It's true that there's less topless sunbathing on Danish beaches than on - say - French ones, and less than there used to be thirty years ago, according to my parents. A fact that I attribute to a combination of American cultural influence (which has been strong in Denmark since WWII) and the fact that most of the year it's too damn cold to run around nude.
And of course these things run to some degree in step with the political cycles. When a right-wing government is in power, society moves towards conformity. When the right wing is out of power, the push towards conformity lessens notably.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Those two countries also have the best equality laws in the world, so if it's been a tradeoff, as Mühleisen implies it was, it's certainly been historically justified. The freedom women have in those models compared to the, say, Dutch model, is worth some cultural restrictions, certainly as those haven't been that big.
I was told, by a Dane, something like: "In Norway all is illegal, in Sweden all is immoral, and in Denmark all is permitted()". Is there any truth to it? () "permitted" might have not been the word, but I think it captures the idea he was trying to transmit.
(
Prejudice has it that Norway is more moralistic and Sweden is more regulated while Denmark is more licentious. But both Norway and Sweden are big places - something that's often forgotten because they only have between five and ten million citizens. Sweden is comparable in area to Poland, Germany, Spain or France, with accompanying cultural variation. In fact, the cultural variation may be even greater, because it spans a wider range of latitudes (and the farther towards the polar regions you get, the greater the difference in climate per degree of latitude).
Norway isn't quite as big, but it's just as long as Sweden, and the terrain is a lot less accessible when you get into the fjords north of around Bergen. So really, I think it's a bit like asking what the culture of Spain is...
Denmark is a lot smaller, a lot more homogeneus and a lot closer to the Central European traditions in a lot of ways.
But in general I think the differences are overemphasised - I have the distinct impression that we notice the differences all the more because most of the culture is so similar. When you come to Paris, you expect everything to be different, so it's surprising how similar it is to what you're used to. When you come to Stockholm, you expect things to be just about the same, so it's surprising when you have to go to Systembolaget for your beer.
