2. The Nordic ocean economy and societal drivers
This chapter offers an overview of the entire Nordic ocean economy and the relative importance of its key sectors. It also introduces some key trends in the underlying socioeconomic driving forces.
2.1 Socioeconomic driving forces
The key driving forces behind economic activity in the ocean are population growth and economic development. As living standards grow, people tend to consume more goods and services, including those produced from the ocean. Innovation and market access are essential to drive productivity improvements, and we review how the Nordics fare in these dimensions.
2.1.1 Population development
The population of the Nordic region is around 28 million, as of 2025. More than a third of the Nordic population lives in Sweden, which has surpassed 10 million. Denmark and Finland earlier had similar population sizes, but Denmark has grown faster and reached 6 million. Finland and Norway each have around 5.5 million, and Iceland around 380,000. The Faroe Islands and Greenland each have slightly more than 50,000 people, and Åland around 30,000. In total, the population of the Nordics is around 6% of the 450 million in the EU in 2025 (EUROSTAT, 2025d).
Aging populations: Like most European and industrialized countries, the Nordics experience sub-replacement fertility rates. Most population forecasts still indicate some growth due to immigration, with relatively high wages attracting talent to the region. The total working age population (20–64 years) declined 3% for the region over the period 1990–2025, with big variations between countries (Nordic Statistics, 2025b). For the 2023–2040 period, Norlén et al. (2024) estimates a marginal 1.9% increase in working-age populations in the Nordics, as opposed to a 6.5% decline in the EU. The risk of declining working-age populations will likely drive capital investment in technologies such as automation, to improve productivity and support economic growth (Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2022).
Figure 2-1 Population forecast to 2050, with left pane showing countries with population above 1 million people and right pane showing those with population below 1 million
Source Nordic Statistics (2025a): forecast for Åland available only up to 2040
Urbanization: All Nordic countries see shifts in the spatial distributions of their populations towards the major cities (Norlén et al., 2024). In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the major cities in the south have increased their shares of the populations over time, but the shift is historically most pronounced in Sweden. The same trend is clear in Denmark and Iceland, with Copenhagen and Reykjavík seeing their shares of national population soar. Urban population centres are not necessarily hubs for core activities in the ocean economy but often provide a range of related services.
2.1.2 Living standards
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most used indicator for the economic output of countries, calculated as the gross value added (GVA) less the value of production inputs (production approach), or the sum of government expenditures, investments, and consumption, plus net exports (expenditure approach), with both approaches yielding the same result. Hence, GDP per capita both measures living standards and the productivity of the economy overall.
The Nordic countries all rank high in GDP per capita terms globally and by European standards but still see substantial variation, ranging from Finland at little more than EUR 50,000 to Norway above EUR 70,000.
Measured in constant 2024 EUR, and at purchasing power parities from 2017 international USD. IIASA (2025) states values in constant 2017 USD. These numbers are therefore not directly comparable with others in the report.
Figure 2-2 GDP per capita forecast to 2050, under SSP2 – ‘Constant Compromise’, excluding Åland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland
Source IIASA, 2024
2.1.3 What the scenarios say about population and living standards
Tables 2-1 and 2-2 show population and GDP per capita under the four scenarios for 2050. The scenarios consistently show the slowest increases in population and living standards when there is ‘Regional Rivalry’, and the fastest (for all countries) under ‘Growth First’. ‘Nature First’ and ‘Constant Compromise’ lead to identical populations in 2050, but ‘Nature First’ delivers higher living standards than ‘Constant Compromise’. Table 2-1 also contrasts the scenarios with Nordic Statistics (2025a) population prognosis referred to in Figure 2-1. The data in Figure 2-2 corresponds to the ‘Constant Compromise’ scenario.
The Nordic population grows in all scenarios, and this is also observed on the country level, except for Finland. Finland only sees population growth in the ‘Growth First’ scenario. Icelandic population growth in all SSPs is lower than the 2050 forecast by Nordic Statistics (2025a). The difference between the lowest and highest population scenarios for 2050 is between 7% and 12% for all countries. GDP per capita grows the fastest in Iceland in all scenarios, but only in ‘Growth First’ does the estimate for Iceland bypass that of Norway. The difference between the highest and lowest GDP per capita scenarios for 2050 is between 22% (Norway and Sweden) and 27% (Iceland).
One caveat of the SSP framework is that it does not address the recent boom in artificial intelligence (AI) (Carlsen et al., 2024), and these analyses therefore do not fully consider the potential economic impact of AI on productivity and employment. This effect is highly uncertain, and DNV (2025a) assumes a modest addition to GDP per capita to account for this effect, for a ‘most likely scenario’ assumed to lie between ‘Constant Compromise’ and ‘Regional Rivalry’.
Table 2-1 Population forecast (million people) and range of scenario estimates
Source Nordic Statistics (2025a); Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (2023)
2050 scenarios | 2050 forecast (Fig 2-1) | |||||
2025 | Nature First | Constant Compromise | Regional Rivalry | Growth First | Nordic Statistics | |
Denmark | 5.9 | 6.2 | 6.2 | 6.1 | 6.5 | 6.3 |
Finland | 5.6 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.4 | 5.8 | 5.5 |
Iceland | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.5 |
Norway | 5.6 | 6.1 | 6.1 | 6.0 | 6.6 | 6 |
Sweden | 10.6 | 11.7 | 11.7 | 11.4 | 12.7 | 11.3 |
Table 2-2 GDP per capita forecast and range of scenario estimates (2024 EUR, 2017 PPP)
Source IIASA, 2024
2050 scenarios | |||||
2025 | Nature First | Constant Compromise | Regional Rivalry | Growth First | |
Denmark | 74 000 | 101 000 | 97 000 | 85 000 | 111 000 |
Finland | 61 000 | 88 000 | 83 000 | 74 000 | 97 000 |
Iceland | 74 000 | 119 000 | 113 000 | 97 000 | 133 000 |
Norway | 85 000 | 120 000 | 113 000 | 101 000 | 129 000 |
Sweden | 70 000 | 103 000 | 97 000 | 86 000 | 111 000 |
2.1.4 The role of innovation
The last few years have seen rising concerns over European competitiveness relative to China and the US, especially following rising geopolitical tensions and years of ambitious regulatory efforts related to climate, energy, and environmental sustainability that have made compliance more complex and driven up costs (European Commission, 2024c). Still, the Nordics perform well on technology development and innovation, with the region’s listed companies reporting higher annual returns than in other European countries (The Economist, 2024). Particularly in the digital sphere – where development globally is currently led by the US – the Nordics are ahead of Europe as a whole. Explanations of this include high uptake of digital technology in society (e.g. early digitalization in banking, insurance, public services), attractive cost-to-skill ratio in engineering, large industrial players (e.g. Equinor and Maersk) that invest heavily in technology, and generous education and social welfare systems (Bjørndalen et al., 2024).
Figure 2-3 shows that private and public research and development (R&D) spending in most of the Nordic countries exceed the EU average when measured as a share of GDP. Sweden spent approximately the same share of GDP on R&D efforts as the US, while both Denmark and Finland spent slightly less than 3%. Only Norway spent a lower share of GDP on R&D than the EU average. Sweden currently (as of 2024) also attracts the most early-stage venture capital among the Nordic countries (NVCA, 2025) and ranks second on the Global Innovation Index (WIPO, 2025), often explained by good framework conditions both in a Nordic and a global context. A good example of Nordic collaboration in R&D is the Nordic Five Tech alliance
Aalto University in Finland, Chalmers University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, DTU in Denmark, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Nordic Five Tech, 2020).
2.1.5 The Nordics as small, open economies
Figure 2-4 shows the value of trade (exports plus imports) as a share of GDP. This is a commonly applied measure of economic openness, often referred to as the ‘trade openness index’. The openness of the Danish and Faroese economies exceeds that of the EU average, whereas Iceland and Norway are relatively less dependent on trade. Neither Iceland nor Norway are member states of the EU but have access to the EU internal market through the EEA (European Economic Area). Compared to the US, all Nordic countries are highly exposed to trade through their tight integration with European markets. The ocean economy is especially export-driven, with seafood production exceeding consumption in Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands as examples.
Foreign trade is a source of significant revenue but also creates vulnerabilities in the Nordic ocean economy. For instance, the Faroese and Greenlandic economies are particularly exposed to trade disruptions affecting seafood, as seafood contributes more than 90% of their exports (Hendriksen and Hoffmann, 2025). For Denmark, exports of goods (e.g. equipment) and services (e.g. international shipping) constitute more than 80% of the output of the maritime industry (COWI, 2024).
Figure 2-3 Research and development expenditure as a share of GDP in 2020
Source UNESCO Institute of Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Figure 2-4 Trade (exports plus imports) as a share of GDP in 2020
Source World Bank and OECD (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
2.2 How economically important are the ocean sectors?
There are big disparities between the ocean economies of the Nordic countries. For the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, the seafood industry is of utmost importance for the national economy. Aquaculture alone contributes 8% of the Faroese GDP (ICES, 2023), and 2% to 3% in Åland (ÅSUB, 2024). In Norway, the ocean sectors have contributed at least 10% of GDP since the 1800s, first with seafood, then with increasing emphasis on shipping, and lately (last 40–50 years) on offshore energy (Grytten and Koilo, 2025). Similarly, Denmark has historically played a large role in seafood and shipping. This contrasts with Sweden and Finland which in recent years host much smaller ocean economies.
Figure 2-5 shows the direct economic contributions, measured in GVA (see text box) of the ocean sectors of Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. This does not include oil and gas, and coastal and marine tourism. These sectors are excluded due to the disproportionately big GVA contribution by fossil fuels (20% of Norway’s GVA and 75% of its ocean economy (Randen et al., 2022)), and due to methodological differences between the EU and Norway in including tourism in ocean accounts. Without oil and gas and tourism, the value added of Norway’s and Denmark’s ocean economies were approximately of equal size in 2020. The Danish ocean economy has undergone a dramatic shift away from fossil-fuel dependency since 2010, with offshore wind GVA tripling between 2010 and 2020 from a very low starting point. Still, Danish maritime transport GVA has increased even more in absolute terms. In Norway, growth in seafood was insufficient to offset declining activity in the shipbuilding and maritime transport sectors, and the GVA of the ocean economy (excluding fossil fuels) was slightly lower in 2020 than in 2010, after peaking in the interim years.
Figure 2-6 shows the breakdown of the Nordic ocean economy by sector (excluding oil and gas and coastal and marine tourism). In this view, maritime transport and associated maritime activities such as ports and shipbuilding contribute more than the seafood industries and the nascent offshore wind industry. Figure 2-6 focuses on direct contributions, but it is important to acknowledge that the forecasted rapid growth in offshore wind will drive activity in other sectors that are part of the offshore wind supply chain, such as ports, shipbuilding, and maritime transport. Besides this, these statistics could underplay the role of services in the ocean value chains, as these often fall outside the classification schemes used to quantify the size of the ocean economy.
Figure 2-5 Gross value added of ocean industries by country, except oil and gas, and coastal and marine tourism
Source EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025); Statistics Faroe Islands (2025c); Statistics Greenland (2025c); Statistics Iceland (2025c); and Statistics Norway (2025a)
Gross value added
To measure direct economic impact, we use gross value added (GVA). This measures the value of the gross output of a production process minus the value of the inputs that are transformed by use of capital and labour in the production process. GVA only captures the direct value creation in the sector, and hence does not consider the sector’s supply chain, thereby avoiding double counting. There are no directly comparable datasets for GVA that cover the ocean economy for all Nordic countries, so some sectors are not accounted for here. For the three EU member states – Denmark, Finland, and Sweden – the EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025) provides a comprehensive satellite account for sectors and subsectors, most recently updated with 2021 data. For Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland, we make direct use of national accounts data. A known issue with relying on national accounts for estimating the size of the ocean economy is that the categorization is often broad and not developed with the intent of separating out marine and maritime activities. Separate ocean accounting approaches have been developed by the national statistical bureaus in Norway (Randen et al., 2022) and Sweden (Vanacore et al., 2024).
Although coastal and marine tourism is a big GVA contributor, it is intentionally left out in Figure 2-5 and 2-6 as it is often difficult to categorize: In 2019, the last pre-COVID year, coastal and marine tourism contributed 63% of Sweden’s ocean economy GVA, 42% of Finland’s, and 24% of Denmark’s. In contrast, the Norwegian ocean accounts (Statistics Norway, 2024) estimate that only 5% of Norway’s GVA from the ocean economy came from coastal and marine tourism (after excluding oil and gas and related services), indicating methodological differences from the EU approach. Åland is also excluded, since the categorization is inadequate, despite significant contributions from ocean sectors to Åland’s economy.
Figure 2-6 Gross value added of ocean industries, except oil and gas
Shipbuilding data series is called ‘Building of ships, oil platforms and modules and other transport equipment’.
Source EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025); Statistics Faroe Islands (2025c); Statistics Greenland (2025c); Statistics Iceland (2025c); and Statistics Norway (2025a)
2.3 Employment in the Nordic ocean economy
The Nordics have an inclusive labour market, with high labour participation by European standards. Within the EU, only the Netherlands has a higher employment rate than Sweden and Denmark as of 2022 among those in the age bracket 20–64 years (Norlén et al., 2024). From high employment rates, many regions and sectors of the economy are at risk of labour shortages as the working-age population stagnates, but the changes in working-age populations vary greatly between regions. Rural areas are especially at risk as young people move to urban areas (Norlén et al., 2024), and much of the ocean economy operates from coastal communities with low populations. Aquaculture is one key example, employing 13,000 people across the Nordics, with around 10,000 in Norway (Statistics Norway, 2024), and most of the remainder in the Faroe Islands and Iceland (Statistics Faroe Islands, 2025b; Statistics Iceland, 2025a). In Norwegian aquaculture, almost 60% of the employees live in municipalities classified as ‘least’ or ‘second-least’ central (Statistics Norway, 2025c), and only around 20% of employees at the farms are female (Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, 2025a). Hence, improving the gender balance in aquaculture could increase the resilience of rural, coastal communities across the Nordic region.
Table 2-3 compares employment estimates for 2015 and 2020 as provided in the EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025) (for Denmark, Finland, and Sweden) and the Norwegian ocean satellite accounts (Statistics Norway, 2024). In the EU accounts, tourism (e.g., accommodation, transport, activities) is by far the biggest employer in the ocean economy. Even in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism accounted for 65% of Swedish ocean economy employment, and more than 50% in Denmark. The sizeable employment footprint of the shipbuilding and offshore oil and gas sectors in Norway should be noted. Much of the offshore construction and equipment sector is included in the shipbuilding category, and this sector is increasingly serving the fast-growing offshore wind industry in the Nordics and beyond. Only Denmark had direct employment in offshore wind (electricity production, transmission, and distribution) as of 2020, according to the EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025). In contrast, Ørsted – the biggest offshore wind farm operator - employed 2,000 people in Denmark in 2020 (Ørsted, 2020). Ørsted’s global staff totalled 6,000, of which half worked in the offshore wind area (Ørsted, 2020). Ørsted’s staff grew another 25% to 8,000 people in 2024 (Ørsted, 2024).
As mentioned in Section 2.2., the Norwegian ocean economy estimates for tourism are not directly comparable with those of the EU member states due to differences in methodology. Similarly, the direct employment estimates in Table 2-3 are not directly comparable with estimates in industry-specific reports, which often include indirect employment effects. For instance, both Danish (COWI, 2024) and Norwegian (Menon Economics, 2025) estimates for the maritime industry include subsectors that cross into the tourism (e.g. cruise), aquaculture (e.g. wellboats), and offshore industries (e.g. offshore ships).
Table 2-3 Direct employment (full-time equivalents) in Denmarka, Finlanda, Norwayb, and Swedena, by ocean industry in 2015 and 2020.
aSource EU Blue Economy Observatory (2025); bSource Statistics Norway (2024)
Shipbuilding includes ‘Building of oil platforms and modules’ and ‘Equipment and repair’. ‘Ports’ not available for Norway.
2015 | 2020 | |||||||
Denmark | Finland | Norway | Sweden | Denmark | Finland | Norway | Sweden | |
Fisheries | 1 700 | 1 700 | 9 000 | 1 800 | 1 800 | 1 600 | 9 400 | 1 900 |
Marine aquaculture | 100 | 200 | 7 000 | 100 | 100 | 200 | 9 800 | 100 |
Fish processing | 4 300 | 1 200 | 12 600 | 2 200 | 3 100 | 1 300 | 14 100 | 2 300 |
Maritime transport | 34 200 | 10 700 | 30 400 | 17 300 | 22 900 | 9 700 | 28 400 | 14 800 |
Ports | 5 700 | 7 600 | N/A | 3 700 | 5 600 | 5 800 | N/A | 4 000 |
Shipbuilding | 3 600 | 8 300 | 32 000 | 7 000 | 3 500 | 8 700 | 31 900 | 7 600 |
Offshore oil and gas | 2 700 | N/A | 26 100 | N/A | 2 600 | N/A | 24 700 | N/A |
Offshore oil and gas services | N/A | N/A | 51 400 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 56 100 | N/A |
Offshore wind | 900 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 1 100 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Coastal and marine tourism | 61 200 | 21 900 | 1 400 | 57 000 | 48 100 | 18 000 | 13 700 | 63 300 |
2.4 Productivity in the Nordic ocean economy
With rising concerns about European competitiveness (European Commission, 2024c), the Nordic ocean economy needs to contribute to both future economic growth and ocean sustainability. Macrotrends such as aging populations and increasing urbanization also indicate that it is essential to raise labour productivity in the ocean economy in the years ahead. The OECD (2025) states that ocean industries do not yet take full advantage of new digital technologies that could improve productivity, and this is likely true for the Nordic ocean economy as well.
Figure 2-7 illustrates the relative labour productivity of selected sectors
Categories that are included in the Norwegian ocean accounts but excluded here are: ‘Services incidental to oil and gas extraction’, ‘Building of oil platforms and modules’, ‘Equipment and repair’, ‘Domestic shipping’, ‘Services incidental to sea transport’, ‘Supply operations’, ‘Research and development’, and ‘Other service production’.
A common trait for the sectors that see the highest labour productivity is the focus on production of commodities (seafood and fossil fuels) for export, rather than services (e.g. tourism) or manufactured products (e.g. ships and marine equipment). Although tourism is a labour-intensive sector with relatively low productivity compared to other sectors in the ocean economy, tourism plays a vital role in sustaining coastal communities.
Besides labour, it is also necessary to understand the role other input factors play in the production process. Figure 2-8 shows the relative importance of intermediate consumption, capital, and labour in generating the gross output of Norwegian ocean economy sectors. Offshore oil and gas are by far the most capital-intensive of these industries, whereas the fisheries and coastal and marine tourism stand out as most heavily reliant on labour for value creation. Rapidly evolving sectors such as offshore wind rely on large investments in physical infrastructure, with relatively light personnel needs, and hence will likely have a structure similar to oil and gas. In marine aquaculture’s move to more technology-intensive operations, a drive to larger investment has already been observed (Misund, 2022).
Figure 2-7 Relative labour productivity of selected ocean industries in Norway. All sectors scaled relative to tourism, which is set equal to 1 in 2020.
Source Statistics Norway, 2024
Figure 2-8 The share of intermediate consumption of goods and services, capital, and labour in gross output of selected Norwegian ocean industries in 2018
Source Statistics Norway, 2024