More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 12, 2023 - August 15, 2024
The Swedes have an even greater trade-union membership and in their spare time are particularly keen on voluntary work: they call this instinct for diligent self-improvement organisationssverige or ‘organisation Sweden’.
their extraordinary levels of trust. All of the Nordic countries have high levels of trust, but the Danes are the most trusting people on the planet. In a 2011 survey by the OECD, 88.3 per cent of Danes expressed a high level of trust in others, more than any other nationality
I grew curious: how do you actually measure trust in a society? It turns out to be remarkably simple. ‘You ask people, “How much do you think other people in your country can be trusted?”’
Bjørnskov, an expert in the fields of social trust, subjective well-being and life satisfaction, told me about some other, highly revealing experiments that had been carried out in the field. ‘Back in the nineties there was an experiment done [in 1996, by Reader’s Digest] where wallets were left around in various cities and they counted how many were returned. And the cool thing is that in the places where more people say they can trust others, the more wallets were returned.
with about forty wallets and the only two countries where all forty were returned were Norway and Denmark. I thought it was too good to be true,
The theory goes that, if there is trust in society, then its bureaucracies will be more straightforward and effective – the cost and time of transactions between companies will be reduced and less time will be spent paying lawyers to draw up costly contracts, and in litigation.
It is tricky and costly to check that high-level consultants, architects, IT technicians or chemical engineers are working as they should, so trust becomes that bit more important, which is one reason why high-trust societies such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, excel in advanced industries like pharmaceuticals and electronics and attract foreign companies operating in these fields. ‘If you talk to German businessmen, that’s what they see in us,’ said Bjørnskov. ‘They have realised that it is cheaper to employ highly skilled workers here.’
It turns out that explaining the reasons for Denmark’s trust, social cohesion and, ultimately, the happiness of its people, is the most politically divisive discussion in the country right now, encompassing, as it does, highly polarised political beliefs regarding everything from immigration through tax, class and equality to, yes, even the Vikings.
In simple terms, in one camp are those who believe that the source of Denmark’s remarkable trust and social cohesion, and by extension also its happiness, is the country’s economic equality – let’s call this group the ‘Ginis’. Naturally, the Ginis are the cheerleaders for the Danish welfare state model, which they believe plays a central role in redistributing the country’s wealth fairly via taxes.
On the other hand, you have those of a more monetarist, centre-right persuasion – including Aarhus University’s life-quality economist, Christian Bjørnskov, it turns out – who argue that the Danes have always had high levels of trust and social cohesion, and that these date back to long before the advent of the welfare state. Top of this camp’s agenda is the downscaling of Denmark’s welfare state, which they feel has become unsustainable, and the reduction of Denmark’s taxes; they place less emphasis on economic equality and more on motivating society’s wealth-generators to improve Denmark’s
...more
And we know that, while the Danes’ income equality has actually decreased over the last two decades, their trust levels have continued to increase. Both of these factors seemed to undermine the theory that economic equality fosters high levels of trust.
And there is no point in tiptoeing around this: everyone is absolutely shit-faced. Including me.
famed for their vast canon of drinking songs and everyone gathered here seems to know the words.
We have finally arrived at the central piece of our Nordic puzzle – the hub, the crux, the Rosetta Stone by which so much of the cultural, political, social and inter-relational history of Scandinavia can be deciphered. This is the country which has done more than any other to define how the rest of the world sees Scandinavia: as modern, liberal, collectivist and – kräftskiva parties aside – more than a little dull.
‘the most successful society the world has ever known’.
the more the outsider will detect a persistent, niggling animosity towards the Swedes.
The accomplishments of twentieth-century Sweden are legion and, mostly, noble: from its rationalist, respectful secularism, to its industrial might and economic success and, of course, its compassionate, all-embracing, shining beacon of a welfare state.
Like Denmark’s similar ‘bumblebee’ model (high taxes, large public sector, extensive welfare state), Sweden continues to defy the warnings of many economists, warnings which have been sounding in one form or other since the Second World War. Sweden is, if not booming, then at least doing very well for itself. As I have already mentioned, it is fourth on the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report, and tenth on the UN’s Human Development Index, ahead of Denmark and Finland.
In fact, almost half of the largest companies in the Nordic region are Swedish.1
the 35 million-selling Henning Mankel and the 60 million-selling Stieg Larsson. Sweden is also the world’s third largest exporter of music (after the US and UK).
The abiding view of the Swedes from their neighbours to the south is of a stiff, humourless, rule-obsessed and dull crowd who inhabit a suffocatingly conformist society, and chew tobacco.
wrote a fabulously bitchy, poison-pen farewell to the country upon leaving.
envious, stiff, industrious, nature-loving, quiet, honest, dishonest and xenophobic
Swedish Mentality:
‘Before expressing one’s views on a controversial issue, one tries to detect the position of the opposite party
In Fishing in Utopia,
‘I have never lived in, nor could imagine a place where people talked less to each other.’
‘Swedish homogeneity provides little of the security felt with good friends. On the contrary, homogeneity can easily lead one to overestimate one’s ability to interpret, to understand the behaviour of others. This makes it risky to give off the “wrong” signal: for example, by wearing expensive, elegant clothes when one holds socialist values.’
They pull back, you know, they try to avoid controversy, to avoid strong disagreements, and there’s a lot of understatement.
they are so formal, and stiff, and never really say what is on their minds because they want to keep a nice polite ambience.’
‘Swedes seem not to “feel as strongly” as certain other people.’
He quotes a midwife as saying that in Swedish society ‘it is forbidden to express strong feelings, and giving birth is a situation in which it is natural to give vent to strong feelings.’
the Swedes will seek to impress each other with how lagom they are.
Laget om loosely translates as ‘pass around’; over time this is thought to have transformed into lagom, which has today come to imply a kind of self-imposed, collective restraint.
‘Never, ever wear shoes inside another person’s home. Unless, of course, others are doing so,’
but there is one golden rule which you will not be forgiven for breaking: be on time.
Never touch glasses when you toast.
Åke Daun’s book Swedish Mentality.
Daun describes the Swedes as a race of wallflowers wracked with insecurities; they would rather take the stairs than share a lift, he writes. Their more scintillating habits including visiting the countryside, eating crispbread, speaking in a low voice, and avoiding controversial subjects in conversation.
I have a French colleague and when she came to Sweden she was convinced it was forbidden to talk on buses. She couldn’t find any other explanation.
‘We are not so talkative, but in Sweden that is something good, you are being polite: “I am going to listen to you.” But after a while the American, or whoever, will start to wonder, “Doesn’t he have his own opinion, something to offer to make it a conversation?” because in America, they think that shy people are stupid.’
for instance, you could always tell the Swedish passengers who were continuing across the Øresund Bridge towards home because they would barge into the carriage while passengers were still disembarking as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
I have just as much right to walk/drive/cycle here as you. I think there is something to this – either that or perhaps for most of the time it’s simply too cold to hang around being polite.
the Swedes were even more conflict-shy than they were rule-abiding.
One of Stockholm’s major tourist attractions is a glass viewing pod which is hauled up and over the top of a spherical sports arena, the Stockholm Globe, affording its occupants a nice view
there was the decriminalisation of the Swedish porn industry in the 1960s, a move that mirrored one by the Danes around the same time and which had the effect of turning the Swedish and Danish porn industries into global leaders.
Yet an exhibition at the Historiska museum had featured photographs from Sweden’s most notorious immigrant estate, Rosengård in Malmö. Rosengård is known throughout Scandinavia for its social problems, racial tension, squalor and violence, and is genuinely feared by the Danes who live just twenty minutes away across the Øresund strait.
After all, this was still Sweden, the country where mothers leave their babies sleeping in prams outside of shops, and people in the suburbs leave their front doors unlocked; home of the three-point safety belt; the country where everyone is required by law to drive with their headlights on at all times.
(I always assume this is on account of some deep-seated, Lutheran notion that shopping for pleasure is shameful and wrong).
Sweden’s economy tanked, unemployment quadrupled and the central bank’s interest rate hit 500 per cent. The central government passed a law preventing any more homes passing into public ownership as part of the cost-cutting, privatisation strategy and Rosengård was left to fend for itself.
