Since I’m going to be writing a lot about the defence industry of this region let’s take a look at the state of the sector, and how I define it.
The Nordic region itself can first of all be defined as the members of the Nordic Councils – that means Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland (three autonomous territories are also members).
Top-100 ranking
The latest ranking by Defense News shows that out of those countries Sweden had the biggest defence company by revenue in 2025.
Saab had a total revenue from defence of almost $7.5 billion (over 6.7 billion euros).
This places it at number 20, slightly higher than Elbit of Israel, for comparison.
The next Nordic country on the table is at 51: Kongsberg Gruppen from Norway, on over $3 billion in defence revenue.
Patria, from Finland, is next at rank 90, with defence revenue of over $1.15 billion (over 1 billion euros).
And just underneath is another from Norway: Nammo, with similar revenue.
Something all these companies share is that they have all moved sharply up the table.
Compared to 2024 Saab is up six places; Kongsberg is up nine; Patria up eight, and Nammo up six.
This reflects a wider record year for defence spending in 2025.
Since this is backed by commitments by Nato countries to raise their level of military spending to five percent of their GDP by 2035, this surge is set to continue.
In fact it will take time for the Nordic arms companies to even be able to absorb the enormous rise in spending.
In proportion
Compared to the giants of the arms trade like Lockheed Martin with $72.1 billion in annual defense revenue even Saab may seem pretty tiny.
But looking at the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database the role of the Nordic countries is clearly significant.
Using their analysis of ‘trend-indicator values’ they assess that the Nordic countries together exported more arms than the UK, and more than half of what Russia exported, in 2024.
If you consider that the population of the Nordic region is only about 28 million this figure is even more striking.
The Nordics are less than four percent of the population of Europe, but they contribute almost ten percent of the arms transfers in the SIPRI database for that continent.
Another point that underlines how significant these industries are is that much of the production will not show up in this database since it is not transferred across borders.
For example Patria’s core operations consist of supplying equipment and performing maintenance work for the Finnish Defence Forces.
This may explain why Finland’s contribution in the SIPRI database is so much smaller than that of Sweden or Norway.
But at the same time, these companies which are grounded in cooperation with the state are now platforms for entering a global arms market, and especially an increasingly integrated European market.