The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

by Michael Booth

After some years of watching the Danish happiness bandwagon roll relentlessly on from a distance—interspersed with regular visits that, if anything, only served to confuse me more (Weather still shitty? Check. Tax rate still over 50 percent? Yep. Shops closed whenever you need them? Oh, yes)—I moved back there. This wasn’t some magnanimous gesture of forgiveness, nor a bold experiment to test the boundaries of human endurance: my wife wanted to move back to her homeland and, despite every molecule of my being screaming, “Don’t you remember what it was actually like to live there, Michael?” I have learned from harrowing experience over the years that it is usually best in the long run if I just do what she says.