Scandinavia Trivia
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59 free Scandinavia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Scandinavia is usually three countries, sometimes five, and this quiz covers the whole argument. It opens with what the word actually means and where Pliny the Elder first wrote it down, then moves through the big shared history: the Viking Age from Lindisfarne to Hastings, Erik the Red's optimistic naming of Greenland, Queen Margaret's Kalmar Union and the day Gustav Vasa walked Sweden out of it, Norway's 1814 constitution and its quiet divorce from Sweden in 1905. Geography gets its due too, from Galdhøpiggen and Kebnekaise to the King of the Fjords, the fourteen islands of Stockholm, the artificial island under the Øresund Bridge, and the seed vault buried in Spitsbergen. Then the things Scandinavia exported to the world: Lego's 'play well', IKEA's four initials, Volvo's Latin, Carlsberg's elephant, the Nobel Prizes and the smörgåsbord that conquered America at a World's Fair. Sámi reindeer herding, Midsummer, the Dannebrog and the sunless capital of the Faroes round it out. The easy tier suits anyone who has flown through Copenhagen; the hard end asks about Poltava, Bernadotte and the 1920 Svalbard Treaty. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the countries, cities and institutions involved, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three countries most commonly make up Scandinavia in its narrowest definition?
Denmark, Norway and Sweden
Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all monarchies whose languages are close enough to be mutually understood; Finland and Iceland are Nordic countries, only sometimes counted as Scandinavian.
Q 02Which Roman author left one of the earliest written mentions of the name Scandinavia?
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder, like the geographer Pomponius Mela a generation before him, took it for a large island in the north; the first 'n' of the name is thought to be a slip for an older Scadinavia.
Q 03Which is Sweden's southernmost province?
Skåne
Skåne, or Scania in English, is thought to share its root with the name Scandinavia itself; one reading makes it 'dangerous island', after the sandbanks off its coast, though the first element's origin is uncertain.
Q 04The Scandinavian Peninsula is roughly how long?
About 1,850 km (1,150 mi)
About 1,850 km (1,150 mi) of land that is still rising: Ice Age glaciers kilometres thick pressed the peninsula down, and it has been springing back ever since.
Q 05What is the highest mountain in Norway and on the whole Scandinavian Peninsula?
Galdhøpiggen
Galdhøpiggen, at 2,469 metres, long had a rival in neighbouring Glittertinden, which counted as higher while its summit snow cap lasted but has sat below it since the turn of this century.
Q 06What is the highest mountain in Sweden?
Kebnekaise
Kebnekaise's ice-capped southern peak has melted so far that the bare-rock northern peak, at about 2,097 metres, is now Sweden's highest point.
Q 07The Kalmar Union, joining Denmark, Sweden and Norway from 1397, was the design of which ruler?
Queen Margaret I
Queen Margaret I had her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania crowned king of all three realms at Kalmar in 1397, yet she stayed the real ruler until her death in 1412.
Q 08Whose election as King of Sweden in June 1523 marked Sweden's final exit from the Kalmar Union?
Gustav Vasa
Gustav Vasa took up the revolt after Denmark's Christian II had his father executed in the bloodbath that followed the king's coronation in 1520.
Q 09About how high above sea level is Møllehøj, the highest natural point in Denmark?
About 171 m
About 171 m is all Denmark manages: Møllehøj only took the title in 2005, when a new survey put it centimetres above two rival hills, and a millstone from an old windmill marks its summit.
Q 10Roughly 40 percent of Denmark's population lives on which island, home to Copenhagen?
Zealand
Zealand did not give New Zealand its name: the Dutch named that country after their own province of Zeeland.
Q 11Which two autonomous territories in the North Atlantic form part of the Kingdom of Denmark?
The Faroe Islands and Greenland
The Faroe Islands and Greenland run most of their own affairs, and Greenland's self-rule law of 2009 goes further: it gives Greenlanders the right to leave the kingdom if they choose.
Q 12Denmark's Constitution Day, 5 June, marks the 1849 document that ended which form of government?
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy ended when Frederick VII, met with demands for a constitution soon after taking the throne in 1848, agreed to give up his unchecked power; he signed the new charter the following June.
Q 13Which monarch succeeded Margrethe II as Denmark's head of state after her abdication?
Q 21The Øresund Bridge, opened in 2000, links Copenhagen with which Swedish city?
Malmö
Malmö was a Danish city until 1658, so the bridge tied Copenhagen back to a shore that Denmark once ruled.
Q 22Which scientific scale was devised in 1909 at the Carlsberg brewery's Copenhagen laboratory?
The pH scale
The pH scale was introduced by Danish chemist Søren Sørensen, who ran the laboratory's chemistry department and wanted a handy way to express acidity in his work on proteins.
Q 23Which animal appears among Carlsberg's original logos and gives its name to some of its lagers?
An elephant
An elephant also guards the old brewery's gate: brewer Carl Jacobsen had four giant granite ones built in 1901 to carry its tower on their backs.
King Frederik X
King Frederik X was proclaimed from the balcony of Christiansborg Palace on 14 January 2024, two weeks after Margrethe II announced her abdication in a live New Year's Eve speech.
Q 14Denmark's Jelling stones were raised in the tenth century by King Gorm the Old and which son?
Harald Bluetooth
Harald Bluetooth lent his nickname to the wireless standard, whose logo merges the runes for his initials, H and B.
Q 15Legend says Denmark's flag, the Dannebrog, fell from the sky during a 13th-century battle in which present-day country?
Estonia
Estonia is where legend says a white-cross banner dropped from the sky to rally King Valdemar II's struggling army; Guinness lists the Dannebrog as the oldest national flag in continuous use.
Q 16The Lego name comes from the Danish phrase 'leg godt', meaning what?
Play well
'Play well' became the company name in 1934, when Lego still made wooden toys; its first plastic bricks did not reach the shops until 1949.
Q 17The Lego Group is based in which Danish town, where it also built its first Legoland park?
Billund
Billund owes even its airport to the toymaker: the private airstrip Lego laid beside its factory in 1961 grew into an international airport.
Q 18Hans Christian Andersen was born in 1805 in which Danish city?
Odense
Odense was the home Andersen left at 14, a poor shoemaker's son setting off for Copenhagen to try his luck in the theatre.
Q 19Copenhagen Airport and part of the Danish capital sit on which island?
Amager
Amager became Copenhagen's kitchen garden in the early 1500s, when King Christian II invited Dutch farming families to settle the island and grow vegetables for the capital.
Q 20How does the Øresund Bridge crossing continue from Peberholm island to the Danish coast?
A tunnel
A tunnel: the famous bridge covers only about half the crossing, because on Peberholm the road and railway dive under the Drogden strait for about four kilometres.
Q 24Norway's Constitution Day, 17 May, is celebrated above all with street parades of whom?
Children
Children took over the day after writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson organised a schoolboys' parade to the Royal Palace in 1870; the date itself marks the signing at Eidsvoll in 1814.
Q 25In referendums in 1972 and 1994, Norwegians voted against joining what?
The European Union
The European Union, and its forerunner in 1972, lost both votes, yet Norway follows most single-market rules anyway through the European Economic Area.
Q 26Norway's sovereign wealth fund, among the world's largest, was built from the revenues of which industry?
Oil and gas
Oil and gas money goes into the fund rather than the budget to shield Norway's economy from swings in oil prices; it now owns almost 1.5 percent of all listed shares in the world.
Q 27Norway has two official written forms of its language: Bokmål and what?
Nynorsk
Nynorsk was pieced together in the 1800s by linguist Ivar Aasen from Norway's rural dialects, as a home-grown rival to a written language inherited from centuries of Danish rule.
Q 28Which fjord, reaching 205 km inland, is Norway's longest and deepest?
Sognefjord
Sognefjord plunges more than 1,300 metres below sea level, yet a rock sill at its mouth leaves the entrance only 100 to 200 metres deep.
Q 29Norway's capital was known by what name before it became Oslo in 1925?
Christiania
Christiania took its name from King Christian IV, who moved the town beside Akershus Fortress after a fire in 1624 and named the new city after himself.
Q 30The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, opened in 2008, sits on which island of the Arctic archipelago?
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen's permafrost would keep the seeds frozen even without power, and the vault proved its worth when war shut a gene bank near Aleppo and scientists withdrew their backup seeds to rebuild it.