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Sjunnesson talks about the characteristics of the Swedish people: modest, shy, not given to overstatement. And then he delivers a book which offers the appeal of embodying those values that he describes.
The book is modest. It is relatively inexpensively produced, and inexpensively edited. However in general it was a very logical, methodical, and extraordinarily well-documented account of how things are in Sweden. Every page rings with the authority of a lifetime of experience and the books he cites in twelve pages of bibliography.
The book starts with a survey of Swedish history, starting with the Vikings about 12 or 13 centuries ago. He talks about their isolation and their warlike character but also their extremely egalitarian nature. He traces the personality traits of the Swedes back through history. He says that they developed their personalities through the long cold winter nights, the enforced isolation of small villages and so on. The ability to get along with one's own company and of self-sufficiency were great virtues. He does not mention anything about evolutionary psychology, although I would say that he could certainly draw quite a bit from the work of E. O. Wilson and Robert Trivers. The Swedish temperament and personality worked well for in environment that Swedes had chosen to inhabit. An industrious, hard-working, and extremely altruistic and mutually supportive people, were exactly what it took to survive in these northern fringes of Europe, beyond the advanced civilizations of earlier eras.
The isolated Swedes were more democratic from a very early age than their European neighbors. The farmers were independent, and they had a voice in selecting their monarchs and their leaders in the period before the emergence of a middle-class.Read more ›
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