About 15 minutes into Friday's trading day, the Stockholm OMX 30 index was down 1.93 percent, Helsinki had lost 2.20 percent, Oslo fell 1.53 percent and the Copenhagen stock exchange shed 0.82 percent.

The fall came on the heels of Thursday's gains on all the Nordic markets except Copenhagen, which ended the day 0.4 percent down, with a short selling ban in the main continental markets having only a very short-lived effect.

The opening drop also came at the end of a rollercoaster week where trading has bounced between steep losses and towering gains amid global concerns the US and eurozone debt crises will push the world economy back into recession.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2010