Research on Islam in the Nordic Countries

Abstract

While it may seem surprising that the far-off countries of the North have developed research interest in the Islamic world, a region they have had no colonial or similar relations with, such studies have in fact a long tradition in the Nordic countries. While we need not go back to the medieval Viking contact with the inner Mediterranean and the Arab world, both Denmark and Sweden had relations with various Middle Eastern powers from the seventeenth century onwards. Denmark, a maritime power, traded in Moroccan and other ports in North Africa, while Swedish forces in Central Europe came into direct military confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, to which they were allied for a period. Thus, there is little reason to wonder that the universities in the region developed a Middle Eastern interest.