In my last post I wrote that the Swedish people are taught to care and be polite to people, but at the same time not get involved in other’s business. Say Hi to your next door neighbor, but if he goes missing you will most likely not be able to tell the police anything about them.
This is sadly true, and in the Scandinavian countries we have something called The Law of Jante or The-Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are-Law. This is the idea that there is a pattern of group behavior towards individuals within Scandinavian communities that negatively portrays and criticizes individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate.
Generally used colloquially as a sociological term to negatively describe an attitude towards individuality and success common in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries, the term refers to a mentality that de-emphasizes individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.
This is an unwritten law but almost everybody knows about it here in Sweden, especially older people, and it involves 10/11 rules, depending on who you are talking to, and a lot of books has been written about this subject.
The ten rules state:
- You're not to think you are anything special.
- You're not to think you are as good as us.
- You're not to think you are smarter than us.
- You're not to convince yourself that you are better than us.
- You're not to think you know more than us.
- You're not to think you are more important than us.
- You're not to think you are good at anything.
- You're not to laugh at us.
- You're not to think anyone cares about you.
- You're not to think you can teach us anything.
These ten principles or commandments are often claimed to form the "Jante's Shield" of the Scandinavian people.
An eleventh rule recognized in the novel as 'the penal code of Jante' is:
- Maybe you don't think I know a few things about you?
If you ask me this is a really dumb way of living and I have no connections to this “law” what so ever.
