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When asked why Danes are so happy, British author Michael Booth replied: “They’re sexy and gorgeous and beautiful.” Here, a reveler at a Danish street festival enjoys music and beer.
Photograph by Mads Nissen, Panos

BOOK TALK
True or False: Scandinavians Are Practically Perfect in Every Way
Thanks to big government and high taxes, Scandinavia is a success story—mostly.
By Simon Worrall
February 25, 2015
• 13 min read

To an outsider, Scandinavia can seem like a group of small, difficult-to-tell-apart Nordic countries. Frequently derided by right-wing politicians as an example of everything wrong with Big Government, the Scandinavian countries are, in fact, some of the richest, most successful societies on Earth, with exceptionally high levels of education, health care, and safety.

Talking from his home in Copenhagen, Denmark, British journalist Michael Booth, author of *The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia*, explains how a “warrior gene” may make Finns susceptible to alcohol, why Greta Garbo’s famous line about wanting to be alone holds true for most Swedes, what the United States can learn from the Nordic countries, and why he loves *flødeboller*.

At the end of the movie *The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest*, there is a shot of Stockholm at night. In addition to *Stieg Larsson*, we’ve had a slew of other internationally successful “Nordic noir” exports. What’s going on?
I think the reason that pe…

Thanks to big government, high taxes, and redistribution of wealth, Scandinavia is educated and safe. But there are a few smudges on the portrait—alcoholism, for one.

Source: True or False: Scandinavians Are Practically Perfect in Every Way