Scandinavian

The Scandinavian group includes the peoples of Denmark, Sweden and Norway and their offshoots in Iceland, Gotland and the Northern Isles, together with the Finns, who lived under Swedish rule. In the Viking Age their seafarers raided, traded and settled across Europe, and were the first Europeans to reach North America. Over the following centuries the region was Christianized.

In 1397 Queen Margaret I of Denmark joined Denmark, Sweden and Norway, with Iceland and the Northern Isles, in the Kalmar Union, partly to counter the Hanseatic League. Sweden left it in 1523 under Gustav Vasa, while Denmark and Norway stayed united until 1814. In the seventeenth century Sweden rose to be an empire.