of you, want us to explore the strength of the Nordic countries. Well, here we are. How

powerful are Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland? You’re welcome.

Now, technically, the Nordic countries are also made up of the Åland [all-and] Islands,

the Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

The Nordic countries are a culturally and politically overlapping group of parliamentary

democracies located in Northern Europe. Individually, they tend to score near the top of most global

achievement lists, in areas like women’s rights, environmentalism, quality of education,

and homeless outreach.

When taken together, they comprise the 7th-largest area in the world. At 1.3 million square miles,

that’s about the same size as India. But unlike similarly large nations, the Nordic

countries have some of the lowest population density in the world, with only 26 million

total residents. This is mostly because half of their land is uninhabited arctic, thanks

to Greenland. But even without Greenland, the rest of the remaining countries are still

larger than Germany, France, and Italy combined.

Economically, they’re quite well off. When compared with the European Union, the Nordic

countries have had much stronger GDP growth over the past ten years. Only Finland has

changed its currency over to the Euro. Combined, their GDP reaches 1.7 trillion dollars, which

would make them the 12th richest area in the world, just below Canada.

Per capita, Norway’s GDP alone is 80% higher than the Eurozone’s, and it’s residents

enjoy the highest standard of living in the world. In fact, all of the primary Nordic

countries rank in the top 25 highest standards of living.

However, the Nordic countries cannot be said to have a comparably strong military. Individually,

Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark rank from the high-40s to the mid-20s when stacked

against the rest of the world. In fact, Iceland’s only military is it’s Coast Guard and they

are the one NATO member without a standing army. When pooling the combined forces of

Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, you end up with 21.3 billion dollars spent yearly

on defense, or around 3.5% of the US’s military budget. Although they might not have the strongest

military, their presence is more relevant as an international peacekeeping force.

Luckily, the Nordic countries have relatively friendly relations with most of the world,

and trade freely with many of their immediate neighbors. However, about a fifth of their

trade is amongst themselves. In 2012, nearly a quarter of exports from both Denmark and

Sweden went to other Nordic countries.

Clearly, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland are pretty great places to live.

A recent World Happiness Report listed all five in the top ten happiest countries. Although,

the reason for Nordic countries ranking so highly so regularly has been attributed to

their social welfare and high taxation. So how powerful are the Nordic countries? Powerful

enough to be happy.

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