What are the secrets behind the prosperity of the Scandinavian nations?

Question

Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Those Scandinavian nations are ones of the top richest and most prosperous, and stable countries in the world.

What made those countries rich? They do not have much of natural resources (not like the U.S. and Canada), yet they are the richest countries in the world. They usually rank in 1~5 top.

How did they become rich?

And how did they make their societies one of the most safest and stable in the world?

Answer 1

Simple, good legal system , highly educated population, lower levels of curroption than Untied States, or France. They make adjustments very quickly in the world economy, and have educated population to know correctly how to excute social policy. Scanidivans came by the boatloads to Minnesota, North Dakota at the end of the 19th century because of poverty during that time. During the 20th century they slowly industralize, and investment wisely in instructure, education, and most of them avoided the great depression depth because they were ahead of the time in economic policy, unlike the USA, Canada, Austraila which tighted money supply during the great depression, the opposite ouccured in Scandvian countries. People said 20 years ago Sweden would fail, but anybody with common sense know Scanidivan country have more flexible labor markets than UK, USA when it comes to the global because of good safety net to quickly retrain workers.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

To start off, Norway became rich because of it's all oil, Sweden became rich because it did not involve in world war 2, so it was easy for them to build an economy while whole other Europe was rebuilding itself.

Finland, though, became rich because of world war 2, since Finland had to pay huge money to Russia in a peace treaty it had to build itself industry. Finland started to manufacture trains, and it gave over 500 trains to Russia, instead of money. It was said in our history book that this launched the economical boom in Finland. Also, socialist party was really strong in Finland, so Finland started to invest on it's people (primaly meaning education), Finland quickly rose from a 3rd-world country to a prosperous country. Finland is/was called Japan of the north. Also I have to say, that after the war against Russia Finnish people felt really united, and were willing to work to make a new better Finland, and this, in my opinion is only possible in small countries, you cannot motivate one big whole country, but you can motivate a small one.

I must also mention that Finland wasn't too rich before the 70's, Finland was in fact quite poor then, many people moved to Sweden in hope for a good paying job. All this was of course, because of the world war 2, from what Finland took the most damage, while Sweden declined to help struggling Finland.

Nowadays Norway is the richest country of the Nordic countries, but I think that this won't last forever, since the oil isn't forever there, and Norway doesn't really have much success stories when it comes to business-life, it doesn't have many well-doing companies to maintain the welfare status after the oil is gone.

Sweden, Finland and Denmark are doing pretty much the same nowadays, although, it seems like the trend is that Finland keeps getting richer the fastest.

Answer 4

The "secret" of the Scandanavian countries isn't very secret. It is geography. Imperial Rome had no interest in them.

The "major" countries of Europe - Imperial Rome, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Austria-Hungary, England - simply made war among each other and didn't have the logistics or desire to attack and pillage the relatively poor and climatologically undesirable countries of Scandanavia.

On the other hand, the Scandanavians did have incentives to raid and pillage the rich south. Vikings were very successful, circa 1000 AD. They made campaigns as far as Phonecia! They founded Moscow and Russia. And at the same time they avoided war among themselves.

Scandanavia has very great natural resources. Finland is rich in timber, and Sweden is rich in iron ore. Norway always has had a plentiful fishing industry (and now has oil), and Denmark is an agricultural and livestock paradise.

Answer 5

Sometimes during the building of the countries per se, the Scandinavian countries raided the other European countries without mercy, usually these raids were fast and furious. They raided Poland during the nights and killed all who tried to stop them, men women and children. They left total destruction's behind, they did this with Russia and far into what is now Chezk republic
The Scandinavian museums are full of art work and booty from these nations. These nations, Poland for one has been after Norway, for instance to give back what they took during these raids. Norway claims they were war booty but, there was no war, only cowardly raids that left destruction behind. When they do give the booty back, their own museums will be Empty because they have no treasures of their own, only what they stole throughout the early years.

Answer 6

In the case of Norway, large oil reserves in the North Sea.

Up until the discovery of oil, Norway was one of the poorest countries in western Europe.

Sorry that this complicates your "they do not have much of natural resources" argument, but there you go.

Answer 7

Somewhere along the line they decided that it was not productive to conduct a war/peac boom and bust economy cycle.

None of those countries has conducted an aggressive war in centuries.

Answer 8

They strictly limit their ties with Jewish financiers.