How would you rank the nordic kingdoms?

[sleeperul]

So let me explain if we where to rank the kingdoms of Europe and only Europe not Asia or Africa or the rest of the world because that would muddle things but kingdoms that are on 2 continents if one is Europe where do the Nordic kingdoms like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and I guess Finland be in?

When I mean rank I mean in terms of military might, economy and that is about it because its hard to measure anything else so what do you say?

 

[Gerle]

Are you looking for their comparative level at a specific time, or how their standing has changed over time? Iceland and Finland were never independent kingdoms, Norway was most of the time a junior partner in a union of some sort of another.

I'd rank the two strongest countries as Denmark and Sweden, constantly competing against each other. Where they stand compared to other European countries I can't really say. Nowadays Norway is probably best off of all the Nordic countries. Oil is nice to have!

 

[sleeperul]

Are you looking for their comparative level at a specific time, or how their standing has changed over time? Iceland and Finland were never independent kingdoms, Norway was most of the time a junior partner in a union of some sort of another.

I'd rank the two strongest countries as Denmark and Sweden, constantly competing against each other. Where they stand compared to other European countries I can't really say. Nowadays Norway is probably best off of all the Nordic countries. Oil is nice to have!

Sure over time why not.

 

[HuzzButt]

Post 1658: Sweden.

 

[Arilou]

It depends a bit. During the middle-ages, while Denmark was the most powerful generally (richest, etc.) all of the nordic countries were fairly weak institutionally (to be fair, this is true of most of Europe) so the exact political situation is going to have a lot of impact.

(eg. theoretically the swedish-norwegian personal union in the 1300's was fairly strong, it's just that it happened just as the Black Death hits and had lots of internal issues)

Though norway was actually relatively centralized compared to the other nordic states, it's just that it had a low population and most of the nobility was wiped out by the Black Death.

For the early-modern period, Denmark was clearly the stronger until the 1643 war, and though they scored some success in the scanian war of 1675, Sweden has remained stronger ever since. And neither Finland nor Norway has really changed this.