Seven United States presidents have made presidential visits to Northern Europe. Richard Nixon became the first incumbent president to visit a Northern European country 1973. The first trips were an offshoot of the general easing of the geo-political tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. To date, every nation in the region has been visited at least once: Finland (6), Denmark (4), Latvia (3), Estonia (2), Iceland (2), Norway (2), Sweden (2), and Lithuania (1).