Scandinavian Peninsula

The Scandinavian Peninsula is a peninsula in Northern Europe, which today covers Norway, Sweden, and most of northern Finland.

The name of the peninsula is derived from the term Scandinavia, the cultural region of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. That cultural name is in turn derived from the name of Scania, the region at the southern extremity of the peninsula that has during periods been part of Denmark, that is the ancestral home of the Danes, and that is now part of Sweden. The derived term "Scandinavian" also refers to the North Germanic peoples who speak Scandinavian languages, considered to be a dialect continuum derived from Old Norse. These languages are Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Icelandic, with the latter two being closest to Old Norse.

The Scandinavian Peninsula can be said to be the largest peninsula of Europe, a continent that is itself a large peninsula of Eurasia. However, Europe contains several large peninsulas, including the Balkan, the Iberian and the Italian peninsulas. During the Ice Ages, the British Isles were another single peninsula extending from the body of the continent. Hence, the question of which is the largest peninsula in Europe is a debatable one, depending on arbitrary human definitions of where the peninsulas begin—and on which century one chooses to consider: sometimes, Scandinavia as a peninsula has not existed. During the Ice Ages, the sea level of the Atlantic Ocean dropped so much that the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Bothnia, and the Gulf of Finland disappeared, and the countries now surrounding them, including Germany, Poland, the other Baltic countries and Scandinavia, were directly joined by land.