Dark Lands the Grim Truth Behind the 'Scandinavian Miracle'

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Norway … the nice side, at least. Photograph: Alamy

For the past few years the world has been in thrall to all things Nordic(for which purpose we must of course add Iceland and Finland to theViking nations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden ). "The Sweet DanishLife: Copenhagen: Cool, Creative, Carefree," simpered NationalGeographic; "The Nordic Countries: The Next Supermodel" , boomed theEconomist; "Copenhagen really is wonderful for so many reasons,"gushed the Guardian.

Whether it is Denmark's happiness, its restaurants, or TV dramas;Sweden's gender equality, crime novels and retail giants; Finland's

schools; Norway's oil wealth and weird songs about foxes; or Iceland'sbounce-back from the financial abyss, we have an insatiable appetite for positive Nordic news stories. After decades dreaming of life among olivetrees and vineyards, these days for some reason, we Brits are nowprojecting our need for the existence of an earthly paradise northwards.

I have contributed to the relentless Tetris shower of print columns on thewonders of Scandinavia myself over the years but now I say: enough! Nu er det nok! Enough with foraging for dinner. Enough with the impracticalminimalist interiors. Enough with the envious reports on the abolition of gender-specific pronouns. Enough of the unblinking idolatry of all thingsknitted, bearded, rye bread-based and licorice-laced. It is time to redressthe imbalance, shed a little light Beyond the Wall.

Take the Danes, for instance. True, they claim to be the happiest people

in the world, but why no mention of the fact they are second only toIceland when it comes to consuming anti- depressants ? And Sweden? If,as a headline in this paper once claimed, it is "the most successfulsociety the world has ever seen" , why aren't more of you dreaming of "alittle place" in Umeå?

Actually, I have lived in Denmark – on and off – for about a decade,because my wife's work is here (and she's Danish). Life here is pretty

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Dark lands: the grim truth beh ind the'Scandinavian miracle'Television in Denmark is rubbish, Finnish men like a drink – andSweden is not exactly a model of democracy. Why, asks oneexpert, does everybody think the Nordic reg ion is a utopia?

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comfortable, more so for indigenous families than for immigrants or ambitious go-getters (Google "Jantelov " for more on this), but as with allthe Nordic nations, it r emains largely free of armed conflict, extremepoverty, natural disasters and Jeremy Kyle.

So let's remove those rose-tinted ski goggles and take a closer look atthe objects of our infatuation …

Protesters clash with police at an asylum centre near Copenhagen in 2008.Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

DENMARK

Why do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys?Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do verynicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they alsowork fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world . As a result,productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all thoseexpensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, theDanes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four timesas much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant awarning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using theblack market to obtain goods and services.

Perhaps the Danes' dirtiest secret is that, according to a 2012 reportfrom the Worldwide Fund for Nature, they have the fourth largest per

capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US. Thoseoffshore windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, butDenmark is the EU's largest exporter of oil, and it still burns an awful lotof coal. Worth bearing that in mind the next time a Dane wags her finger at your patio heater.

I'm afraid I have to set you straight on Danish television too. Their bignew drama series, Arvingerne ( The Legacy, when it comes to BBC4 later this year ) is stunning, but the reality of prime-time Danish TV is day-to-day, wall-to-wall reruns of 15-year-old episodes of Midsomer Murdersand documentaries on pig welfare. The Danes of course also havehighest taxes in the world (though only the sixth-highest wages – hencethe debt, I guess). As a spokesperson I interviewed at the Danish centre-right thinktank Cepos put it, they effectively work until Thursdaylunchtime for the state's coffers, and the other day and half for

themselves.Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best publicservices? According to the OECD's Programme for International Student

Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark's schools lag behind even theUK's. Its health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at mylocal A&E to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can't helpfeeling rather misunderstands the nature of the service.) According tothe World Cancer Research Fund , the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet. "But at least the trains run on time!" I hear you say.No, that was Italy under Mussolini. The Danish national rail company hasskirted bankruptcy in recent years, and the trains most assuredly do notrun on time. Somehow, though, the government still managed to find £2mto fund a two-year tax-scandal investigation largely concerned, as far as Ican make out, with the sexual orientation of the prime minister's

husband, Stephen Kinnock .Most seriously of all, economic equality – which many believe is thefoundation of societal success – is decreasing. According to a report inPolitiken this month, the proportion of people below the poverty line hasdoubled over the last decade. Denmark is becoming a nation divided,essentially, between the places which have a branch of Sticks'n'Sushi(Copenhagen) and the rest. Denmark's provinces have become a social

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dumping ground for non-western immigrants, the elderly, theunemployed and the unemployable who live alongside Denmark's 22mintensively farmed pigs, raised 10 to a pen and pumped full of antibiotics(the pigs, that is).

Other awkward truths? There is more than a whiff of the police stateabout the fact that Danish policeman refuse to display ID numbers andcan refuse to give their names. The Danes are aggressively jingoistic,waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest provocation. Likethe Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm (even theambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularlyunsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of blackpeople with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon inthe national press). And if you think a move across the North Sea wouldhelp you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodgingcorporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I'mafraid I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.

Plus side? No one talks about cricket.

NORWAY

The dignity and resolve of the Norwegian people in the wake of theattacks by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011 was deeply impressive,but in September the r ightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of whichBreivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of thevote in the general election, enough to elevate it into coalitiongovernment for the first time in its history. There remains a disturbingIslamophobic sub-subculture in Norway. Ask the Danes, and they will tellyou that the Norwegians are the most insular and xenophobic of all theScandinavians, and it is true that since they came into a bit of money inthe 1970s the Norwegians have become increasingly Scrooge-like,hoarding their gold, fearful of outsiders.

Though 2013 saw a record number of asylum applications to Norway, itgranted asylum to fewer than half of them (around 5,000 people), a thirdof the number that less wealthy Sweden admits (Sweden accepted over 9,000 from Syria alone). In his book Petromania, journalist Simon Sætrewarns that the powerful oil lobby is "isolating us and making the countryasocial". According to him, his countrymen have been corrupted by their oil money, are working less, retiring earlier, and calling in sick morefrequently. And while previous governments have controlled thespending of oil revenues, the new bunch are threatening a splurge whichmany warn could lead to full-blown Dutch disease.

Like the dealer who never touches his own supply, those dirty frackersthe Norwegians boast of using only renewable energy sources , all thewhile amassing the world's largest sovereign wealth fund selling fossilfuels to the rest of us . As Norwegian anthropologist Thomas HyllandEriksen put it to me when I visited his office in Oslo University: "We'vealways been used to thinking of ourselves as part of the solution, andwith the oil we suddenly became part of the problem. Most people arereally in denial."

Finns … having a quiet drink Photograph: Martti Kainulainen/REX

ICELAND

We need not detain ourselves here too long. Only 320,000 – it wouldappear rather greedy and irresponsible – people cling to thisbreathtaking, yet borderline uninhabitable rock in the North Atlantic.Further attention will only encourage them.

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FINLAND

I am very fond of the Finns, a most pragmatic, redoubtable people with aSahara-dry sense of humour. But would I want to live in Finland? Insummer, you'll be plagued by mosquitos, in winter, you'll freeze – that'sassuming no one shoots you, or you don't shoot yourself. Finland ranksthird in global gun ownership behind only America and Yemen; has thehighest murder rate in western Europe , double that of the UK; and by far the highest suicide rate in the Nordic countries.

The Finns are epic Friday-night bingers and alcohol is now the leadingcause of death for Finnish men . "At some point in the evening around

11.30pm, people start behaving aggressively, throwing punches,wrestling," Heikki Aittokoski, foreign editor of Helsingin Sanomat, told me."The next day, people laugh about it. In the US, they'd have anintervention."

With its tarnished crown jewel, Nokia, devoured by Microsoft, Finland'shitherto robust economy is more dependent than ever on selling paper –mostly I was told, to Russian porn barons. Luckily, judging by a recent

journey I took with my eldest son the length of the country by train, theplace appears to be 99% trees. The view was a bit samey.

A car burning after riots in Stockholm in 2013. Photograph: EPA

The nation once dubbed "the west's reigning educational superpower"(the Atlantic) has slipped in the latest Pisa rankings. This follows someunfortunate incidents involving Finnish students – the burning of Porvoocathedral by an 18-year-old in 2006; the Jokela shootings (another disgruntled 18-year-old) in 2007, and the shooting of 10 more studentsby a peer in 2008 – which led some to speculate whether Finnish schoolswere quite as wonderful as their reputation would have us believe.

If you do decide to move there, don't expect scintillating conversation.Finland's is a reactive, listening culture, burdened by taboos too many tomention (civil war, second world war and cold war-related, mostly).They're not big on chat. Look up the word "reticent" in the dictionary andyou won't find a picture of an awkward Finn standing in a corner lookingat his shoelaces, but you should.

"We would always prefer to be alone," a Finnish woman once admitted tome. She worked for the tourist board.

Sweden

Anything I say about the Swedes will pale in comparison to their ownexcoriating self-image. A few years ago, the Swedish Institute of PublicOpinion Research asked young Swedes to describe their compatriots.The top eight adjectives they chose were: envious, stiff, industrious,nature loving, quiet, honest, dishonest, xenophobic.

I met with Åke Daun, Sweden's most venerable ethnologist. "Swedesseem not to 'feel as strongly' as certain other people", Daun writes in hisexcellent book, Swedish Mentality. "Swedish women try to moan as littleas possible during childbirth and they often ask, when it is all over,whether they screamed very much. They are very pleased to be told theydid not." Apparently, crying at funerals is frowned upon and

"remembered long afterwards". The Swedes are, he says, "highly adeptat insulating themselves from each other". They will do anything to avoidsharing a lift with a stranger , as I found out during a day-long experimentbehaving as un-Swedishly as possible in Stockholm.

Effectively a one-party state – albeit supported by a couple of shadowyindustrialist families – for much of the 20th century, "neutral" Sweden



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What's this?

What's this?

(one of the world largest arms exporters ) continues to thriveeconomically thanks to its distinctive brand of totalitarian modernism,which curbs freedoms, suppresses dissent in the name of consensus,and seems hell-bent on severing the bonds between wife and husband,children and parents, and elderly on their children. Think of it as theChina of the north.

Youth unemployment is higher than the UK's and higher than the EUaverage ; integration is an ongoing challenge; and as with Norway andDenmark, the Swedish right is on the rise. A spokesman for the SwedenDemocrats (currently at an all-time high of close to 10% in the polls)insisted to me that immigrants were "more prone to violence". I pointedout that Sweden was one of the most bloodthirsty nations on earth for much of the last millennium. I was told we'd run out of time.

Ask the Finns and they will tell you that Swedish ultra-feminism hasemasculated their men, but they will struggle to drown their sorrows.Their state-run alcohol monopoly stores, the dreaded Systembolaget,were described by Susan Sontag as "part funeral parlour, part back-room abortionist".

The myriad successes of the Nordic countries are no miracle, they wereborn of a combination of Lutheran modesty, peasant parsimony,geographical determinism and ruthless pragmatism ("The Russians areattacking? Join the Nazis! The Nazis are losing? Join the Allies!"). Thesesocieties function well for those who conform to the collective median, butthey aren't much fun for tall poppies. Schools rein in higher achievers for

the sake of the less gifted; "elite" is a dirty word; displays of success,ambition or wealth are frowned upon. If you can cope with this, and thecost, and the cold (both metaphorical and inter-personal), then by allmeans join me in my adopted hyggelige (home). I've rustled up a sorrelsalad and there's some expensive, weak beer in the fridge. Pull up anEgg. I hear Taggart's on again!

The Almost Nearly Perfect People – The Truth About the Nordic Miracle(Jonathan Cape), by Michael Booth, is published on 6 February. It will beBBC Radio 4's Book of the Week from 10 February.

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World newsDenmark · Europe ·Finland · Iceland ·Norway · Sweden ·

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Dark Lands the Grim Truth Behind the 'Scandinavian Miracle'

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