I am old enough to remember when the Nordic countries had enough of their own personalities to rate Cold War lies.  The Sweden of Hammarskjold, Bergman, Gylenhammar, and especially Olaf Palme and Gunnar Myrdahl especially annoyed the Eisenhower boys. (Sorry for spelling errors.)

I live in Minnesota where there are enough Nordics so that at least the Democrats are essentially a Social Democratic party.  (One may argue that the Republicans in the state have a more legitimate claim on this title as Charles August Lindbergh, Sr., whose father was a reform member of the Riksdag before fleeing to USA because of a scandal, would go on to win five elections to the US House.  Of course, modern Minnesota Republicans are now mostly ignorance-worshipping Reaganites so Lindbergh has been LONG forgotten.)

As I see it, Nordic politicians have similar characteristics on either side of the Atlantic.  They come in two essential flavors. 1) The explorers--the folks who like to blaze new paths.  2) The hearth-tenders--the folks who understand that one very good way to survive winter is to pull your blanket over your head and wait for spring.    My theory is that no matter how successful life is with the explorers, eventually Nordics panic and look to "be normal" for a while.

I have a Finnish friend.  Very smart--a professor at the University of Helsinki.  This guy sent me home with 5 kg of books on Marx and Lenin when I first visited him in 1970.  He last visited me a year ago.  He was working on a book on Adam Smith.  He had spent a year in France and considered French society a largely a failure at multiple levels.  It had been a LONG intellectual journey!

I wondered how this could happen.  Two theories emerged.  1) Neoliberalism has been almost kind to Finland.  They are experiencing the closest thing to a "Golden Age" they have ever had.  Hard not to credit neoliberalism.  2) Small societies just assume the larger nations are worth emulating--in this case, England wins almost by default.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, societies that are rich and willing to emulate a culture that has almost no known virtues except how to make life more comfortable for the rich lose their effectiveness a laboratories for social experimentation.  Oh well, at least there are fewer Cold-War-style lies directed at the Nordics these days.

One hopes this situation does not last much longer.  This is a culture that admires its explorers.  One assumes the Nordics won't be led by blanket-over-the-head types forever.


"Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"