Over at the Power and the Money, Jussi Jalonen writes about Finland's supportive relationship to the Afrikaners in the Boer War and how this support both reflected and shaped Finnish national identity, even though this participation's only legacy are news articles about some minor ceremonies that could well take the ordinary Finn by surprise.

Why did independent Finland celebrate a battle fought in a British colonial conflict in South Africa? Simple: Finnish volunteers had fought in the battle as soldiers of the Scandinavian Corps of the Boer forces. The Scandinavian Corps was founded in Pretoria on September 23rd, 1899, supposedly as a testimony of loyalty felt by the Scandinavian immigrants towards the South African Republic. It included 118 men; 48 Swedes, 24 Danes, 19 Finns, 13 Norwegians and 14 other miscellaneous nationalities, mainly Germans and Dutch. In addition, three Swedish women served as nurses in a separate ambulance unit. The Scandinavians fought in the siege of Mafeking and the battles of Magersfontein and Paardeberg; of these, Magersfontein was the most significant.

[. . .]

The first one is the impact of migration on war, both civil and interstate. Those Finns who volunteered to fight in the Boer forces were, of course, immigrants, people who had come to the gold fields of Witwatersrand in search of wealth and a better life. Some had arrived directly from Finland, others came via United States. The uptick in immigration to the Transvaal had been one of the proximate causes of the war, and the British guest-workers and settlers — the so-called “uitlanders” — formed a fifth column through which the British Empire sought to strengthen its grip over the Boer republic.

[. . .]

The Boer resistance against the British Empire set an example for national movements of the time. Both Sun Yat-Sen and Arthur Griffith paid special attention to the Boer struggle. This explains the Finnish fascination with the Boers. At the time of the war, the Grand-Duchy of Finland had become a target of Russian imperial reaction. The February Manifesto of 1899 began a Russian attempt to abrogate Finnish autonomous institutions and integrate it into the Russian Empire. The Boer resistance to Britain aroused sympathy in beleaguered Finland, and the participation of the Finnish volunteers in the battle on the Boer side became as a source of pride. Arvid Neovius, one of the organizers of the underground opposition to Russia, wrote an article where he spoke of the “intellectual guerrilla warfare” and argued for modelling Finnish passive resistance to Russia on Boer hit-and-run-tactics. The South African national anthem became a popular protest song that eventually found its way into Finnish schoolbooks. Finnish participation in another country’s war of national liberation was very much alive in 1924, only seven years after independence, and long before recognition of the sins of apartheid clouded the European view of the Afrikaner “liberation struggle.”

The Battle of Paardeberg, it's worth noting, is the one commemorated by Charlottetown's Boer War memorial. It's interesting how the Boer War had its own influence on Canadian nationhood, by making Canadians--not only French Canadians--consider their relationship with an empire that would get involved in controversial bloody conflicts like the Boer War.

Walrus Magazine's Eliza Reid reports on how some Icelanders are dealing with their post-crash economy through unusual forms of emigration.

In October 2008, Iceland became the first country to succumb to the global financial crisis. In a few short months, its banks collapsed, its government fell, and unemployment more than tripled. More or less flat broke, the tiny nation of 320,000 had to go begging to the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan of US$2.1 billion, and it remains in an economic shamble. As the country licks its wounds, some Icelanders, especially those crushed by mortgage payments that skyrocketed when the currency crumbled, are once again seeking the relative economic stability of Canada as the key to rebuilding their lives. But unlike the nineteenth-century wave of emigration, when more than 16,000 islanders —roughly 20 percent of the population at the time — climbed into ships for the hellish voyage that would take so many of them off to Manitoba, these new Viking emigrants, generally highly educated and fluent in English, do not go steerage. They go online.

Jón Ólafur Ólafsson is an architect. His firm, Batteríid, is tucked away in a nondescript building in the gentrified former fishing village of Hafnarfjördur, where rent is cheaper than in central Reykjavik, eight kilometres away. Over a lethal macchiato, Ólafsson explained that since projects ranging from luxury high-rises to glam corporate headquarters have dried up, the architecture sector has become one of the hardest hit since the crisis began last autumn. Batteríid laid off a third of its employees, and of the twenty still left only half are working full time.

Yet Ólafsson is optimistic. Like his ancestors, he has looked to Canada. This spring, along with Winnipeg partners Cibinel Architects, Batteríid won a contract, its first outside Iceland, to design and construct a $40-million aquatic, wellness, and performing arts centre in Gimli, Manitoba (population 6,000). Gimli remains the unofficial capital of “New Iceland,” as the immigrants called it, and Manitoba is home to the world’s largest population of Icelanders outside of Iceland. Gimli’s mayor, Tammy Axelsson, is fluent in Icelandic, and the people retain strong ties to their ancestral land.

Hafnarfjördur is famous for having one of Iceland’s largest settlements of elves, dwarves and other mystical beings, which (translating from the Icelandic) are collectively called “Hidden Folk.” Centuries-old folklore has it that whole clans of such beings reside in the rocks that make up part of the town’s centre. We do not doubt this at all … Hidden Folk enjoy a certain regard, and nowhere more so than in Hafnarfjördur. There is even a Hidden Worlds tour that takes you to their home sites, stopping at places like Hellisgerdi park and the base of the cliff Hamarinn, which is said to be home to the Royal Family of the Hidden Folk.But Ólafsson and his colleagues are not moving house — just ideas. Instead of queuing up for visas and plowing through masses of immigration forms, they breeze in on Skype. Call it virtual immigration: Batteríid can visit Canada on a regular basis but complete its major work remotely from Iceland, thereby ensuring its survival.

The Financial Times' Martin Sandbu has come up with a long article that explores the idea that Farouk al-Kasim, an expatriate Iraqi engineering now living in Norway, helped save his adopted country from being ruined by oil wealth, eventually leading Norway in its creation of its highly successful preparation for this boom.

Poor countries dream of finding oil like poor people fantasise about winning the lottery. But the dream often turns into a nightmare as new oil exporters realise that their treasure brings more trouble than help. Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, one time Venezuelan oil minister, likened oil to “the devil’s excrement”. Sheikh Ahmed Yamani, his Saudi Arabian counterpart, reportedly said: “I wish we had found water.”

Such resignation reflects bitter experience of the way that dependency on natural resources can poison a country’s economic and political system. Inflows of hard currency push up prices, squeezing the competitiveness of non-oil businesses and starving them of capital. As a result, productivity growth withers (a phenomenon known as “Dutch disease” after the negative effects of North Sea gas production on the Netherlands). Meanwhile, the state institutions in charge of oil often become corrupt and evade democratic control. And oil-rich states almost invariably waste the income it brings, many ending their oil booms deeper in debt than when they started.

This is better understood today than it was 40 years ago. When al-Kasim arrived in Oslo, no one was worrying about how oil might challenge Norway – in part because they didn’t think any would be found. The Geological Survey of Norway had dismissed the possibility just 10 years earlier.

The politicians and senior bureaucrats had not caught oil fever. A serious mining accident had recently brought down a government, and most did not want to touch oil matters with a bargepole. “Everything I said was met with, ‘Oh, you think so? Mmm. Maybe. Let’s wait and see’,” al-Kasim recalls. “This characteristic saved Norway from the curse of oil: the fact that they are completely incapable of getting carried away by the oil dream. They were very sceptical – plain horse sense basically. They didn’t want to move until it was absolutely proven that it was the right time to act.”

His was a lonely, contrarian voice. After examining exploration results, he wrote a report that warned Norway was sleeping, that even though no one had found oil yet, it was only a question of time. And time was short: the country’s leaders needed to prepare Norway to become an oil nation, but they were doing nothing. “I was a constant reminder that they were doing everything wrong,” al-Kasim says pointedly. Only his closest colleagues would listen.

Over at Demography Matters I've a post up linking to a study, examining the particular case of Sweden but applicable universally, suggesting that there's no reason to think that immigration can compensate for unfavourable demographic trends in a country for any number of reasons. Go, read the post and the paper I linked to.

The gist of this post is that, since the late 1980s, Finns and Estonians have been forming a particularly intimate relationship between their two nation-states, both countries populated mostly by peoples of Finnic languages lying on either side of the Gulf of Finland, this relationship culminating in--among other things--the functional fusion of their capital cities, Helsnki and Tallinn into the community of Talsinki.

Crossborder relations are hardly unique in Europe. Nation-states continue to function, but older zones of cultural affinity and economic polarities power newer integration dynamics within these zones. The entire structure of the European Union was arguably founded to help create a virtuous cycle of prosperity uniting France and Germany, taking particular care to make French Lorraine and the German Rhineland a single unit. This, the prototype of the modern Euroregion, is hardly unique; in northern Europe, even, Swedish Malmö and Danish Copenhagen, separated by the Oresund, have begun to fuse into a single Scandinavian metropolis thanks to the cross-straight bridge.

The Finnish-Estonian relationship stands out, however, by virtue of the differences that it bridges: an established and prosperous First World economy brought into close contact with an aspiring First World economy still trying to leave the Second World behind; a Nordic social democracy against a more rawly capitalist regime; an ethnolinguistically stable society versus an ethnolinguistically riven one. Further, the Finnish-Estonian relationship is complicated by the presence of Russia, unspoken third partner and the historic Other of the two sovereign Finnic nations of northeastern Europe.

Like any two closely related nations, the Finns and Estonians have long had rivalries. As Toomas Hendrik Ilves noted, they've often taken malignant form, but his conclusion, these rivalries in this case leading to a friendly relationship as Mel Huang wrote in 1999 for Central European Review.

The two nations share a similar culture, history, heritage and language. As The Economist has noted, "Tallinn is probably the only foreign city in the world where a poetry reading in Finnish can attract a crowd." The 85-kilometre distance between Tallinn and Helsinki served as another link, as tourism between the two kindred peoples continue to grow. For example, the first international flight by Finnair in the 1920s was made to Estonia. These days, millions of Finns visit Estonia annually; albeit, most are "alcohol" tourists.

[. . .]

Even in strife, however, relations were strong. Many Finns fought with the Estonian resistance, and Estonians fought with the Finns against the Soviets. But the Cold War years reaped financial rewards for Finland as an economic conduit between the two spheres, and the economic difference between the two cousins widened drastically. By 1991 and Estonia's restoration of independence, Estonia was dramatically poorer than Finland -- many Estonians remember that, in 1939, Estonia was richer than Finland and on par with other Scandinavian states.

The two countries managed by the early 1920s to secure their independence and nationhood in the face of the Soviet Union. How did they compare? On the one hand, Estonia was somewhat richer than Finland; on the other hand, Finland avoided Estonia’s period of anti-Nazi dictatorship under Päts and remained a democracy. Estonia was much less lucky than a Finland that managed to avoid conquest by either of its totalitarian neighbours. Finland survived the Second World War an independent state; Estonia was not nearly so lucky, with two Soviet occupations and one Nazi occupation, complete with mass murders and ethnic cleansings and wholesale flights of refugees. Even in 1989 there were only 90% as many ethnic Estonians living in Estonia as there were five decades previously. Estonia lost its income advantage over Finland quickly thanks to the collectivization of agriculture, the reorientation of trade towards the Soviet Union, and programs of heavy industrialization (often for military aims) which resulted in the additionally problematic resettlement of most of the northeast and heavy Russian immigration to there and the new suburbs of Tallinn. Nonetheless, Estonia retained its privileged position within the Soviet Union as one of the wealthiest republics of the bloc, as part of the "Soviet West," possessing a relatively liberal and experimental political climate; Solzhenitzyn, among others, took refuge in the Estonian university town of Tartu. Too, Estonia was open to Finnish cultural influence, not least because of the ability of Estonians to receive Finnish television in the north of their country and their ability to understand the Finnish language.

Since Estonia and nine other European states joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, the 5.2 million Finns on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland and the 1.4 million Estonians on the southern have found themselves under the same political authority. Almost 95% of Finns are Fennophone, while two-thirds of the Estonians are ethnically Estonian; most non-Fennophones in Finland speak Swedish as their native language, but a growing minority of immigrants in Finland and the near-totality of non-Estonians in Estonia use Russian as their major language, perhaps as many as a half-million people in all. Finland is one of the richest countries in the world; Estonia is the richest in the former Soviet Union, and since independence (but until 2009) converged quickly towards Finland’s PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, regaining the ground lost in the post-independence depression and catching up. There are strong differences in Estonia--the north fares better than the south, urban areas better than rural wells, ethnic Estonians better than Russophones--but overall the picture is one of growth.

How does this affect the relationship between Helsinki and Tallinn? The very closely adjacent capital cities of the only two Finnic nation-states in Europe now lie only an hour's travel away. In the past, there has been a certain amount of interest in the idea of a Finnish-Estonian confederation, apparently more frequently from Estonia than not and more frequently under stress: "Estonia’s president, Konstantin Päts [proposed ] a federal state that would have a common head of state, a common defence policy, foreign policy and currency. He presented this idea only a few months before he was imprisoned and transported to Russia whilst Estonia was annexed to the Soviet Union."

There have also been some recentish suggestions, as in this Interfax report, of a formal union of the two cities.

A plan for the development of Tallinn until 2025, approved by the city authorities last week, provides for the merger of the two capitals into an entity dubbed Talsinki. Such entities already exist and one of them is a merger between Danish Copenhagen and Swedish Malme.

A more efficient transport system is expected to facilitate the implementation of this plan. Estonian experts have proposing linking the two cities, located 80 kilometers from one another, with an underwater tunnel instead of the current ferry line.

Without a tunnel or any other radical departure in type from the relationships of the past, a vast exchange between thw two countries and capital cities has already taken off, involving everything from commercial helicopter flights linking the two capital cities ("Our goal is for there to be no more than 35 minutes between getting out of a taxi in one city and getting into a taxi in the other city") to a retrospectively ill-judged massive influx of Nordic investment ("Charity and nostalgia have nothing to do with it," he said. "These Nordic companies definitely want a return in the long run. They are here for only one reason: they want to make a profit."). The massive increase in trans-Gulf traffic since 2004, never mind 1989, has obvious repercussions on the human scale for both countries--one news article claimed that a quarter-million Finns, looking for a familiar environment and lower prices, could move south.

There was some discussion of this in the English language in the area, I know. Aleksi Neuvonen's 2004 Estonian Architectural Review study "Helsinki/Tallinn bipolarcity" began by making an interesting distinction between "twin city" and "bipolar city," arguing that a more distanced relationship between the two cities is giving way to one much more integrated.

Helsinki and Tallinn, or Helsinki/Tallinn, could be described as a twin-city in a verge of becoming a bipolarcity. Starting from the fact that Helsinki was founded to become a rival to Tallinn, their development could be imagined to have happened in a bipolar manner, in opposition to the counter part’s development. This would be, however, contrary to the current interpretation of the history, according to which the fate of these cities has been moved along with the kingdoms, empires and power regimes to which they belonged to from time to time. That is to say: polarity was not between the two cities but between larger entities.

We are about to enter new phase in the history: Helsinki and Tallinn are becoming part of the common European integration. They will both parts of the union, sharing a large amount of common laws, common parliament, partly common foreign affairs etc. Unlike the previous times the two cities belonged to the same ruling systems, there is no remote capital to which all the roads end and all the money is collected. At least in principle we live in a de- or
multi-centralised world consisting of complex networks between hubs of different size.

Jussi. S. Jauhianinen's 2004 "Urban networks between Tallinn and Helsinki -- Talsinki or Hellinn?" is skeptical of the possibilities, distinguishing between a good-case "Talsinki" and a bad-case "Hellinn."

From the 1990s onwards the relations between and within urban regions of Helsinki and Tallinn have enormously intensified. The integration of Estonia in the EU facilitates the networking. However, the gradual adjustment of cost differences between Tallinn and Helsinki reduce the current bazaar-economy and relocation of enterprises. In the future, the extreme possibilities for common urban region are progressive Talsinki or regressive Hellinn. These have substantially different impacts on the spatial development of urban regions and on the inhabitants living in-between spaces of flows and space of places. Nevertheless, transparent governance is an urgent necessity to create a common vision for the urban region(s).

Talsinki 2020 is a setting for mutual respect of differences between and within the urban region of Tallinn and Helsinki. The conceptual idea of this common progressive urban region is continuous learning, collective open participation with equal voice and transparent governance. Mistakes of the past in built environment are corrected through careful dismantling and recycling of unwanted infrastructure. Tacit knowledge and social capital are enhanced in cross-border and trans-national grass-root projects voluntarily subsidised by 10% enterprise tax in the urban region. Quality time, work, consumption and environment are valued when people work on average three days per week. A particular institution is the International Talsinki Open University (INTO) with computer-aided synchronous translation of activities into Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, Russian, English and Chinese. The university is well-known by the development and design of intelligent dis/connectable mobile devices and the “fourth way” capitalist economy based on regional production-consumption chains, identity and empowerment.

Hellinn 2020 is a setting for hard-core competitive global capitalism in which citizens are individual clients responsible themselves of their own well-being. The roll-out phase of neoliberalisation converted Hellinn into a market-led commodity consisted of purified consumptory space. The uncontrollable supra-local transformations creatively destruct political-economic space in multiple geographical scales. The political-economic elites of Hellinn promote aggressively economic restructuring and rejuvenation of the urban region based on marketisation, commodification and hyperexploitation of workers. The utopia of unlimited exploitation has led into geographically uneven, socially regressive and politically volatile trajectories that strangulate the urban region.

Thoughts, whether on the plausibility of this idea or the ways in which the Talsinki concept is working out or the ways it possibly can't, et cetera, are more than welcome.

The Guardian's Gwladys Fouché reports that some Icelanders see a closer association with Norway as an alternative to European Union and Eurozone membership.

While Iceland is debating whether applying for EU membership is really the best option to rescue its crisis-hit economy, there is another option on the table growing in popularity: monetary union with Norway.

None other than Iceland's new finance minister, Steingúrmur Sigfússon, is considering the idea of using the Norwegian crown as the country's currency – a move that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago.

Asked by the Norwegian daily Klassekampen on Friday whether this was a serious option, Sigfússon answered: "We hope so. It will be natural to talk about it when we celebrate our party's 10-year anniversary [this week]. Nordic socialist party leaders are invited and I hope of course that Kristin [Halvorsen, the Norwegian finance minister] will come."

Sigfússon is the leader of the Left-Greens, the most popular political party in Iceland today, while Halvorsen leads the Socialist Left party in Norway, the sister-party of Sigfússon's.

"A strong and deceptive belief in adopting the euro has emerged [in Iceland] even though Iceland is just as far away from complying with euro criteria as poor countries in eastern Europe," continued Sigfússon, whose party is strongly opposed to EU membership. "So we think that the possibilities of currency co-operation with the Nordic countries, preferably Norway, must be thoroughly investigated."

Iceland was originally settled from Norway in the 9th century and was part of the Norwegian kingdom until the Congress of Vienna when continental Norway was handed over to a personal union with Sweden and Norway's insular possessions (Iceland, Faroes, Greenland) went to Denmark. It seems unlikely that Norway will go for a monetary union with its much more troubled European neighbour, however, and new Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir still favours the European Union option.

This Bloomberg article was eye-catching.

Almost 1,200 years after Viking chief Ingolfur Arnarson left Norway to found Reykjavik, the crisis engulfing Iceland is forcing his descendants home.

"There are no jobs here," said Baldvin Kristjansson, an 18-year-old former container repairman from western Iceland, at a European job fair in Reykjavik. "I’m going to move away and go to Norway."

The Atlantic island of 320,000, suffering from its worst financial crisis since gaining independence in 1944, faces the biggest exodus in a century. Iceland’s $7.5-billion economy may shrink about 10 percent next year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which is helping provide a $4.6 billion bailout package.

About half of Icelanders aged between 18 and 24 are considering leaving the country, Reykjavik-based newspaper Morgunbladid said, citing a survey of 1,117 people between Oct. 27 and Oct. 29.

"Tens of thousands" will depart, estimated Jesper Christensen, chief analyst at Danske Bank A/S, the biggest lender in neighboring Denmark.

Iceland’s biggest wave of emigration was in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Then, 15,000 out of a total population of 70,000 left, joining a flow to North America from countries including Norway, Sweden and Ireland.

Foreign Debt

A hundred years later, Iceland’s economy is struggling after the nation’s banking system collapsed under the weight of its foreign debt last month.

Inflation surged to an 18-year high of 17.1 percent in November following a currency collapse that drove up prices. A protest against the government turned violent last week as police used pepper spray to battle activists in front of Reykjavik’s main police station.

Unemployment is forecast to rise to 7 percent by the end of January from a three-year high of 1.9 percent in October, the country’s Labor Directorate estimates.

"A lot of people are registering unemployed," said Valdimar Olafsson at European Employment Services in Reykjavik. "It’s very hectic and Icelanders are asking for jobs, especially in Norway."

Norse settlers arrived in Iceland around 874 on sail- powered wooden longships. The country came under Norwegian control in 1262 and then under Danish dominion in 1380. It gained autonomy 90 years ago yesterday and became fully independent from Denmark in 1944.

‘State of Coma’

The Danes and Norwegians, along with Germans and Poles, returned to pluck Icelandic talent at a job fair on Nov. 21 and 22. It drew 2,500 people.

Neither country has been fully spared from the effects of the global crunch. Denmark’s economy will shrink 0.5 percent next year, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation. Norwegian economic growth more than halved to 0.2 percent in the third quarter.

Both remain in much better shape than Iceland, though, and Norwegian and Danish companies are seeking skilled workers.

"Iceland is more or less in a state of coma," said Sigrun Thormar, who runs a consulting business for Icelanders moving eastward. "There’ll be an increase in the number of Icelanders seeking work in Denmark."

Danish unemployment is 1.6 percent. In Norway, the jobless rate rose to 1.8 percent last month from 1.7 percent the previous month. Norway’s Labor and Welfare Administration, or NAV, expects unemployment to stay below 3 percent over the next two years.

Iceland has been implementing the Schengen Agreement since 2001 and was a party to the Nordic Passport Union since 1965 long before Schengen, so there's certainly no legal or other institutional bars to Icelandic migration to the countries of mainland Norden. There's no reason why it can't take on huge proportions, either, judging by the experience of the Faroe Islands in their economic crisis of the early 1990s: "The important fishery sector collapsed (fish makes up approx. 90% of exports), the major Faroese banks went bankrupt and foreign debts were very high. Most of the many fish processing plants were closed and the Faroese economy was put under Danish administration, resulting in the concentration of most fish processing plants in one United Seafood firm. During these years, the population of the Faroe Islands declined from 48,000 to 42,000 (approx.) due to emigration." The subsequent recovery of the Faroese economy has not stemmed the outmigration, with Danish paper Politiken pointing out that twenty-three thousand Faroese live in Denmark versus the forty-eight thousand who live in the Faroe Islands. The Faroes do have a much closer relationship with Denmark than Iceland, but comparison might hold in terms of absolute numbers if not relative proportions.

Andrew Pierce's article in The Telegraph propvides an interesting explanation of why Iceland is so badly affected y the global financial crisis.

Yesterday, trading in the shares of six major financial institutions was suspended as the government sought to avert meltdown.

Sigurdur Einarsson, Chairman, Kaupthing Bank, warned against people being too alarmist.

"Over the years we have built a strong and well-diversified bank. We have some of the strongest capital ratios in the European bank sector. We've got good asset quality and a highly diversified loan portfolio.

Kaupthing has and continues to manage its business prudently and, with our strong fundamentals, we are naturally concerned when we hear malicious rumours and sensationalism about Kaupthing being reflected irresponsibly. We ask people to look at the facts, not rumour and inuendo."

Meanwhile, Icelandic interest rates have been catapulted to 15.5 per cent, peaks not seen in Britain since Black Wednesday, in an attempt to rein in inflation. The krona's freefall on the international currency markets is surpassed only by the catastrophic failure of Zimbabwean currency.

One of the country's three banks, Glitnir, has been nationalised; another wants money from its customers. Foreign currency is running out as international banks refuse pleas to lend money.

[. . .]

The dramatic change in Iceland, from the poor relation of Europe to one of its wealthiest and apparently most successful, and now back again, dates from the mid-1990s with the privatisation of the banks and the founding of the country's Stock Exchange.

The free market reforms unleashed a new generation of thrusting, young businessmen, many of whom picked up their banking trade in the United States. They were determined that their country would no longer have to rely on fishing for its principal source of wealth; they loathed the international perception of Iceland as a parochial nation of farmers and fishermen who could not hold their own on the world business stage.

They had learnt at school all about the last Cod War with Britain, in 1976, when Iceland unilaterally extended its territorial waters, desperate to increase the financial yield from its trawler fleet. So, in keeping with the traditions of their Viking ancestors, the new army of corporate raiders went overseas to seek their fortune.

[. . .]

It was almost inevitable that when the international credit crisis unleashed the worst financial tsunami the world had seen since 1929, there was little that Iceland, which disbanded its armed forces 700 years ago, could do to repel the shock waves. Iceland has guaranteed all its savers deposits, but could not extend this guarantee to the hundreds of thousands of British savers who have invested money in their internet savings banks.

The mood of crisis was heightened further when the Government suspended all public service broadcasting, a measure usually reserved for volcano warnings. The chairman of the opposition left-green party, Steingrimur Sigfusson, has called for a coalition government to lead Iceland through its financial emergency.

The trade unions, meanwhile, are pressing for Iceland to begin talks about becoming part of the European Union, which the government has been reluctant to join for years. The pension funds have now also agreed to help the Government by selling assets.

It took a while, though, for the penny to drop. As recently as this spring, when questions were being asked about the economy, the country was in denial.

Dagur Eggertsson, a former mayor of Reykjavik, said: "Someone called it 'bumblebee economics' because it is hard to figure out how it flies, but it does, and very nicely, too." The bumblebee, though, like the billionaires who thought they could buy up the British high street, is no longer flying high.

I was quite surprised to come across John Tagliabue's article in The New York Times "For Finland, the Issue Is Selling Its Wine, Not Making It". Finland makes wine? Evidently so.

In spring and fall, when temperatures are erratic, Fredrik Slotte sprinkles his vineyard with water. The water freezes, encasing the vines in thin tubes of ice that protect them from temperatures far lower than freezing.

Is this Burgundy? The Napa Valley? No, it is the Aland Islands, a cluster of wooded islands in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, roughly 1,000 miles northeast of Burgundy.

Dr. Slotte, a 29-year-old physician, is one of a growing number of people in Finland and some neighboring countries who, as global temperatures climb, are turning to winemaking. The grapes he plants are hardy, weather-resistant varieties, including a cross between a Latvian and a Siberian strain.

Within a couple of years, Dr. Slotte expects to produce about 110 bottles a year — hardly a threat to the French — including a frothy, pink blush sparkling wine, what the French call vin gris, and a robust white.

But a wine business must sell what it produces, which is where Dr. Slotte has run into a problem.

The Aland (pronounced OH-lund) Islands, with a population of 27,000 Swedish speakers, are an autonomous region of Finland. And since Finland, which entered the European Union in 1995, is not considered a wine-growing country under European rules, Dr. Slotte may not sell his wine. “I give it to my family and friends,” he said.

A major problem for Finnish vinticulture, as the article goes on to say, is that the European Union's agricultural subsidy system sees areas like traditionally cold Finland receive heavy agricultural subsidies, with European Union authorities arguing that southern Finland was too warm to justify the most subsidies. When news that Slotte and others were growing grapes for vine got out, major complications ensued, in the autonomous and Swedophone Åland Islands and elsewhere in Finland.

I wonder if Finland will end up becoming a large-scale producer of ice wine, like Ontario's Niagara Peninsula. The climate might well be right for that sort of specialized product.

Björk's performance of "Declare Independence" got her in trouble twice, when she called for a Kosovo in a Tokyo performance and more famously supported a free Tibet in a Shanghai concert. None of that comes out when you watch the video, which features Björk wearing decals of the flags of Greenland and the Faroes on either shoulder of her jumpsuit. Might that have been, as one commentator suggested, West Nordic solidarity in action?

First, an explanation. The term "West Norden" when applied to the North Atlantic region seems to have first referred to divisions within continental Norden, between an East Norden consisting of Sweden-Finland and a West Norden centered on Denmark-Norway but also including Schleswig-Holstein and the various North Atlantic holdings. Perhaps as a result of the continentalist thinking behind projects like Nordek and, later, the European Union, continental Norden might now be thought of as a whole, leaving "West Norden" to the three Nordic islands and island groups of the North Atlantic (from west to east, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes), in the early 20th century all under Danish rule.

These three all have many points in common. All were initially settled, in the 10th and 11th centuries or so, by Norse migrants mixed with Celts, Greenland's Norse population famously becoming extinct and replaced by Inuit migrants. All three territories became relatively weak and fell under the jurisdiction of the Norwegian Crown, which in turn became weak and fell under Danish domination. When Norway suddenly switched from rule under Copenhagen to federation with Sweden, Norway's former North Atlantic possessions remained under Danish rule. Iceland and the Faroes experienced national renaissances late in the 19th century, reviving local cultural forms and languages and translating this into a desire for political self-government. The German occupation of continental Denmark in the Second World War and the use of Denmark's North Atlantic territories by the Anglo-Americans destabilized Danish rule. Self-governing Iceland gained independence in 1944. It would have been followed by the Faroes which voted for independence by a slim majority in 1946 but this was overturned by the Danish government and instead a home rule agreement was established. Greenland, with its Inuit population, followed a different trajectory, in 1953 being absorbed fully into Denmark and then in 1978 being constituted as a self-governing entity so powerful that it could secede from the European Union.

What's so fascinating about the former Danish North Atlantic to me, apart from the fact that it's relatively close to Atlantic Canada, is the extent to which cooperation between the region's sovereign and semi-sovereign governments seem to be growing. Iceland's notable success might be a model. In the informative and well-designed if occasionally terribly superficial Monocle, articles have appeared speculating as to whether or not Nuuk is going to becoming the next Reykjavik and promoting the Faroes ("THE FUNKY FAROES," the line on the masthead said, "WHALE AND GAY BASHING ARE OUT OF FASHION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC"). As Ívar Jónsson's 1995 West-Nordic Countries in Crisis argues convincingly, these three territories are forced to use their strong dependency on natural resources in such a way as to ensure their high living standards, a task made all the more difficult by--as this May 2003 Nordic Council report argues--their relatively marginal positions in the world, in terms of their geography and their climate. It would make good sense for these three governments to share best practice, especially as climate change shakes things up.

That seems to be what's happening. For starters, there is a West Nordic Council and a West Nordic Council interparliamentary bloc. More, there have been suggestions that these governments are interesting in discussing the exchange of consulates and the establishment of regional free trade. I was rather surprised to find out about the 2005 Hoyvik Agreement, which set up free trade between Iceland and the Faroes, promoting the free movement of goods (and services and people and capital ...) across their borders and institutionalizing inter-governmental cooperation.

This may well not come to much. Björk might be in favour of independent Greenlandic and Faroese states, and the Greenlanders and Faroese might want to emulate Iceland's success, and the shared history and possible futures of the islands might encourage cooperation, but it might well not. Competition might be as likely an outcome as cooperation, and the European Union might ultimately swallow the entire region up. If nothing else, it's a trend worth keeping an eye on.

("Will Reykjavik become the capital of a Greater Iceland? Stay tuned!")

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Barents Observer, an online newsjournal specializing in news from northermost Europe, is reporting that the region is continuing to lose population. I think that emigration is now the main factor, at least in the Nordic countries.

Norway as a whole has had the largest population growth ever in 2007, but still the population decline in Northern Norway continues. Out of 19 counties in Norway, only Nordland and Finnmark, both situated in the north, had a decreasing population. Nordland's population decreased with 600 persons, while Finnmark lost 266 inhabitants. The total population in Nordland was 234 996 at the start of 2008, while in Finnmark there were 72 399 inhabitants at the same time.

The only county in northern Norway with a growth in 2007 is Troms, which gained 506 inhabitants last year. It is especially the growth of the region's largest city, Tromsø, which contributes to this growth. Tromsø has 65 286 inhabitants, which is 794 more than at the end of 2006. In general there is a population growth in the cities of northern Norway, while smaller communities slowly are depopulated.

Also Norrbotten County in northern Sweden is experiencing depopulation, in spite of large investments in the mining industry and high business activity in general. The net population decrease in Norrbotten in 2007 was 1300 inhabitants, and at de end of the year there were 250 602 persons living in the county.

Murmansk Oblast has lost almost 400 000 inhabitants over the last 20 years, but it now seems like the situation has stabilized. In 2007 the population decreased with only 0,7 percent and by the end of the year there were 851 000 persons living in the county. The other Russian counties in the Barents Region have also experienced large depopulation over the last years. The largest county, Arkhangelsk Oblast, has decreased from 1 569 000 inhabitants in 1990, to 1 280 000 inhabitants at the beginning of 2007.

Hill and Gaddy have argued in the impressive if controversial 2004 tome The Siberian Curse that the overconcentration of so much of the Russian population in the inhospitable north of that country is a serious economic drag. Why wouldn't the same apply in Nordic countries?

Jonathan Edelstein has a post about the peculiar language situation in Norway, which gives both the Bokmål and Nynorsk versions (regiolects?) of Norwegian official status.

The English-language edition of Helsingin Sanomat has recently noted that Russian immigration to Finland has slowed down, and further that it isn't driven by the economic dispairites between Finland and Russia but rather by the reunification of families divided by the Russo-Finnish border. Sveriges Radio International, in the meantime, reports that thanks to immigration, the Swedish population has grown for the eighth year in a row.

What's happening with the Swedish and Finnish populations has worldwide relevance, since both countries have effectively completed the demographic transition, with high sub-replacement fertility rates and growing immigration. What happens at the transition's end? If your country is rich enough, mass immigration for starters.