David Mitchell

A small group of interconnected countries on the northern edge of Europe, centuries of conflict, some subjected to colonial-type governance by others, Crowns uniting, territory expanding and contracting, a huge and lasting Reformation influence, bitter land and class conflict, cultural connections and disputes, peaceful today but with lingering resentment…

There’s no mystery why someone interested in Ireland and Britian should also be drawn to Scandinavia. That said, I may have picked this book off the shelf because of its very pretty cover. Stein Ringen is a Norwegian-born political scientist, emeritus professor at Oxford, who has lived for decades in the UK. The Story of Scandinavia is a personal journey in the later years of his life to explain to himself and us how his homeland and its neighbours became perhaps the most sophisticated and humane societies ever seen.

Indeed, he quotes the phrase, associated with Francis Fukuyama, ‘getting to Denmark’. Not Ryanair, it refers to the ambition that a poor and conflict-affected country can attain the high level of development and stability seen in a place like Denmark. This book is literally about how Denmark, and its Scandinavian counterparts, got to be themselves, the ‘brand Scandinavia’ that we know today.

The scope, then, is big; 1,200 years, and three countries. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get; the print is small. But it’s all just so interesting, written in a direct and elegant prose.

There are the expected narratives of crazy kings and their entourages, medieval filth, senseless and petty wars, and eventually much tedious but important detail about the development of the welfare state.

We also meet many writers, scientists, and the small number of powerful women in the Scandinavian story. Here and there, Ringen inserts his own family history, and strong opinions, in enjoyable ways, keeping an eye on what he calls the ‘small folks’. These are the ordinary people who leave behind limited records and who suffer the whims of rulers and the vicissitudes of economics.  

It’s remarkable to see how a society/nation/state comes into being. We start with the Vikings, maritime raiders who appear to have had little sense of their own identity. Ringen tells us that, for all the contemporary interest in the Vikings, their society was not up to much. They didn’t leave behind structures of note, their mythology was shallow, their lasting achievements few. Even their key enabling technology, the sail, was borrowed.

Chieftains become kings – basically, the strongest gangsters who could buy others’ loyalty. Christianity arrives, the Black Death, then the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. And money and banks, factories, emigration, taxation, electricity, railways, democracy, feminism; this book is about everything. I was surprised to learn that Denmark and Sweden had colonies and East India companies, and were involved in the African slave trade.

With all the warring and court intrigue, history could have produced a very different map. Norway could still be a province of Denmark or Sweden, Finland a region of Sweden or Russia. Southern Sweden could still be part of Denmark, or Denmark not even exist, incorporated into Germany with its language extinguished. It’s hard to learn all this and not think how the political map of Ireland and Britain could have turned out very differently and may yet evolve.

Ringen is certainly an apologist for Scandinavian success and social democracy. These countries prove that you can have both social justice and capitalist affluence. Trade unions became so powerful that revolution was not needed. But he also stresses that Scandinavia was a late developer, poor and backward at the start of the twentieth century, and borrowed most of its great ideas from further south in Europe. Its welfare states – what Ringen sees as the defining, shared characteristic of modern Scandinavia – were heavily influenced by policies in Germany and the UK.  

How, then, did Scandinavia ‘get to’ Scandinavia? Failure helped. Autocratic Sweden and Denmark overreached, lost wars and their empires. This may have replaced delusions of grandeur with modest and collaborative mindsets. Each country also made a lot of money, in different ways, in the twentieth century, cash they could spend on social protection. They were also fortunate to have competent and enlightened politicians.

The final chapter refers to the July 2011 terror attack in Norway, Covid, and the Ukraine war. The region is not immune from threats and challenges. But the author concludes that with high levels of trust in governments, and strong welfare states, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are well-equipped to handle what is thrown at them. It’s a dense read, but an exhilarating one.