Originally Posted by
Flying Lawyer
At various times in history half of northern Germany was part of Danmark and Mecklenburg is for sure not Scandinavian.
So if Flensburg were again Flensbourg you'd argue it wouldn't be Scandinavian? No matter, the salient point is that Denmark is historically a Scandinavian country because for hundreds of years it had possesions which are clearly part of Scandinavia by any definition.
Originally Posted by
Flying Lawyer
To understand Scandinavia as a "synonymos" of the nordic countries must be an approach of a clueless North American author:
The writer wasn't clueless; he was explaining a usage, not endorsing it. The usage is akin to the British use of the term "Yank" as synonymous with U.S. American, when to an American the word only refers to someone from the Northeast of the country.
Originally Posted by
Flying Lawyer
Neither Finland nor Greenland are under any suspect to be Scandinavian at all - neither languagewise, nor geographical nor historical.
The claim that Finland is in no way Scandinavian "languagewise" (a.k.a. linguistically) or historically couldn't be more wrong. Sweden ruled most of what is now Finland almost
700 years, starting in the eleven hundreds with more or less total control from 1249 to 1714, and some control until 1809. People of Swedish ancestry make up the majority of the population in some parts of the country, and Swedish is one of Finland's official languages as it is the first language of a sizeable number of Finnish citizens and the official language of some municipalities. Maybe you'd like to claim Sweden and Swedish aren't really Scandinavian either.
And as far as Greenland goes, clearly it is not geograpically even part of Europe (despite the opinion of some Europeans). But what lanuguages do you think Eric the Red or the much later Danish colonists spoke? I'd imagine today the Danish influence in Greenland is quite limited, but historically it was significant.
I guess based on the lines on today's map you could claim Danish isn't a Scandinavian language, since you doubt Denmark is a Scandinavian country. That would fly in the face of the fact that Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are similar enough to be mutually comprehensible to a great degree, while Danish and German are generally not (although German seems to be more comprehensible to Danes than vice versa, probably because of greater exposure to German than the average German has to Danish).
Anyway my point was, it is impossible to enter Scandinavia without entering the Nordic countries! As to whether Denmark is Scandinavian, ask any Dane you meet and then you'll know for sure.