Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians, on and off, for over ten years,
perplexed by their many strange paradoxes and character traits and equally bemu
sed by the unquestioning enthusiasm for all things Nordic that has engulfed the
rest of the world. He leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journe
y through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes
are, the secrets of their success and, most intriguing of all, what they think o
f each other. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a re
gion plagued by taboos, characterised by suffocating parochialism and populated
by extremists of various shades.
