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

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.

At funerals, meanwhile, Daun warns that, while mild sniffling is just about acceptable, “cries of despair are embarrassing and are remembered long afterward.” This doesn’t mean the Swedes are unaffected by, or unsympathetic to, bereavement, he stresses: “Rather, they lack the skills to deal with strong feelings and are afraid of doing the wrong thi

They have never looked back: 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.

One Norwegian conceded to me that May 17 was really not much more than “a kind of ‘fuck you’ to the Swedes

Danes were second only to the Belgians in the laziness stakes—

The traditional Swedish crayfish party—the kräftskiva—is one of the Swedes’ few self-sanctioned days of public disorder, a rare moment of unguarded merriment when they permit themselves to unleash their (otherwise dormant) Viking spirit. It is held every year in mid-August, as the last hurrah of summer before the murk of winter draws in. And there

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.

leading Swedish ethnologist Åke Daun put it in his book Swedish Mentality: “Before expressing one’s views on a controversial issue, one tries to detect the position of the opposite party.… Swedes seem to reflect a great deal on what they would like to say, how to say it and when, how other people might react, etc., before they actually say it—if th

This feeling of unthreatened somnolence, of peace, stability, and calm, is, of course, central to the sense of security and quality of life enjoyed by the people of the north and, by extension, also to their happiness. But safety, functionality, consensus, moderation, social cohesion—these aren’t the be-all and end-all of life, merely the foundatio