NORD 55° is an independent, self-governing association. However, the initiative was conceived at JP/Politiken, in Politiken’s house on City Hall Square in Copenhagen.

The newspaper Politiken was founded in 1884. The newspaper played a central role in Denmark’s golden era in the late 1800s, at which time Copenhagen became a cultural melting pot. It was during these years that Danish literary critic Georg Brandes held his famous lectures titled “Main Currents in 19th-century Literature”, with the opening words: “problems must be debated”. This call for debate resonated with thinkers throughout the Nordic countries. Brandes’ brother, Edvard Brandes, was the editor-in-chief of Politiken, and the cosmopolitan brothers played a significant role in establishing Copenhagen as the culture metropolis of the Nordic region the 1880s. They paved the way for “the modern breakthrough”. Many great thinkers and writers flocked to Copenhagen from the other Nordic countries, and Copenhagen became the centre of a new, vibrant Nordic consciousness.

Today, Politiken is part of one of Denmark’s leading media organisations JP/Politikens Media Group, which includes a large number of news media, weekly papers and niche media. In addition to the two Danish newspapers Ekstra Bladet and Jyllands-Posten, the media group also has several publishing and media activities in Norway, Sweden, Germany and the UK. Through its journalism, debate and literature activities, JP/Politikens Media Group strives to provide the public with facts and knowledge, thereby enabling them to participate actively in a democratic society.

NORD 55° also includes major media groups in other Nordic countries. We aim to establish a broad Nordic community of media groups, so that NORD 55° can span the entire Nordic region. Through partnerships anchored in the Nordic countries, individual partners will contribute with unique competences and perspectives.

The media partners will play a vital role as disseminators of the content produced during the annual NORD 55° summit. The media groups will also be instrumental in realising the project’s ambition: that we in the Nordic region become familiar with leading thinkers in all the Nordic countries. The time is ripe to strengthen media distribution across the Nordic region and to finally bring to life the ambitions of all the similar initiatives that have been in the making for years but never been realised.

The fact that media groups from across the Nordic region are involved in our project demonstrates that there is increasing cross-border collaboration – and that the media groups often work together and enter into shared partnerships. Media groups are also facing some of the same structural changes in media market. One example of such a change is generative AI, the emergence and spread of which will have great consequences for the media and culture scene in the Nordic countries in the years to come.

In response to these changes, NORD 55° will spotlight the transformation and the potential and far-reaching consequences generative AI is expected to have on the region’s media and culture scene.

Among other things, NORD 55° will focus on how these technologies impact small language areas and how they will shape and challenge the Nordic languages and cultural values. We will also examine what strategies the Nordic countries can apply to counter the challenges of generative AI, how to make the most of the opportunities it brings, and whether there is a need for joint Nordic projects on language technology.