Janteloven: The Reason Why Scandinavians Are So Happy
I have always been a bit fascinated by the stories I heard of Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. They are incredibly successful societies, their populations are the happiest in the world and, I mean… going to the supermarket and parking your car further from the entrance because somebody you don't know might arrive later and be actually late for an appointment is taking consideration for others to another level. Who the hell in the world would do something like this?
Well, it wasn't until I came across a video of Spotify's Sweden cofounder Daniel Ek saying that he was ashamed for the time when he was showing off and driving sport cars that I truly understood what makes most of the Scadinavians act the way they do.
Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. — C.S. Lewis
Turns out much of the Scandinavia operates under a cultural code of conduct known as the Law Of Jante, which is a set of rules that supposedly dictates how you should behave and discourages individual superiority and ambition.
The ten rules state:
1. You are not to think you are anything special.
2. You are not think you are as good as we are
3. You are not to to think you are better than we are.
4. You are not to imagine yourself better than we are.
5. You are not to think you know more than we do.
6. You are not to think you are more important than we are.
7. You are not to think you are good at anything.
8. You are not to laugh at us.
9. You are not think anyone cares about you.
10. You are not think you can teach us anything.
It makes sense that the Jante Law takes a significant part of making the Nordic societies what they are today, because after all you cannot have complete individuality where everyone just ignores the rules while you have a harmonious and equal society.
The law is taken so seriously that the Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård, in an interview for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, explains that although he was very proud of winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe, the Jante Law inhibited him from celebrating and even displaying his accolades.
The craziest part of this, though, is that the Jante Law comes from a work of fiction. It was written as a satire by the Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks in the 1930s , but over the time and decades it became an informal Scandinavian Ten Commandments.
And although the law was only written in the 1930s, Sandemose stated that he came up with the idea for the law when he visited Nyköbing, a town in Denmark, and crystallized the mentality he felt there in this concept. Thus, the mentality, although not written down, has probably been around for longer than the past 90 years and might be the reason why these societies are so successful and happy.
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