1 Todd Terje – Inspector Norse

Many Scandinavian disco tracks employ a classic trope of their 70s forebears: the bass line that hops between the same note two octaves apart, a swinging metronome over which funk is draped. And none do so with quite as much enthusiasm as this, which dials up the speed of the bass line until it's almost ska paced. It lays the groundwork for an energetic, rather naive melody that becomes increasingly frantic as it bounces around, only to find comfort again in the final refrain – this puppyish charm has made it the scene's biggest hit. Terje repeated the trick to only slightly less brilliant effect on the singles Strandbar, Lanzarote and Spiral, and his just-released debut LP, It's Album Time, is also full of zany energy.

2 Lindstrøm – Another Station

With a studio bordering Terje's – they even share a doorbell – Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is another cornerstone of the scene, fitting into a lineage of European electronic psych alongside Tangerine Dream and Manuel Göttsching, and managing to dial up the cosmic side of the sound while also creating some of the most dancefloor-uniting moments. His pop album with Christabelle is excellent, his collaborations with Prins Thomas pounding and tropical, and I Feel Space (appropriately, given its name) crossed over into Ibiza. But Another Station remains his high point, with its wistful yet surefooted lead guitar melody, and a piano motif that sits somewhere between Billy Joel and Chicago house.

Soft rock is a massive part of this scene, with major touchstones including Chris Rea's On the Beach and Josephine, along with Phil Collins, Michael McDonald, Ned Doheny and other white guys doing a slickly conga-laced version of US funk. Tiedye's biggest track is probably their remix of DJ Kaos's Love the Night Away, full of third-margarita contentment, but this has the edge. It's a much slower, more hard-won bliss, with delayed guitar lines gorgeously dulling the pep of the original (which has Feist guesting on vocals).

4 Kings of Convenience – Gold for the Price of Silver (Erot remix)

Erot, who died aged 23 in 2001, was one of the first people on the scene, in thrall to British DJs like Idjut Boys and Maurice Fulton and their culture of Balearic re-editing. Here he gives Kings of Convenience an almost trip-hopping break to create a remix that could certainly appear on a Hed Kandi chillout mix – but the songwriting saves it from coffee-table blandness. Erot also produced The Greatest Hit for shoulda-been-massive pop singer Annie, as well as two excellent disco-house tracks dedicated to her. The Kings' singer Erlend Øye, meanwhile, was also a muse for Röyksopp and their pair of singles, Poor Leno and Remind Me, and carved out a sideline as a DJ.

5 Bjørn Torske – Bergensere

Torske is a hugely important figure. As Todd Terje told me in an interview recently, it was Torske's Sexy Disco that taught him disco could be more than just an ironic joke. Along with Lindstrøm, he's probably the best at the album format, using it to craft a smooth up-and-down arc, from moody grooves to cheeky hits and back again. Here, deliberately cheesy Chinese chimes march in lockstep over a metronomic 4/4 beat.

Powered by an almighty Moroderesque bass line, this takes Scandi disco to its most psychedelic and expansive – yet it remains tied to the funk by tight guitar licks. It's the climactic point to the Sunkissed mix curated by the Oslo club night of the same name that, like Tiga's American Gigolo for electroclash or Run the Road for grime, helped elevate and define the scene. Mungolian Jet Set, meanwhile, would go on to carve out their own daffy corner, with tracks like Moon Jocks'n'Prog Rocks and Shelton's on a Bender as tongue-lollingly ravey as they sound.

Drifting into beefier tech-house territory is Diskjokke, who nevertheless uses the chirpy melodies and sense of extravagance at the heart of disco; this has a big undulating heft to it, with that cosmic twinkle also in evidence, arranged in perfect equilibrium. Diskjokke's talent for getting sound systems to really sing means that he's one of the most popular remixers in the scene, having tackled Foals, Lykke Li, Metronomy and Charlotte Gainsbourg in the past.

8 Nicolas Makelberge – Dying in Africa

It's not just New York disco, but also the more rigid Italo style that feeds into the sound, nowhere more so than with Swedish would-be pop star Nicolas Makelberge. His track Dying in Africa has a fast, ashen beat with gorgeously undulating synth work atop it, for a darkly funny song about heartbreak so bad that not even African hardship can throw it into perspective. It was later covered by fellow fey Swedish diva Sally Shapiro, and slowed to a screwed crawl by Joel Ford and Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) for one of their Games mix tapes.

9 Magnus International – Kosmetisk

That octave-hopping bass line returns, and Magnus International retools it with a frosting of distortion, placing simple cascades of notes on top – a rudimentary but utterly lush production. This came out on Full Pupp, the label from Prins Thomas whose other stars Blackbelt Andersen and Mental Overdrive push an astral, slightly acidic disco sound; the label is about to celebrate 10 years in the game with a double-CD compilation.

10 Paavoharju – Kevätrumpu

Using the same bass line but to very different ends is Finnish band Paavoharju, who, like Kemialliset Ystävät and other wonky outfits from the country's forested interior, use electronics to create a bizarre modern folk. This is disco as if performed by people who have been told about Studio 54 by passing travellers, with the diva vocals utterly unintelligible, and the sweep of Philly soul orchestration cobbled together from ragged twinkling. As ascetic Christians, the group couldn't be further from the cocaine, sex and Bianca Jagger-transporting horses of the New York scene, but like all the above artists, they've somehow tapped into its sunny essence from their snowbound side of the Atlantic.