International Competition

For many people around the world, the Nordic social model is an ideal organization of society, a peak in the history of civilization and a shimmering example for others to follow. Or is it? What kind of society have we actually created for ourselves? The Swedish iconoclast Erik Gandini takes a loving and critical look at our little corner of the world from the other end of the telescope and finds the recipe for the good Nordic life in a manifesto published by the political elite in Sweden in the 1970s. Here, one finds that happiness is a life lived in freedom – from others. And so it has been ever since. But the question is whether our individualism and independence have isolated us from each other. Is the price of happiness a lifetime of loneliness? Like a sociologist from another planet, Gandini travels across the globe (and Scandinavia) drawing startling parallels between our way of life and all the other forms it could have taken.