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Scandinavian countries have very high trust societies, based on any survey that looked into this. Why that is is a difficult question and leads us very far. Is

Scandinavian countries have very high trust societies, based on any survey that looked into this. Why that is is a difficult question and leads us very far. Is it money? Where did the money come from? Oil (but that's not there in all Nordic countries)? Lack of war? Did the lack of war come from their high trust? Or the geographic distance to warring nations and empires of Europe? Is it related to the cold environment, perhaps harder to conquer and less valuable for empires? Do social temperaments have to do with climate? Is it about their genetic homogeneity? Which one is the cause of which? If they go in cycles what influences what in the strongest way? It's a very complicated issue! It's too reductionist to take only the part "earnest, therefore startup". Sort of implying that if only other nations were also more earnest they'd also have startups and wealth, disregarding all the possibly good reasons that those other nations have not to be trusting/earnest. But it's also too dismissive to say to this that it's "national stereotyping" therefore it immediately must be false and there can be no connection at all between earnestness/trust and startups in the case of Scandinavia.

nindalf 6y ago
Trust is something that is defined and measurable. And yes you’re right, it is complicated. But the complexity isn’t helped by introducing a random thing called “earnestness” without a way to measure that.
qwerty1234599 6y ago
Scandinavian countries are not really countries. More like a family club. (This is starting to change though) When everybody is just like you, it leads to high trust, no us vs them mentality. Same is true in eg. South Korea and Japan. Contrast this with their similarily northern neighbour Russia, which is basically the America of eastern europe. A nation resulting from a melting pot of ethnicitiess, languages, cultures (most current Russians are really assimilated from smaller native cultures, their great grandparents didn't identify as Russian). And the end result? Corruption. Everybody just tries to milk public funds as much as they can, and so forth.
- trap_chateau 6y ago
  While I'm not disagreeing with your proposed cause to high trust within a culture, I disagree with 'high diversity causing corruption'. I think the corruption issues in eastern europe are a whole different conversation and I'm not sure how diversity in ethnicity would necessarily cause that.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Poland is very uniform in term of cultural background and origins (and everyone is white), and yet has very low trust levels.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Poland (and most of Eastern Europe) has been steamrolled repeatedly by neighboring empires which have imposed what amounted to foreign governments. These governments ruled despite, not due to, the local populations. Ergo secret police, network of informants, etc, just to control the population. It's hard to have very high trust levels when your own government and state are working against you and when your coworkers and neighbors can at any time rat you out for unpatriotic activities.
pjc50 6y ago
Everyone forgets the Swedish empire. And the man whose name is a synonym for traitor, Vikrund Quisling. Scandinavia has hardly escaped war. If I wanted a glib answer I'd attribute it to a combination of less feudalism and more Lutheranism, plus a bit of Hanseatic trading.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  I meant they escaped the world wars and the rest of the turmoils of the 20th century. Largely because they didn't have deep historic conflicts with the rest of the big empires. I mean, sure, not completely, they definitely had some of their population deported by Nazis, but it wasn't such a major impact as elsewhere in Europe.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    They definitely did not escape any recent war. The WWII in Scandinavia was particularly bad, including the occupation of Norway and Denmark. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Weserübung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Weserübung They did escape the contemporary ones the same way any other country in Europe did anyway.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Norway and Denmark (as well as France) were treated with kiddie gloves compared to what occupation in Eastern Europe meant.
      - anubidiocane 6y ago
        Well, Norway collaborated with the nazis and sympathised for some of their ideas at the time, for example Norway had been experimenting with eugenics programs since the 20s when they started to sterilise mentally hill patients and made it legal in 1934. But the king of Norway and members of the army escaped to London and directed the resistance from there. Ask the Jews that owned the houses and nursing homes that were confiscated for the Lebensborn project and the kids that survived it (not many), what they think about it. Others had it worse doesn't mean they escaped the war and its consequences. If the eastern block is where you draw the line, you could argue that many parts of Europe escaped the war. But it would be historically false.
silvestrov 6y ago
> Lack of war? Denmark and Sweden have been at war with each other so many times you can't give an exact number as it becomes difficult to say when it's a prolonged war and when it's 2 seperate wars. A simplified list: https://useless-denmarkfacts.tumblr.com/post/125179860721/all-21-wars-between-denmark-and-sweden-1205-1814 https://useless-denmarkfacts.tumblr.com/post/125179860721/al...
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  What I meant specifically is that they are in part rich because they didn't have to rebuild from scratch after WW 2.
anubidiocane 6y ago
Not to disagree but I believe that the nature of their government, the social democracy, that empowers people and their needs, built up the trust they have in each other and their representatives. It's also the reason why they accept very high rates of taxation in exchange for public services that actually work and benefit the population. Depicting Scandinavia as an uniform land where a genetically homogeneous spawn lives is also misleading. For example in Denmark 86% of the population is Danish descent, same goes for Norway, in Sweden 18% of the population was born in another country. In Italy, which is not particularly famous for its genetic uniformity, 90% of the population was born in Italy from Italian parents. What seems uniform in Europe, except for Scandinavia, is the distrust European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other Italy has the highest level of trust in the Mediterranean area, around 30%, while France, Spain and Greece are below 20%. Netherlands have the same level of Scandinavia (>60%), Germany is around 50%. My personal belief is that the society trust is directly proportional to the level of social conflict. Not surprisingly France, where social conflict is quite high (which I don't think is bad per sé) has the lower level of trust in Europe (~18%), except for Romania.

nindalf 6y ago

Trust is something that is defined and measurable. And yes you’re right, it is complicated. But the complexity isn’t helped by introducing a random thing called “earnestness” without a way to measure that.

qwerty1234599 6y ago

Scandinavian countries are not really countries. More like a family club. (This is starting to change though) When everybody is just like you, it leads to high trust, no us vs them mentality. Same is true in eg. South Korea and Japan. Contrast this with their similarily northern neighbour Russia, which is basically the America of eastern europe. A nation resulting from a melting pot of ethnicitiess, languages, cultures (most current Russians are really assimilated from smaller native cultures, their great grandparents didn't identify as Russian). And the end result? Corruption. Everybody just tries to milk public funds as much as they can, and so forth.

trap_chateau 6y ago
While I'm not disagreeing with your proposed cause to high trust within a culture, I disagree with 'high diversity causing corruption'. I think the corruption issues in eastern europe are a whole different conversation and I'm not sure how diversity in ethnicity would necessarily cause that.
burntoutfire 6y ago
Poland is very uniform in term of cultural background and origins (and everyone is white), and yet has very low trust levels.
- oblio 6y ago
  Poland (and most of Eastern Europe) has been steamrolled repeatedly by neighboring empires which have imposed what amounted to foreign governments. These governments ruled despite, not due to, the local populations. Ergo secret police, network of informants, etc, just to control the population. It's hard to have very high trust levels when your own government and state are working against you and when your coworkers and neighbors can at any time rat you out for unpatriotic activities.

pjc50 6y ago

Everyone forgets the Swedish empire. And the man whose name is a synonym for traitor, Vikrund Quisling. Scandinavia has hardly escaped war. If I wanted a glib answer I'd attribute it to a combination of less feudalism and more Lutheranism, plus a bit of Hanseatic trading.

bonoboTP 6y ago
I meant they escaped the world wars and the rest of the turmoils of the 20th century. Largely because they didn't have deep historic conflicts with the rest of the big empires. I mean, sure, not completely, they definitely had some of their population deported by Nazis, but it wasn't such a major impact as elsewhere in Europe.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  They definitely did not escape any recent war. The WWII in Scandinavia was particularly bad, including the occupation of Norway and Denmark. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Weserübung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Weserübung They did escape the contemporary ones the same way any other country in Europe did anyway.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Norway and Denmark (as well as France) were treated with kiddie gloves compared to what occupation in Eastern Europe meant.
    - anubidiocane 6y ago
      Well, Norway collaborated with the nazis and sympathised for some of their ideas at the time, for example Norway had been experimenting with eugenics programs since the 20s when they started to sterilise mentally hill patients and made it legal in 1934. But the king of Norway and members of the army escaped to London and directed the resistance from there. Ask the Jews that owned the houses and nursing homes that were confiscated for the Lebensborn project and the kids that survived it (not many), what they think about it. Others had it worse doesn't mean they escaped the war and its consequences. If the eastern block is where you draw the line, you could argue that many parts of Europe escaped the war. But it would be historically false.

silvestrov 6y ago

> Lack of war? Denmark and Sweden have been at war with each other so many times you can't give an exact number as it becomes difficult to say when it's a prolonged war and when it's 2 seperate wars. A simplified list: https://useless-denmarkfacts.tumblr.com/post/125179860721/all-21-wars-between-denmark-and-sweden-1205-1814 https://useless-denmarkfacts.tumblr.com/post/125179860721/al...

bonoboTP 6y ago
What I meant specifically is that they are in part rich because they didn't have to rebuild from scratch after WW 2.

anubidiocane 6y ago

Not to disagree but I believe that the nature of their government, the social democracy, that empowers people and their needs, built up the trust they have in each other and their representatives. It's also the reason why they accept very high rates of taxation in exchange for public services that actually work and benefit the population. Depicting Scandinavia as an uniform land where a genetically homogeneous spawn lives is also misleading. For example in Denmark 86% of the population is Danish descent, same goes for Norway, in Sweden 18% of the population was born in another country. In Italy, which is not particularly famous for its genetic uniformity, 90% of the population was born in Italy from Italian parents. What seems uniform in Europe, except for Scandinavia, is the distrust European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other Italy has the highest level of trust in the Mediterranean area, around 30%, while France, Spain and Greece are below 20%. Netherlands have the same level of Scandinavia (>60%), Germany is around 50%. My personal belief is that the society trust is directly proportional to the level of social conflict. Not surprisingly France, where social conflict is quite high (which I don't think is bad per sé) has the lower level of trust in Europe (~18%), except for Romania.