Why cold, dark, small, and depressive nations top the rankings.

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I used to eat at a Scandinavian cafeteria in San Francisco that called itself a smorgasbord and
advertised its reindeer meatballs over pasta as superior to the Italian meatballs at the U.S. Cafe next
door. This place was just outside Chinatown. It also had Swedish meatballs, but if there was a
difference only a Finn could tell for sure. After the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing Gypsy music
from Slovenia under the direction of a Japanese conductor in Salt Lake City, this is my secondfavorite example of the great American smorgasbord.
The word may have originated in Sweden, but looking over the metrics for best countrieswhere
Sweden is No. 3 and Finland No. 1, Norway No. 6 and Denmark No. 10I find it hard to imagine just
how much variety that Northern European buffet holds. Why is it that the Nordics always dominate
such lists, anyhow? Since its dark and cold outside for most of the year, the smorgasbord itself must
be an attempt to offset tedium, angst, and monochromatism. Even so, there couldnt be that many
kinds of pickled herring, smoked fish, dark rye bread, and mustards on the smorgasbord, be-cause
we know from the 1987 movie Babettes Feast that a French woman on the run in Scandinavia after
the Paris Commune turned the austere locals into insane bons vivants by means of spices. Also, as
Ingmar Bergmans movies and Stieg Larssons novels show, Scandinavian angst is nothing to laugh
about. Pass the vodka, the incest, and the noose.

NEWSWEEK's list of the best places in the world to ... (Illustration by Frank Chimero)

Still, metrics are metrics, and art is subjective, so lets try another tack. Intuitively, one would think
that people who are warm most of the year would be better off than people who are not. Yet Finland
is in the No. 1 spot, and tropical Burkina Faso dead last at 100. The link between freezing and a high
ranking becomes more explicable when the following dots are connected: a heated classroom is
better than being outside chopping trees, hence education is important; moving briskly is good
preventive medicine, thus health is robust; quality of life improves immensely when one must get as
close to ones beloved as possible to fend off the chill; the political environment is likewise better
when governance is kept simple and equitable because its too cold to fight in the streets; and finally,
economic dynamism is bound to be high among peoples who have learned to combat frostbite with a
maximum of movement and the least expense of calories.
A large portion of Finlands well-being is also the result of its historical reputation for fierceness and
diplomacy; it has had to fight and appease both the Russians and the Germans. Switzerland, at
No. 2 on the best countries list, shares a similar history: squeezed between warring powers, it
looked most appetizing to its French, German, Austrian, and Italian neighbors. The Swiss Alps are
very good for health, Swiss banks are (or were, until recently) very good for hiding ill-gotten gains,
and its so-called neutrality made it an excellent place for enemy combatants to do business and spy
on each other. All these reasons, combined with a reputation for martial valor, enabled the Swiss to
thrive and plan; the Alps are honeycombed by tunnels stocked with food that would enable every
Swiss citizen to survive a nuclear war. Switzerland is a Swiss-cheese country hiding an underground
smorgasbord.
The worlds best countries seem to have this in common: they avoid war, they live in the dark, and
they maintain a steady state of depressive and productive activity. No wonder, then, that we in the

United States rank a pathetic No. 11. We are the only country in the world that has written the
pursuit of happiness into its founding document, thus guaranteeing that well never be satisfied. We
are a geographically and socially diverse nation doomed by law and custom to optimism. We are not
too healthy, are quite belligerent, and we borrow too much without thinking much about how well pay
it back. To achieve better metrics wed need to tolerate a lot more (smorgas) boredom.