The clearest example of the use of the term "Scandinavia" as a political and cultural construct is the unique position of Finland, based largely on incursions into that country and occupation of it by Sweden, thus to much of the world properly associating Finland with all of Scandinavia.

But the creation of a Finnish identity is unique in the region in that it was forged in the decolonization struggles against two different imperial models, the Swedish and the Russian, as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History[