Originally Posted by
gilpin
I don't really think there is much doubt that Denmark is part of Scandanavia. At various times in history Denmark consisted not only of Jutland and the nearby islands, but part of what is now southern Sweden and at other times much of what is now Norway. On pure geographical grounds (as you indicated) the argument could be made, but I'm not sure many Danes would agree to a re-classification.
At various times in history half of northern Germany was part of Danmark and Mecklenburg is for sure not Scandinavian. Not me, but Wikipedia seperated Danmark from Scandinavia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandinavien
Going back a short period in history, when Greenland was an integrated part of the Kingdom of Danmark, almost 95% of the Danish territory was outside Scandinavia
and even outside Europe. To understand Scandinavia as a "synonymos" of the nordic countries must be an approach of a clueless North American author: Neither Finland nor Greenland are under any suspect to be Scandinavian at all - neither languagewise, nor geographical nor historical. And I am not sure about Iceland and Føroyar either - they share at least long winters and high prices for alcohol.