The aim is to describe the development of achievement in compulsory school in the Nordic countries from the 1960s. The study relies on published results concerning literacy and numeracy from the international large-scale assessments between 1964 and 2012. Among others, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) for most countries, a small but consistent increase in the level of achievement was observed from the mid-1970s to around 1990 for both literacy and numeracy; (2) Finland improved literacy performance dramatically between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, which is hypothesized to be associated with the introduction of part-time special education; (3) for all countries performance declined from the late-1990s/early-2000s, which is hypothesized to be due to different factors in different countries.