Reconstructing Nordic Significance in Europe on the Threshold of the 21st Century

Abstract

The paper deals with examples of reconstructing the significance of Northern Europe (Norden) in the post-modern social reality. After decades of being regarded as a trailblazer of the social modernisation project from the 1960 to the 1980s, the Nordic societal model and the Nordic identity deriving from it experienced a period of crisis in the beginning of the 1990s. As noted by a leading Danish specialist of international relations, the past ideas and self-images of being better than Europe, upon which the Scandinavian model had been founded, started to give way to fears of the Nordic area becoming a periphery in the new geopolitical setting after the Cold War. The European Union and the Baltic Sea region became the nodal co-ordinates of the discourse that aimed at counteracting the alleged peripherization of this area. The paper attempts to point at the actors and sketch the scope of the discourses that contributed to the process of construction of the new identity as a part of the emerging Baltic Sea region identity. This involved reshaping of the Nordic social and geographical space of reference and reconstructing nodal points of the Nordic identity in a post-modern fashion. Institutional and individual actors that constructed the new reality are presented along with the new structures that have arisen as a result of their actions. Particular attention has been paid to the political agenda that made regionalization in the Baltic Sea area a prominent theme of the Nordic identity formation after the Cold War.

Keywords:

• Baltic Sea region
• region-building
• constructivism
• Nordic identity
• discourse analysis
• Norden

Notes

1 Hilson, ‘Scandinavia’, 31.

2 Cf. Archer, ‘Nordic Swans and Baltic Cygnets’. See also Lehti, ‘Possessing a Baltic Europe’.

3 The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for detailing out possible causes of uncertainty in the Nordic area during the Cold War, despite impressions of relative stability conveyed by the Nordic balancing act in between the superpowers.

4 During the Cold War period the focal points of the Nordic ‘third way’ internationalism were mainly the developing world and the United Nations. After the Cold War they have been juxtaposed to Nordic-Baltic relations that have been posited as more important and strategic. More aspects of Nordic internationalism have been analyzed by Bergman, ‘Adjacent Internationalism’, 73–5.

5 Szacki, Historia myśli socjologicznej, 916–7.

6 Cf. Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 251.

7 As a matter of fact, a number of publications based on the institutional analyses demonstrate the fruitfulness of such an approach in studies of Nordic-Baltic relations. The most topical is probably Archer, ‘Nordic Swans and Baltic Sygnets’. A point of view from the Baltic republics on this unbalanced relationship can be found in Jurkynas, How Deep is your Love? The Baltic Brotherhood Re-examined, 146–56.

8 Cf., for instance, Scott, ‘A Networked Space of Meaning?’ The positioning theory has been developed in regional integration studies to the extent that a constructivist turn has been able to penetrate studies in international relations. A geographical area can thus be seen as a region when other actors position it as a region, when people position this region as an actor and, finally, people are positioned as acting and generating meaning on behalf of the region. For details see Slocum and Van Langenhove, ‘The Meaning of Regional Integration’, 227–52.

9 Stråth and S⊘rensen, ‘Introduction: The Cultural Construction of Norden’, 21–2.

10 For more details see, for instance, Musiał, ‘“Nordisch – Nordic – Nordisk”’. Die wandelbaren Topoi-Funktionen in den deutschen, anglo-amerikanischen und skandinavischen nationalen Diskursen’, 95–122.

11 Østergård, ‘The Nordic Countries in the Baltic Region’, 26.

12 A term used by Mouritzen, ‘The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall’.

13 Cf. Østergård, ‘The Nordic Countries in the Baltic Region’, 49.

14 Bloland, ‘Post-modernism and Higher Education’, 526.

15 Cf. Beck, Risikogesellschaft – Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne.

16 Inglehart, Modernization and Postmoderization, 28.

17 Hauge and Harrop, Comparative Government and Politics, 95. More specifically the early years of Nordic post-materialism were researched by Knutsen, ‘Materialist and Post-materialist Values and Structures in the Nordic Countries’.

18 An arbitrary but quite convincing typology of welfare states by G⊘sta Esping Andersen was based on the degree of decommodification, i.e. to what extent individual human performance was independent of one's ability to sell one's work input (treated as a commodity) on the market. For details see: Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.

19 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 251.

20 Joenniemi, Co-operation in the Baltic Sea Region. This TAPRI conference report along with the conference itself are parts of a wider attempt to build a new region in Northern Europe, to complement or overtake Nordic co-operation. Papers by Stålvant, Wæver, Petersen and Joenniemi provide a stimulating focus on actor interests and the importance of changed external circumstances. Other contributions discuss the possible relevance of the idea of a regional nuclear-free zone and potential of regional environmental co-operation. The report's greatest value was that it started addressing these issues, and it served as a harbinger of more elaborate TAPRI and other volumes to come. See, for instance, also Wæver, ‘From Nordism to Baltism’.

21 Neumann, ‘Building up of the North European Region’; Neumann, ‘A Region-Building Approach to Northern Europe.’

22 Perko, Nordic-Baltic Region in Transition; Joenniemi, Baltic Sea Politics Achievements and Challenges; Jukarainen, ‘Norden is Dead’.

23 Browning, ‘The Region-Building Approach Revisited’; Smith, ‘Nordic Near Abroad or New Northern Europe?’.

24 Wæver's 1992 contribution describing an institutional transition from Nordism to Baltism, i.e. to creating a region in the Baltic sea area is a classical example but many more contributions coming from institutes for future studies or realized by the Delphi method could be mentioned here as well.

25 Scott, ‘A Networked Space of Meaning?’, 152.

26 Østergård, ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity’; Østergård, ‘Norden – europæisk eller nordisk?’.

27 Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens Medelhav. For a particular coverage of Sweden in the region see also Gerner, ‘Sweden's Success Story – The Happy Ending’.

28 Klinge, The Baltic World.

29 Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. Kirby's continuation of the theme was The Baltic World 1772–1993, and finally, of a more comparative character, The Baltic and the North Seas (co-authored with Hinkkanen).

30 Uffe Ellemann-Jensen did this in a speech in Lund in 1991. Full text of the speech was printed in Information 18.04.1991 under the title ‘Hvor skal vi finde Norden’. For details of the active internationalism see also Holm, Danish Foreign Policy Activism.

31 Uffe Ellemann-Jensen together with Hans Dietrich Genscher were the conceptual founding fathers of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) established in 1992. The council was created to provide a meeting ground and structure the dialogue between the Baltic Sea littoral states and the European Community.

32 See, for instance, Kelstrup, ‘Danmarks deltagelse i det internationale samarbejde’, as well as Petersen, ‘Tilbage til Baltikum’.

33 For a general framework see: Hettne et al., Globalization and the New Regionalism. For a more detailed, regional focus see Lähteenmäki, ‘Regionalization in the Change of the European System’.

34 The Copenhagen school of security studies centred on ideas by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde. The concept of regional security complexes and securatization (security as a speech act) have been central contributions of the school to the theory of international relations with the focus on regions.

35 On 24 February 1992, Carl Bildt was quoted in International Herald Tribune saying that: ‘The time for the Nordic model has passed. … It created societies that were too monopolized, too expensive and didn't give people the freedom of choice they wanted; societies that lacked flexibility and dynamism’.

36 Wæver, ‘Nordic Nostalgia’.

37 Since the early 1990s a number of initiatives was created to facilitate the dialogue between all states belonging to the drainage basin of the Baltic Sea. The most formal body was created in 1992 as Council of the Baltic Sea States, which apart from the Baltic Sea littoral states included also Norway and Iceland as well as a representative of the European Commission.

38 As alleged in Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, 27, unlike the ‘modern’ state system, its post-modern counterpart does not rely on the balance of power, nor does it emphasize sovereignty or the separation of domestic and foreign affairs.

39 Neumann, ‘Building up of the North European Region’, 68.

40 Norden i det nye Europa, 204.

41 Quoted from Mouritzen, ‘The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument’, 14. Original utterances were published in Dagens Nyheter, respectively on 1 and 9 August 1992.

42 Ringmar, ‘Re-Imagining Sweden: The Rhetorical Battle Over EU Membership’, 45.

43 The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for reminding of this faction in the social democratic party as a possible cause for an average lukewarm support for the strategic reorientation towards the EU among the social democrats.

44 The first pillar focuses on cultural, educational and linguistic ties amongst the Nordic states. The second pillar focuses on Nordic-EU relations. Quoted from Browning, ‘On Nordic Models and Identity’.

45 Cf. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, 28, and Laclau, ‘Power and Representation’, 287.

46 Rapport fra Norges formannskap i Nordisk Ministerråd 2006, 5.

47 See also Andrew Newby's contribution to this collection for a discussion of the Nordic Council in relation to Scotland.

48 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model.

49 Mouritzen, ‘The Nordic Model as Foreign Policy Instrument’, 10–11.

50 Cf. Zetterberger, ‘The Rational Humanitarians’.

51 Salmon, ‘Whatever Happened to Swedish Neutrality?’, 279.

52 Cf. Browning, ‘Branding Nordicity’.

53 Ruth, ‘The Capriciousness of Universal Values’, 247.

54 Archer, ‘The Nordic Area as a “Zone of Peace”’, and Joenniemi, ‘A Deutschian Security Community?’.

55 Cf. Ingebritsen, ‘Norm Entrepreneurs’.

56 ‘Farewell, welfare’, The Economist, October 23, 1993, 43.

57 Cf. Fox, ‘Denmark's Difference’, 46–7.

58 Rapport fra Norges formannskap i Nordisk Ministerråd 2006, 6.

59 Wæver, ‘The Baltic Sea’, 324.

60 Cf. Nordic Council, ‘Governments in Baltic Sea Region Must Live up to their Promises’.

61 Wæver, ‘From Nordism to Baltism’, 31.

62 Bergman, ‘Adjacent Internationalism’, 87.

63 Geyer, ‘Globalization, Europeanization, Complexity’.

64 See, for instance, S⊘rensen, Nordic Paths to National Identity in the Nineteenth Century, and Tägil, Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World.

65 Browning, ‘Branding Nordicity’.