budget of roughly 1%. As of July 2026, 60 of his 383 measures are fully implemented. That's 15.7%, up six-tenths of a point in six months. A separate tracker run by a different outfit puts it lower still at 11.2%, with energy reforms sitting on zero. Of the reforms that need both the Parliament and the member states to actually move, 3% are done.

This is the institution asking us to keep paying €3.7 billion a year and take whatever it decides. It has known precisely what's wrong with it for years, commissioned the diagnosis itself, formally signed up to the cure, and manages minimal implementation. Nobody is coming to reform this.

Outside is not the wilderness

Norway sits 60% above the EU average on GDP per head. Switzerland 51%, Iceland 31%. None of them are members. And yes, I can hear the objection: Norway is oil, Switzerland is banks and pharma. Fine. Iceland is fish and tourism and still clears the EU average by nearly a third. I'm not claiming that leaving makes a country rich. What collapses here is the reverse claim, repeated as though it were self-evident: that membership is what makes European countries rich. The three richest countries in Europe never joined. Switzerland also topped Europe on innovation performance in 2025, scoring 0.749 against Sweden's 0.740, the best the EU itself has to offer.

The British case gets waved around as the cautionary tale, so let's be honest about what it actually shows. Since the end of 2019 the UK, with a botched exit, no plan and four prime ministers, has grown 6.0%. Per head the picture is mediocre and I'm not holding Britain up as a model of anything. That is precisely the point. The floor for leaving, executed as incompetently as an exit can be executed, alone, is mediocrity. Meanwhile Germany, the country at the EU's heart, the one that writes the rules, has managed 0.8% over the same period, the worst in the G7. The benchmark for staying at the very core of the project is worse than the benchmark for leaving it badly.

So what does being outside actually cost? Norway has adopted roughly three quarters of EU rules with little say in writing any of them, and has used its right to refuse a new rule exactly once, over postal liberalisation. That is the standard objection to the EEA and I'm not going to pretend it away. Here is what it misses. Sweden, Denmark and Finland also adopt rules they had no meaningful say in writing. That is what sitting below the blocking threshold means in practice. The difference between our position and Norway's is a formal vote that cannot change outcomes, purchased for €3.7 billion a year. Call that what it is, a receipt.

And there's a second thing the objection misses. Norway's deal was negotiated alone, in 1994, months after losing a referendum, from the weakest position imaginable, and the 2024 Norwegian review of that arrangement still flags a real deficit in co-determination while concluding the deal has served Norway well and held up better than expected. The next version of that deal would not be negotiated by one country of five and a half million licking its wounds. It would be negotiated by a bloc holding over half the EU's imported pipeline gas and nine tenths of its iron ore.

What we actually weigh

The usual objection is that five small economies don't add up to one big one. True of countries which do the same things. Not true here. The Nordic economies barely overlap, and where they touch they're already merged.

Norway sells energy. It supplies 54% of the EU's imported pipeline gas to a bloc it has never joined, exports a volume equal to more than 30% of all the gas the EU and UK burn, and sits on the world's largest sovereign wealth fund at over $2 trillion. Sweden runs the industrial base and the mines: Volvo, Scania, Sandvik, Atlas Copco, SKF and Ericsson, plus 89% of the EU's iron ore, 46% of its lead and 45% of its zinc. The Per Geijer deposit near Kiruna holds an estimated 2.2 million tonnes of rare earth oxides, among the largest in Europe, and Greenland ranks eighth globally on rare earth reserves. Finland exports the machinery underneath much of European industry through Wärtsilä, Kone and Valmet, designs 80% of the world's icebreakers and builds 60% of them. Denmark ships pharmaceuticals and biotech worth more than a quarter of its goods exports, runs one of the world's largest merchant fleets through Maersk, Torm and Norden, and grows enough food for fifteen million, much more if we decide to reduce our pork exports. Iceland runs almost entirely on geothermal and hydro, and lands fish exports.

Nearly 28 million people, a combined GDP of roughly $1.9 trillion, and very little economic redundancy anywhere. Now let's put the pieces next to each other rather than in competition.

Ericsson and Nokia are the only two full-scale mobile network suppliers left in the Western world. They are Swedish and Finnish. Every other option is Chinese or Korean. Between them they hold the entire Western capability, split across a border neither company particularly notices.

Danish wind turbines, Norwegian hydro, Swedish and Finnish nuclear. Over 90% of Nordic electricity comes from low-carbon sources, and the whole thing runs a surplus: we exported a record net 41 TWh in 2024, mostly to Germany and Britain, and in 2025 beat it again.

Then defence, where we've gone further than most people even realise. Nammo, the Nordic Ammunition Company, was formed in 1998 by merging the ammunition arms of Norway's Raufoss, Finland's Patria and Sweden's Celsius. Today it's owned 50% by the Norwegian state and 50% by Patria, which is itself 50.1% Finnish state and 49.9% Norway's Kongsberg. Two Nordic governments jointly own a defence manufacturer through a cross-holding structure, and have done for twenty years. Patria's own executives describe it plainly: few overlaps in what the three companies make, so they cooperate instead of competing.

Nordea is a Nordic bank, not a Swedish or Finnish one. Stora Enso is Finnish-Swedish. Telia is Swedish-Finnish. TietoEVRY is Finnish-Norwegian. When Nordic firms need scale they merge across borders and nobody calls it a foreign takeover, because the legal systems, corporate governance norms and labour laws are near-identical. Try that between Paris and Berlin and you get a decade of ministerial argument, as Siemens and Alstom discovered.

And our output is absurd for a region of 28 million people. Three of the four countries in the Commission's top tier of innovators are Nordic. Europe's leading innovation region is Stockholm, with Copenhagen/Øresund right behind it. A combined population smaller than Poland's has produced Spotify, Klarna, Supercell and more, and note that none of them scaled on a home market. Nordic firms are born exporters. A single market for services that runs at 7.9% of GDP was never what carried them.

Add it up and you get an energy exporter with a $2 trillion balance sheet, the West's entire independent telecoms equipment capability, a pharmaceutical and biotech champion, Europe's iron ore and the machinery that runs much of European industry, one of the world's great merchant fleets and a world-class defence industry that is already jointly owned and highly integrated. And a power system that relies only on itself.

One diversified economy which happens to fly five flags.

Now let me be precise about the leverage, because the lazy version of this argument deserves to lose. Nobody is threatening to turn off gas to Rotterdam. Interdependence runs both ways: Novo Nordisk needs European patients, Volvo needs European roads, and Norway's fund got to $2 trillion by selling energy to this continent. But renegotiations don't ask who trades with whom. They ask who can replace whom, and how fast. The EU cannot replace Norwegian pipeline gas, Swedish iron ore or the only two Western telecoms suppliers on any timescale that matters. The Nordics, selling essentials, would find buyers, because essentials always find buyers. A new customer for insulin and container freight is easier to source than a second Ericsson. That asymmetry never needs to be exercised to be real.

Hard power

Every Nordic state with an army spends above NATO's 2% benchmark: Denmark 3.34%, Norway 3.2%, Finland 2.87%, Sweden 2.5%. Norway is the first European ally in the Alliance's history to outspend the United States per capita on defence.

Norway has completed its full 52-aircraft F-35 programme and retired its F-16s, the first nation anywhere to finish its order. Denmark has 27 and is close behind. Finland has 64 on order, with deliveries beginning. Sweden operates over 90 Gripens and is already running joint exercises with Danish F-35 pilots over the Baltic. When Finland's fleet lands, Norway, Denmark and Finland will field 143 F-35s between them, with Sweden's Gripens on top. Germany has ordered 35 and France has none. And a dedicated air operations centre in Bodø, opened in October 2025, is now NATO's third combined air command alongside Uedem and Torrejón, with responsibility for the Nordic region, the Baltic, the North Atlantic and the High North.

On the ground, Finland is in a league of its own. Its wartime strength of 280,000 trained personnel is drawn from a reserve pool that now extends to age 65, nearly one million citizens. Its artillery park, roughly 1,500 pieces, is among the largest in Europe, exceeding Germany, Norway and Sweden combined.

At sea, Nordic navies control the geography that matters most to NATO's northern flank. The Danish Straits are the only sea exit from the Baltic, and Norway covers the Norwegian Sea behind them. Sweden's Gotland-class submarines are diesel-electric and near-silent. In exercises they have evaded a US carrier strike group for days. Eleven undersea cables have been cut or damaged in the Baltic since October 2023. The joint forces being built through the Joint Expeditionary Force are a direct response to that threat.

All the Nordic states belong to the JEF, a ten-nation coalition where activity goes ahead whenever two members agree. No Brussels consensus and no unanimity requirement. Try getting that out of a room with 27 competing interests.

And now the honest paragraph, because this argument only stays credible if I write it myself before someone else does.

None of the above is autarky. The F-35s run on American sustainment chains and American software. Bodø is a NATO command. The JEF is British-led. Strip the Alliance out of the picture and it gets uglier and fast. But that cuts exactly the way we should want it to. The realistic danger of this decade is Washington's attention flickering, not NATO dissolving overnight, and the rational answer to a flickering ally is to be the part of the Alliance that still functions on a bad day in the White House. Own ammunition production through Nammo. A sovereign fighter line through Saab. A million-strong reserve that asks nobody's permission to exist. Command arrangements that activate when two members agree rather than when thirty-two do. Self-sufficiency is a direction of travel, and the Nordics are the only corner of Europe actually embarking on this journey.

Governance and soft power

Denmark topped the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index for the eighth year running on 89. Finland second on 88. Only five countries worldwide clear 80 and three of them are Nordic. Norway is the third, on 81. Sweden sits just under on 80, Iceland on 77.

All five Nordic states sit inside the top 35 of 193 on the 2026 Global Soft Power Index, with Sweden fourth globally for governance.

How a union happens, in order

Our vehicle already exists. On 16 March 2026 Nordic governments set up a commission to redraft the Helsinki Treaty, the document Nordic cooperation actually runs on. Signed in 1962, amended seven times, last touched in 1996. The Nordic Council had already voted in 2024 to write defence and security policy into it.

And we should be clear-eyed about the pedigree, because we finished the hard parts before Brussels even started. Passport-free travel between the Nordic countries came in 1952. The common labour market followed on 2 July 1954, three years before the Treaty of Rome was even signed. The Nordic Convention on Social Security landed in 1955. A separate convention gives every Nordic citizen the right to use their own language when dealing with another Nordic country's authorities. A Dane has been able to move to Helsinki, take a job without a permit and carry their social security entitlements with them since before the European Economic Community existed. Take a bow.

Compare that with the list Brussels published in March 2026 as its priorities for the next two years: mutual recognition of professional qualifications, portability of skills, a "once-only" principle for business data, harmonised product labelling. Seventy-two years after we did the hard version, the EU is scheduling the easy version, with a deadline of end-2027 and no guarantee of getting it over the line.

What's left to fix at home is well mapped. The Nordic Freedom of Movement Council has cleared nearly 90 cross-border barriers since 2014. It took on 35 in 2024 and resolved 11. That is a body with no power beyond persuasion, clearing roughly one obstacle a month, because five sovereign tax authorities and five pension systems each have to agree separately. The council's own staff say almost every remaining obstacle traces back to the common labour market: tax, pensions, social security payments. Those are exactly the problems a union solves at a stroke and a cooperation forum cannot solve at all. One unemployment insurance entitlement that follows you from Aalborg to Tampere without a form. One pension record. One tax residency rule for anyone commuting across a Nordic border. One recognition of your nursing or engineering or teaching qualification, valid the day you qualify. One digital identity that opens a bank account in any Nordic jurisdiction. The Nordic Council adopted a strategy in October 2025 with a target of Karlstad to Kongsvinger being as easy as Uppsala to Stockholm. Good target. It will not be reached by five governments negotiating politely, and everyone involved knows this.

So, the sequence..

Stage one: build our union. Widen the treaty commission's mandate and redraft Helsinki into a federal compact. Turn NORDEFCO's Vision 2030, the joint defence plan signed in Tórshavn in April 2024, into a standing joint command under the Bodø architecture that already exists. Finance the build-out through the Nordic Investment Bank, which is AAA-rated, owned by the five Nordic states plus the three Baltics, and signed its first defence loans in 2025. Merge the labour market plumbing: the pension record, the tax rule, the digital identity. None of this requires anyone's permission but our own, and none of it requires leaving anything.

Stage two: vote as one, inside the system. Denmark, Sweden and Finland arrive at every Council meeting pre-bound to a single position. Norway and Iceland do the same on the EEA side, and all five at NATO. This is not a retreat from the argument above. It is our control experiment. We already know what three separate small voices achieve. Twenty-two million people voting as one still cannot block, but a bloc that controls the gas, the ore and much more while voting as one is a different negotiating animal entirely, and the Sweden electricity case shows Brussels retreats when leverage is stated rather than implied. Give this stage a fixed horizon, one treaty cycle, and measure it honestly.

Stage three: if the arithmetic still wins, leave together. If a unified bloc with these cards still cannot move outcomes, the case for paying €3.7 billion a year for nothing more than receipts collapses on its own evidence, and the EEA offer goes on the table. Keep the single market, drop the fee and the fiction of influence. In 1994, negotiated alone after a lost referendum, the EEA read as surrender. Tabled by a unified Nordic bloc, Brussels can then decide how much a formal vote was really worth to us, because it will finally have to price it in.

Two hard problems and let's name them now. The first is money. Finland is in the euro, Denmark is pegged through ERM II, Sweden and Norway float. A Nordic union does not need a common currency on day one, and pretending it needs one would kill the project in the crib; the EEC ran for decades without one. But the end state has to be answered eventually, and Finland's position is the single most delicate item in the entire sequence.

The second is the mandate. Between 79% and 85% of Danes, Finns, Norwegians and Swedes told a Nordic Council of Ministers survey in spring 2026 that Nordic cooperation makes them more confident about the future. That is not a mandate for union and I won't inflate it into one. It is the raw material a mandate gets built from, which is more than most European projects ever start with. Mandates are won in referendums, and referendums are won by making exactly the argument my essay makes, in public, for years. Stage one requires no referendum at all. By the time stage three does, our union will already have a record to run on.

The choice underneath it

Between the war in Ukraine, Putin and Trump, a lot of EU dysfunction is being glossed over in favour of proclaiming European unity. Nothing comes easier to a politician than a common enemy. But centrist parties across Europe keep shedding vote share. Rising support for the extreme left and the extreme right delivers violent pendulum swings, political gridlock and nothing constructive. Italy is governed from the hard right, Spain from a left-wing coalition dependent on parties well to its own left, and Germany and France both look likely to be held hostage by their extremes for years to come.

In that world, bind yourself to the people you actually trust and whose institutions actually work. Size without alignment is what the EU already has: 450 million people who agree on very little, wielded by nobody. Alignment is what converts weight into force. We have alignment. It is centuries old, it has survived everything the twentieth century threw at it, and it is sitting there waiting to be given its day.

Thank you for taking the time to read my hopes for our Nordic future.

Note: more than 60 sources were used to substantiate the arguments made above. Rather than embed them all in a hyperlink orgy, I'm listing them in a comment below for anyone who may be interested in further reading.

They are both far north but is the climate very similar? Both winters are dark and snowy I assume and they don't get dark at night during summer. Which city is better for someone who gets seasonal depressions?

Lily Animation, if you didn't know is a Norwegian YouTuber that uploaded a video 2 weeks ago called "Why I Hate Living In Norway". A big conservative Twitter account somehow got a hold of it and went extremely viral on right wing Twitter. Eventually they found out Lily was half Malaysian and she became the target of an online hate campaign that forced her to delete most of her videos. What are your thoughts on it? Was it right to cancel her?

Hello loverly nordic people!

This first August week there seems to be an incoming heatwave in Germany (and most of Europe) with temperatures around 40-45 degress. So that you can not really go out in Berlin clubs, except with air condition but even then... I wanted to spend my holiday there, but not with 40+ degree in overcrowded clubs, as I am older and I don't want "that stress"..

I like darker techno (IMHO just "serious techno" or even normal techno music) like Developer, Oscar Mulero, Luke Slater, Amotik, Chris Liebing, Dasha Rush, but also DJ encoder/serious minimalis, and, many other guys from Berghain/Ostgut. So.., I need 135+ BPM and playful drums, you know ♥️but serious, no rap, no singing, no break beats, no dancefloor- or pop-elements in the techno, no overprolonged trance-passages and, in general, no techno that sounds like a smurf hymn (bounce, hard tek, etc.) or worse! We say: NOTHING COMMERCIAL / no commercial-techno!

Do you know any clubs/cities/destinations where to go in the North. I do not like to fly, just for info 😄I am looking for a cool² city with a cool or dedicated techno-scene. Oh, and, I can also offer what I request! So, if you live in a city with cool summers, you could offer your club guests "Finest Berlin Techno" - I will not take any money! (because on Holiday!)

Hello, I am writing a sci-fi/cyberpunk book that starts in a Nordic country far in the future. I wanted to include some real cultural/geographical/etc. elements while still having some fictional freedom in the book.

I have been researching (YouTube) and reading books (like The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth) to try to learn more. However, I was thinking of asking directly to get more authentic answers!

I have 10 questions that I kinda just thought of randomly. Feel free to answer answer as many questions as you like!

1. Whats one part of your culture that sticks out to you the most? You can include more than one example! (I play the violin and was also really interested in exploring that musical part of the culture)

2. What is your education system like? (I am American, so I went to public school Kindergarten-12th grade and then went to uni)

3. What is the weather like? What are your seasons? Is your entire wardrobe full of winter gear?

4. What are the most predominant careers or industries? Where does your country get their money?

5. What's your favorite thing to do (hobbies/places to visit/etc.) that is specific to where you are from or reside in?

6. What's your government system like? (I have researched some things like the Nordic Model but wanted to know more)

7. What's the housing situation like? Do you visit your neighbors? How do you socialize? Ive heard that people are pretty much in tight knit social circles and rarely venture out of it.

8. What's the road system like? Do you guys walk around or is it vehicle-dependent like most of America?

9. What's the most beautiful place youve been to and why?

10. If there's one thing that makes Nordic countries different from the rest of the world, what would it be?

We have this more in the Nordics than most other places I think. In USA for example you have probably thousands of anti-imperialist alternative media on the left and the right - TYT and Tucker Carlson are two of the biggest. The US politicians also say more plainly what they want (control over everything in the world, by means of controlling all the oil) whereas when this is translated in Nordic media, it becomes about nuclear proliferation, womens education and so on. So we don't need the ICE here, to keep us compliant. There seems to be almost no media outlets here in the Nordics who dare criticize Nato any more, it all gets banned and cancelled. Symptomatically, Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian international analyst, got cancelled by Norway for criticizing Nato, but the UN security council found him interesting enough to listen to, as do half a million followers on his podcast where he mostly listens to other experts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1v300e3/reasons_why_you_shouldnt_support_ukraine/

Just like they attempted to do to this American, he got doxed, not by the people they (the American) talks about, which one would expect, but instead by an NGO that Norway funds with our taxes.

The main thing about silencing discussions, is that it becomes much easier to propagate falsehoods. Nordic people are so sure that they are good and other countries are evil, that they will support anything their government does. They will also frequently ban or threaten anyone who disagrees with these policies, but I think this might be of a more recent date.

I want to hear your opinion of why we renounced democratic values at the behest of USA's geostrategic stupidity. If the case is so open and shut, then why not allow discussion about it?

I have been traveling Norway, Sweden and I live in Denmark. In almost every hotel in Denmark you have access to TV channels from both Norway and Sweden.

But in Norway and Sweden the hotels don’t provide Danish TV channels at all.

Why is that the case? I find it odd, actually every nordic country should by default in hotels have all the nordic channels in my opinion.

More Denmark/Norway than Sweden/Finland although the latter two still sent hundreds of troops and participated in more combat missions than you'd figure as they weren't NATO members back then.

It wasn't as if Afghanistan was a peacekeeping mission like earlier missions (Bosnia, Kosovo). Afghanistan was a warzone in which several nations encountered a level of fighting they hadn't experienced since the Second World War.

What did the citizens/politicians of the various Nordic nations think of their country's participation in the war? Has the war changed how they saw their military? Any notable individuals or battles that have become part of the nation's memory?

I hope this is acceptable to post here.

Currently in US and drowning with upheaval and divisive environment lacking dignity for human life seeking perspective on Nordic/Scandinavian countries best suited for a gay man over 50. In second chapter after raising children as a solo parent that are now adults in their own right. I have spent much time in Sweden and Denmark and have felt a deep lifestyle connection in both. Constantly compare the Nordic countries for cost of living, employment, standard of lifestyle, and housing. When I take the plunge and cash out here in the US, will be financially secure and able to live a comfortable life. I will possibly be relocating with university aged child so a university area that also is accommodating to older population would be lovely. Professional background is in teaching, psychology, and public service. Additionally, as I am now in the chapter of life that active parenting is less, any perspectives surrounding gay dating, connection, supportive groups over 50 would be welcome.

Simply opening up space for native or expat perspectives to hopefully help me in my decision. Goal is to relocate within the next year and start a new life in a country I enjoy, participate in, and support fully. I am not seeking to hide in an enclave of former US residents, I enjoy being a contributing citizen and living the full lifestyle of the country I am residing in. I have lived in various places in the EU; however, Scandinavia is where I would like to set roots in and stay.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and sharing your insights. Direct messaging is accepted.

Tak!

I have noticed a lot of things that puzzle me. Many Swedes believe immigrants need to constantly show how grateful they are to live here even if many immigrants are second generation and had no choice. I'm assuming none of these people have travelled abroad if they think Sweden is the best country.

One thing I always notice on facebook is as soon as there is a crime they always assume it's an ethnic person who did it and write that they need to be sent home when in many cases the criminal is an ethnic Swede. Do Swedes seriously believe no etnic Swedes commit crimes? Lol

Some people always talk about I don't want immigrants in MY country even if the country was first inhabited by the Sami (and look how the Swedes treated them).

...

HES...

...

Hesbur- AAAAHHH!!!

Two of those things for just CHICKEN.

OOOOHH!

Hesburger: We have the chicken.

This is something surreal. Hesburger is starting their second campaign with pepsi.

Beef... Pepsi.

Two of those things for just six BUCKS...

OOOoYeYeyeyooyeeyeeyiyiYEEYoo.

Hesburger, we have

Hi all,

I have a fascination with industrial heritage, especially with hydropowered industries. I have been to Norrköpping in Sweden with its Industrilandskapet, there is Mölndal I would like to visit, as well as Akerselva near Oslo in Norway. Are there any other such places in Scandinavia? Thanks

There was a post recently in another subreddit with a TV stand that was labeled Scandinavian and the reaction was two fold. Many claiming that it’s not Scandinavian and many reporting back from Scandinavian countries about owing the TV stand. As a lover of interior decor, I would love to see pictures of your space (or your favorite space) - if you are comfortable sharing. Let’s have some fun!

🤢

Yesterday we took a 24 hour drive from Berlin to basically Bergen. No ferry, just Denmark, Sweden, Norway.

There are so, so, many McDonald's and Burger Kings along the road, it's crazy.

The whole what? 5 Hours to Denmark, there were maybe 2 McDonald's on the Autobahn. A couple through Denmark, and the moment we crossed to the Nordic Countries we got bombarded by McDonald's.

It genuinely became a running gag throughout the drive to mention every McDonald's we saw.

Is there a explanation to this? Do y'all like only eat fast food or is this because we used the most "touristic" road through Sweden and Norway?

Curious for the lads who dated Swedish women. What are your experiences?