How to have a happy child... bring them up the VIKING WAY!
Babies left to sleep outside, school lessons in building bonfires – and broken bones aplenty. A British mother embraces Scandi parenting
How To Raise A Viking: The Secrets Of Parenting The World’s Happiest Children
Helen Russell
Fourth Estate £16.99
Let’s start this review with a parental quiz. Where are babies left alone in their prams outside cafes? Where do teenagers use an app to avoid incest? And where are children invited to ‘intuitively eat’ as many sweets as they like? Answer: the Nordic nations. As Helen Russell explains in How To Raise A Viking, they do things differently in the far north.
In a delicious mix of comic memoir and well-honed reportage, Russell addresses how well-adjusted little citizens are formed in Scandinavia – Denmark, Sweden and Norway – as well as Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, the other Viking haunts.
Russell draws on personal experience. In 2013 she left her job as an editor at Marie Claire and swapped media London for rural Jutland in Denmark so her husband could work at Lego. She chronicled how she adjusted to a country that celebrates Dancing Cow Day in her bestseller The Year of Living Danishly. But that year became a decade, and the expat life became more complicated with the arrival first of a son – ‘the redhead’ – and then twins, a girl and a boy. Suddenly Denmark became more than a whimsical stopgap. There were kindergartens, schools, laws and other parents to navigate.
Getting a child in the first place, Russell explains, is treated with consummate practicality in Scandinavia: single parenthood is a routine choice for many and the IVF process affordable. In the name of research, Russell visits the Cryos sperm bank in Aarhus: along with bacon and slimming jabs, Denmark does a roaring trade in Viking essence.
She glances awkwardly at the young men heading into cubicles that are kitted out with virtual-reality porn goggles to give donors a helping hand. They don’t wham-bam in Denmark. Russell reads the literature and discovers that ‘the longer they take to create their sample, the “better the quality”.’
After conception, things become rather 1950s. ‘I learned early on that Danes use fewer needles, tests, exams or any other medical procedures than elsewhere,’ notes Russell. Pregnant with her first child, she is amazed when her midwife comes with an ear trumpet to check for a heartbeat: ‘I had been expecting a scanner, but apparently a Pinard horn worked just fine.’
There are other pre-natal peculiarities. In Denmark the mothers-to-be eat sushi. And in Finland parents receive free ‘baby boxes’ containing mattresses, mittens, bootees and nappies. They also contain complimentary condoms. ‘I think that horse has bolted,’ observes Russell.
Once children are large enough to run around, the big differences emerge. The Nordic childcare system is envied across the globe: the state pays 75 per cent of the cost in Denmark. Economic structures support these policies – taxes are high but so are salaries, and housing is relatively affordable. Also playing into the model is the Scandinavian notion of Janteloven – or Jante’s Law – in which everyone is considered equal. The flip side to this principle, of course, is that being extraordinary is frowned upon.
The other adjustment for expat parents is the staggeringly relaxed attitude to risk. Gunnar Breivik, a Norwegian professor, tells Russell that ‘we have failed as parents if our children haven’t broken any bones by the time they turn 18’.
The idea is that a child should crash and burn and then, theoretically, rise from their mistakes like an emboldened phoenix. Discipline is minimal and guidance is fluid and always in dialogue with the child.
Russell receives school notes stating: ‘On Wednesday we build bonfires! Bring daggers!’ She knew she’d ‘passed the point of no return when Googling “best axe for children” in a coffee shop while my babies slept outside in their pram’.
Full disclosure: I have a thing for Scandinavia. I had a Danish girlfriend at university – an anarchic hip-hop fan who soon tired of my English neuroses – and I spend a lot of time in Norway (a cold country with warm people). There is, I find, something
‘She is amazed when her midwife comes at her with an ear trumpet’
‘We have failed as parents if our children haven’t broken any bones by the age of 18’
strangely comforting about the region’s dramatic landscape and – bracingly – honest dealings. It’s like Yorkshire with cinnamon buns and pines.
A Norwegian friend once told me that in Scandinavia the things you need – housing, energy, childcare – are cheap and the things you want – branded goods, eating out – are expensive. And the maxim is born out in many of Russell’s observations as she explores how consumerism, or lack of it, factors in a Nordic childhood (there is no eBay or Amazon in Denmark).
This is not a rose-tinted advert for the hygge life, but rather a deep dive into the pros and cons of a radically different approach to parenthood. If the generous welfare state and communal sense of trust are obvious positives, the negatives include what Russell calls its ‘digital blind spot’: half of Denmark’s children are daily gamers (Russell’s eldest starts ‘dreaming in Minecraft’).
And then there is the freewheeling attitude to teenage drinking. One Danish anthropologist explains: ‘We toast with them when they are 15 and pick them up at the emergency room after their stomachs are pumped when they are 16.’
Russell’s focus on Denmark is at the expense of the nuanced experiences of other populations in the region. However, this is a well researched study injected with humour and humanity, and the author can be exceedingly funny about local norms – in the way only an outsider can be.