The Scandies

Scandinavia is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties.

The term “Scandinavia” in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Together, their currencies are known as the “Scandies“.

Back in the day, Denmark and Sweden established the Scandinavian Monetary Union to merge their currencies to a gold standard. Norway joined later.

This meant that these countries now had one currency, with the same monetary value, with the exception that each of these countries minted its own coins.

But then World War I happened, the gold standard was abandoned and the Scandinavian Monetary Union disbanded.  These countries decided to keep the currency, even if the values were separate from one another. And this remains the state of things.

If you notice their currency names, they all look similar. That’s because the word “krone or krona” literally means “crown”, and the differences in spelling of the name represent the differences between the North Germanic languages.

Crown currencies. What a cool name huh?

I don’t know about you, but saying “Hook me up with some crowns yo.” sounds way cooler than “Hook me up with some dollahs yo.”

SEK and NOK also have cool nicknames, “Stockie” and “Nokie“.

So when paired with the U.S. dollar,  USD/SEK is read “dollar stockie”  and USD/NOK is read “dollar nockie”.