Nordic shake-up: Scandinavian navies

Although the navies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are grouped and bound by a shared northern European history and geography, they cannot be categorised as a common block given the very different defence and security outlooks of each nation state.

Each warrants individual scrutiny: Denmark, as a member of both NATO and the EU, has increasingly deployed its armed forces far from home to support coalition operations on the wider international stage; Norway, a NATO member but outside the EU, has taken a similarly proactive stance towards international operations well outside its traditional sphere, although it has in recent years become more mindful of the security of the High North; Sweden, an EU member and active participant in NATO's Partnership for Peace, has also reoriented its defence towards international crisis management and peace support operations; while Finland, the only non-NATO EU state bordering Russia, continues to view national self-defence as the primary mission of its armed forces.

Trends are discernible, however. A comparison of the entries logged in an early 1990s edition of Jane's Fighting Ships with those in the 2009-2010 volume provides a ready indicator of the way in which the size and shape of the three largest Nordic navies - Denmark, Norway and Sweden - have changed over the past two decades.