The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Sweden and Norway

From this side of the Atlantic, the Swedish-Norwegian tradition of official coöperation and individual friction may seem a trifle absurd, both countries being, to the American at home, unmistakably Scandinavian. The American who goes to Scandinavia soon realizes that differences in national resources, not to mention national temperament, more than excuse a certain edginess between the people of the two countries.

The Swedes refer to Norwegians in the manner of a banker discussing his improvident relatives. “They are charming, but —”and a dour shaking of the head. The Norwegians, who are no slouches at turning an honest penny when offered the chance, complain that Swedes think only of money. “They are good businessmen, but—” and a disapproving shrug.

Certainly Sweden is far more prosperous than Norway, which is not surprising in view of her more varied natural resources, larger population, and successful maintenance of neutrality. Sweden is also an expensive country to travel in, and frankly jittery about the international situation. Walking a tightrope between East and West is not easy, and the strain reaches beyond government officials (who are eager to explain that Sweden happens to be involved in an unprofitable economic treaty with the Soviets through misguided wartime enthusiasm) to the ordinary citizen. Expressions of anxiety and wariness are uncomfortably common in Stockholm, and where they don’t exist there is a look of stolid resignation equally disconcerting.

The political opposition is very articulate, but the arguments of both Liberals and Conservatives boil down to the familiar cry, “We could do the same thing with less regulation and lower taxes.”

Groceries in cellophane

In spite of the taxes, Swedes are able to do a lot of shopping. Cars are common in Stockholm, and bicycles relatively scarce. The coöperative groceries,which frankly imitate the methods of American chain stores, have discovered the self-service supermarket, and the town is now reveling in cellophane. These coöperatives stock a wide variety of foods. Their pastry is infinitely better than that found in American stores of the same level. Fruit and canned goods are plentiful. Even bananas are on display, but they are a very poor quality of banana.

The Swedish manufacturing coöperatives take credit for breaking up monopolies, bringing prices down, and improving public taste. Their products are sold in their own stores, and also in private shops. It is hard for a traveler to see any aesthetic difference between the products of the coöperatives and those of private enterprise, but it is easy to believe that the war against monopolies has been of general benefit.

Sweden has a flourishing ready-to-wear men’s clothing industry, and thinks of invading the American market. It may not be a mad idea, for the general effect of their tailoring is very like ours, their wools are good, and they have developed a somewhat more extensive system of sizes for fitting their oddly shaped customers. The country’s lowpriced women’s wear is outright dismal. It is possible for a wealthy Swedish woman to dress very well, however, in clothes copied faithfully from the big Parisian houses. These items cost less than similar garments do in New York, but not enough less to make a shopping trip to Sweden a sound financial investment.

The Swedish gift for order

The Swedes appear to have a natural gift for contrived order. Their street traffic moves at a good clip with no blowing of horns and very little police supervision. Their designers are extremely skillful with geometric patterns. Their choice of English words suggests a preference for imposed arrangement. When the customs officer SAYS, “Please control your luggage,” he does not mean that the bags are misbehaving. He merely wants them counted.

This taste for order, which enables the Swedes to manipulate their complicated network of coöperatives, unions, private enterprises, and government projects with a minimum of friction, leads to a determination to do as much as possible for evervone at the same time. The housing shortage has therefore been attacked with a multitude of regulations and occasionally debatable results.

While it is almost impossible for a private person to build a house, even if he has the materials and is able to do the work himself, government permits and large subsidies are given for the erection of apartment houses. Stockholm has almost no cheap residential suburbs, but it is surrounded by blocklike structures suggesting early Bauhaus stuff.

These buildings contain mostly twoand threeroom apartments, which from the point of view of rent and equipment are certainly better than the average Swede could previously obtain, but rumor has it that the walls are paper-thin, forcing upon the tenants an excessive acquaintance with the foibles of their neighbors. The apartments are also overcrowded. A couple with two children will live in two rooms—better, the Swedes point out, than having them live in one room. It may be better, but it isn’t good.

Swedish officials, in both business and government, are alert and rather aggressive types. Swedish citizens seem, in general, phlegmatic, disinterested, and given to a good deal of ineffectual grumbling. In spite of the many benefits provided by their government, and the highest standard of living on the Continent, they do not look happy. Marchers in the Stockholm May Day parade — no Communist demonstration but an activity of the SocialDemocratic Party which has been in power for eighteen years — are all middle-aged or older, and very solemn for all their scarlet banners. The crowds on the sidewalk are silent, and the band music has nothing in it to lift the feet.

The absence of young people in the parade illustrates the complaint of veteran union and coöperative workers that “our children accept as natural rights the things we had to fight for. There’s no enthusiasm any more.”

Norway rebuilds

Oslo is a clean and orderly city, by American standards, but after Stockholm it seems positively raffish. The older houses need paint. Streets and buildings worn out during the war are still under repair. Traffic, which is not heavy, contrives to mill about a bit at intersections, while the streetcars make an unholy racket. The local habit of growing flowers in baskets set halfway up the lampposts produces a pleasantly tousled effect overhead. Norwegians seldom have the closed, cautious, urban faces seen in Sweden. Oslo seems full of transplanted farmers and fishermen, still more interested in people and open country than in civic planning. Actually a great deal of planning is done in Oslo. In spite of the immense difficulties created by the wat, Norway has made considerable progress with housing, has replaced most of her merchant marine, and is undertaking further development of electrometallurgical plants.

The state railroad, chronically in the red, is losing less money than usual and officials hope that extensive electrification of the lines will put things on a paying basis —or nearly. Government subsidies, family allowances, pensions, and public health services are as ambitious as those in Sweden the actual figures, of course, geared down to Norway’s smaller population and budget.

Not all Norwegian enterprises are serious. Oslo has recently completed a town hall, planned since 1919 and finished in a mad rush in order to have it open for the city’s nine-hundredth anniversary. Out wardly a rather austere brick pile, this building houses a maelstrom of color in the form of murals, tapestries, ceramic sculptures, stonework, and carved, painted wooden ceilings of extraordinary charm. The result may strike a foreigner as overwhelming, but there is no doubt that the total effect is as distinctively Norwegian as a slave church.

The Norwegians frankly love colors. Their children wear the brightest reds and blues that dye can produce. Decorations for Oslo’s anniversary party included groups of tall, slender poles set up at any convenient corner, painted white and streaked or spotted in black and yellow, blue and red, or all four together. The man who elected to paint sections of the road into town sky blue with large red polka dots showed pure genius in creating a festive atmosphere.

Fun for leisure hours

Oslo’s regular sources of amusement are a yearround theater season, an amazing quantity of museums, a number of parks, and easy access to beaches in summer and ski slopes in winter. There is plenty of open country around the town; Norwegians explain, with pride, that one can shoot elk within the city limits.

The tourist looking for the giddier kind of entertainment can find it in the resort hotels. Whether they are ski hotels or beach hotels, these places contrive to maintain a toy night club, a small but raucous band, and a fine chef. Norwegian smörgåsbord, thanks to a large supply of lobsters, is the highest form of that noble institution, while Norwegian steaks would be a credit to any country. Orange juice for breakfast is one point on which Norwegians stand firm, though. Stewed fruit never hurt anybody.

Prices are reasonable at these places — $5 a day or less — and it is a mystery how all the hotels survive. The summer season lasts barely two months, and the remoter ski resorts do no business before mid-February , the early part of the winter being too cold and stormy even for the natives. They not only survive, they progress. Norwegian hotel owners have branched out into Copenhagen.

Free enterprise and hard work

One hears a great deal about the virtues of individual enterprise in Norway. The whaling, shipping, and lumbering industries, most important in the nation’s economy, are almost entirely controlled by private companies. The owners of these companies do well. Agriculture is largely in the hands of individual farmers, who have to scratch hard for everything.

A Norwegian farm looks tough even to a Vermonter. Fields are nearly perpendicular. Thick stone walls run in all directions, but large boulders still squat immovably in the midst of the mowing. The Norwegians have the mountaineer’s usual wry joke about the legs of their cattle being shorter on one side. There are few modern farm buildings in southern Norway, but they are necessarily being erected in the German-devastated northern province of Einnmark. Houses are low, solid, old, and often roofed with sod, but electricity is fairly usual. It is accepted that rural power lines will go down every winter.

The Norwegians are able to concentrate cheerfully on the problems at hand. Their inevitable concern with international tensions does not seem to jangle their nerves, nor does it prevent them from planning for expansions and improvements possible only in a long peace. People look confident, and they display a spontaneous friendliness and curiosity about life and opinions in other countries which make the traveler in Norway feel like a minor ambassador. Whatever uncertainties may exist outside the country, the Norwegians are obviously sure of themselves.