The five Nordic countries will work towards a common defence deal to strengthen NATO’s ability to deter and defend in the alliance’s far north, Norway’s defence minister, Tore Sandvik, said on Thursday.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland are all NATO members since Finland and Sweden joined the alliance in 2023 and 2024, and have steadily deepened their military cooperation since then, including through joint exercises and civilian preparedness planning.
“We have already come a long way within the framework of NATO. We exercise and train together more than ever before. Now we want to take the cooperation one step further and integrate the Nordic armed forces even more closely,” Sandvik said in a statement.
One challenge highlighted by the countries’ military leadership is the need to harmonise laws and regulations, for example on moving military personnel and equipment across borders. “We see that there is potential to remove practical obstacles and adapt laws and regulations to make it possible to operate even more smoothly across national borders,” Sandvik said.
The move is the latest example of the Nordic countries stepping up their defence preparedness, driven by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and by uncertainty over the United States as NATO’s ultimate security backstop. All five have steeply increased their defence budgets and now rank among the alliance’s top defence spenders per head.
Norway and Finland both share a land border with Russia. All of the Nordic states are strong backers of Ukraine, and the region has seen a spate of incidents, including drone intrusions and sabotage of cables and pipelines, that have sharpened security concerns.
Russia has consistently denied that it poses a threat to its Nordic neighbours and has described such accusations as scaremongering.
The image accompanying this article is a file photo from Exercise Nordic Response 24 in February 2024, not from today’s announcement.
Note: this announcement rests on a statement from Norway’s defence ministry as reported by Reuters; no other government has yet published its own account of the deal.
Sources: Reuters — “Nordic countries to work towards common defence deal, Norway says” (https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/nordic-countries-work-towards-common-defence-deal-norway-says-2026-11-12/)
