Dark lands: the grim truth behind the 'Scandinavian
miracle'
Television in Denmark is rubbish, Finnish men like a drink –
and Sweden
is not exactly a model of democracy. Why, asks one expert, does everybody think
the Nordic region is a utopia?
Michael Booth
The Guardian, Monday 27 January 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden?CMP=fb_gu
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 the Viking nations of Denmark ,
Norway and Sweden ). "The Sweet Danish
Life: Copenhagen : Cool, Creative,
Carefree," simpered National Geographic; "The Nordic Countries: The
Next Supermodel", boomed the Economist; "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's bounce-back from the financial abyss, we have an insatiable appetite
for positive Nordic news stories. After decades dreaming of life among olive
trees and vineyards, these days for some reason, we Brits are now projecting
our need for the existence of an earthly paradise northwards.
I have contributed to the relentless Tetris
shower of print columns on the wonders of Scandinavia
myself over the years but now I say: enough! Nu er det nok! Enough with foraging
for dinner. Enough with the impractical minimalist interiors. Enough with the
envious reports on the abolition of gender-specific pronouns. Enough of the
unblinking idolatry of all things knitted, bearded, rye bread-based and
licorice-laced. It is time to redress the 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 to Iceland
when it comes to consuming anti- depressants? And Sweden ? If, as a headline in this
paper once claimed, it is "the most successful society the world has ever
seen", why aren't more of you dreaming of "a little 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 comfortable, more so for indigenous families than
for immigrants or ambitious go-getters (Google "Jantelov" for more on
this), but as with all the Nordic nations, it remains largely free of armed
conflict, extreme poverty, natural disasters and Jeremy Kyle.
So let's remove those rose-tinted ski
goggles and take a closer look at the objects of our infatuation …
![]() |
Protesters clash with police at an asylum centre near |
Why do the Danes score so highly on
international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and
social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but
according to the OECD they also work fewer hours per year than most of the rest
of the world. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they
afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple,
the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four times
as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning
from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to
obtain goods and services.
Perhaps the Danes' dirtiest secret is that,
according to a 2012 report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, they have the
fourth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US . Those offshore
windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, but Denmark burns
an awful lot of 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 big new 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 Murders and documentaries on pig welfare. The Danes of course also
have highest taxes in the world (though only the sixth-highest wages – hence
the debt, I guess). As a spokesperson I interviewed at the Danish centre-right
thinktank Cepos put it, they effectively work until Thursday lunchtime for the state's
coffers, and the other day and half for themselves.
Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the
best public services? According to the OECD's Programme for International
Student Assessment rankings (Pisa ), Denmark 's schools lag behind even the UK 's. Its
health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at my local A&E
to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can't help feeling rather
misunderstands the nature of the service.) According to the 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 has skirted bankruptcy in recent
years, and the trains most assuredly do not run on time. Somehow, though, the
government still managed to find £2m to fund a two-year tax-scandal
investigation largely concerned, as far as I can make out, with the sexual
orientation of the prime minister's husband, Stephen Kinnock.
Most seriously of all, economic equality –
which many believe is the foundation of societal success – is decreasing.
According to a report in Politiken this month, the proportion of people below
the poverty line has doubled 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 dumping ground for
non-western immigrants, the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable who live
alongside Denmark's 22m intensively 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 state about the fact that Danish policeman refuse to
display ID numbers and can refuse to give their names. The Danes are
aggressively jingoistic, waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest
provocation. Like the Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm
(even the ambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularly
unsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of black people
with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon in the national
press). And if you think a move across the North Sea
would help you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodging
corporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I'm afraid
I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.
Plus side? No one talks about cricket.
The dignity and resolve of the Norwegian
people in the wake of the attacks by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011 was
deeply impressive, but in September the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party
– of which Breivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the
vote in the general election, enough to elevate it into coalition government
for the first time in its history. There remains a disturbing Islamophobic
sub-subculture in Norway .
Ask the Danes, and they will tell you that the Norwegians are the most insular
and xenophobic of all the Scandinavians, and it is true that since they came
into a bit of money in the 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, it granted asylum to fewer than half of them (around
5,000 people), a third of the number that less wealthy Sweden admits (Sweden
accepted over 9,000 from Syria alone). In his book Petromania, journalist Simon
Sætre warns that the powerful oil lobby is "isolating us and making the
country asocial". According to him, his countrymen have been corrupted by
their oil money, are working less, retiring earlier, and calling in sick more
frequently. And while previous governments have controlled the spending of oil
revenues, the new bunch are threatening a splurge which many warn could lead to
full-blown Dutch disease.
Like the dealer who never touches his own
supply, those dirty frackers the Norwegians boast of using only renewable
energy sources, all the while amassing the world's largest sovereign wealth
fund selling fossil fuels to the rest of us. As Norwegian anthropologist Thomas
Hylland Eriksen put it to me when I visited his office in Oslo University :
"We've always been used to thinking of ourselves as part of the solution,
and with the oil we suddenly became part of the problem. Most people are really
in denial."
We need not detain ourselves here too long.
Only 320,000 – it would appear rather greedy and irresponsible – people cling
to this breathtaking, yet borderline uninhabitable rock in the North Atlantic . Further attention will only encourage
them.
I am very fond of the Finns, a most pragmatic,
redoubtable people with a Sahara-dry sense of humour. But would I want to live
in Finland ?
In summer, you'll be plagued by mosquitos, in winter, you'll freeze – that's
assuming no one shoots you, or you don't shoot yourself. Finland ranks third in global gun ownership
behind only America and Yemen ; has the highest 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 leading cause 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
an intervention."
With its tarnished crown jewel, Nokia,
devoured by Microsoft , Finland 's hitherto 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, the place appears to be 99% trees. The view was
a bit samey.
The nation once dubbed "the west's
reigning educational superpower" (the Atlantic) has slipped in the latest Pisa rankings. This
follows some unfortunate incidents involving Finnish students – the burning of
Porvoo cathedral by an 18-year-old in 2006; the Jokela shootings (another
disgruntled 18-year-old) in 2007, and the shooting of 10 more students by a
peer in 2008 – which led some to speculate whether Finnish schools were 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 to mention (civil war, second world war
and cold war-related, mostly). They're not big on chat. Look up the word
"reticent" in the dictionary and you won't find a picture of an
awkward Finn standing in a corner looking at his shoelaces, but you should.
"We would always prefer to be
alone," a Finnish woman once admitted to me. She worked for the tourist
board.
Anything I say about the Swedes will pale
in comparison to their own excoriating self-image. A few years ago, the Swedish
Institute of Public Opinion 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. "Swedes seem not to 'feel as strongly' as
certain other people", Daun writes in his excellent book, Swedish
Mentality. "Swedish women try to moan as little as possible during
childbirth and they often ask, when it is all over, whether they screamed very
much. They are very pleased to be told they did not." Apparently, crying
at funerals is frowned upon and "remembered long afterwards". The
Swedes are, he says, "highly adept at insulating themselves from each
other". They will do anything to avoid sharing a lift with a stranger, as
I found out during a day-long experiment behaving as un-Swedishly as possible
in Stockholm .
Effectively a one-party state – albeit
supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families – for much of the 20th
century, "neutral" Sweden (one of the world largest arms exporters)
continues to thrive economically 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 the China of the
north.
Youth unemployment is higher than the UK 's and higher than the EU average; integration
is an ongoing challenge; and as with Norway
and Denmark ,
the Swedish right is on the rise. A spokesman for the Sweden Democrats
(currently at an all-time high of close to 10% in the polls) insisted to me
that immigrants were "more prone to violence". I pointed out 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 has emasculated 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 were born of a combination of Lutheran modesty,
peasant parsimony, geographical determinism and ruthless pragmatism ("The
Russians are attacking? Join the Nazis! The Nazis are losing? Join the
Allies!"). These societies function well for those who conform to the
collective median, but they 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 the cost, and the cold (both metaphorical and inter-personal),
then by all means join me in my adopted hyggelige home. I've rustled up a
sorrel salad and there's some expensive, weak beer in the fridge. Pull up an
Egg. 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 be BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week from 10
February.
• This article was amended on 29 January
2014. The claim that Denmark
is the EU's largest oil exporter was based on out-of-date information and has
been removed. A minor linguistic error has also been corrected.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário