Adevărurile sinistre din spatele mitului „miracolului scandinav”

Fericirea din Danemarca, restaurantele sale, dramele TV; egalitatea de sexe din Suedia, romanele polițiste, giganții din comerțul cu amănuntul; școlile din Finlanda; bogăția de petrol din Norvegia și cântecele sale ciudate despre vulpi; sau revenirea spectaculoasă a Islandei din abisul financiar. Există un nesaturat apetit pentru știri pozitive din țările nordice ale Europei. Iar toate acestea, în timp, au condus la ideea unui ”miracol scandinav”.

«The Guardian» își propune însă să studieze în amănunt fiecare dintre părțile care formează acest ”miracol scandinav” și descoperă în spatele fiecărui lucru pe care îl știm despre țările nordice ceea ce vor numi „adevăruri sinistre”.
Este adevărat că Danemarca este cunoscută ca fiind cea mai fericită țară din lume, dar nu este oare demn de menționat și faptul că este pe locul doi, după Islanda, la consumul de antidepresive sau faptul că danezii au cea mai mare rată a îndatorării din lume?
Astfel, «The Guardian» ajunge să spună „Enough!” (Ajunge!). Ajunge cu idolatria și să strecurăm puțină lumină dincolo de zid!

Danemarca:
– în spatele fericirii din Danemarca stau antidepresivele. Este țara cea mai fericită, în studii și sondaje, dar danezii consumă cele mai multe antidepresive din lume.
– danezii au un nivel ridicat de încredere și coeziune socială, însă lucrează mai puține ore pe an decât cea mai mare parte din restul lumii, iar creșterea productivității este foarte lentă.
– cu toate acestea, își permit mese savuroase și pulovere de lână tricotate sau, altfel spus, o viață liniștită, confortabilă și fericită… însă Danemarca are cea mai mare rată a datoriei externe privată, de patru ori mai mare decât a Italiei, îndeajuns încât să justifice un avertisment de la FMI. Peste jumătate dintre danezi recunosc că-și cumpără produse de pe piața neagră.
– un adevăr sinistru este și faptul că danezii au a patra cea mai mare amprentă ecologică pe cap de locuitor din lume, chiar și înaintea SUA, adică impact negativ asupra mediului.
– au cele mai mari impozite din lume și al șaselea cel mai mare salariu. Danezii lucrează, astfel, trei zile și jumătate pentru stat și o zi și jumătate pentru ei;
– la învățământ sunt chiar în urma Marii Britanii, iar la sănătate stau și mai rău: danezii au cele mai mari rate de cancer de pe planetă.
– nici egalitatea economică nu mai este cea care a consacrat țările scandinave în ochii lumii. Danemarca devine tot mai mult o țară polarizată: proporția celor sub pragul sărăciei s-a dublat în ultimii zece ani.

Norvegia:
– lumea întreagă a fost cutremurată de atacul lui Anders Behring Breivik, în 2011. Au fost 92 de morți, în urma celor două atacuri (din Oslo şi de pe insula Utoeya). Însă, partidul anti-islamist care îl avea ca membru pe Breivik, a obținut, după atac, un procent spectaculos: 16,3% la alegerile generale, suficient pentru ca a face parte dintr-o coaliție guvernamentală, pentru prima dată în istorie.
– în 2013, Norvegia a înregistrat un număr record de cereri de azil, însă a acceptat mai puțin de jumătate, adică 5.000. În comparație, Suedia a acceptat, doar din Siria, 9.000.
– în ceea ce privește bogăția în petrol, jurnalistul Simon Sætre avertizează că lobby-ul puternic „izolează și face țara asocială”. El susține că norvegienii, care au bani din petrol, muncesc mai puțin, se retrag mai devreme și spun frecvent că s-au îmbolnăvit. Dacă guvernele anterioare au controlat cheltuirea veniturilor din petrol, actualul guvern are tendința să „răsfețe”.

Islanda:
– The Guardian a scris doar atât: 320.000 de oamenii se agață de această piatră de nelocuit, care-ți taie răsuflarea, aflată la limită în Atlanticul de Nord. Mai multă atenție doar îi va încuraja.

Finlanda:
– este a treia țară din lume la procentul deținătorilor de arme de foc și …cea mai mare rată a criminalității din Europa de Vest, dublu față de Marea Britanie, și cea mai mare rată de suicid din toate țările nordice.
– cu Nokia devorată de Microsoft, Finlanda este mai dependentă decât oricând de vânzarea de hârtie. Cea mai mare parte ajunge la baronii porno din Rusia.
– Finlanda nu mai este nici „superputerea în învățământ a Occidentului”, așa cum devenise faimoasă. Asta din cauza mai multor incidente nefericite: incendierea unei catedrale sau uciderea mai multor elevi.
– în ceea ce privește abilitățile sociale, finlandezii preferă „să fie întotdeauna singuri”, nu poate fi vorba despre primiri călduroase, zâmbete calde sau conversații sclipitoare; ei sunt imaginea clasică a ceea ce se numește „reticență”.

Suedia:
– suedezii sunt adepții izolării unii de alții; de exemplu, ei ar face orice pentru a nu împărți liftul cu un străin;
– șomajul în rândul tinerilor este mai mare decât în Marea Britanie și mai mare decât media UE;
– integrarea este o provocare în curs de desfășurare, iar partidele de dreapta câștigă tot mai mult teren. Un purtător de cuvânt al „Democraților” din Suedia, care are un record de 10% în sondajele de opinie, a afirmat că „imigranții sunt mai predispuși la violență”.

Dark lands: the grim truth behind the ‘Scandinavian miracle’

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 …

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 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.

NORWAY
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.”

ICELAND
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.

FINLAND
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.

SWEDEN
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!

Susține Anonimus.roDacă te regăsești și crezi, sprijină activitatea Anonimus.ro și presa liberă și independentă! Nu suntem finanțați de partide sau companii, nu avem interese politice sau economice, ADEVĂRUL ESTE SINGURUL NOSTRU SCOP!