The theme of this article is education as nation building in the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Starting with an overview of their Social Democrat parties' ascension of to near hegemony immediately following the Second World War, and these parties' impact on education, we go on to sketch the interplay between general political trends and educational policies up to the present day. We examine the goals of educational policies, the governance of the primary school system and the instruments of governance. Five levels of governance are taken into account: central government, regional and local government, schools and, finally, what happens in the classroom. Attention is given to trends that the Scandinavian countries shared in particular periods and to the divergence between them. We conclude that the main trend up to now is towards deregulation, decentralisation and individualisation.