The purpose of this essay is to analyze the ideological development of the former communist parties and the contemporary left-wing socialist parties of the Nordic countries. It is aimed at the two decades that have passed since the collaps of the Berlin wall and the parties at hand are; the Norwegian Sosialistisk Venstre, the Danish Socialistisk Folkeparti, the Swedish Vänsterpartiet and the Finnish Vasemmistoliitto. Since the 1960´s these parties have undergone major ideological changes with reference to a widening of their political agenda to an inclusion of democratic ideals as well as the new ideologies of feminism and ecologism. Thus reforming them into modern left-wing socialist parties at different times. The main hypothesis is formulated from the idea that there must be a connection between the startingpoint of reformation and the degree of modernism/traditionalism they show today. Furthermore, the study intends to determine how much they have changed and if there are any common features in the development. The method used consists of a quantitative approach with a minor qualitative streak and the material includes the four parties principalprograms from 1990 until today. In the quantative part I chose to count an amount of value-related words with connection to the four categories of socialism, feminism, ecologism and the democratic ideal. With the ideological refinement of Ball and Dagger as a frame of reference i chose a big amount of words, in which case the qualitative approach constituted as a failsafe in order to determine every words accuracy. The research shows that my original hypothesis is only partly correct. The degree of modernization seems to be depending on whereas the party was founded before or after the collapse of the Berlin wall. The fact that the three Scandinavian parties all show a positive modernization in comparison to their Finnish counterpart supports that. The study also reveals that the Finnish party, without consideration of modernism/traditionalism, changes the most during the period and the Danish party changes the least. The main feature of the Scandinavian parties is the decline of socialistic ideas in comparison to their Finnish equivalent.