The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

✍️ Michael Booth

Here is a book that has an interesing subject and makes the potential reader curious to know about what is inside. However it fails miserably to deliver due to the author himself. A smug brithish journalist that just writes his personal opinion based on weak anedoctal data and his own political biases. It is really difficult to like the author and not to lose patience with him.

There are some good points such as the Law of Jante, which came from fiction but explains the uniformity and conformity that we see spreaded all over Scandinavia. Good bits about danish flags, holidays, norwegian way of life, and so on. Any deeper incursion into sociology/politics falls flat due to the bias. I was undecided between 1 and 2 stars, but the Law of Jante bit was good enough for me to became a little more generous with the star distribution this time.