Living with Vikings

And Denmark is one of the few countries where democracy was introduced before a working class was formed.40 Danish farmers attended Grundtvig’s high schools during the winter and learned about fellowship, equality and the necessity of agreement. But they were also masters of their own homesteads, and unlike Sweden, Denmark did not amass a blue-collar working class of any dimension until relatively late. The

old saying “standards are good but double standards are twice as good” has found the perfect home. In Sweden

war in 1864, when Denmark surrendered one-third of its territory, lost 40% of its inhabitants and after five months of war, gained a serious national trauma.
Once a medium-sized state, after just two battles against the Prussians, it became small and insignificant, and therefore retreated back to what was national, safe, homogeneous, and cosy. Denmark chose to invest in what it knew: agriculture, more land reclamation, and making the cooperative movement and farmers into the new folk heroes

koldskål, a cool, classic summer dessert consisting of egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and buttermilk, are natural choices for the list of items that are particularly Danish

For example, the Swedes explain that on the bottom of Norwegian beer bottles it says: “Open at the other end”. And the Danes tell the story: “Two people are sitting on a bench. One is a Swede and the other is drunk too”. The Finns are generally presented as taciturn, strange, contained, backward and naturally also alcoholic. A Danish joke at the more civilised end of the scale is: “Two Danes, two Finns, two Norwegians and two Swedes were stranded on a desert island. One month later, the Danes have created a cooperative movement, the Finns have felled all the trees, the Norwegians have built a fishing boat and the Swedes are waiting to be introduced to each other.”

Lars von Trier was so cut up when his film “The Idiots”

stubborn belief that work is good, and that efficient work is even better

’s Nordic. It’s discreet. It’s expensive

People are not afraid of failure. People make mistakes along the way – and resolve them. This means that people dare to take chances and experiment.

Jante’s Law about “Do not think you are anything special”. The notion of equality is woven into the social model – and Jante’s Law is integral to the mentality. Both are challenged today. And Jante’s Law does not explain a large Nordic paradox relating to equality i.e. the absence of women in top management in the most equal countries in the world