After my visit to Norway (well, an one-and-a-half month stay, to be accurate) some while ago back in 2016, my perception towards Scandinavian countries had entirely changed. I wouldn't say the Scandinavian society is very far beyond my expectation, but through the process of it, I came to realize there is always two sides of every story. Perhaps it's because of the fact that visiting a country as tourist versus actually living in a country are two entirely different things. During my stay in Bergen, Norway, I came across quite many different things that I couldn't quite make sense of- ranging from things like the "work-life balance" that Scandinavians are able to maintain, the confusing medical system (that the doctors would rather suggest you to get medicines from pharmacies alone rather than offering you prescriptions like they are supposed to), to the unfrequented "no-cash" banks in the second largest city in the country. It was only after I came back to Hong Kong that I started to recapitulate my experiences in Norway and think about the reasons why things were what they were in the first place.
Being so convinced that my connection with Scandinavia wouldn't just end with me leaving the country, I started to take part in activities organized by the local "Scandinavian communities" (more like those organized by Hong Kong people with special connections with Scandinavia; and as a matter of fact, I organized one as well last December myself). I have also started to pick up books related to the culture (such as the Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking), which is where I discover this book that I am going to write about today: The Almost Nearly Perfect People- Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia written by Michael Booth.
The book certainly tries to give you another perspective as to how one sees Scandinavia- it started with a particularly odd question:
Considering all the positive PR (that molds this new-found love of all things Scandinavian- be it their free-from schools, whitewashed interior design, consensus-driven political systems or chunky jumpers), and with awareness of the so-called Nordic miracle at an all-time high, why wasn't everyone flocking to live here? Why did people still dream of a house in Spain or France? Why weren't they packing up their mules and heading for Aalborg or Trondheim? For all the crime literature and TV shows, why was our knowledge of Scandinavia still so abysmally lacking? How come you have no idea where Aalborg or Trodheim actually are (be honest)?
Why can no one you know speak Swedish or 'get by' in Norwegian?
(pp.7)
Scandinavia, indeed, is some sort of terra incognita, in which the Nordic historian T.K. Derry puts it, "for literally thousands of years, the north remained almost entirely outside the sphere of interest of civilised man", or how A.A Gill would say, that this part of the world is a simply "a collection of countries we can't tell apart". (pp.8)
Linguistical connections between Scandinavian languages and English
Scandinavian languages certainly left their mark on the English language. A language professor at Oslo University even went as far as declaring English a Scandinavian language, pointing to shared vocabulary, similar verb-then-object word order (as opposed to German grammar), and so on. Then there are some of the days of the week (Wodin or Ordin for Wednesday; Thor for Thursday; Freya for Friday),
as well as many place names. Any town ending in '-by' or '-thorpe' (meaning 'town' or 'smaller settlement') was once a Viking settlement- Derby, Whitby, Scunthorpe, Cleethorpes, and so on. There is also a town called East Grinstead, whose name is probably of Danish origin (sted meaning 'place', and a common Danish town name ending).
Family words- mother (mor), father (far), sister (søster), brother (bror) are all pretty close too, although the English never adopted the Scandinavians' very useful far-far, mor-mor, far-mor, mor-far method of distinguishing between material and paternal grandparents. (pp. 9-10)
The Downside of the Scandinavian Utopia
Once you begin to look more closely at the Nordic societies and their people, once you go beyond the Western media's current Scandinavian tropes- a more complex, often darker, occasionally quite troubling picture begins to emerge:
there are the discussions about Nordic totalitarianism and how uptight the Swedes are; about how the Norwegians have been corrupted by their oil wealth to the point where they can't even be bothered to peel their own bananas; how the Finns are self-medicating themselves into oblivion; how the Danes are in denial about their debt, their vanishing work ethic, and their place in the world; and how the Icelanders are, essentially, feral. In this coming series of blog posts, we are going to unearth the truth about the Nordic miracle one by one, including Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.