Yeah kaliningrad oblast came like as a surprise to me as well some years back. Like what the fuck is a piece of Russia doing there?!
Estonia is a EU and NATO country. It’s not part of NORDEFCO but we still have exercised with them extensively I believe especially after joining NATO.
Finland is the backbone of the Nordic defense.
And that’s my favourite role. In the army we won the rope-pulling contest with me as anchor. The other teams wore fucking boots while we had sneakers on (because dress code says no boots with exercise gear) so they broke military dress code and accused us of cheating.
I know I wasn’t the strongest member of our group (we had one EU judo champion who could toss a 10-20kg exercise ball to the ceiling of a sports hall like 10m high), but I was the most unyielding one with the most spirit and anger and that’s infectious.
I like to think I channeled the spirit of Óðinn:
As mentioned above, Odin’s name can be translated as “Master of Ecstasy.” His Old Norse name, Óðinn, is formed from two parts: first, the noun óðr, “ecstasy, fury, inspiration,” and the suffix -inn, the masculine definite article, which, when added to the end of another word like this, means something like “the master of” or “a perfect example of.” The eleventh-century historian Adam of Bremen confirms this when he translates “Odin” as “The Furious.”[1] Óðr can take countless different forms. As one saga describes Odin, “when he sat with his friends, he gladdened the spirits of all of them, but when he was at war, his demeanor was terrifyingly grim.”
https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/odin/
(as a side note odin was way gayer than ppl think and slightly genderfluid and I respect all lgtb and im not a racist, it’s just something you have to mention when talking about norse myths)
And thats wholly tangential but it’s what I bring to the table… Let Vanja fucking try opening up another front.
I’m not an expert. It’s think the name might just be derivative, but obviously with the time it takes for a name to change, their aspects might change as well.
It is a fascinating site.