ABSTRACT
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Nordic economics were backward in relation to England and other more industrialized countries, Norway and Finland more so than Denmark and Sweden. The incentive for many of the businesses was to catch up in term of economic growth: the Nordic countries were relatively backward in Gerschenkronian terms. All four countries had goods to offer the rest of Europe and soon became large exporters of products within fishery, forestry and mining. In order to carry out this trade, they had to modernize and develop other parts of the economy, for example the infrastructure and financial system. The first generations of the dynasties took part in the formation of a liberalized economy, where they push for institutions that promoted more freedom for business activity. Thanks to natural resources and the dissemination of knowledge and technology, some impoverished economies on the periphery of Europe soon became sophisticated and wealthy, at the beginning of the twentieth century. 1
