Michael Booth

The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes. 'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world. Finns have the largest per capita gun ownership after the US and Yemen. 54 per cent of Icelanders believe in elves. Norway is the richest country on earth. 5 per cent of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians, on and off, for over ten years, perplexed by their many strange paradoxes and character traits and equally bemused by the unquestioning enthusiasm for all things Nordic that has engulfed the rest of the world. He leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success and, most intriguing of all, what they think of each other. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterised by suffocating parochialism and populated by extremists of various shades.

The Truth about the Nordic Miracle

The Almost Nearly Perfect People

Gavin

Fault-finding things received opinion finds no fault with?: good. Booth says the weather, the expense, the pressurised homogeneity of ethnicity and manner leading to marginalisation, the hypocrisy (e.g. Statoil’s tar sands) and the diet are the subtractions. But actually he's a massive fan of the countries.

The bit on their peerless state education (for decades, Finnish kids have scored the highest on tests with the lowest inequality – but note the kids’ own satisfaction with the system is the lowest on record) bases the whole Scandinavian Miracle on their school systems: “It is no coincidence that the region that is consistently judged to have the highest levels of wellbeing, also has the greatest equality of educational opportunity… To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need power over your own life…” 

How to recreate this? He concludes that it’s a difficult-to-copy feedback loop from 1) actually respecting teachers and funding everyone’s Master’s, so 2) attracting excellent people, who 3) teach excellently and thus 1) earn the respect of their charges and society... Booth can be a bit glib (“Is it still racist if they’re rich?”), and is obsessed with tax to the point where he has to ask five different professors how on earth people don’t simply die from 50% income tax. But he gets into the cracks: “please don’t [form a separate Nordic Union]. Truly the rest of us would not stand a chance.”

The Christian Science Monitor's #1 Best Book of the Year A witty, informative, and popular travelogue about the Scandinavian countries and how they may not be as happy or as perfect as we assume, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People offers up the ideal mixture of intriguing and revealing facts” (Laura Miller, Salon). Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another. Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn’t easy being Scandinavian.

Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

Belle

I've been fascinated with Denmark and its Nordic neighbours since watching Borgen a couple years ago, so I was curious to see why these countries seem so good at everything—and what they're not good at. Booth is quite down on all the countries but Finland, and gives the reader plenty of reasons not to visit, but I still found the book worth reading.

Lisa Miller

I've always wanted to know about Scandinavia, those countries in Northern Europe which I could never get completely right on the map. So it was really enjoyable to read about Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden, what makes them different and similar, utopian and troubled. The author is a Brit and so has an openly acknowledged British point of view and humour which was a bit too familiar and some-how 'off' at the start, maybe because he started with Denmark where he lives and is married to a Dane?, but became more enjoyable as the book went on. Pop-culture at it's best.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People The Truth about the Nordic Miracle

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