AHC: Scandinavian microstates
- Thread starter Alkahest
- Start date
Åland in fact joined the EU partly separately of Finland - the specifics are a bit unclear to me, but due to this they have several tax benefits within the EU that Finland hasn't. I believe that if the EU decided to tighten its grip on Åland in taxation, because of its special status Åland could just leave the EU while still staying a part of Finland. A bit like Greenland is Danish but outside the EU.
There is also the fact that Åland gets more money from the Finnish government than they pay to the mainland, and they have a very solid autonomous position, holding the power to decide on a great many things independently of Helsinki. A major number of Finnish laws does not apply in Åland. The islands are demilitarized, the locals are exempt from conscription to the Finnish Defence Forces, and the Finnish state has only the right to defend Åland in the case of war. To give an example of the autonomy: as a citizen of Finland, I don't have the right to own any real estate in Åland - unless at least one of your parents has the right (hembygdsrätt), such a right can only be requested from the local government if one has lived in Åland for five years and can prove he/she speaks adequate Swedish.
And so on. I believe the position of Åland is such that becoming independent would only in a very, very special situation work to the general benefit of the Ålanders. More often than not, independence would increase their duties and expenses a lot more than their rights and incomes. So unless the Finnish government is fully taken over by the crazy nationalist fringe of the Finns Party, say, the Ålanders will be quite content where they are.
SunDeep
Banned
I had a fair few potential POD's in mind. The most realistic POD would probably have been if the Duchy of Schleswig was never merged with the Danish crown, but becomes a sovereign state in its own right (perhaps even still merging with Holstein due to the marital alliances which brought them together IOTL), or a Grand Duchy in the manner of Luxembourg.
In my opinion though, the most fun ATL I could come up with was one in which the region maintains a dominantly Danish rather than German culture, where the entirety of the region ITTL votes to secede from Germany and re-unify with Denmark in the aftermath of WW1. The region is briefly seized back by the Nazis after a successful invasion of Denmark in WW2, but subsequently liberated- but while the remainder of Denmark is liberated by the Allies, Schleswig-Holstein (aka South Denmark) is freed by the Soviets and subsequently comes under their occupation.
In a near identical situation to that which develops on the Korean peninsula, the Soviet Union refuses to hold elections there, and a Communist government claiming sovereignty over the entire Danish peninsula gets established in S. Denmark. Then, at the height of the Korean War, between late-1950 and mid-1951, the autocratic leader of S. Denmark decides to follow suit and invade N. Denmark in a similar fashion to Kim Il-Sung, leading to the outbreak of WW3 (with the Soviet Union and the nations of OTL's Warsaw Pact united with the PRC, lining up against the newly formed NATO and their feeble Asian allies at a time when a significant portion of their military assets are tied up in Korea).
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Alkahest
Banned
Neat! Where's that map from? Is it from a TL, or just a standalone map?
I'm getting a kind of Iron Islands vibe from it...
Well, South Denmark is Best Denmark.
Alex Richards
Donor
That's kind of what the free Association status is, but called 'Crown Dependency' instead.
Not really Danish but Frisian peasant/merchants Republic in west Holstein.
Wasn't Jamtland a republic for a while before Sweden gobbled it up? Neuter Sweden and it might have a chance of surviving...
The problem with Norrland is that it is very sparsely inhabited in comparison to the more southern parts of the Swedish realm. In a modern comparison, for example, the currently Finnish part of "Norrland" (the former Finnish provinces of Lappland and Oulu) can only boast somewhat over 10% of the national population of Finland, when "Österland" has nearly 90%. Before the modern era the difference was often even more pronounced.
It is most likely that the centres of power controlling what is currently southern or central Sweden and southern or central Finland would control the (their respective) north as well, unless they are for some reason weakened as much as to not be able to do it. Norrland/Lappland simply can't command the resources to put up a continued bid for independence unless the powers to the south, southwest and southeast are continually hamstrung by various troubles. The northern half of the area (that is north of the Bothnian Bay, mostly) was also for a long time mostly inhabited by the nomadic Sami - the ethnic Finns and Scandinavians that moved to the area mostly during and after the medieval era did it at the behest or on the sufferance of the Swedish Crown - as these people would be partly dependent on the southern centres of power, it would be that much harder for them to become independent of said centres.
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I've noticed the OP doesn't require it to be pre-1900. In the city of Copenhagen there is an independent anarchist enclave called Christiania that's recognized by the Danish government, and has been since 1971. What if there are more anarchists in the 1960s and 70s, and they claim various abandoned sections of cities and rural areas? I suspect that Denmark wouldn't be the only country that would willingly set aside small bits of land for these people. And there might groups with other political beliefs who might want communes, as well.
Bavarian Raven
Banned
How about a micro-state on one of the smaller islands off the coast of North America. Since this is a pre-1900 pod... that'd be cool.
whitecrow
Banned
A post-1900 POD: Soviet Union, which occupied the Danish island of Bornholm between 1945 and 1946, creates an independent socialist nation out of island.
That reasoning makes sense, but if *Svealand and *Österland are odren in quarrels with their neighbors, which seems possible, is there even the slightest chance of some state structure forming in *Norrland?
katchen
Banned
Actually, the most obvious candidate is Greenland. Greenland has the resources for independence even if it's 30,000 Danish speaking people are mostly Innuit. And a conservative Danish government could always reverse the pro-Innuit policy and allow more Danish settlement while prohibiting Muslims and other minorities. Denmark then secedes as a conservative "free" Denmark-Greenland..
Other possibilities could be Jan Mayen or Bear Island getting small populations and seceding as tax havens with secret banking.
Still another possibility is, as mentioned on another TL, the Wends settle Jutland, making Jutland a separate, independent state, perhaps dominated by Schleschwig. Dannen (not called Dannmark, which is a frontier name for Jutland, apparently) is only the islands, but also includes the Holstein and Mecklenburg mainland coast. The Danes, living on extremely productive land, but limited in size, learn to extend that land by building dikes and polders between their islands and between their islands and the mainland as the Dutch do. And Aland and Karelia grow by following suit.
Also, Scandinavian mini-states can form on Kurland, Livonia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia and on the Baltic island of Sarimaa.
If Novgorod fails to control Northeastern Europe, the Scandinavian cultural area can expand to include the Komi and Bjarmi regions and Mariel and Mordovia, and perhaps even Ugria, where the Khanti and Mansi live, all speaking Uralic languages in the Ob Basin, all the way to the Yensei, along with the Nenets, who are basically eastern Saami. Siberia dosen't stop being Uralic (and therefore Scandinavian, if Finns are Scandinavian) until one reaches the Yensei.
.Other possibilities could be Jan Mayen or Bear Island getting small populations and seceding as tax havens with secret banking.
Still another possibility is, as mentioned on another TL, the Wends settle Jutland, making Jutland a separate, independent state, perhaps dominated by Schleschwig. Dannen (not called Dannmark, which is a frontier name for Jutland, apparently) is only the islands, but also includes the Holstein and Mecklenburg mainland coast. The Danes, living on extremely productive land, but limited in size, learn to extend that land by building dikes and polders between their islands and between their islands and the mainland as the Dutch do. And Aland and Karelia grow by following suit.
Also, Scandinavian mini-states can form on Kurland, Livonia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia and on the Baltic island of Sarimaa.
If Novgorod fails to control Northeastern Europe, the Scandinavian cultural area can expand to include the Komi and Bjarmi regions and Mariel and Mordovia, and perhaps even Ugria, where the Khanti and Mansi live, all speaking Uralic languages in the Ob Basin, all the way to the Yensei, along with the Nenets, who are basically eastern Saami. Siberia dosen't stop being Uralic (and therefore Scandinavian, if Finns are Scandinavian) until one reaches the Yensei.
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While it would be hard to do that with the local power base only, it might be possible with introducing an outside element. Consider this TL: after the Finnish War in 1809 the Russians have more leverage towards Sweden than IOTL, because of (handwave), and the border of the Finnish Grand Duchy (and thus Russia) is in the north drawn roughly on the Kalix river rather than the Torne and Muonio rivers, running roughly from Kalix to Kiruna to Narvik. This was what the Russians demanded IOTL, and that would leave a bigger chunk of Lapland to the Russians.
Now, let us say that in the latter part of the 19th century, large deposits of iron are found in Kiruna as per the OTL, as luck would have it now on the Russian side. With this and other strategic considerations in the north (a possible access to the Atlantic, etc.), the northern part of the Finnish Grand Duchy is detached from Finland and as a special administrative area ruled directly from St. Petersburg - Finland gets some areas in Karelia as compensation, but the move is still considered as another example of Russian oppression along with the moves towards Russification.
This "Oblast of Lappland" sees Russian resources thrown to it to build mines, defenses and a railway connection between Narvik and the Bothnian Bay and eventually, during *WWI, across Lappland to connect to the Murmansk railway. The population is still mostly Sami and Finnish, partly Swedish and Norwegian, but there is a sprinkling of Russians, mostly soldiers, administrators and their families.
*WWI rolls along and so does the *Russian Revolution. The empire disintegrates. Finland declares independence with German support. In the north, the Oblast of Lappland becomes a refuge for White emigres on the way west. A White Russian provisional government rules the area in opposition to the Reds, based on the local wartime administration and Russian Whites who withdraw there from Finland and Karelia. Before the Germans manage to grab the area, the war ends.
The White administration in Lappland is propped up by the Allied intervention in the north, with British troops mostly. With British, French and American support, a Free State of Lappland is proclaimed, an ostensibly independent White Russian state, which in reality is dependent on the Allies and where the Russians still are just a minority, even if politically stronger than the other ethnic groups.
And there you would have a "microstate" in "Norrland". While the Free State might look big on the map, it would have a population well under 100 000, even with White Russian immigration.
It is of course debatable how "Scandinavian" this state would be - at least geographically it would be partly in Scandinavia, and a small part of its population would be Swedish and Norwegian.
Note that this idea is consistent with my other suggestion about Åland - this alt-WWI could be tweaked to allow two microstates to be carved out of Finland
. Åland is, granted, a lot more plausible.
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Heligoland used to belong to Denmark, even though its population is (IIRC) predominantly Friesian in origin. If that island had been retained as a British colony insteas of transferred to Germany (in exchange for Zanzibar, as IOTL, or on any other basis), and was finally granted independence -- or maybe transition to 'Crown Dependency' status, like Man, Jersey, & Guernsey -- in probably the 1950s, would you accept that as fitting this theme?