This chapter discusses the role and ambitions of the state in relation to natural resource development in northern areas in the past and the present. The chapter presents broadly the pattern of historical change in northern Scandinavia, often here subsumed as Fennoscandia, and the increasing role of the states in northern areas with their diverse populations. It also asks to what extent the recently developed welfare state – with its historical origins perhaps more developed there than elsewhere in the world – may be seen as a continued foundation for governing societal change or if other governance systems now prevail, to the extent of the emergence of a less responsible, more selective and issue-avoiding “smorgasbord state”.