The campaign for an independent Scotland has suggested forming an independent state with its Nordic neighbours. But is the feeling reciprocal?

Scotland's Better Together campaign may be well ahead in the polls, but it is under fire from critics who say its message of doom and gloom is failing to inspire even the most ardent unionist with a positive vision of the country's future inside the UK. In contrast, the alternative destinies being mooted by the campaign for an independent Scotland are vivid and appealing. They include the recurring theme of a Scandinavian Scotland, a small independent state not only emulating the social-democratic welfare models of its Nordic neighbours, but actually joining the institutions that Europe's so-called Nordic tier share among themselves.

This a prospect championed by the likes of the SNP's defence spokesman Angus Robertson, who argues that Scotland could join the Nordic Council if it left the UK. "Given that Scotland is a northern European country with the Atlantic to our west, the Iceland gap to our north and the North Sea to our east, we should take responsibility for the environmental and defence challenges we face there … But Scotland needs the full toolbox that independence brings to do it."

If Scotland did knock at the Nordic door, would anyone answer? Judging by my interviews with campaigners and activists from Sweden and Norway, they would have one ally, at least, in Swedish activist Gunnar Wetterberg: "If the Scots phoned we'd be overjoyed!" he said.

But then Wetterberg also champions a Nordic union in which Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland abandon their own independence and lock themselves together to form a single federal state that would be wealthy enough to take a seat at the G7. That idea does not command much mainstream support.

For the most part, the Nordics are content as they are, and they have a lot to be content about – an enviable club of small independent states each flying its own flag (happily "going it alone", in the parlance of the Scottish independence debate), with dynamic wealth-creating economies, egalitarian societies, and high taxes that pay for strong welfare provision. Would small-nation solidarity reach across the North Sea to welcome a Caledonian cousin?

Political scientist Oivind Bratberg spoke for many when he told me, disappointingly for Scotland's Yes camp: "Norwegians are very fond of the idea of Britain. They look back at the war with loyalty towards London, where our government and our royal family were located. It's very difficult to conceive of Scotland as detached from the UK."

Even the redoubtable Scottish broadcaster and campaigner Lesley Riddoch, a fierce champion of a Scotland remodelled on a Scandinavian template, has her doubts. "I feel at home [in the Nordic countries]," she says. "You see aspects of Scottish society played out there that are latent or struggling in Scotland itself." She is a frequent visitor to our northern neighbours. Do they care about Scotland's referendum? Are we on their radar? Scarcely at all, she concedes.

• Does Scandinavia Want Scotland? BBC Radio 4, Monday at 8pm

• This article amended on 27 January 2014. The Iceland gap is to the north of Scotland, not the south. This article was further amended on 28 January 2014 because Gunnar Wetterberg is Swedish, not Norwegian as the original said.