Scandinavia is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties.
The Nordic Council is the official body for formal inter-parliamentary Nordic cooperation among the Nordic countries. Formed in 1952, it has 87 representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden as well as from the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Åland Islands. The representatives are members of parliament in their respective countries or areas and are elected by those parliaments. The Council holds ordinary sessions each year in October/November and usually one extra session per year with a specific theme. The council's official languages are Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, though it uses only the mutually intelligible Scandinavian languages—Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish—as its working languages. These three comprise the first language of around 80% of the region's population and are learned as a second or foreign language by the remaining 20%.
The polka is originally a Czech dance and genre of dance music familiar throughout all of Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the nineteenth century in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. The polka remains a popular folk music genre in many western countries, and is performed by many folk artists.
In partner dancing, closed position is a category of positions in which partners hold each other while facing at least approximately toward each other.
The polska is a family of music and dance forms shared by the Nordic countries: called polsk in Denmark, polka or polska in Estonia, polska in Sweden and Finland, and by several different names in Norway. Norwegian variants include pols, rundom, springleik, and springar. The polska is almost always seen as a partner dance in 3
4-beat (help·info), although variants in 2
4 time, as well as in compound meters also exist.
The polka-mazurka is a dance, musically similar to the mazurka, but danced much like the polka. Many polka-mazurkas were composed by Johann Strauss II and his family. Johann Strauss I did not compose any of this type of music; the first polka-mazurka example written by the Strauss family was in the year 1854 by Johann Strauss II, entitled La Viennoise op. 144.The polka-mazurka was not credited to the Strauss family alone, as many Viennese composers in the 1850s era also wrote many examples. This variant of the polka was seen as cross-cultural, as many of its influences can be seen in the French-polka with its feminine and deliberate steps as well as the exciting schnell-polka, where Eduard Strauss composed many famous pieces of this type.
Nordic folk music includes a number of traditions of Nordic countries, especially Scandinavian. The Nordic countries are Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
The schottische is a partnered country dance that apparently originated in Bohemia. It was popular in Victorian era ballrooms as a part of the Bohemian folk-dance craze and left its traces in folk music of countries such as Argentina, Finland ("jenkka"), France, Italy, Norway ("reinlender"), Portugal and Brazil, Spain (chotis), Sweden, Denmark ("schottis"), Mexico, and the United States, among other nations. The schottische is considered by The Oxford Companion to Music to be a kind of slower polka, with continental-European origin.
The National Nordic Museum is a museum in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States, dedicated to the history of the area's Nordic immigrants. It was founded in 1980 as the Nordic Heritage Museum, moved into a permanent, purpose-built facility in 2018 named the Nordic Museum, and was designated as the National Nordic Museum in 2019. The museum serves as a community gathering place and shares Nordic culture by exhibiting art and objects, preserving collections, and providing educational and cultural experiences from Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish Americans.
Traditional Nordic dance music is a type of traditional music or folk music that once was common in the mainland part of the Nordic countries — Scandinavia plus Finland. The person who plays this kind of music might be called speleman (Swedish/Norwegian), spelman (Swedish), spel(l)emann (Norwegian), pelimanni (Finnish) or spillemand (Danish). Finnish traditional dance music is often called pelimanni music in English, while there does not seem to exist a similar, widespread term for the corresponding music from the other countries. It is often more meaningful to distinguish between the traditional dance music from different regions than between music from the countries as such. Some concepts in the field can be defined as Norwegian or Finnish, but most are either common to all four countries or local. Besides the dance music tradition, all countries also have other traditions of folk music that are not shared to a similar extent.
Bygdedans is the regional, traditional dance of Norway. Bygdedans are the oldest and most distinctive among Norwegian folk dances.
The hambo is a traditional dance that originated in Sweden in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a couple dance in 3
4 time, danced to music played with a strong accent on the first beat and a tempo that varies from moderate to fast. The hambo is a dance with a fixed pattern and tunes almost always have a corresponding eight measure structure.
Nordic and Scandinavian Americans are Americans of Scandinavian and/or Nordic ancestry, including Danish Americans, Finnish Americans, Icelandic Americans Norwegian Americans, and Swedish Americans. Also included are persons who reported 'Scandinavian' ancestry on their census. According to 2010 census data, there are approximately 10,931,991 people of Scandinavian ancestry in the United States.
The ethnonyms for the Poles (people) and Poland include endonyms and exonyms. Endonyms and most exonyms for Poles and Poland derive from the name of the West Slavic tribe of Polans (Polanie), while in some languages the exonyms for Poland to derive from the name of another tribe – the Lendians (Lędzianie).
The Association of Nordic and Pol-Balt Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Student Organizations (ANSO) is an international non-profit non-governmental organization striving to improve the quality of life of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans - LGBT - students in the Nordic as well as Baltic countries. ANSO targets its activity to LGBT students in Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Åland.
Melodi Grand Prix Nordic 2008 was the fourth Nordic Melodi Grand Prix, a Scandinavian song contest for children. The contest was held on November 29, 2008 in Aarhus, Denmark and the participating countries were Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Each country submitted two songs to participate in the first round with the top placing entry from each country proceeding to the super-final. The winner of the MGP Nordic 2008 was Norway's The BlackSheeps with "Oro jaska beana".
The Nordic countries are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as well as the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland, and the autonomous region of the Åland Islands.
Pehr Hörberg was a Swedish artist, painter and musician. In 1769 he married the maid Maria Eriksdotter and they had three sons.
Danish traditional music is the music genre that has its roots in pre-modern Denmark. In this period it was common for towns to have one or more town musicians who played at dances, processions and certain rituals. In the 17th and 18th centuries, professional music performances were monopolized by town musicians, who also traveled into the neighboring rural areas to perform. Urban music and dance styles, often from other parts of Europe, penetrated the countryside and almost eradicated earlier styles. This period also saw the introduction of the fiddle as the most important instrument and the abandonment of earlier chain dances in favor of pair dances. Until around 1900, traditional music was the common musical culture of Denmark, but with increasing urbanization and the spread of classical music it became marginalized to rural areas.
