Always interesting to see people not from the north discussing nothern policies and culture. Most of what these happiness indexes measure isn't so much being happy as in overtly expressive and full of emotion, however it's more akin to satisfaction. We're content and satisfied because we have built a society that values personal leisurely/free time, educational opportunity, quality of life, the middle class worker, healthcare, health and overall equality. We live good lives because we treat society as something we share between us and all have a vested interest in. That's also why, as someone mentioned, despite having high taxes and government envolvement, we trust our institutions and things run way more efficiently than the US.
With that said, culturally we're a strange mix of conservative and progressive. In some ways we are very free spirited and progressive, like with booze, sexual prefences/orientation, gender and ethnical opportunity, secularism and we believe in the betterment of society, but at the same time we don't give a shit about what others do and we don't care to know. Janteloven, or Lagom, basically means we don't like fancy stuff or change too much, and you shouldn't think like you're better than others. All that gender nonsense and culture war shenanigangs on both sides, for example, is very miniscule here because no one gives a shit. When people live well they don't have to make enemies out of each other all the time, although there's definitely differences in political opinion.
Just a quick one on suicide rates. According to the latest OECD data which is from between 2015 and 2018, between the included countries it goes like this:
Denmark: 9,4
Iceland: 10,4
Sweden: 11,4
Norway: 11,6
Finland: 14,6 (13 Eurostat)
United States: 14,5
https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide-rates.htm
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/...te_in_finland_nears_european_average/10324113
All Nordic countries have been on a downward trend the last decade, the US has been rising unfortunately. Newer data from 2020-2021, when released, will show that more for sure.
This tracks. Lots of hot women indeed, love it.
There's nothing pointing to this. If anything our culturel norms haven't changed at all. Immigration policies stopped being lax about 5 years ago as well.
Yeah that video is pretty good. Obviously it's done through the eyes of foreigners so they might not know the variety in society as much, but it does cover some of the basics pretty well. Also Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland all have their own versions of the nordic model, but there's no doubt that a lot of the fundamentals are similar. The people however don't like to be associated with each other too much, probably stems from all the wars we had with each other.
