OSLO — The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, must know as a Dane that his fellow Scandinavians won’t be contributing much to the troop surge he has promised in Afghanistan. With more than 1,600 soldiers in the fight (or in Afghanistan anyway) the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian militaries say they’re already going full tilt. They will stay — but expect no Viking surge.

Denmark

NYT

The Danes in particular have shown mettle, battling the Taliban in Helmand Province since 2006 and sustaining 31 deaths. Relative to national population, the Danish death toll is nearly twice that of the United States and the highest in NATO.

Half of the Danish population still supports the country’s energetic commitment, while only a third wants the troops to come home now, a recent Gallup poll found. Widespread Muslim animosity toward Denmark since 2005, when Danish newspapers published unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, has had a bracing effect on public opinion so that even the Socialist People’s Party backs the war. When the current 650-person Danish battle group under British command rotates home in February, however, its replacement will be the same size, according to a Ministry of Defense spokesman, Jacob Winther.

“The number of soldiers we have there is already very high considering how small our country is, and we are not considering sending more,” Mr. Winther said.

Norway

Norway’s center-left government, which once planned a mid-2010 pullout, now insists it is in for the long haul. But after repeated personnel cuts the past two decades the Norwegian army is down to a single brigade, and a third of it is already in Afghanistan.

“We are almost breaking our backs trying to maintain the current level of participation,” said Jacob Borresen, a retired rear admiral now analyzing military affairs for the Norwegian Institute for Strategic Studies. There has been talk of sending back a small, highly decorated special forces unit that has already done several tours in Afghanistan, but government officials have discounted the idea, preferring to switch focus to civilian development efforts, as befits the land of the Nobel Peace Prize.

NYT

A solid plurality of Norwegians favors immediate withdrawal of their troops, according to a recent TNS Gallup poll, and each of the five Norwegian fatalities that have occurred since 2001 – most recently last Monday – has caused national anguish. Norway’s 500 infantrymen and women in Afghanistan are not available for war-zone duty, though they have been aggressive in confronting insurgents in northern Faryab Province.

According to Admiral Borresen, staying put in the north is appropriate given that American forces have “behaved like elephants in the glass shop” elsewhere.

Sweden

So far only two Swedes have lost their lives in Afghanistan. But Sweden’s role there, like Norway’s, has grown more dangerous as the insurgency has expanded northward.

NYT

The Swedish army contingent at Mazar-i-Sharif grew from 430 to 500 people last month and might gain a few more in 2010, according to a military spokesman. But as a nonmember of NATO, Sweden is not formally bound to the cause.

“I get the sense from recent firefights that the Swedes can hold their own and go toe to toe if attacked, but I’m not sure they would go out on any search-and-destroy-type missions,” said Tim Foxley, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“If General McChrystal piped up and said, ‘Please send a reinforced company south,’ I don’t know what the reply would be,” he said, referring to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of the international forces.

He could always try the Danes.