1.7.1 ...in the international hierarchies?
  
   There aren't that many. Soc.culture.nordic, as I said, is so far the
   only group in the original "Big Seven" hierarchies (news.*, rec.*,
   sci.*, soc.*, misc.*, talk.* and comp.*) devoted specifically to the
   Nordic countries, and there aren't any corresponding alt.* groups
   either. Splitting up soc.cculture.nordic into s.c.sweden, s.c.finland,
   and so forth, has been discussed from time to time but the idea hasn't
   received much support because of the relatively low number of Nordic
   netters in general and Danish & Icelandic netters in particular (s.c.n
   is a pretty medium-traffic group), the existense of national
   hierarchies where Nordics can discuss the matters of their own
   countries, and perhaps also the feeling of community that has evolved
   in s.c.n over the years (the group has been around for at least since
   the beginning of the 1990:ies; no one seems to know the exact year it
   was created).
   
   There are, however, some international newsgroups that have some
   connection to Nordic issues. A scan through the lists of active major
   and alternative newsgroups (posted regularly to news.lists) with
   global distribution produced the following, vaguely Nordic-related
   groups:
   
  soc.culture.baltics     An unmoderated group on the Baltic countries
                          of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

  soc.culture.estonia     A moderated group on things Estonian.

  soc.culture.europe      A group on European countries in general,
                          but alas, probably the flamiest group in the
                          net right after alt.flame.

  soc.genealogy.nordic    Questions about your family roots should be
                          posted here.

  rec.skiing.nordic       A group devoted to that most Nordic of all
                          sports, cross-country skiing.

  rec.travel.europe       Discussions on travelling in the Nordic
                          countries fit in here as well.

  talk.politics.european-union   Politics of the European Union

  nordunet.talk.skandinaviska  Nordunet is the hierarchy of the Nordic
                               University Network. Discussion in both
                               English and Nordic languages (this one
                               is in 'skandinaviska').

  alt.culture.net-viking               The Norsemen of the Net.
  alt.kill.the.whales                  A Norwegian national pastime.
  alt.music.abba                       Björn, Benny &co.
  alt.music.swedish-pop                ABBA and beyond.
  alt.music.bjork                      The Icelandic singer Björk and her
                                       late band, the Sugarcubes.
  alt.music.yngwie                     The Swedish guitar hero.
  alt.politics.ec                      Politics of the European Union.
  alt.religion.asatru                  Worshippers of the Old Norse deities.
  alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork      Well...it has the word "Swedish"
                                       in it. :) Anyway, it's a classic.

   (Did I forget any? I shouldn't think so :)
   
  1.7.2 ...in the Nordic hierarchies?
  
   In the national hierarchies all discussion is in the Nordic languages,
   often on Nordic topics. The main hierarchies (except for the Icelandic
   is.* hierarchy, I've been told) can be accessed and posted to from
   abroad. It is, however, up to your system administrator to decide
   whether or not your site will receive them; contact him/her if you
   would like for your site to carry them. If he refuses, it may be
   possible (although not necessarily very convenient) to access some of
   them via a mailing-list to which the newsgroup is mirrored. You can
   also search for a "public NNTP server" in Scandinavia that carries
   these groups, and set your newsreader to use it instead of the server
   your own site normally uses - in a Unix shell, this can be done with
   the command
   "setenv NNTPSERVER <name of server>".
   
   Different kinds of FAQs also exist to guide the many Nordic newcommers
   to Internet and to Usenet, as for instance the Danish OSS - Ofte
   stillede spørgsmål, and a Swedish Sidor för nybörjare together with a
   current full list of "swnet.*" groups which can be obtained by WWW
   from the URL: <http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d1dd/faq/>.
   
   When you read s.c.n, check the headers of posts coming from the Nordic
   countries, see the line "NNTP-Posting-Host" or the second last domain
   of the "Path" line, and try to set these as your NNTP server. Most
   servers only allow their own users to access them and it can be
   difficult to find a public server, especially one that allows you not
   just read but also post, but with some trying or asking around you
   should be able to find them.
   
   Here are some examples of newsgroups from each of the main Nordic
   hierarchies (there are, of course, tens if not hundreds of groups
   other than these in the hierarchies, on various topics):
   
 swnet.diverse        A group on miscellaneous topics in Swedish.
 swnet.svenska        Swedes talking about the Swedish language in Swedish.
 swnet.filosofi       Swedes philosophizing.


 no.general           General topics in Norwegian.
 no.alt.frustjasoner  Frustrated Norwegians.

 dk.chat              Danes chatting.
 dk.general           More chatter in Danish.

 sfnet.keskustelu.ihmissuhteet  Finns wrestling with human relations.
 sfnet.huuhaa                   Verbal acrobatics and idle talk in Finnish.
 finet.svenska.prat             An alternative Finnish hierarchy; this
                                group, but not all of the hierarchy, is
                                in Swedish.

   An up to date list of all groups in the sfnet.* hierarchy can be
   acquired by anonymous FTP from
   <ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/netinfo/gc/sfnet.ryhmalista/>
   .
   
  1.7.3 What about mailing-lists?
  
   Honestly, keeping track on mailing-lists isn't really what
   s.c.nordic's contributors are known for, but there exists at least one
   list which ought to be mentioned: The mailing-list Swede-L, mainly
   about Sweden, which has survived since 1993.


[ the sections above are available at the www-page
  http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/scn/faq17.html ]