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Sweden is either miracle or mirage. In summer, all 173,423 sq. mi. of it seem to be filled with dimpled, unattached blondes. In fact, only 40% of Sweden's 3,700,000 women are blondes. The country also lacks such other vital resources as coal, oil and fertile farmland. Like the other Scandinavian countries, Sweden must export to survive. In desolate Arctic wilderness lies Sweden's treasure, the greatest reserve of high-grade iron ore in all Europe. In this wasteland of rock and ice lies Kiruna, which claims to be the world's biggest city (11,000 sq. mi.) and exists to exploit the lode. Under floodlights in winter and the midnight sun in summer, its hardy miners and technicians work night and day to bring the treasure to the surface.
In area, population and affluence, Sweden is the envied, energetic giant of the north. It has the highest wage scales, highest living standards and highest productivity in all Europe. In the past 25 years, its industrial output has trebled and has crossed the world. The auto industry's big success story is the Volvo, sparked by dynamic Gunnar Engellau, the first European automaker to build a North American assembly plant. Behind Swedish industry's plans to spend a billion dollars for new plant and equipment this year stand such powerful banking and business dynasties as that of the entrepreneurial House of Wallenberg.
Sweden's quiet miracle has been wrought by a potent triumvirate of employers, unions and government that has virtually eliminated strikes in Swedish industry, boosted productivity and assured its workers the best pay rates and fringe benefits in Europe. By milking the capitalist cow instead of nationalizing it, Sweden's labor government sustains the comprehensive social-welfare program that is creating "a home for its people."
What is the lesson of the north today? Much has been made of the sexual and suicidal pattern of the Nordic countries. Some argue that it is all the fault of the welfare state. The statistics are murky and conflicting. True, mating habits in rural Scandinavia may differ from accepted norms in Syracuse or Sacramento. This probably has more to do with rural isolation and the long winter months than with such newfangled ideas as pensions for Grandpa or socialized playpens. In any case, from Oslo to Stockholm to Copenhagen, no one seems to mind all that much. Busily building prosperity for all, Scandinavia has in large part become a place, as Denmark's Poet-Bishop N. F. S. Grundtvig foresaw a century ago, "Where few have too much, and still fewer too little."
*One-seventh of Sweden, one-third of Norway, and a quarter of Finland lie above the Arctic Circle. -They had the same great-great-grandfather, Denmark's King Christian IX (1818-1906), whose skill at bagging the better thrones for his children earned him the sobriquet "Father-in-law of Europe." One of his daughters was Queen Alexandra, wife of Britain's King Edward VII; another, Princess Dagmar, married Russia's Czar Alexander III.