The Almost Nearly Perfect People Read online

  On the other hand, you have those of a more monetarist, centre-right persuasion – including Aarhus University’s life-quality economist, Christian Bjørnskov, it turns out – who argue that the Danes have always had high levels of trust and social cohesion, and that these date back to long before the advent of the welfare state. Top of this camp’s agenda is the downscaling of Denmark’s welfare state, which they feel has become unsustainable, and the reduction of Denmark’s taxes; they place less emphasis on economic equality and more on motivating society’s wealth-generators to improve Denmark’s poor productivity growth.

  This second camp argue that, far from creating the economic equality that Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia enjoy today, the region’s welfare state systems were actually founded on a broader social equality, which existed long before the public sector and high taxes. Bjørnskov claims that research into pre-war trust levels shows that the Danes have always been a trusting people and that trust and social cohesion prepared the way for the welfare state, and not the other way round. ‘If you want to redistribute wealth, then it is easier in a high-trust society because you believe that the money will be distributed well to deserving people. We’ve always had trust and this trust is the cornerstone of the welfare state,’ he told me. ‘Yes, today Denmark has low inequality and the greatest happiness, but if there was a correlation you would also expect it to be true for other countries with low inequality. But it’s not.’

  Bjørnskov claims that Wilkinson and Pickett’s famous graphs, which purported to demonstrate direct correlations between inequality and numerous social ills, omit key countries which do not fit in with their hypothesis: ‘They include South Korea, but not Taiwan. Slovakia, but not the Czech Republic. If you included these countries, then the graphs would resemble a perfect cloud [instead of a simple, linear correlation]. It is a conjuring trick. Nobody took that book seriously in Denmark.’

  I had to admit, it had puzzled me that, while Japan is one of the few countries whose Gini Coefficient matches those of the Nordic region, it still only ranked a mere sixteenth on the OECD’s trust index; the Japanese were equal yet still did not trust each other. And we know that, while the Danes’ income equality has actually decreased over the last two decades, their trust levels have continued to increase. Both of these factors seemed to undermine the theory that economic equality fosters high levels of trust.

  So, if Denmark’s trust and social cohesion were not created as a result of the welfare state spreading everyone’s money around equally, providing equal educational opportunities, free health care and so on, what were their origins?

  Chapter 6

  Vikings

  ‘WE HAVE INDEED heard tell of the splendour of warrior Danes in days gone by, of the kinds of that nation, and of how their high-born men achieved deeds of valour.’Beowulf, anon.

  THE WARRIOR DANES have gathered together at either end of the battlefield in two rowdy circles, raging and baying like animals. They are huge, these men, beasts in their skins, leather and chain mail. They clutch pikes and axes and the blades of their mighty swords glint through the mist. I am some way off, but the incitements of their leaders carry on the chilly breeze as they rouse the ranks for battle and, if need be, death.

  ‘Do you want some ketchup?’

  ‘No thanks, it’s fine like this. Thanks.’

  I tuck into my spit-roasted wild boar sandwich, bought from one of the many market and craft stalls set up nearby, and wince as, a minute or two later, the two armies hurl themselves across the grassy ramparts and collide in an almighty clatter of wood and iron. Pointed weapons thrust out of the melee at alarming angles; the armies look like two giant, brawling porcupines.

  ‘They’ll have someone’s eye out,’ I think to myself. Actually, the other day they very nearly did: ‘We’ve had all sorts of accidents. Mostly broken fingers and arms, but there was a guy last year who got hit across the eye. It was pushed back into its socket, but luckily it popped back out overnight.’

  I am chatting to Mike, a guide here at Trelleborg, one of Denmark’s largest Viking sites, in western Zealand. We are watching a re-enactment of the kind of battle fought by the man who built this impressive circular fortress in AD 980, the legendary Viking king Harald Bluetooth (of wireless technology fame, which was invented in Scandinavia).

  The Danes are highly enthusiastic historical re-enacters and, naturally, they gravitate to an era (the era) when they reigned supreme: the two-hundred-or-so-year period from the late eighth century when Vikings terrorised a good part of Northern Europe, ruled parts of Scotland and Ireland, rattled the gates of Paris, and discovered North America. This was the time of warrior kings like Bluetooth, Sweyn Forkbeard, and King Cnut the Great, who used the strategic location of their homeland – within striking distance of modern-day Germany, France and Britain – together with their recently developed fast, agile ships, to make devastating lightning raids on unsuspecting Christians across what is new Europe. And, yes, as countless Danes have reminded me over the years, they also ruled eastern and northern England (although, as I keep having to point out, their rule lasted less than thirty years in total and Yorkshire was mostly swamp at the time).

  I am here because, according to some, the Vikings are the best bet as to the source of the Danes’ remarkable egalitarianism. For those who argue that high taxes are a disincentive to hard work, that they stifle ambition and innovation, that the welfare state encourages a feckless underclass of spongers, and that social democracy is one step removed from communism, it is far more satisfying to point to history, and even genetics, to explain the Nordic miracle.

  ‘You hear those famous stories about the Vikings attacking Paris in the 800s,’ Bjørnskov had told me. ‘And a Parisian coming out with a white flag or whatever and asking to speak to their king. The Vikings are supposed to have roared with laughter and said, “But we are all kings here.” We didn’t use to think trust and equality went that far back [to the Vikings]. We used to think there was this link between trust and the welfare state, that trust was something that could be changed, was malleable, and that the welfare state created it, but I don’t believe that now. The welfare state didn’t really start until 1961, but trust levels were high in Scandinavia long before that. If you want to explain where those trust differences [between the Scandinavians and other countries] come from, you have to go back to at least the nineteenth century.’

  When you visit a Danish company and can’t tell the CEO from the office clerk, that’s Viking egalitarianism at work. When you see women leaving their babies sleeping in prams outside cafés, that’s Viking social trust. When the Danish prime minister can walk the streets of Copenhagen with few turning a head, that’s a Viking attitude to class and leadership. Or that’s the argument.

  Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward as that. At least, not if you ask Mike the Trelleborg Viking guide. ‘It is a myth that there was no class society then. Oh no, there was lots of conflict,’ Mike, dressed in a woven wool tunic and sturdy leather boots, tells me. ‘There was the store mand, which literally means the “Big Man”, the ruler; then the middle-class farmers; then the slave class, the thralls. If you were rich and had a big farm then you could build a retinue and power.’

  In other words, of course the Vikings had kings but, in terms of trust, it is also true that the Vikings had a strict code of honour, which you could argue finds an echo in the high levels of trust in Danish society today. ‘One of the fundamental elements of Viking-age society was honour,’ Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe told me. I had telephoned her after coming home from Trelleborg, more confused than ever about the Danes’ Viking inheritance. ‘It was like a credit rating. Every action you took would have real-life repercussions, practically every interaction could affect your standing. Valour and honour were especially valuable to men because they were a measure of who you could trust, who your daughter could marry, and so on.’

  But the Vikings were also ferociously violent, immoral renegades, fa
med for their brutal attacks, rapes and murder: contemporary Danes not so much.

  ‘Well, yes, they were pillagers and marauders, but obviously it was a violent age, those were the times. But they were also very law-abiding. The English word for law comes from Old Norse,’ Rowe said, adding that cooperation and a spirit of community were extremely important in the harsh northern lands. ‘There are many instances of people working together because they could not survive alone. You needed friends and allies, and that community and solidarity shows up very early with reciprocity, gift giving cementing personal relations.’

  Back in the Aarhus coffee shop, Bjørnskov was sticking to his line that even if Danish trust levels didn’t go all the way back as far as the Vikings, they did at least predate the welfare state. As evidence, he cited his ability to predict trust levels in American states based on where their immigrants had come from over the last 150 years. There are, it turns out, high levels of trust in those states, such as Minnesota, that received a large number of immigrants from Scandinavia in the mid-nineteenth century (i.e. pre-welfare state), and low levels of trust in those that welcomed, say, Greeks and southern Italians.1

  ‘Whoa, there,’ I said, placing my elderflower cordial on the table. ‘This is heading into fairly dodgy territory, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is so sensitive,’ agreed Bjørnskov, looking around rather anxiously, as I now realised he had been doing since we started discussing the subject. ‘And I don’t like it because it means it is really difficult to change things.’

  ‘Wait, though,’ I said, suddenly relieved. ‘If your theory is true, then Sweden, which has had far higher levels of immigration from supposedly “untrustworthy” non-European countries, would have much lower levels of trust than Denmark, and ultimately be a much less successful country. But it’s not.’

  Bjørnskov pointed out that immigration had happened gradually in Sweden, which had helped keep trust relatively unaffected, and that it was very difficult to conduct research in areas with large immigrant communities, like the infamous Rosengård housing estate in Malmö. ‘You can’t even go there if you are a policeman, so crime and things like that are under-reported. In fact trust levels are a little lower in Sweden, but what we do see is that immigration doesn’t actually change trust level because if you ask immigrants, ‘Do you trust most people?’ most of the people around them are Swedes in Sweden, or Danes in Denmark.

  ‘I know it is politically incorrect to say these things, and it doesn’t help to have to say that, if you come here, you have to get used to Danish society, but it pushes us to dig even deeper for evidence. What you do find is that you can’t just talk generally about “immigrant groups”. For instance we have observed that Iranian immigrants have much more trust in Danes than in other Muslim immigrant groups, because Iranians define themselves as Persians, not Arab Muslims. We are now realising that you will probably want to know where a Turkish immigrant comes from: if he is from the coast or from Istanbul, where trust levels will be more like they are in Greece [in other words, not terribly trustworthy]. And there are major differences between French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Canada.’

  Aside from the troubling racial stereotyping, the branding of some nationalities as less trustworthy seemed to me to be dubious for so many other reasons, not least the nagging suspicions that, as with happiness, presumably notions of trust are different in different countries, and that the happiness surveys always seemed to be slanted toward Nordic notions of what is trustworthy or not. Plus it is worth re-stating that Canada and Sweden both score very well in terms of trust, yet both have high immigrant populations.

  As for the Vikings, they rampaged, raped and pillaged, had slaves and kings, and wrote epic, boastful poems about themselves. None of this can be said of their modern descendants (aside from the kings, with whom we will deal later). It seemed a little too convenient that the Scandinavians had inherited only the positive traits of their forefathers. And but still, I had to admit that my faith in the value of wealth-distribution had been slightly shaken.

  My next meeting was with Ove Kaj Pedersen, head of the Copenhagen Business School and one of the most respected economists in the Nordic region. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the universities of Stockholm, Sydney and Beijing. As he was an economist, I expected Pedersen to have a centre-right, liberalist approach to all this, but I could not have been more wrong.

  The new Copenhagen Business School building is the closest thing I have ever seen to one of those idealised architect’s models. Students lounged in perfectly mixed race- and gender-clusters on landscaped, manicured lawns, or walked in twos and threes, or cycled by on gearless racers. It was fabulous. Like Gattaca. Unfortunately, as I discovered at reception when I rolled up precisely one minute before our scheduled appointment, this was not where Pedersen’s office was located. That was twenty minutes’ walk away in a handsome stucco villa at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in leafy Frederiksberg. I arrived sweaty and flustered, but Pedersen immediately put me at ease, both personally and with regard to the Danish system.

  ‘Nah, bullshit. That’s absolute bullshit,’ he laughed when I asked him about the Viking inheritance theory. ‘Absolutely it is because of the equality and our tax rates and the welfare state. The trust is based, on my understanding, on the welfare state, period. You trust your neighbour because you know your neighbour is paying tax just like you are, and when that neighbour gets sick, they get the same treatment as you, they go to the same school. That is trust: that you know that, regardless of age, sex, fortune, family background or religion, that you have the same opportunities and the same safety net. You don’t have to compete with your neighbour, or be envious of your neighbour. You don’t have to cheat your neighbour.

  ‘The welfare state is the most important innovation of any country in the post-war period. Before it, Denmark was split between 25 per cent with the highest income, 25 per cent at the bottom: now we have 4 per cent at the top and 4 per cent at the bottom.’

  I had met many Danes like Pedersen before, usually of his generation and perhaps a little oversatisfied with what they had achieved, but he was not without his doubts concerning the direction in which his country was going: ‘I see a major problem in Denmark at the moment. We are in the midst of a historical process. We can go from the traditional, Nordic, egalitarian welfare state to a more Continental French or German one based on a two-tier society – those working, and those outside the labour market. [The Right] sees no problem in the Continental model, with the inequality that brings, but I do. It is a big fear for me that the traditional model will go down the drain, like in Britain, because that will pose problems for social capital and trust, and bring higher crime, and so on. Our comparative advantages in these areas will disappear, and the only way we can beat Germany is by having an even more equal society.’

  But the truth is, Denmark is no longer the classless society Pedersen and others on the Left claim it to be. The proportion of the Danish population considered to be below the poverty line has almost doubled, from 4 per cent to 7.5 per cent, over the last ten years. The elite are increasingly congregating in residential ghettos, almost all of them in and around Copenhagen. (Telltale signs that you are in one include a: a branch of Sticks ‘n’ Sushi and b: swarms of Fiat 500s.) The upper-middle and upper classes are increasingly sending their children to the same schools, too, and, according to national Danish newspaper Politiken the tendency has doubled since 1985. More generally, economic inequality has been increasing since the mid-1990s to the point where, according to the OECD – and rather at odds with Pedersen’s interpretation – the top 20 per cent of Danes earn more than three times as much as the bottom 20 per cent. That is still better than in the UK where they earn six times as much, but it is far from an equal society.

  I can, though, see why foreigner visitors might think Denmark is classless, particularly if their impressions are gathered either from a long weekend in Copenhagen, or a few episodes of Borgen, b
ut travel more widely in the country, or spend some time learning the signifiers of Denmark’s social classes, and the strata become all too clear.

  I have had the mixed blessing of meeting several members of the Danish landed gentry over the years, and can confirm that – with one or two exceptions – they are just as weird and arrogant as the British variety and as numerous in per capita terms, too, I suspect (the Danish countryside is lousy with minor castles and manor houses). But perhaps more representative polar opposites of Danish socio-economic extremes are the ‘Whisky Belt’ Danes and the ‘Rotten Banana’ Danes. The former live on Denmark’s ‘Gold Coast’, Strandvejen (the Beach Road), a ribbon of lavish villas, modernist bungalows and sea-view apartment blocks, many of them designed by Denmark’s legendary post-war architects (the aforementioned ‘most beautiful petrol station in the world’, designed by Denmark’s master builder Arne Jacobsen is here). Strandvejen stretches twenty or so miles north from the prosperous suburb of Hellerup and boasts great beaches, Michelin-starred restaurants, Jacobsen’s famous Bellavista housing complex, the forested deer park of Dyrehaven and, further north, the loveliest art museum in Scandinavia, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

  Strandvejen’s fishing villages and Hamptons-esque waterfront mansions are home to Denmark’s elite – its movie stars and directors, big-time lawyers, bankers, hedge funders, sports stars, CEOs and IT entrepreneurs. Property prices are piffling in UK or US terms, averaging a million or so pounds, rising to perhaps three million at most, but for Danes Strandvejen is a symbol, either of everything they might allow themselves to aspire to when they are sure no one else is looking, or of a vulgar and reprehensible anomaly in an otherwise modest and egalitarian society.