Is Nordic Success Just Oil?

Has oil money funded all Nordic welfare services, economic prosperity and social development?

Erik Engheim
8 min readApr 25, 2022

INTERNATIONAL media will often write various excited or positive stories about Nordic countries:

These stories are reflected in various rankings and statistics such as the UN Human Development Index or world happiness report which tend to show Nordic countries capturing most of the top spots.

While us Nordics are naturally flattered by a lot of the positive rankings, I cannot say that somehow “winning” these kinds of development indexes is important to me. To me it seems more important if we can shine some light on what kinds of choices a society can make to make a happier and healthier population. Many people around the world are looking for a path for their country.

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Erik Engheim
Erik Engheim

Written by Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.

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