Life in a Cold Climate

THE SCANDINAVIANS by Donald S. Connery. 590 pages. Simon & Schuster. $7.95.

When the author paid his first visit to the place in 1948, he knew only that the Scandinavians "were people in a northern world of dark days and bright nights who read a lot of books, enjoyed good plumbing and had some problems about love and laughter in a cold climate."

A diligent reporter, Donald Connery set out in subsequent years (first as a TIME correspondent and later as freelance writer) to learn more. His chief conclusion, and the thesis of this lively book, is that Scandinavia really does I not exist as an entity at all. Denmark. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, while having much in common, are distinctly different in temperament and outlook, and are fiercely determined to stay that way.

Connery's 590 pages, filled with fact and observation, suggest that he has left out nothing but the recipe for rendyr-stek in an effort to write the definitive book on Scandinavia in English. 'He could have done it in half the space: there is not much competition.

Merely Honest. When he deals with such famed Scandinavian problems as sex, suicide and alcoholism, Connery often turns into a partisan defender. Scandinavia's much publicized sexual laxity, which in turn produces a high rate of divorce, abortion and venereal disease, cannot be called anything so simple as immorality, he argues: the Scandinavians are merely honest when it comes to sex. "To the Nordic mind, Americans and Englishmen are sexual hypocrites: their pretenses are puritan and Victorian, while their performance is entirely the opposite."

Alcoholism, moreover, is no more an acute problem in Scandinavia than in other countries; it is just that the people of the North drink irregularly and immoderately. Similarly, Connery feels that the Scandinavians' high suicide rate is misinterpreted. According to Connery, "the heart of the matter is that the more progress, the more suicides." That is not the whole heart, however (TIME ESSAY, Nov. 25). The U.S., more urbanized and advanced technologically, has a suicide rate only half that of Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

Gradual Change. Next to Scandinavia's social problems, Connery believes, foreigners least understand its approach to welfare. Actually, Scandinavia is no longer so extraordinary in this respect, since all the more prosperous West European countries are as much welfare states as Sweden or Denmark. "The U.S., while clinging to its old notions of every-man-for-himself, spends more money on welfare than any nation in history," he says. What makes Scandinavia unique, he declares, is that its social benefits have accumulated slowly over almost a century, with no particular impetus in the past three decades. He argues that it is wrong to describe Scandinavia as socialistic. In Sweden, which dominates the Scandinavian busi ness scene, less than 6% of industry is nationalized; the base on which most Scandinavian industry flourishes is still private enterprise.

Connery, who obviously fell in love with his subject, is particularly skillful in his sketches of national characteristics. The Finn's daring and lighthearted approach to life contrasts with the Swede's sobersidedness, the Dane's easygoing shrewdness, the Icelander's reserve, the Norwegian's naivete. The Scandinavians themselves love to tell stories about their differences. One favorite, a Nordic twist on a familiar theme, concerns two Danes, two Norwegians, two Finns and two Swedes who were shipwrecked and cast up on a desert island. By the time they were rescued, the Danes had formed a cooperative and were making jokes, the Norwegians had built a sailing vessel and were fighting, the Finns had chopped down all the trees and were drinking, and the Swedes were still waiting to be introduced.

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