I think Scandinavia is better off than much of Europe because they didn't get conquered by the Romans & hence failed to catch 'the Roman Disease'
@prometheus . Every country that was conquered by Rome, 'caught it' went onto building unsustianable Empires & in the end descended political, financial & social ruin. Just like the Romans before them. England. France. Germany. Belgium. The Netherlands. Spain. Portugal. I think what these countries didn't realize is they were subconsciously re-creating the Roman Empire & emulating their former Roman masters. But in the end, it did them all in. That's probably one reason Scandinavian culture still flourishes around the world in the form of Norse legends, etc. It left a positive legacy that others actually believe in.Whereas the other European nations colonized and enslaved other peoples. So perhaps their cultures are viewed as oppressive by their former subjects.
Sweden was a bit left alone at that time, norway too I think, there are some Roman influences we have, though the height of the roman Empire was collapsing around 476 AC, at that time the Viking Era wasn´t even started, that was around 750 to 1100.
I think many of the Roman influences still got here, from England, spain and other countries anyway.
I don´t think the nordic flourishing has so much to do with the roman influences or not really, we had our share of the Vatican Catholism affecting our lifes, the pagan ways, the North Asa faith rapidly was pushed aside, so our country became christian fast as many others.
Around 1527-1544, we had lands meeting,(riksdagar) and it was decided to break with the pope, so a huge reformation from Catholism to the Lutherian church.
Our Swedish king who just faught out the Danish king, created the Vasa Bible, which was the first fully Swedish translated Bible, and it was more connected to the power of the king, and the Swedish state, not the pope In Rome.
Around 1248 it is when our land became consolidated in a form we could call it the kingdom of Sweden for the first time, with special laws all over the country. ( Birger Jarl)
That guy we actually have a reconstruction on from his skeleton.
He was never crowned as a king, but as a Jarl, but he did rule and consolidate Sweden in many ways, and is also considered the founder/protector of Stockholm.
He is tributed with a golden sarkofag outside of the the cityhall, but is himself buried in a monestary at Varnhem.
His Son however, became a king later.
Birger Jarl..
Sweden was no Angel on this earth either, not during The viking Age when we in fact had slaves.
Not in the middle ages when we faught wars in Europe either.
After the times of Power of Greatness, Sweden mostly lost wars and land, like finland, estland etc, and was becoming quite poor, and Norway celebrates
the independence from Sweden.
Not until early 1900 until we started to get some equality, and voting right´s things started to get better.
The times..
Long before that, around 12000 years ago, it is said the first humans came to our lands, before that, there was like 3km of thick inland ice preventing this environment from being inhabited.
