"SCANIA

Skåne

CAPITAL: Lund

POPULATION: (95e) 1,511,000 : 1,630,000 Scanians in Sweden. MAJOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Scanian 91%, other Swedish. MAJOR LANGUAGES: Scanian, Swedish, Danish. MAJOR RELIGION: Lutheran. MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Malmo 238,000 (500,000), Helsingborg 107,000 (190,000), Lund 88,000, Halmstad 76,000 (91,000), Kristianstad 75,000 (120,000), Karlskrona 61,000 (86,000), Trelleborg 47,000 (86,000), Varberg 43,000 (62,000). GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 7,452 sq.mi.-19,306 sq.km. LOCATION: Scania lies in southern Sweden, a region of flat, fertile plains, the southern point of the Scandinavian Peninsula separated by a narrow strait, the Kattegat, from Denmark to the west. POLITICAL STATUS: Scania has no official status; the region, as defined by nationalists, forms the Swedish provinces of Blekinge, Halland, Kristianstad, and Malmöhus.

FLAG: The Scanian national flag, the flag of the national movement, is a red field charged with a yellow Scandinavian cross.

PEOPLE: The Scanians are a Scandinavian people of mixed Danish and Swedish descent, their culture and language incorporating customs and influences from both along with many unique traits. The Scanian dialect, widely spoken in the region and claimed by nationalists as a separate Scandinavian language, is, in some ways, closer to Danish than to Swedish. The Scanians have a strong sense of identity and consider themselves a separate Scandinavian nation, their identity as strong as that of the larger Scandinavian peoples. The Scanians are overwhelmingly Lutheran, their Protestant religion an integral part of their culture.

THE NATION: The Scandinavian Peninsula, inhabited since ancient times, was occupied and settled by Germanic tribes in the sixth century A.D. The Scanian tribes settled in the coastal regions in the south and soon spread to the fertile interior. The Scanians of the overpopulated coastal regions, unable to sustain the size of the population, participated in the great Viking expansion dunng the eighth and ninth centuries. Scanian Vikings, searching for land and plunder, raided Britain, Ireland, and Northern Europe.

The Danish kingdom, with its capital at Lund, gained power under King Canute in the eleventh century, becoming an extensive empire that controlled Scania, Denmark, Norway, and most of England. The empire disintegrated following Canute's death in 1035 although Scania continued as the heartland of the reduced Danish kingdom.

Christianity gradually became the dominant religion in spite of fierce resistance. The archbishopric established at Lund in 1104 developed as the ecclesiastical center of all Scandinavia. The Scania region, the crossroads of Northern Europe, became a prosperous center of religious life and commerce. Danish rule of the rich Scanian provinces in the thirteenth century was increasingly challenged by the Swedes to the north.

The Union of Kalmar united Denmark, Scania, Norway, and Sweden in one kingdom in 1397. At the dissolution of the union in 1523, Denmark retained control of Scania and Norway. The Protestant Reformation, accepted by the Danes in 1534. was accepted by the Scanians two years later, ending a serious religious rift between the Scanians and the Danes.

Danish control of both sides of the Kattegat, the narrow strait between Denmark and the Scandinavian Peninsula, allowed the kingdom to halt trade and military traffic between the Baltic and North Seas during the frequent European wars. Sweden's hostile relations with the Danish kingdom centered on a desire to annex Scania to attain a natural coastal frontier and to end Danish control of the Kattegat, the entrance to the Baltic Sea.

Sporadic wars between the two kingdoms in the seventeenth century resulted in the loss of Halland to Sweden in 1645. Renewed hostilities culminated in the Swedish conquest of the remaining Scanian provinces in 1658. War again broke out in 1660, the invading Danes aided by an ultimately futile Scanian uprising against Swedish rule. The Scanians again rose when the war resumed in 1675, welcoming the closely related Danes as liberators from the hated Swedes. Swedish reprisals marked the return of the Swedish authorities to Scania when the Danes withdrew, and peace was agreed to in 1679.

Influenced by Swedish culture and language, the Scanians began to develop away from the more closely related Danes. The evolution of a distinctive Scanian culture led to a decline of pro-Danish sentiment. When the Danes again invaded the region in 1709, the majority of the Scanians remained loyal to the Swedish kingdom or adopted a neutral stance.

Devastated by the long series of wars, Scania began to recover only in the mid-eighteenth century. The end of the Scandinavian wars allowed a period of consolidation of the separate Scanian culture and language, incorporating both the earlier Danish traditions and later Swedish influences. To forestall Scanian unrest, the Swedish government relaxed cultural and linguistic restrictions in the Scanian provinces in the nineteenth century.

A Scanian revival took hold in the 1880s, reversing over two centuries of gradual assimilation. Unlike many European minorities, the Scanian revival failed to evolve a strong nationalist sentiment. The revival, more cultural than most parallel European movements, focused on the modernization of the Scanian language and a renewal of interest in Scania's folklore, crafts, and traditions. The Scanians benefited from neutral Sweden's avoidance of Europe's conflicts and its concentration on social development.

The Scanians cooperated with the Danes to save nearly all of Denmark's Jewish population during World War II. Sympathy for the Danish plight and cooperation with the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation reestablished close ties to the Danes during and after the war. The Swedish government's murky relationship with Nazi Germany is still a controversial issue in Scania. In the decades after the war, Sweden attained one of Europe's highest standards of living under a liberal, democratic government. The Scanians, their culture and language protected, had little motivation to espouse nationalism. However, a small movement in the 1970s began a campaign for a separate Scanian state in a Nordic confederation.

The assassination of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, in 1986, followed by a series of government scandals and a sharp economic decline, politicized the formerly complacent Scanians. A resurgent national movement began to question the benefits and the social cost of Sweden's welfare state. In 1988 the first openly separatist political party formed in Scania as the debate over membership in the European Community galvanized the population. Sweden's entry into a united Europe, strongly supported in Scania, has raised the question of sovereignty within a united Europe. The national movement in February 1994 accused the Swedish government of betrayal when the government dropped Scania from an aid blueprint during negotiations on European Union membership. The fervently pro-European Scanian nationalists have gained support for a sovereign Scania with close ties to both Denmark and Sweden in a united European federation.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Gordon,-Raoul. Sweden: Its Peoples and Industry. 1976.

Kirby, David. Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World 1492-1772. 1990. Lauring, Palle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. 1960.

Loiit, Aleksander. National Movement in the Baltic Countries during the Nineteenth Century. 1985."