‘Nordic Nineties’: Norwegian and Swedish self-understanding in the face of globalization

Abstract

In her New Year’s Eve Speech on January 1, 1992, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland drummed up a bright future scenario for her country: “The football girls, the handball girls, the ski boys, the Oslo Philharmonic. They’re in the world elite. In the same way we will show that Norwegian business performs at an international level. Perhaps we need a new slogan? ‘It is typically Norwegian to be good’” (Brundtland 1992). The contrast could not have been starker with the message broadcast to the Swedish people from crisis-ridden Stockholm in April 1993 at the public media event “En dag för Sverige” (A day for Sweden) – an 8-hour long televised dissection of all that was wrong with contemporary Swedish society in economic, political and cultural terms (Hellenes 2019). While Brundtland promised glory for Norway on the world stage through its sports heroes and export commodities, “A day for Sweden” presented a “slaughter of Swedish holy cows” deemed necessary to avoid national systemic collapse and in order to get the country back up on its feet again (Krantz 1993).