Jim McMahon, aka Mapman®, is Junior Scholastic’s cartographer (or mapmaker). Before the pandemic put his world travels on pause, he visited the capital city of a Nordic nation that is famous for its bike-friendly streets, LEGO® bricks, and happy citizens.
Mapman traveled to that country to find out what makes its people so positive. Nordic countries consistently score the highest in the World Happiness Report (WHR). The WHR is an annual survey that ranks 156 nations in several categories. It serves as a report card of sorts by measuring how happy each country’s citizens consider themselves to be.
Since the first WHR was released in 2012, only four countries have won the title of world’s happiest—Switzerland and three Nordic nations. This year, Finland won the top spot for the third year in a row. Denmark has also won three times, and Norway has earned the honor once.
Located in northern Europe and the North Atlantic, the Nordic region consists of Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, as well as the Åland Islands, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. (You might have heard of these countries and territories referred to as Scandinavia—but that term actually applies only to the nations of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.)
Want to learn more about the geography and culture of the Nordic region? Enter this year’s Can You Find Mapman? contest! If you correctly answer the five questions at right, figure out Mapman’s final destination, and draw a map of the country where it’s located, you could be chosen as one of our contest winners.
The grand-prize winner will receive $250. (Your teacher will also receive $250.) Twenty-five runners-up will each get a Mapman T-shirt. See below to download the entry form and contest rules.
All entries to this contest must be postmarked by February 22, 2021. Good luck!