Why didn't the Scandinavian countries ever have colonies?

Norway had St. Olaf.

New Sweden was one.

Because Sweden - the big Scandinavian power at the time - was losing its edge as empire-building really took off in the 18th century. Also, by that time, the British Navy ("Rule Britannia"!) dominated the seas, especially the Atlantic, so there was no room for anyone else who wasn't already well established (France, Spain, Portugal).

OP, the Vikings had "colonies" all over Europe and Asia (and even parts of America). Why bother with Africa.

Denmark (and Norway, which was at that time part of Denmark) did colonize a small part of East Africa (called the "Danish Gold Coast," today known as Ghana).

But Denmark didn't have the means or the appetite for greater colonial expansion. They got their asses kicked by the British in 1814 (in the Battle of Copenhagen) and then they lost a war over the borderlands of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia in the 1860's, and that pretty much put a stop to any more military dick-swinging from the Danes.

Sweden had St Barts for about a hundred years, but sold it to France.

Denmark had St John, St Croix, and St Thomas, but sold them off. They were used for sugar plantations.

Norway was part of either Denmark or Sweden during most of the colonizing by European powers.

Greenland is still a colony of Denmark.

And Donny wanted it!

My Swedish/Norwegian-by-way-of-Britain-and-Ireland DNA is evidence that the Danes, the Jutes, and the Vikings were all colonizers. They're remembered as invaders, but many stayed and settled.

US Virgin Islands

Denmark had settlements in India at one time.

Vikings integrated. No need.

So I see (ahem) we’re no longer talking about Mitch’s efforts to avoid giving non-millionaires $2,000

Russian nobility are descended from Viking invaders who set up trading posts along the Volga. Vikings appeared outside the walls of Constantinople and ultimately got absorbed into an imperial guard. Besides England they conqured Normandy. William of Normandy was basically a descendant of Vikings. Sicily was ruled by them for a period.

Thank you for sharing, r13. Now, on with a musical segue to get us back on topic...

Um..Iceland? Not independent til 1944.

Didn’t the Dutch colonize South Africa at some point?

My guess that in the 15th century Norway and Sweden were integrated in the economy centered on Russia/Turkey and had no interest in pushing down around Africa like Spain and Portugal did (and which led them to colonize the Americas). They also weren't Catholics interested in spreading Christianity. Then later in the 18th century, their economies remained centered on big landed estates like Prussia/the Baltic, so they didn't experience protoindustrialization to the same degree Britain did. Once the economy took off in Britain, the British began looking for more resources and markets.

I am a historian but I am too lazy to look it up.

r17=Miss Teen South Carolina

The Netherlands is not in Scandinavia.

[quote]Greenland is still a colony of Denmark.

But it's not in the New World, Africa, or Asia.

The Swedes are colonizing the entire world now with IKEA and H&M.

They were too busy selling slaves.

R20, Greenland is considered part of North America and its indigenous population predates European arrival by millennia.

Well they got pretty far south. One of best tours I took was in York, England. Fascinating place where Vikings and Romans met. Great archaeological site.

Why is The Netherlands also Holland and the people are Dutch? Really weird...

Not all of the Netherlands is Holland. Holland only refers to a specific part of The Netherlands.

We call the Netherlands Holland, all of it. So fuck off R26.

Random story inspired by the Netherlandish off shoot: Once as an undergraduate I was up all night writing an Art History paper on Dutch Still Life paintings and as I did my final read through before needing to hand it in in a hour I realized I had discussed Flemish paintings as well. So, I went back are redid the title page calling it “Dutch and Flemish Still Life Paintings of the Golden Age” and all was good!

The Netherlands thing is surprisingly complicated given Holland, Dutch territories, etc.

In short:

The Netherlands is the name of the whole continental country and also the name of the kingdom, which encompasses territories.

Holland = the most-populous two provinces within the Netherlands, North Holland and South Holland. Holland is not really synonymous with the Netherlands but sometimes is used as a surrogate name because most Dutch people live there.

Another Dutch province is Zeeland. Just as New York was once called New Amsterdam, New Zealand was founded by Dutch people.

Some island nations remain Dutch colonies. One of them is St. Maarten, which shares the island of St. Martin with the French territory of St. Martin. These are independent countries that belong to the kingdom of the Netherlands.

Other islands, such as Bonaire, are part of the Netherlands (the country and not only the kingdom), use U.S. currency, and people born there are Dutch citizens who can live in the European Netherlands or on the island at will.

And the Netherlands is not Scandinavia; it's the former German "Lowlands," which is what Netherlands mean--it's basically a giant low-lying flood plain.

Well at least they're not Miss Lake Dardanelle, r19!

Britain, Iceland, Greenland, France ... seems like a lot of colonies to me.

[quote] R27 We call the Netherlands Holland, all of it. So fuck off [R26]. —Britain and the United States

Only uneducated Brits and Yanks call the entirety of the Netherlands “Holland.”

What's more confusing is why Germany has so many very different (i.e., unrelated) names in different languages: Deutschland, Germania, Alemaña/Allemagne, etc. And the Italian demonym for Germany is "tedesco."

Danes call all of the Netherlands "Holland." The Danish word for Dutch is "hollandsk."

...And the Danish word for Germany is "Tyskland" (which sounds like it's related somehow to "Tedesco."). No idea why.

The Delaware Valley was originally the colony New Sweden, and Philadelphia’s flag has the Swedish colors in honor of its origins.

Germany is generally known by its neighbours either by a version of the Latin name Germania, by the main tribe on the Roman border at one point, the Alamans (hence Allemagne and in Middle English Almayne) or by words derived from its own word Deutsch, though often with a shift from D to T - so Tyskland etc. 'Teutonic' comes from another early group of proto-Germans, known to Rome as the Teutones. France is also names after another group of proto-Germans on the Roman borders, the Franks, whose name is also part of the German region of Franconia. The English called the inhabitants of the northern Netherlands 'Dutch', i.e. Deutsch, Germans - because they were the nearest part of 'Germany' to them.

Interesting fact. The brief Swedish colony here brought Finns to America. The Finns stayed after the colony fell and had considerable skill clearing trees to make trails and roads through thick woods.

While they were doing this, they built the sort of cabins for lodging they were accustomed to — log cabins, built from the byproducts of their clearing work. This became the trademark dwelling of the American west.

Another interesting fact — these Finns spent some time in New Amsterdam/New York. That colony had early learned that a cheap and easy way to keep itself fed was to grow cabbages and make a chopped salad with them that was easy to preserve for a long time. The Finns recognized this as a good food to bring along on their trailblazing through the thick forests of America. That cabbage salad was of course Cole Slaw, and it was brought all across America in that way, and is now a staple of American quick eats. And via American deli fare, it spread around the world.

So that brief Scandinavian colonization had echos right down to today.

[quote] Only uneducated Brits and Yanks call the entirety of the Netherlands “Holland.”

Well that’s because most of the industry and population in the Netherlands was in Holland.

I thought calling The Netherlands "Holland" is now racist.

[quote]Well that’s because most of the industry and population in the Netherlands was in Holland.

The semiconductor and tech startup industry is centered in Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, home of Philips. Brabant nearly has as many people as Noord-Holland. And the insurance and banking industry is mostly concentrated in Utrecht. It's not as all-Holland as people think.

The Dutch speak better English than most Americans.

And many Dutch I've met have impeccable American accents.

Thank you r29. Very interesting!

[quote] It's not as all-Holland as people think.

Maybe so but that doesn’t change the fact that the bulk of the wealth and economy of the Netherlands was centered around Holland, and that’s why the country picked up that informal name.

This is obviously a much more extreme example, but the United States has typically been referred to as “America” even though much of the Americas isn’t US, and not all of the US is in the Americas.

The Vikings MAJORLY colonized what's now western Ukraine/eastern Slovakia. My ancestors are from there, but I'm ~32% northern European/Scandinavian/Viking ancestry as a result (at least, according to 23&me).

The US Virgin Islands were a colony of Denmark.

Canada (or at least Newfoundland) came within a single hasty bad decision by Leif Ericsson of being a Scandinavian colony.

You could argue that modern-day Britain was Scandinavia's most successful colony. "Old English" is basically medieval Danish. The Vikings who colonized England basically wiped out the indigenous languages (Celtic, Welsh, Gaelic, etc) & their own language became the baseline norm going forward. It's why Scandinavians don't really shed any tears about switching to English as their de-facto lauguage... English, at its core, is fundamentally medieval Danish with redundant French words added in for good measure. And Norwegian is humorously described as "Swedish, spoken by a Dane" (or "Danish, spoken by a Swede").