Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Norway did have colonies, and they did engage is the slave trade along the West African Coast, particularly Ghana (the current Ghanaian presidential residence is in a former Danish fort). There were a constellation of royally chartered, government administered, and private trading companies that plied the triangular trade, sailing from present-day Ghana to the Danish west indies (sold in 1920 to the US, now the US Virgin Islands). Denmark also maintained the colony of Tranquebar in India.

Sweden, for its part, founded the colony of "New Sweden" on the current Delmarva peninsula, but it was quickly absorbed by Dutch interests in the New World. Sweden, like Denmark, also maintained a shifting number of outposts along the Slave Coast, but unlike Denmark, was not as heavily engaged in the trans-atlantic trade.

Northern Europe had no more positive or negative a view on colonization than other areas in Europe, Denmark's history from the end of the Wars of Religion is a catalogue of military defeat and lessening power, and in the age of the triangle trade, Denmark was in no place to challenge the major powers in any significant way - and even so they still engaged in slaving, trans-atlantic, and east-indian trade.