Prevention Strategies and Practices in the Nordic Countries

This chapter is dedicated to a review of the practices used for prevention purposes in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The basis of inclusion has been described in the introductory chapter. The presentation of the results is initiated by some general remarks on the Nordic model (if there is one) of prevention, along with some of the commonalities and differences in the national strategies for handling RWE. This is followed by a review of the practices and initiatives in the respective countries and national approaches that are characteristic for how the problem is being tackled. The country-specific reviews are then followed by an analysis of emerging Nordic collaboration practices and a broader discussion of the results.

Based on the inclusion criteria, the following practices have been identified and selected for this overview:

 On the national level, the four Nordic countries that are the focus in the present report have all developed national action plans to prevent and handle violent extremism and radicalization. The plans center on the need for more collaboration between authorities, professionals, and local resources (Sivenbring & Andersson Malmros, 2019). Furthermore, all four countries place the main responsibility for handling RWE at the municipal level (i.e., the local administrative level). The main rationale behind this approach is that recourses are tied to first line practitioners who understand the local conditions and resources. Accordingly, many Nordic municipalities and agencies have installed a coordinating function, for example, the Norwegian radicalization contact within the police or Swedish municipal coordinators against violent extremism. In line with the localized approach, municipal action plans are recommended in all four countries where the national strategies are to be translated and adapted into local conditions and circumstances. In 2018, 62% of the Danish municipalities had a local action plan for handling extremism (Rambøll, 2018), and 67% of the Swedish municipalities by 2022 had a plan (SKR, 2022).

The main targeted group for the prevention practices is young people in school environments, in youth centers, or social services and various multiagency approaches in cases of “at-risk youth.” However, it is not primarily the young who are the first beneficiaries of the identified practices, but the practitioners working with children and youth. Indeed, most of the initiatives are targeting first line practitioners. By strengthening their knowledge, competence, and awareness, their actions are meant to have a beneficial impact on their students, participants, clients, or the like. This is a seemingly rational and common way to handle societal challenges: the ones who, in their everyday job, interact with young people are in a privileged position to affect a desired change. However, the practices that are implemented to prevent extremism are generally broadly defined and might miss the specific mark of preventing or handling RWE as a unique problem.

It is noteworthy that, except for C-REX (the Norwegian Center for Research on Extremism; NO8), and the EXPO foundation (SW2),

It could also be added that EXPO is “the odd one out.” It is a journalistic organization with the intention of monitoring and informing the public about the right-wing movement, mainly as material published in the journal and online. It can be discussed if this includes a preventive element. However, the workers of EXPO are regularly giving lectures and lessons in schools and civil society organizations—with the purpose of contributing to knowledge and prevention.

none of the identified practices have RWE as an exclusive focus. The extremist milieus (i.e., militant Islamism, left-wing extremism, and RWE) are either lumped together under a unified “violent extremism umbrella” or as two separate but dominant categories that are categorized as a threat to democracy, that is, political extremism and religious extremism. This might be because of the changing landscape in the Nordic countries and the emergence of a “new extremist category”: militant Islamism that calls for initiatives and practices that can aid in the understanding of this (in a Nordic perspective) new phenomena. Subsequently, the more “well-known” RWE falls into the background, or the practices that were previously aiming at preventing RWE are now utilized for a broader purpose. Occasionally, this means including all and excluding none.

Examples of this include SW1, No3, SW7, and No12.

The Norwegian C-REX has the mission to contribute with research-based knowledge on RWE, hate crime, and political violence. The center functions as an international hub and has the aim to disseminate knowledge to relevant actors. Such initiatives not only have a (potential) pragmatic value but can also be symbolically important for accentuating the significance of protecting democracy from antidemocratic tendencies such as RWE. The Swedish Segerstedt Institute (SW9) lies under the auspices of the University of Gothenburg and has a similar function: to be a national resource center with the mission to contribute to increased knowledge about preventive work against violent ideologies, violent structures, antisemitism, and racist organizations. Besides the research on these issues, the institute is collaborating with other authorities and municipalities in developing knowledge and methods. The institute also affords university courses for teachers, police, and other relevant first line practitioners on how to prevent extremism and intolerance. A similar type of organizational platform, though not university based, is the Plattform initiative (NO12), which acts as a coordinating hub connecting 25 Norwegian municipalities in Agder County. Through action research and counseling, academic knowledge of the platform is meant to enforce the local foundation of prevention.

As we will see in the following section, there are influential actors in the respective country that have had a notable impact on the practices against RWE. In Denmark, Preben Bertelsen’s life psychology theory and the Aarhus model have been influential. In Finland, the ministries have had a strong impact on initiatives and actions. In Norway, the Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education is highly influential, building bridges between the different practices, authorities, and organizations, keeping them focused on a joint objective. The Swedish practices are more reliant on the services performed by civil society organizations (CSOs). The influence of specific actors, or certain approaches, can be the reason for some of the national streamlining. Practices and approaches that have been considered successful in one preventive area are translated to another local area with the purpose of handling similar challenges.

When comparing the different national discourses, there is a pattern that separates the Danish–Finnish practices from the Norwegian–Swedish. The former (DK–FI) seems to be in favor of interventive practices that are put to practice when there is a concern of someone being at risk, that is, what we could denote as a countering perspective. The latter (NO-SW) are more prone to engage in early prevention practices that are meant to build a wide resilience against extremism before any risks have occurred.

The present review has identified 11 practices that fit into the inclusive criteria. None of the 11 are explicitly focused on RWE. As previously noted in the overview of the post-Cold War period, Denmark has been less affected by violent right-wing extremist movements than its neighbors. When, for instance, the Danish Centre for Preventing Extremism in 2018 commissioned a research mapping, the challenges posited in the introduction was only mentioned for people traveling to combat zones and attempts to plan terrorist attacks (Rambøll, 2018b). Accordingly, the preventive practices mainly focused on militant Islamism.

In comparison with the other Nordic countries, the Danish strategy has been more focused on securitizing measures and the countering aspects of handling extremism. For instance, the police and PET (Danish security police) are the dominating actors in the policy on prevention (Sivenbring & Andersson Malmros, 2019). The “hard measures” that come with this perspective are represented in, for example, the sanctions practiced by the Copenhagen municipality, where economic benefits (monthly child benefits given to all Danish families) are removed from parents who are reluctant to address radicalization concerns (DK8).

To some extent, all the Danish practices that we have identified are connected with authorities on either a national, regional, or municipal level. The approach is also characterized by its strong trust in multiagency collaboration and cooperation. This is probably a result of the early (successful) preventive strategies performed in the Aarhus model (Bertelsen, 2015) (DK6) and in the Deradicalization targeted intervention program. The Aarhus model is a cooperative multidisciplinary approach that entails both raising awareness among professionals and public, collaboration, and dialogue with actors in the local communities, management of individual cases, and counseling for professionals and affected individuals and their families.

Mentoring and coaching emerges as one of the pillars if the Danish practices (DK5, DK10, DK11). There is a national corps of mentors and parent coaches (DK5) working with those in or affiliated to extremist groups or at risk of radicalization and with their families or kins. The mentoring and coaching are based on “life psychology” (tilværelsepsykologi), a solution-focused method developed by the psychological researcher Preben Bertelsen for helping people handle challenges and find their way in life. It is focused on exploring and developing life skills (tilværelsekompetence) and the achievement of positive goals. Interestingly, life psychology and life skills are also an integral part in three of the 11 Danish practices (DK2, DK5, DK6).

Finally, the Danish practices in this overview have been characterized by its governmental control, in the sense that we have not found any practices that are entirely provided by CSOs. Nonetheless, there are services based on voluntary work. Even though the National Center for Forebyggelse af Ekstremisme og Center for Frivilligt Socialt Arbejde (2020) reviewed how civil society can contribute to the prevention against violent extremism, they concluded that CSOs have a limited, but important, task in democratizing society and building resilience. The review also suggested that municipalities can make use of CSO resources for mapping the local situation and identifying local actors that can be utilized for specific prevention purposes. CSOs can also contribute to building bridges between authorities and citizens in local areas. This can lead to an amalgamation of voluntary services and governing institutions. On that note, the network Youth4youth (Unge4unge) (DK7) is based on youth voluntary work; it is described as a governmental institution and is organized by municipalities. The volunteers are between 16 and 29 years old and arrange activities for 8–15-year-olds in their local area. The objective is to afford positive role models so that young people can support and inspire each other. The volunteers are trained, and there is a handbook based on training days and volunteering in general.

Tight governmental organizing, security focus, and online intervention

The present review has identified nine practices that meets the inclusion criteria. None of the nine are explicitly focused on RWE. The identified Finnish practices aiming at preventing violent extremism are tightly tied to the governing institutions. For instance, the Ministry of the Interior has been influential in forming both national strategies and single practices targeting extremism and terrorism. This gives the authorities the possibility to govern the initiatives and to control, observe, and assess whether they are efficient. In personal communication with the representatives from the Finnish ministries, it has also been confirmed that there is no precise division between extremist milieus. Nonetheless, the latest threat assessments show that the threat from RWE is now the most significant one and that the dissemination of RWE online propaganda and recruitment can be hard to identify and approach. Therefore, Finland is now intensifying their efforts to handle online extremism. Considering the transnational interconnectedness of RWE, this could be a reasonable approach.

The police and security sector are the dominating actors in the Finnish practices for preventing violent extremism, a finding that harmonizes with those in an extensive policy review of preventive policies in the Nordic countries (Sivenbring & Andersson Malmros, 2019). The police are an evident contributor in preventing practices. For instance, the web police officers (FI4) that have existed since 2011 are active on various social media platforms under their own name and affiliation. They participate in discussions, offer support, and are available for answering questions from participants in various media platforms. Furthermore, they are taking part in online forums where local issues are discussed. The web constable function is also used for monitoring risk behavior among minors, especially in cases where school shootings are discussed. In such cases, the web police officers have the mandate to carry out background checks and report to the local police. Interestingly, school shootings are an evident area of focus in Finland, which is not visible in the other countries practices. This is connected to the incidents in Tuusula in 2007 and Kauhajoki in 2008 that actualizes the need for such practices.

CSOs are also utilized for preventive purposes. For example, the Finnish branch of Save the children is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in the RadicalWeb-project (FI7). Another prominent example of a CSO driven practice is the Aggredi program (FI3), which is offering individualized psychological support for at-risk individuals (or those already involved in extremism) and works under the auspices of the HelsinkiMissio. It stands out among the Finnish practices because it is not explicitly connected to or funded by any official authority but by a gaming company.

The present review has identified 12 practices that meet the inclusion criteria. Out of the 12, only a single practice is explicitly focused on RWE. In a review of prevention against violent extremism in Norway, Tore Bjørgo and Ingvild Magnæs Gjelsvik (2015) described how Norwegian research on RWE and racist violence had a great impact on the preventive actions between 1991 and 2005. The research and collaboration with first line practitioners and CSOs gave some valid knowledge on how to prevent RWE and racist gangs through the use of soft measures such as exit approaches, parent networking, prevention dialogue, and individual guidance. Bjørgo and Gjelsvik (2015) wrote that there are reasons to believe that the research-based measures contributed to a more efficient and goal-oriented strategy that, in turn, dismantled the RWE milieu in Norway. In the aftermath of this successful work, researchers turned their attention to other themes and problems. This means that in the period between 2005 and 2011, research on RWE was close to nonexistent in Norway (Bjørgo & Gjelsvik, 2015).

The 22 July 2011, the terror attack on Oslo and Utøya certainly impacted the strategies and practices in Norway, both when it comes to those being developed and their content and focus. Several descriptions of the practices state that they are initiated as a response to the antidemocratic message and ideas that the terrorist had. The attack on a mosque in Bærum in 2019 has become an incentive to further strengthen these practices. Accordingly, the Norwegian strategies and practices are generally less prone to lump together different forms of extremism and more explicit in their focus on RWE compared with other Nordic countries. It should also be noted that teaching about the 22 July attacks have been a mandatory theme in the Norwegian school curricula since 2020.

The Norwegian practices have a specific interest in promoting democratic attitudes and democracy as a term is lending itself to project titles (NO2, NO6, NO7). Thus, the Norwegian actions are more leaning towards a promotive perspective, in which the strengthening of democracy overshadows the repression of negative attitudes. The objectives of these initiative have been related to human rights education and the Council of Europe’s Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (2010). The charter focuses on working with educational initiatives together with teachers and youth to strengthen democratic competencies, values, knowledge, attitudes, and skills. One example of this is Democracy workshop Utøya (Demokrativerkstad Utøya, NO2), which is funded and organized by the European Wergeland center and the Council of Europe. There is no doubt that the 22 July terror attack has had an impact on the implementation on this specific site, but it is important to recognize that Utøya has a long tradition as a place for democratic resilience and education.

The Norwegian practices are also centering families as a resource (NO3, NO5). Family support Sarpsborg was initially focused on working with relatives affected by their near one’s affiliation with RWE but has extended their target group and are now reaching out to other groups as well. The practice is focusing on empowering families, building networks around affected families, and supporting professionals to handle issues related to extremism.

The present review has identified 11 practices meeting the inclusion criteria. Out of the 11, one explicitly focuses on RWE. Sweden stands out among the Nordic countries regarding the inclusion of CSOs (SW1, SW2, SW3, SW5, SW6, SW8, SW10, SW11). This might not come as a surprise because Sweden has (like Finland) a long tradition of advocacy and activities performed by citizen movements (Folkrörelser), which had a great importance for establishing democracy in Sweden during the late 1800s. Marcus Herz (2016) discussed how Sweden has been affected by an institutional deficit, steaming from the privatization of welfare services and segregation issues, which has resulted in social work by CSOs becoming increasingly important. Thus, it can be regarded as a common practice in Sweden to use CSOs when societal unease occurs and there are many opportunities for associations and organizations to apply for funding and grants. The Swedish society’s tendencies to lean toward a social care logic (Sivenbring & Andersson Malmros, 2019) also encompass voluntariness as a backbone for preventive actions.

The Swedish practices are also oriented toward the pedagogical realm, where knowledge about extremism and its drivers are integral parts of various initiatives. The so-called Tolerance project (SW7) has been running for more than 25 years, and its outreach has been constantly expanding. Dedicated teachers, social workers, youth workers, policemen, and church employees work with (mainly) secondary school students as part of the curricula for up to a year. The content is centered around giving the student tools to understand who they are in relation to their environment, and each project period is finalized with a study trip to Holocaust memorial sites. The past seven years leaders of the tolerance projects have been offered a university teacher training run by the Segerstedt Institute (SW9) at the University of Gothenburg.

The construction of web platforms offering online courses and tools is presented as a way to increase knowledge, awareness, and preparedness for action. Occasionally, this is the main practice (SW10), and it is sometimes offered as a supplement or alternative to other educational initiatives (SW1, SW3).

An orientation of the Swedish practices is the empowerment of individuals through self-reflection and awareness to develop tolerance (SW3, SW6, SW7, SW9, SW11). Flamman – socialt förebyggande arbete (Flamman, social preventive work), an organization situated in Malmö, has run a variety of programs for young people and, in recent years, has produced a line of projects focusing on aspects of extremism. For example, Flamman organizes the project Unga mot extremism (Youth against extremism) (SW5). By holding seminars and discussions about norms, masculinity, mental health and emotional resources, the project aims to empower young men in the Malmö area. This entails, among other things, an inventory made by the participants of who they can approach to initiate changes in their local communities.

On the topic of pan-Nordic collaborative practices, we made the decision to make a minor bypass of our inclusion criteria specifying that practices need to have a life span longer than five years. The reason for this decision is that, besides the more long-lived Nordic safe cities network, we found some recently developed cooperation and networking between the Nordic countries. These cooperations are based on practices that have been developed and tested in one of the Nordic countries and have now extended their reach. Nordic cooperation is important and suitable: besides the geographical closeness and language similarities, the Nordic countries share a comparable culture, structures for welfare, and characterization of a high trust in official authorities and democratic governance (Evs, 2021).

This is also noticed in the Nordic safe cities network (NOC1), initiated in 2016 by the Nordic Council of Ministers, currently consisting of 20 Nordic member cities. The purpose of the network is to facilitate Nordic cooperation between associations, practitioners, politicians, researchers, and so on. Nordic safe cities are supporting municipalities and local professionals to create safe and resilient cities standing against polarization, hatred, threats, and extremist violence (Nordic safe cities, 2022). By membership in the alliance, cities can, among other things, get access to new knowledge, attend meetings and assemblies with other municipalities, get advice on local projects from peers and experts, have the opportunity to receive financial support, and receive immediate support in case of a crisis.

Save the children is an international nongovernmental organization with a longstanding tradition of pan-Nordic cooperation on various topics. Recently, the Swedish and Finnish branches have initiated a cooperation on preventing extremism and radicalization online (NOC2). The cooperation is new, but the branches have both been active in preventive work against extremism (Sweden longer than Finland, hence the absence of the Finnish Save the children work in this review). Since 2017, the Swedish practice (SW3) has primarily focused on supporting individuals affected themselves by extremism or who are a relative or friend of someone affected. They also offer information and workshops for professionals and relatives who need more knowledge or information on how to act or who to contact when they are concerned. The Finnish practice is focused on preventing violent extremism and radicalization on the internet and on building resilience among young individuals. During autumn 2022, a Nordic network for preventing violent extremism among children and youth was formed, where Save the children coworkers and researchers are meant to cooperate in bringing research and practice closer together.

Since 2012, the Norwegian DEMBRA practice has been oriented toward teachers, school managers, and other educational staff. DEMBRA is departing from the democratizing missions embedded in the Nordic education system, offering teacher education for developing teachers’ skills to empower students to take an active role in their own lives and participate in society at large. The schools within DEMBRA are also offered guidance, discussions, and workshops with other schools on how to develop local strategies to empower democracy based on local situation and needs. In 2019, the one-year project “Nordic DEMBRA: Strengthening Work on Democracy and Prevention of Group Hostility, Segregation and Radicalization in Nordic Schools” (NOC3) was initiated as a pilot project in all of the Nordic countries, including Iceland. The pilot gave insights into the possibilities and challenges of implementing a common Nordic model that could be fruitful for further development in future cooperations. The director of the HL Center in Norway, Guri Hjeltnes, wrote, “The project revealed the benefit of exchanging experiences and increasing awareness of the mechanisms behind various phenomena, from prejudice to extreme hatred” (Nustad et al., 2020, p. 5).

As described in the introductory parts of this chapter, the ToC reveals the underlying rationale of a practice and the connection between an intervention and its intended outcomes. For example, if a project has the objective of strengthening resilience against radicalization and the interventions focus on reading facts and learning by taking part in lectures about different extremist groups, its ToC would imply that factual knowledge (cognitive aspects) leads to resilience (emotive, social aspects), which, in this case, would imply a mismatch. The learning of facts would more probably change and expand the knowledge about different extremist groups. Thus, for a practice to have the possibility to succeed in reaching its objective, there must be an alignment between the problem, objective, and intervention.

Many of the practices in the current review that are based in Sweden and Norway are about empowerment, awareness, and the development of democratic competencies. The underlying assumption would be that by allowing conversations on controversial issues, exploring the implications of human rights, working with individual identity development, developing citizen competencies, and finding one’s place in life and society, young people gain an understanding and will to contribute to a democratic and tolerant society. Thus, the Swedish and Norwegian practices are leaning more toward early prevention that concerns all participants, both students and clients.

Furthermore, there is a strong emphasis in all four countries on producing and disseminating knowledge about extremism and identifying radicalization. The rationale of this ToC is that, if professionals are better equipped to recognize symbols, styles, and other visible signs of extremism, they can recognize and respond to the needs of their clients. This would indicate that the prevention of extremism relies on knowledge about the individual signs of concern. Such an alignment comes with some problems because it is next to impossible to approach and prevent signs and symbols. However, knowledge about signs and symbol that are combined with its causes, consequences, and drivers facilitates a preparedness on how to operationalize the knowledge. When one encounters a national socialist with a violent agenda, the knowledge about their ideology and appearance makes it possible to detect the problem and categorize it, but the key question remains on what the appropriate action is.

There is a strong emphasis of collaboration between professional groups and institutions. This form of multiagency collaboration is most developed in Denmark, where the construction of teams is a common practice in many areas of prevention and intervention. The ToC behind this prevention strategy is that efforts and knowledge are best used in a holistic approach that enables a problem to be attacked from various angles. It can be noted that this is closer to the countering perspective because prevention is focused on intervening and interrupting in a risk situation, such as an ongoing radicalization.

As stated in the introduction, the research on preventive practices around the world has shown that there is a lack of evidence of effects. This is also the case for those practices employed in the Nordic countries. Even though anecdotical evidence (in, e.g., DK8) says something about the success of a practice, without proper benchmarks and control groups, it is hard to discern what has caused the experienced success and if and how it is related to the practice. Nonetheless, practices can be motivated by numerous types of evaluations. Quantitative measurements and statistics presenting numbers of cases, participants, or lessons are occasionally used to validate a practice (e.g., FI4, DK11, EU2, EU3, EU5). Nonetheless, most of the projects have undergone some kind of evaluation consisting of either surveys focusing on user/participant satisfaction (e.g., FI1, NO5), evaluations conducted by external consultants (DK1, NO3), universities (DK4, SW1, SW5), or governing institutions (DK6, SW9, NO4).

There are examples of practices that have a firm foundation in research and proven experience that have successfully functioned for many years with positive results. Not the least, projects or initiatives that have had positive outcomes locally can be the reason behind some national streamlining.

Our review has shown that projects that have a life span of more than five years are generally funded or supported by authorities or municipalities. Practices organized by CSOs with a longevity of more than five years are few in numbers and have formed partnership with the authorities. A prominent example of such partnership is the Swedish support line for radicalization, run by Save the children (Sw3), in cooperation with the Center for Preventing Violent Extremism. Other projects that manage to last are prone to apply for renewed or new grants, so their focus and thematic approach tends to be constantly updated, redeveloped, renamed, rebranded, or divided into several subprojects (e.g., Swe1, Swe8).

Projects initiated and carried out by CSOs are many and stem from numerous different theories, deploying a plethora of different methods. Such initiatives are important because they often are in tune with local target groups and tendencies and have the advantage of being decoupled from the state. The latter can be an incentive for people to join projects and programs because it is voluntary and without any need for official registration. However, these advantages come with challenges: to get funding CSOs need to apply for short-term grants that limit their chances to evaluate and further develop their ideas and actions (Sivenbring & Andersson Malmros, 2022). Therefore, such initiatives seldom last more than a couple of years. This was also noted as a problem in Kylli et al.’s (2021) overview of deradicalization policy in Finland, and the authors stated, “policy has mainly consisted of projects funded for a limited time, which makes it hard to establish them especially in the case of third sector organizations whose funding differ from state institutions” (p. 21). Even if there are CSOs involved in preventive work in all four countries, they are more visible in Finland and Sweden. The Danish DIIs report (Hemingsen, 2015) point out that there are reasons to question the necessity of bringing civil society into prevention of violent extremism (p. 44). The reason for questioning their involvement is the risk of compromising the professionalization and institutionalization that has characterized the Danish approach and legitimizing actors with an unknown agenda.