NATIONALISM IN NORTHERN EUROPE

The Observer

Progress party, Norway, 22.9% of the vote in parliamentary elections

The Progress party has seen its vote almost halve since Anders Breivik, who had been a member of the youth wing, shot 69 people dead at a Labour party youth camp last July. It picked up only 11.4% of the vote in this year's local elections. After Carl Hagen shifted it in a strongly anti-immigrant direction, it became the most successful Nordic far-right party of the 1990s. It became the second party in Norway in the 1997 elections, with 15% of the vote, and had increased its share above 22% by 2009.

True Finns, Finland, 19.1% of the vote in parliamentary elections

Started in 1995 as a successor to the Finnish Rural party, the True Finns made little headway until the eurozone crisis, which its leader Timo Soini has expertly exploited to win the party seven times the number of seats in 2011 that it had in 2007. The True Finns stress their strong support for progressive taxation and a generous welfare state, but combine this with support for socially conservative positions on gay marriage and women's rights, controlled immigration, and opposition to the European Union.

Danish People's party, Denmark, 12.3% of the vote in parliamentary elections

Using its position as a supporting party to the ruling Conservative-Liberal coalition, the party in 2002 drove through what it claimed was Europe's strictest immigration policy. Pia Kjærsgaard, the party's leader and co-founder, was one of the strongest voices against Denmark joining the euro in the 2000 campaign. She relentlessly campaigned against immigration when she was supporting the ruling block.

Sweden Democrats, Sweden, 5.7% of the vote in parliamentary elections

They won their first seats in the 2010 general election, winning 20 seats in parliament, but have suffered a string of scandals. They have a strongly anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic stance, and are sceptical of further European integration.