The historical backgrounds of the five Nordic countries are closely linked, and their lifestyles, religions and social and political systems are similar. Politically, although not the same institution, they all participate in the Nordic Council. The pan-Scandinavian movement tried to unify Denmark, Norway and Sweden into one country in the19th century.
With the independence of Finland in the early 20th century and Iceland in the middle 20th century, this movement expanded to the establishment of modern Nordic cooperation organizations, including the Nordic Council.
There are two language families, namely North Germanic branch of Indo-European Germanic family (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic) and Finnish-Ugric (Finnish) of Ural family. The religion with the largest proportion of believers in the five countries is Christianity and Lutheranism, and they are all highly developed countries.