Over the years, Denmark has emerged as the good faith capital of the world. Nearly 74% of Danes believe "most people can be trusted" - more than any other nationality. On wider metrics, such as social trust (trusting a stranger) and civic trust (trusting authority), Denmark also scores highest in the world, with the other Nordic countries close behind.
The political scientist Gert Tinggaard Svendsen argues that trust accounts for 25% of Denmark's otherwise inexplicable wealth. By his reckoning, a quarter of that wealth comes from physical capital (means of production and infrastructure), half comes from human capital (the population's level of education and innovation), and the unexplained final quarter is trust: they don't sue one another, they don't waste money on burglar alarms, businesses often make binding verbal agreements without sweating the contract. People who hold power in Danish institutions - the government, police, judiciary, health services - are trusted to be acting in society's best interests, and there is very little corruption.
Even the Danish official website calls it "the land of trust", using unattended cloakrooms at the opera as an example. A better one I saw is the Red Cross charity shop in Copenhagen, with a QR code on the door. If the shop's closed, you download the app, let yourself in, choose what you want and leave the money on the counter.
The cliche that's gone global is that Danes are so trusting, they leave their babies sleeping in prams outside cafes and restaurants. "Are you guys for real?" I ask Alma, 21, who's working in a cafe in Copenhagen. "There are seriously babies out there, asleep?" She gets asked this by foreigners a lot. "Sure, why not? If a baby's crying outside, people will pop their heads in and say, 'Is this anyone's baby?"
This story is from the May 31, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the May 31, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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