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

by Michael Booth

It would be surprising if this long litany of loss and defeat had not had a lasting impact on the Danes, but I would go further. I suspect that it has defined the Danes to a greater extent than any other single factor—more than their geography, more than their Lutheran faith or their Viking heritage, more even than their modern political system and welfare state. You see, in a roundabout way, Denmark’s losses were her making.

Their greatly reduced circumstances bound the Danes together more tightly as a tribe than any of the other Nordic countries. As historian T. K. Derry writes (about the accession of Norway to Sweden), “The Danish king and people resigned themselves to the loss … as a common misfortune which drew them together in a desire to avoid all further changes.” The territorial losses, sundry beatings, and myriad humiliations forced the Danes to turn their gaze inward, instilling in them not only a fear of change and of external forces that abides to this day, but also a remarkable self-sufficiency and an appreciation of what little they had left.

followed was a process of what you could call “positive parochialization”; the Danes adopted a “glass half full” outlook, largely because their glass was now half full, and it is an outlook that, I would argue, has paved the way for the much trumpeted success of their society to this day.

this parochialist urge toward insularity and its accompanying national romanticism is a defining element of Danishness that is epitomized by a saying that every Dane knows by heart to this day: Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes. (What was lost without will be found within.)

Holst’s declaration also encapsulates what turned out to be the Danes’ great cultural “Golden Age,” a mid-nineteenth-century period of increased social mobility and artistic blossoming that saw the son of a washerwoman, Hans Christian Andersen, publish his first fairy stories and go on to become one of the first genuinely world-famous figures; Søren Kierkegaard write his groundbreaking existentialist works; and the great classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, along with painters like C. W. Eckersberg and his pupil Christen Købke, and the Royal Ballet master August Bournonville, contribute to a great flurry of artistic activity within Denmark at the time.

They were learning how to do what they still do best: to be grateful for, and make the most of, the resources available to them; to cherish the simple pleasures of community; to celebrate their Danishness; and, above all, to avoid annoying the Germans.

While the Swedes forged forward with their great modernist, progressive social agenda, the Danes retreated, seeking refuge in their parochial, National Romantic vision. Parochialism remains the Danes’ defining characteristic, but their radically recalibrated sense of identity and national pride has created a curious duality best described as a kind of “humble pride,” though many often mistake it for smugness.

Denmark’s Great School Commission of the mid-nineteenth century, which laid the foundations for one of the first free nationwide primary school systems in Europe.

Other key moments in Denmark’s recent history include the country’s peaceful move toward democracy when the king renounced his absolutist powers with the constitution of 1849, and the all-important agricultural cooperatives that emerged soon after. When corn prices crashed because of cheap US imports, these cooperatives meant that Danish farmers were able to turn from arable production to pig farming virtually overnight.

today, the Danes are the world’s leading pork butchers, slaughtering more than twenty-eight million pigs a year. The Danish pork industry accounts for around a fifth of all the world’s pork exports, half of domestic agricultural exports, and more than 5 percent of the country’s total exports. Yet the weird thing is, you can travel the length and breadth of the country and never see a single sow because they are all kept hidden from view in intensive rearing sheds.