Nordic Horizons

Iceland has a stunning landscape with glaciers galore … but is more properly fire island. Lava, earthquakes eruptions and volcanoes dominate life and world headlines. Around Christmas 2023, an eruption forced people from their homes in the fishing port of Grindavik. One year and six eruptions later – the townspeople are back. But another eruption nearby is spewing lava into the car park of the fam...

Gothenburg in Sweden once boasted the world's largest shipyards, but in the face of Japanese and Korean competition, the oil crisis and a world economic downturn, the city was brought to its knees in the 1980s, with 5 kms of empty dockland and 20 thousand people without jobs. So far, so very like the Clyde. But though shipbuilding was down, Gothenburg was not out. The City Council bought the empty...

Finland has a particular source of propaganda to deal with in the shape of Russia. Misinformation attacks have focused on familiar issues like immigration and the EU, but also Finland’s application to join NATO. Now the Finns have devised a strategy to teach all social groups to spot fake news and fact-check. This includes lessons in community colleges, digital literacy toolkits and a critical thi...

Finland has a 1300 km long land border with Russia, it fought two wars in the 1940s to defend then reclaim lost territory, and is now applying to join NATO.  There, most knowledge of Finland ends. Which is a shame. Because a staple of Finnish life could offer a permanent solution to supply crises in Britain – if we could learn to rely on cooperatives not corporations to deliver.  The picture shows...

It's twelve years since Dan Wynn and Lesley Riddoch set up a think tank to focus on the policy successes of Scotland's Nordic neighbours. Since then, Nordic Horizons has organised almost 70 meetings - most of them in person until the pandemic lockdown in 2020. Now Nordic Horizons meets online - less disruption and travel for speakers and more access for Scots living outside Edinburgh. We're also p...

'Finland doesn’t have a long history of Kings and castles. We have always been occupied. When we finally became free the country was built on language, literature, music, paintings. Sibelius created the distinctive sound of Finland. You can hear his enthusiasm for the country – the Finnish sagas, the stories, folklore and the language that is ours and only ours - but at the same time you can hear...

Is Scotland set to follow Norway with a shift to kindergarten for the early years and a school starting age 6/7 not the present 4/5? Just 12 per cent of countries send five-year-olds to school. Almost all are former parts of the British Empire, clinging to a model devised to release women from childcare as quickly as possible, so they could work in Victorian factories instead. Child welfare played...

Why did district heating start on farms in Denmark? Are the Norwegians wiser to depend on electrification? Could Scotland do something game changing with smart, local energy networks? Will nuclear help Sweden reach net zero? This 50 minute podcast of the COP 26 - Nordic Verdict event tackles all these big questions with contributions from Viktoria Raft, a former energy journalist and co-founder of...

Since Scotland's 'local' elections in May 2022, there’s been much debate about coalitions and control. But there’s a bigger question – are Scottish councils with an average of 175 thousand inhabitants really local at all? And does that not matter? The EU average council has a relatively meagre 10 thousand inhabitants. And Vágur, on the isolated southern Faroese island of Suðuroy, has just 1377 fol...

This is a podcast edited from the conversation between three Nordic experts talking about Russian aggression in Ukraine and the way it is unravelling 70 years of neutrality and non-alignment in Scandinavia. It deals with opinion polls suggesting most Swedes and Finns want to join NATO, but questions American commitment to the Alliance - in light of remarks made five years ago by President Trump su...