You know we love our viewers, and lately it seems that a million of you… nay, a Maximilian
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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