Scandinavia

**Scandinavia** is a region in northern Europe that includes at a minimum Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Finland is often considered a Scandinavian country in common English usage, and Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes also included. The term relates to the Scandinavian Peninsula which is a geographic region consisting of Norway, Sweden and part of northern Finland. Scandinavia extends to the north of the Arctic Circle, but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Much of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate. There are many lakes and moraines, legacies of an ice age about 10,000 years ago. The northern regions of Scandinavia are home to the indigenous Sami people. Scandinavia has, despite many wars over the years since the formation of modern nation-states in the 10th century, been politically and culturally close. The constellations and alliances, however, have shifted over the centuries. For all of the 15th century, Scandinavia was united in the Kalma Union. In the 19th century a new political union was proposed, but it did not take place when Denmark was denied key military support in a conflict with Prussia. Today, the nations cooperate mainly in the European Union or the Nordic Council. The Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish languages are linguistically classified as North Germanic languages, while the Finnish and Sami languages are classified as members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family.