Nordic Music Days claims to be the longest-running annual music festival in the world, having existed as a showcase for contemporary Nordic composers more-or-less continuously since 1888. This longevity raises some questions of category definition: What might unite today's composers working in Helsinki with their counterparts 1,500 miles away in Reykjavík? Has modern communications technology and international study wiped out national characteristics or amplified them? Does anyone working in this year's host city, Copenhagen, ever make the 30-minute journey over the bridge to check out what's going on in Malmö? What, if anything, does being a ‘Nordic composer’ mean?