Northern Europe
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50 free Northern Europe trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Northern Europe packs a lot into its cold corner of the map: fjords and volcanoes, kingdoms that once shared a single crown, and small nations that changed how the world builds, listens and talks. It is the part of the continent where a legend is attached to almost every rock. This quiz follows the United Nations definition of the region: the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, and Britain and Ireland. Expect capitals and coastlines, Viking history and Norse myth, explorers, painters and storytellers, plus the brands and inventions the region sent around the world. The questions start gently and get harder, so the set works for a geography class, a pub quiz round or anyone planning a trip north. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing the story as well as the name.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Northern European city is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state?
Reykjavík
Reykjavík sits at 64°08′ N, about four kilometres south of Greenland's Nuuk, which misses the title because Greenland is not an independent state.
Q 02Which Danish toy company takes its name from a phrase meaning "play well"?
Lego
Lego is a contraction of the Danish words leg godt. Founder Ole Kirk Christiansen was a carpenter, and the company made wooden toys before it made plastic bricks.
Q 03Which wireless standard is named after a 10th-century king who united the tribes of Denmark?
Bluetooth
Bluetooth honours King Harald Bluetooth, and its logo merges the runes for his initials, H and B.
Q 04Which Icelandic volcano's 2010 ash cloud closed most of Europe's airspace for nearly a week?
Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull sits directly under the jet stream, which carried its ash over the continent. About 20 countries shut their skies, affecting roughly 10 million travellers.
Q 05Which furniture retailer did 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad found as a Swedish mail-order business?
IKEA
IKEA joins its founder's initials to those of Elmtaryd, the family farm, and Agunnaryd, his home village in southern Sweden.
Q 06Which Finnish bathing custom did UNESCO add to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2020?
Sauna
Sauna culture runs so deep in Finland that official registers count at least two million of the heated rooms, for about 5.5 million people.
Q 07Which Swedish pop group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Waterloo?
ABBA
ABBA sang their winning entry in English instead of Swedish, and went on to sell more than 150 million records.
Q 08Which summer phenomenon brings 24-hour daylight to the far north of Norway, Sweden and Finland?
Midnight sun
Midnight sun lasts a single day at the Arctic Circle itself, but the season stretches to about six months at the North Pole.
Q 09In which city did the Harland and Wolff shipyard build the RMS Titanic?
Belfast
Belfast's Harland and Wolff yard built the liner for the White Star Line, a customer it had served since 1867.
Q 10Hákarl, an Icelandic national dish with a strong ammonia smell, is the fermented meat of which animal?
Shark
Shark meat of the Greenland species is poisonous when fresh, so Icelanders ferment it and then hang it to dry for four to five months.
Q 11Which far-northern region of Finland promotes its main town, Rovaniemi, as the hometown of Santa Claus?
Lapland
Lapland has been tied to Santa since 1927, when a Finnish radio host announced that he lived on Korvatunturi, a fell in the region.
Q 12Which capital is home to Tivoli Gardens and a harbourside statue of the Little Mermaid?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen keeps the mermaid on its Langelinie promenade, where she is one of the city's most-visited attractions.
Q 13Which Scandinavian city is spread across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the sea?
Stockholm
Stockholm is said to have been founded by Birger Jarl to guard Sweden against invasions from the sea.
Q 21Which Scottish lake contains more water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined?
Loch Ness
Loch Ness owes its volume to depth, not spread: it is only the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area, behind Loch Lomond.
Q 22Which peak, at 1,345 metres, is the highest mountain in the British Isles?
Ben Nevis
Ben Nevis still carries the ruins of a summit observatory that was staffed continuously from 1883 to 1904.
Q 23Which Roman frontier, begun in AD 122, runs 73 miles across northern England?
Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall inspired the vast wall of ice in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, the novels behind Game of Thrones.
Q 14Which artist painted The Scream, versions of which were stolen in Norway in 1994 and 2004?
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch made several versions of the image, and both stolen ones were recovered. An 1895 pastel fetched almost $120 million at auction in 2012.
Q 15Which author, born in Odense in 1805, wrote The Ugly Duckling and The Snow Queen?
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen also wrote The Emperor's New Clothes and Thumbelina, and his tales have inspired ballets, plays and films.
Q 16Which Swedish inventor of dynamite left his fortune to fund annual prizes that still bear his name?
Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel held 355 patents, and by his death his business had set up more than 90 explosives and armament factories.
Q 17Which explorer led the five-man party that first reached the South Pole in December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, had already led the first expedition to sail through the Northwest Passage, between 1903 and 1906.
Q 18Which Norse explorer is thought to have reached North America about 500 years before Columbus?
Leif Erikson
Leif Erikson grew up in Greenland, in the first Norse settlement there, which his father Erik the Red had founded.
Q 19Which Danish word for a mood of cosy contentment made Collins Dictionary's 2016 word of the year shortlist?
Hygge
Hygge is an everyday word in Norwegian too, but only in Denmark has it become a badge of national identity.
Q 20Which Northern Irish landmark of some 40,000 basalt columns does legend credit to Finn MacCool?
Giant's Causeway
Giant's Causeway was really formed by an ancient volcanic eruption, though the tale has Finn building it after a challenge from a Scottish rival, Benandonner.
Q 24Which 1998 peace deal ended most of the violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
Good Friday Agreement
The Good Friday Agreement was put to voters across the island of Ireland, who approved it in two referendums held on the same day in May 1998.
Q 25Which Dublin stout's first brewer signed a 9,000-year lease on the St. James's Gate brewery in 1759?
Guinness
Guinness founder Arthur Guinness agreed to pay just £45 a year for the disused brewery, which grew into one of the largest in the British Empire.
Q 26Which capital, with a castle perched on an extinct volcano, hosts the huge Fringe arts festival?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh has been recognised as Scotland's capital since at least the 15th century, and its Fringe is the world's largest annual international arts festival.
Q 27Norway's sovereign wealth fund, set up in 1990, invests the surplus revenue from which North Sea resource?
Oil
Oil gives the Government Pension Fund Global its everyday Norwegian nickname, Oljefondet, which means the Oil Fund.
Q 28Which music streaming service did Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon found in Sweden in April 2006?
Spotify
Spotify was conceived as a legal alternative to music piracy and launched in several European markets in October 2008.
Q 29Which red-haired Swedish storybook heroine is strong enough to lift her horse with one hand?
Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking was named by author Astrid Lindgren's daughter Karin, who asked her mother for a get-well story while off school.
Q 30Which Finnish company began as a pulp mill in 1865 and later led the world in mobile phone sales?
Nokia
Nokia shares its name with the Finnish town near which it opened a second mill in 1868, and it overtook Motorola as the best-selling mobile phone brand in 1998.