Newsweek had published the results of a survey it had conducted of nations around the globe. The magazine had set out to answer a question that, in its own words, was “at once simple and incredibly complex—if you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly m

Another report, published in June 2013 by the government’s statistics department, no less, revealed that the Danes were working even less than previously thought—fewer than twenty-eight hours a week.

For many Danes, their tax burden seems to be the ultimate symbol of collective sacrifice.

The fragment of A Fugitive that has come both to define and to torment the Danes is a list of rules by which the residents of the fictional town of Jante were said to abide. These rules set out the Law of Jante (Janteloven), a kind of Danish Ten Commandments, the influence and infamy of which have spread beyond their home country throughout the Nor