Ok I'm used to considering only Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland as Nordic countries. They're also the only members of the Nordic council.

Estonia I've always just considered a Baltic country, which I suppose is accurate as well. Not that these definitions really matter anyway.

>> Also, I didn't know Estonia was a Nordic country.

Relevant: https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher

https://satwcomic.com/imposter

https://satwcomic.com/new-nordic

A funny take on why other 'Nordic' countries don't think so

Well, true, all the big players are from USA. But as far digital innovation inside of a nation go, and for the nation, USA needs to do a lot of catching up. Because while true that USA made a thing called "instagram influencers", it has done very little for its people.

If by Nordic you mean Northern European, then Estonia is Nordic, all tho' often misrepresented as Eastern European.

> We use Google, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Apple - all American products.

You say we use them now. But some of these companies are barely past their teenage years. Nokia as a company is around 150 years old, they didnt win fast and they are still in business (but not in the phone business)

How long any of these current, not winners but ”winning it right now” last? Who knows.

They are still young, but they will all fail or ceases to exist eventually and hopefully dont leave cities bankrupt behind them.

Also, we all had instant messages, social networks (very small, geographically) etc. before these behemoths and now days globalism is getting some pushback around the globe, who knows how long and what markets they can later dominate.

But on the other hand, any meaningful comparisons get harder and less relevant for us if we use a time span of the past 150 years. I don't know if it really even matters that much that most companies die eventually. They're still producing lots of value right now. While Nokia is certainly not doing particularly well nowadays despite having a long and partially very successful history.

Edit: year

What's your point? The Nordics have a relatively high contribution of "innovations", higher than other countries that don't work "half the hours".

Examples: Linux, Spotify, Unity, King, the radio base stations that your phone might be connected to, ...

But even Linux was ultimately developed in USA. So was/is Unity. I don't know if Linux would've ever been the success it is had Linus Torvalds stayed in Finland developing it.

I'd hope we would have a big list of recent examples of major innovations from the Nordics but unfortunately nearly all the major digital products or innovations seem to be decades old. I can't think of almost any globally really promising Finnish digital startup right now.

I still remember Skype before Microsoft. And Nokia before Microsoft :-)