Traditionally Nordic –Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish –understanding of the past shies away from colonial self-understandings and rejects colonial undertones as unfitting to a Nordic history, while clinging to notions of “exceptionalism.” This accepted wisdom proposes that colonialism was something that happened far away and proved inconsequential for Nordic histories. It also detaches Nordic peoples from colonial networks of settler projects, knowledge production, and material exchanges, or at least suggests that their participation shows cases of a more peaceful, benevolent colonial association. This in turn supports the Nordic countries’ self-image as harbingers of humanitarian causes. Recently, a growing number of scholars have criticized these kind of notions as self-congratulatory, misleading, and alarming. They have also started to expose the rich and complex histories of Nordic colonial involvement around the world. Scholars have examined Nordic participation in the global slave trade, settler colonialism in Sámi lands, or various forms of involvement by Nordic individuals and groups with other European empires. Some have investigated the Nordic experience and legacies in North America via the colonial lens. This panel continues the discussion, highlighting how Nordic colonialism as a set of academic inquirers and as a framework for Nordic history has gained ground, stirred debates, created opposition. It deals with the past, present, and possible futures of Nordic colonialism, on how it is forming new meanings for Nordic histories more broadly, across national boundaries in order to understand differences and similarities in the national histories of colonialism in the Nordic countries or between Nordic countries and the world.