They had a head start in the pursuit of happiness long ago, without which they would not have been here today
Published in · 10 min read · Jan 23, 2023
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The year 2022 was hectic for me. It was one of the happiest years in my 30s as well. In addition to my day job at a financial daily, I spent the entire year talking to academics and researchers from different parts of the world, especially the Nordic region, about happiness on my YouTube podcast. I wanted to dig deep into what makes the five Nordic countries the outliers in the happiness domain as they shine in the UN-sponsored World Happiness Report year after year.
In the 2020 World Happiness Report, four Nordic academicians (I got three of them on my podcast) pointed to history as the root cause of the high happiness rankings these countries enjoy today. They posited that much of today’s Nordic happiness stems from markedly high equality that was a defining feature of these societies at the beginning of the modern period. Compared to continental Europe, this high level of equality was exclusive to the Nordic nations at the time, they said.
I built on this statement as I discussed different aspects of Nordic happiness with them. I also asked them a hypothetical question that popped into…
