Region of Northern Europe (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, & Sweden)

• Main Authors: Scigala, Karolina Aleksandra, Dammeyer, Jesper, Schild, Christoph, Zettler, Ingo
• Other Authors: Chang, Edward, Downey, Christina, Yang, Hongfei, Muyan-Yilik, Mine
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Springer 2022
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/region-of-northern-europe-denmark-finland-iceland-norway--sweden(2a403d2c-f719-4c75-ac15-9a51191e99a7).html; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57354-6_6

The first part of this chapter provides a brief introduction into the countries of Northern Europe (i.e., Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, to which we refer to as the Nordic countries herein) with respect to cultural, political, societal, and geographic characteristics, as well as the potential links of these characteristics with the countries’ relatively high scores on happiness indexes. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of some positive psychologists of each of the Nordic countries. This includes a methodological description about how the positive psychologists included in this overview were searched and selected, followed by a short biography, main publications and other contributions to the field of each psychologist. The third and last part of the chapter discusses the history, current status, and future perspectives of positive psychology in the Nordic countries. The discussion includes in particular the impact of Nordic research traditions and the influence of the welfare state model of governance on the positive psychology field. In an appendix, an overview of the associations and positive psychologists presented in the chapter as well as recommendations for further reading are provided.