The Nordic Council is a forum for cooperation between the Nordic parliaments and governments. The Council consists of 87 parliamentarians from the Nordic countries. The Nordic Council takes policy initiatives and monitors Nordic cooperation. The Nordic Council of Ministers is a forum for cooperation between the Nordic governments. The Nordic Council of Ministers implements Nordic cooperation. T...

A Nordic WelfAre Model? The Nordic countries are all established welfare states, and there has for some time existed a notion of a distinctive Nordic or Scandinavian welfare state; it is often understood in terms of broad, tax-financed public responsibility and legislated, collective, and universalistic solutions that respect employment interest yet aim at welfare and equity goals (1). Lately, ...

BACKGROUND Data from the Nordic health care registers have been of great value in perinatal epidemiological research. It has been assumed that findings from the Nordic population (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) are applicable to other populations as well, including the population of the US. OBJECTIVE To describe and compare maternal and infant characteristics between the Nordi...

BACKGROUND Low Back Pain is a major public health problem all over the western world. Active approaches including exercise in the treatment of low back pain results in better outcomes for patients, but it is not known exactly which types of back exercises are most beneficial or whether general physical activity provide similar benefits. Nordic Walking is a popular and fast growing type of exerc...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Nordic walking and walking on spatiotemporal gait parameters and ground reaction force. [Subjects] The subjects of this study were 30 young adult males, who were divided into a Nordic walking group of 15 subjects and a walking group of 15 subjects. [Methods] To analyze the spatiotemporal parameters and ground reaction force d...

The globally warm climate of the early Pliocene gradually cooled from 4 million years ago, synchronous with decreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In contrast, palaeoceanographic records indicate that the Nordic Seas cooled during the earliest Pliocene, before global cooling. However, a lack of knowledge regarding the precise timing of Nordic Seas cooling has limited our understanding of th...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to examine the degrees of changes in the gait and feet when walking on a treadmill using Nordic poles and without Nordic poles for 30 minutes. [Subjects] The participants of this study were 30 young adult males. The subjects were divided into a Nordic pole walking group of 15 subjects and a normal walking group of 15 subjects. [Methods] The subjects in bo...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular diseases are among the main causes of morbidity and mortality in Norway. The objective of this article is to provide an overview of literature that describes the effect of a Nordic diet in line with the authorities’ dietary advice on risk factors for cardiovascular disease. METHOD Electronic literature searches were undertaken in the PubMed, Cochrane and Embase datab...

This paper reports on a recent initiative undertaken under the language technology programme of the Nordic Research Training Academy (NORFA) to create a network of Nordic research institutes working with multimodal interfaces. In the paper we present the objectives of the network and give an overview of multimodal research and resources in the Nordic

Regulatory reform in the Nordic electricity-supply markets has resulted in a single integrated Nordic electricity market. This paper performs an econometric study of market power in the spot market of Nord Pool, the joint Nordic power exchange. I use a dynamic extension of the Bresnahan-Lau model, and weekly data for the period from 1996 through April 1999. To my knowledge, this is the first st...