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THE PERIPHERY

  What has been said so far is based on opinion and value research in Sweden. To find the more unique and basic aspects of the Nordic mentality, we have to turn to history.
European history has two axes. The first — and for us, the most important — has to do with ideas and values such as rationality and humanitarianism, and moved from south to north. The intellectual sources of our culture are to be found around the Mediterranean: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. The ideas and values in our culture spread northward from Rome, Florence, and Venice. The Alps were in the way, but the values passed to the west of them and formed a cultural center in Paris. They traveled to the east, too, and formed another center in Vienna. Between Paris and Vienna, an arc of lovely cities — Strasbourg, Bruges, Cologne, Constance, Salzburg, and many others — flourished. This intellectual and cultural legacy then spread northward to the British Isles and, with time, to the Nordic regions. 
  The Nordic countries are located at the periphery. The Mediterranean civilization’s cultural legacy was late in reaching this region and gained only a superficial foothold. The Reformation was an attempt to give an independent Central European identity to the currents of ideas traveling from south to north. Significantly, Sweden’s highly intellectual Queen Kristina (1626-89) was unwilling to accept such peripheral placement, so she converted and moved from Stockholm to Rome.
  The other axis in European history went from east to west. Here lay the key to commercial development. If course, the lion’s share of all commerce has always been local, but a good deal of long-distance trading has also occurred. On balance, European commerce traveled from east to west. Venetian merchants traded with their Islamic counterparts along the old trade routes of the Mediterranean. Goods from the Orient followed the Danube and Rhine from Constantinople. Salt was transported from Salzkammergut. Considerable commerce moved from the Baltic countries to the countries of the north Sea. In the northern half of Europe, grain, timber, potash, charcoal, and hemp moved from the underdeveloped east to the commercially developed west. Sweden contributed copper, iron, and herring to this trade. This commerce led to the accumulation of great riches. At the center if this northern trade pattern lay Copenhagen, which, in the past was well as the present, was the undisputed capital of the Nordic 

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