Does Scandinavia Have it All Figured Out? – The New Yorker

“The trouble with the Scandinavian model isn’t that there are no exceptions to sameness; it’s that exceptionalism is not something the system is set up to protect and serve. If, like the non-Western Muslims of Rosengård, you have trouble joining the national schools and domestic culture—if you can’t quite fall in with the color blindness of Icona Pop and Nico & Vinz—you tend to fall from the system’s providence. Autonomy and individualism abound, but pockets of difference can become pockets of disadvantage. What Nordic life tells us, in other words, is how steep and ambitious the path of American liberalism is.”