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

In his book Suicide and Scandinavia US psychiatrist Herbert Hendin observed that the Swedish approach tended to encourage independence in their children at a very early age. Swedish children were, he said, taught that to be dependent on another person—even one’s own mother—is a failing. “Children are encouraged to separate from their mothers early

According to Stefan Jonsson, his country has reached a crucial crossroads. “There is huge confusion in Sweden. I think it is a society on the edge of cracking up. Mentally it is disintegrating, questioning what it is. Questioning social democracy. Many are now wondering what to salvage, whether this is sustainable, and what will come if it is not s

Immigration will continue in the north—it has to for many reasons—and integration will continue to improve.

The Swedish royal family’s legitimacy is even more tenuous. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended neither from noble Viking blood nor even from one of their sixteenth-century warrior kings, but from some random French bloke.

Berggren was at least prepared to nail his colors to the mast: “I’m a republican, basically, and it’s definitely an intellectual nuisance, but I tend to agree with Engels that it’s a distraction.

They find the extremes of poverty and wealth, deprivation and privilege you find in the States downright horrifying. Scandinavian class structures tend to be far more subtle, income and status differences far less marked.

To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, a slogan like the American Dream (the United States came way down on the LSE’s social mobility scale, incidentally).

gently explained that part of the reason that Sweden had tolerated its royal family for so long was that the country’s move toward democracy and universal suffrage had been a gradual, peaceful one. It is a similar story in Denmark. “By the time of the late seventies most people didn’t feel there was a need to get rid of the king because he didn’t d

I don’t believe this is the case, but Sweden does appear to be sitting on a demographic time bomb. It is the only country in the world in which people over eighty years old make up more than 5 percent of the population (the global average is 1 percent). Almost 20 percent of Swedes are over sixty-five, making Sweden the oldest country in Scandinavia