Ideas around diversity differs somewhat between Nordics so I’ll stick with Norway.

I would say there quite an obsession with diversity in all forms. I remember me an my brother making fun of it 25 years ago when we were both in politics as teenagers. When picking candidates there was just so much about age, gender, geographic origin etc that we felt skill and talent was like the last thing considered.

I look more positive at it now, but I was more of a cynic then. Norway is geographically a fairly large country, so there are strong identities in each province. Norway is a bit different from other Nordics countries in that we have am obsession with dialects. Norway is a country full of obscure dialects. I learned to understand many of my fellow Norwegians long after I was fluent in English. The dialects are so different that we could not agree on one written language that would match all of them, but ended up with two.

To put this in an American context: our language and dialect debate is like the American abortion debate in some ways. It never ends and fires up a lot of people. It has been ongoing since 1814.

So stuff like dialect and written language is a big part of the diversity debate. There are mandated amounts of different dialects on TV. Including Sami languages. Some of the more radical newspapers try to represent both written forms by having different stories written in different written forms of Norwegian.

That is a peculiar aspect that really sticks out in Norway, but you also used to see some concern for diversity in class and profession. We have had prime ministers and prominent politicians with very diverse backgrounds: road worker, whaler, medical doctor, economist, sheep farmer, lawyer etc. I think a former finance minister was a middle school teacher.

Gender diversity is a big deal. Often the second in command of a party is of a different gender. As Norway has gotten more ethnic minorities we also see more second in command who are an ethnic minority in addition to being opposite gender of party leader. E.g. when liberal party had a women as leader, the second in command was Abid Raja, a Pakistani-Norwegian man. Current Labour party leader is a man, and second in command used to be a Pakistani-Norwegian woman.

You see similar stuff in media. Choice of news anchors and pundits.

Lately I started seeing more young transsexual politicians promoted. There are gay politicians but somehow that has never been much of a topic in Norway. Was never as contentious as in the US. Also we don’t have a habit of prying in private life of politicians. Like you don’t write about somebody’s religion, faith, sexual orientation etc.