The Nordic contribution to regional science: People, principles and empirics

This paper examines the contribution of the Nordic countries to regional science scholarship and practice over the last century. In order to do this we begin by reviewing the contributions of five key scholars whose work has heavily shaped regional science thinking in different ways. In each case the work of each of these scholars was seminal in different ways in different strands of regional science research. Yet, at the same time, one of the issues which arises is that the contribution of these key thinkers has to some extent often been rather overlooked, in some cases for linguistics reasons, but in other cases because of changing research traditions. The more recent contributions of Nordic scholars to regional science research are very varied, but at the same time it is possible to detect a clear focus on issues related to knowledge-related and innovation-related topics. The analytical contributions of Nordic regional science research are much bigger than the size of the countries might suggests, but this is not always understood. Moreover, over the years the Nordic regional science community has also played a significant role in regional science institutions and activities, which again is probably more significant than the size of the Nordic countries would suggest.