The Quest for a Nordic Church Fellowship Challenged by the Formation of the Nordic Ecumenical Institute/ Council

Sammanfattning: In the 20th Century, the Nordic regtion was often regarded as a politically and ecclessiastically homogenous area. Archbishop Söderblom was partly responsible for that conception by creating a Nordic Bishops´ Council and by conducting its business with intent to coordinate actions and declarations by the Nordic Folk Churches. In this paper I incuire into the fate of the Nordic Ecumenical Institute (founded in 1940), and, in doing so, I also look at the notion of Scandinavism and a Nordic region. I explore regions as areas for Christian cooperation. Furthermore the terms Institute and Council will be studied. Manfred Björkquist´s attempts to create in Sigtuna a Nordic Ecumenical Institute will be studied as well as his strategies to deal with the considerable  scepticism in the Nordic region, expressed particularly by the Church of Norway. Did such strategies lead to innate defects that caused the Nordic Ecumenical Council to collapse much later? I intend to demonstrate how political stress and theological controversy created conditions in which the Nordic Ecumenical Institute/ Council could not compensate for the loss of both an academic research role as well as the loss of the role of being a regional structure for the emerging World Council of Churches.