In 2014, Trine Syvertsen, Gunn Enli, Ole J. Mjøs, and Hallvard Moe raisedtwo central concerns as to the future of the ideal of the Nordic media welfarestates regarding increasing demographic fragmentation and political polarisation.Using audience data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, we offer acomparative longitudinal perspective on how these concerns have played out infour Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) from 2016–2022, compared with the US and the UK. We find that despite some fragmentationaccording to age, fragmentation may not be problematic per se if people’s newsdiets draw substantially on quality journalistic news outlets with a guarantee ofrelatively shared news agendas. A moderate degree of political polarisation existsfor some types of Nordic news media, with public service media showing lesspolarisation than some newspapers and digitally born outlets.