ABSTRACT
The image of the Nordic model, the individual Nordic countries, as well as the welfare state as such are highly politically charged: Attracting attention abroad serves as evidence of success for politicians at home. Even if individual Nordic countries may conceivably suffer from problems and exhibit less successful policy choices, the multiple experiments conducted by Nordic countries as a group serve as an opportunity to reconfirm the paleofuturological stereotype on the global market of ideas of the Nordic countries as imaginary testing grounds, social laboratories, and experiment stations for future politics. This chapter shows how successive concepts have been associated internationally with the Nordic countries as well as concrete and figurative solutions to common political and social challenges – the middle way in the 1930s and 1950s, the welfare state model in the 1940s to the 1990s, and progressive values in the 2000s. In all these contexts, a kind of ‘utopian trap’ appears to be continuously at work, especially with regard to Sweden, attracting negative attention where there is positive expectation.
