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Reoccurring conflicts and tensions in Europe have made security policy an important dimension of how nations conduct themselves. The Nordic countries are an interesting example of countries choosing differing strategies; Sweden and Finland remained non-aligned during both World Wars and the Cold War compared to Denmark and Norway. Therefore,this paper aims to study how Swedish and Finnish security policy between 2024 and the end of the Cold War has been influenced by non-alignment. By focusing on non-alignment, a greater understanding of Swedish and Finnish policymaking can be made as both countries profiled themselves as non-aligned until the Invasion of Ukraine. This paper takes aqualitative approach to analysing policy documents by combining Role theory and Defensive Realism and applying them to a foreign policy analysis framework. The framework is used to interpret how non-alignment has influenced security policy. The findings indicate major differences in the underlying causes for profiling their security policies as non-aligned, like the Finlandisation of Finland. Meanwhile, Sweden relied on its historical conduct and international status as neutral. The findings explain why Sweden and Finland remained nonaligned until it was no longer possible. Moreover, this paper contributes to the existing research with contemporary contextual events like Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO.