[dalke]

Sweden had colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies . Sweden also had slave trade. Denmark/Norway had colonies as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_colonial_empire . Greenland and the Faroe Islands are what remain of the Danish colonial empire.

Finland is another Nordic country, though not a Scandinavian country. Finland has never had an empire. It was too busy being controlled by Sweden and Russia. This means the Finns are Nordic people. Hence getgoingnow's statement cannot be true for all Nordic countries.

That said, cplanas is correct. Finland had no colonies, and for the other Nordic countries the colonies provided only a small revenue source. They surely did not "owe large part of their success to colonization in the past" as getgoingnow claims. Eg, Sweden's wealth historically comes from copper and iron, and Sweden was a poor country. Norway's w

I see you switched from "Nordic countries" to "Nordic people" and then to "Normans", to then imply that successful Norman conquests and colonization lead to a significant economic gain to the Nordic countries. I do not think that's a meaningful connection for the current discussion.

First, I do not like how you imply there is only one type of colonization. There's settler colonialism, like how the Bantu migrations displaced the Pygmy populations in early Congo history, or how the Norse/Danes controlled the region known as the Danelaw, or how the Norse settled in France, and assimilated (switched to Catholicism and to the French language), or how the Norse colonized Iceland.

There's also exploitation colonialism, which England and Spain are two of the best known examples. But the Norse conquest of England, which might have enriched some of the Norse in France, never went back to "the Nordic countries". Where then is the source of the revenue stream that getgoingnow implied was a basis for the success of the modern Nordic countries?

Second, the connection from "Normans" to "Nordic countries" doesn't work that way. The term "Nordic" is a relatively recent term that refers to a list of modern countries and territories; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries . It does not refer to Brittany, where the Normans lived, nor to Britain or southern Italy, which the Normans conquered.

Third, "Nordic people" has a variety of meanings (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_people ). It can refer to the Germanic people as a whole, or the people who live in the specific Nordic countries, or a term from scientific racism from the late 1800s, or the Norse, or more specifically the Vikings. I think your introduction of that term confuses the topic more than it helps. Which definition do you mean to use, and why not stay with "Nordic countries"?

Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?

Then again, you wrote "The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies". I must have missed that part of history where they covered how the Normans colonized the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and lead to the Portuguese colonies.

[fleitz]

> Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?

You could well say that... but I'm not sure how it makes the assertion true that nordic countries/people didn't have colonies. It's actually something that I've picked up on from my studies of history that many colonizers derive from Germanic roots. (My hunch which I can't prove / haven't investigate much is that the germans picked up on it from the romans)

I didn't mean to suggest that there's only one kind of colonization, I'm actually a huge fan of the idea that there are many types, and that some of them were beneficial.

Also, I don't really buy into the idea that colonization was responsible for the success of the nations that did the colonizing. I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy just as slavery in the Southern US lead to widespread poverty when compared to the North.

Yes, that was an absolute statement which you disproved handily, not all colonies were created by nordic / germanic peoples.

The very language we are communicating in is a testament to the colonization of England (or whatever the fuck it was called before it was colonized) by Nordic/Germanic people/countries. It's a colonization similar to America by Britain, where the colonists decided to give the middle finger to the motherland, similar to the way the English just gave the finger to their original colonizers in Denmark.

https://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm

[dalke]

> "Yes, that was an absolute statement"

And there was no need for you to introduce a absolute statement as the previous nuanced statement was correct.

> the colonization of England

There have been many waves of colonization of England: Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Norse, and the Norman French come quickly to mind. The colonization of England is far different from the combination of English, French, and Spanish colonization of the Americas.

I think you overemphasize bloodlines when you focus on immigration and "people". The Romans were a diverse set of peoples from across the Roman Empire, with people as far away as Africa living in England. The Christianization of England, or the spread of the concept of the divine right of kings, or of democracy, was not due to immigration of bodies but to an immigration of ideas. The rise of Sweden as an invading superpower in the 1600s was due in part to the Reformation, which let the Swedish king confiscate money from church land, and not simply from some intrinsic nature of the people.

"England" comes from the Angels. In modern use it refers to the area in the southern part of Great Britian, and corresponds mostly to where the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were, ie, not Wales and not Scotland. There was no name before the Angles as there was no reason to highlight that specific area.

England as a short-hand for Great Britain was called Britannia by the Romans, and Albion, from a Celtic language through the Roman.

> "I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy..."

Which brings the topic back to the original discussion. getgoingnow wrote "Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past".

Do you think it's true that the Nordic countries (modern Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland) owe their success to colonization? If so, which colonization, and what was the return which lead to modern success?