ABSTRACT
Among established democracies in Western Europe, Norway is a deviating case — maybe only Switzerland can compete in the league of outliers — and ‘Norwegian peculiarities’ (Østerud 2004) is an expression with the appropriate flavour. There is, however, nothing negative in characterising Norway as an outlier in Europe. Along many dimensions Norway stands in a favourable position not only compared with European countries, but also in terms of global competition. Among yardsticks that are used to select the ideal society, the United Nations Human Development Index is one of the broadest and most authoritative benchmarks combining economic indicators, level of education, and life expectancy to construct a comprehensive measurement of quality of life in the world. Norway has always been among the leading countries on this index, and is the number one country in the world in the most recent reports. The UN rankings go back only a few years, but Norway's favourable position is not new. In older, albeit somewhat smaller studies on the comparative quality of life, Norway, and the Scandinavian countries rank top in most of the studies, both when assessed on objective measures and on variables that tap into subjective indicators of well-being (Listhaug 1990).
