Satellite photo of Scandinavia, February 2003

Scandinavia is a group of countries in northern Europe. Scandinavia has Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some people also think Finland is part of Scandinavia and that Iceland and the Faroe Islands should count. Most of the time, "Scandinavia" is used to mean places where people speak Scandinavian languages, also called North Germanic languages or Nordic. The Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese) are very similar to each other, and many Scandinavians understand parts of the other languages because they are alike. Finnish is not part of the North Germanic language group.