THE modern history of Sweden has been one characterised by a state of continuous peaceful existence. No participation in any war since 1814, neutral in both world wars, no political assassinations in the country for nigh on two centuries following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792. This remarkable irenic run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent Democratic Socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene 🔻 (Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
“Clouseauesque” policing The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (ie, a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/]. Another injudicious move on the police’s part was the ignoring of witnesses who had key information.
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér (Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Chief Commissioner Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other, more tangible leads. After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service,30-Jun-2020,www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
🇸🇪 🇸🇪 🇸🇪
The cast of suspects and the conspiracy theories◘ In the 39 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and more than 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements. Not unexpectedly, CIA involvement in Palme’s murder was also suspected by some.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result” Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen),The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite the absence of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
“Skandiamannen”✪ Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ (below with the film’s star, Lena Nyman)🔻
”Resolved” but left up in the air? In 2019 the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
🔻 PM Palme (source: www.cnbc.com)
——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪—𝄪 ＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin ⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier ✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan ◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency ◕ among the considerable number of suspects ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet!
Contemporary Scandinavian society is rich and appetising fodder for sociologists and behaviouralists. The peculiar strain of egalitarianism that runs through the Nordic countries manifests itself in a concept known as Jantelagen in Swedish or Janteloven in Danish and Norwegian⊡. The origin of the word ‘Janteloven’ comes from a 1933 satirical novel by a Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose. A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, set in a fictional Danish town called ‘Jante’, is “a thinly veiled roman à clef about his hometown Nykøbing Mors”, Denmark, in which he skewers the inhabitants for their foibles – “pettiness, envy, backbiting, gossip, inverted snobbery and small-mindedness” [‘The Law of Jante’, Michael Booth, Paris Review, 11-Feb-2015 www.parisreview.org]. One small portion of En flyktning krysser sitt spor (the Norwegian title) is of lasting significance, the “Laws of Jante”⊞, the list of ten principles designed to put non-conformists in Nordic society in their place. Sandemose’s so-called ‘Laws’ draw on long and widely held, deeply engrained Scandinavian attitudes⊟.
The 10 Laws of Jante
A society devoid of exceptionalism and ‘oneupmanship’Janteloven/Jantelagen is a concept which celebrates Nordic self-restraint, “stoic humbleness and modesty”. Any sense of individual superiority and ambition is actively discouraged, as is talking about one’s personal success. The Jante laws are cultural codes which eschew declarations of a self-congratulatory or immodest kind. Nordic “Jante-ism” offers no haven for those seeking to stand out from the crowd. The benefits for adherence, Scandinavians assert, are collective ones, good for the nation as a whole, resulting in enhanced quality of life, a contribution to the “GNP of happiness” enjoyed by its citizens⊠ [‘Jantelagen: The Law of Jante Explained’, Swedes in the States, 22-Feb-2021, www.swedesinthestates.com].
(Source: worldlife expectancy.com)
The Jante Law instructs on what citizens need to do to fit in to the community, but it has a punitive purpose too…if an individual fails to fit in, it provides a way of “socially stigmatising anyone who break the rules”. According to author Michael Booth, it affects the everyday choices Scandinavians make, what clothes you wear, what car you buy, etc [‘Forget hygge: The laws that really rule in Scandinavia’, (BBC Ideas video, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk].
“We are all equal!”
Swedish comparisons are odious: The taboo on money and statusJantelagen is deeply rooted in the Swedish psyche, it is de rigeur for all stratum of society never to talk about one’s wealth or income. Jantelagen also prohibits people from boasting about their social status, firing off a warning shot to allay any notions they may harbour about climbing the social ladder (the codes act as a handbrake on citizens not getting above their station). The reinforcement of the appearance of an egalitarian society helps to keep the balance (ie, serving as a control mechanism, maintaining homogeneity and societal harmony). Stephen Trotter’s study of Janteloven in Norway concludes that it operates as a “form of structural censorship (where) symbolic power is exerted (in the task of) nation-building” [‘Breaking the law of Jante’, SR Trotter, Issue 23 Myth and Nation, www.gla.ac.uk].
(Source: mbastudies.com)
Anything north of average is a win!
The claimed benefits of “Jante-ism” has also been explained in terms of a state of decreased expectations – living by the ten rules installs a sense of average expectations from life, so anything that comes your way “above and beyond the average” will be a welcome bonus, value-adding to your existing store of happiness (Lindsay Dupuis)[‘The happiness of the Danes can easily be explained by 10 cultural rules’, Lila MacLellan, Quartz, 29-Sep-2016, www.qz.com].
A Millennial challenge to the Law of Jante?
The fabric of Jantelagen in a society like Sweden remains firmly intact despite the reality of growing inequalities in income since the 1990s – the top 20% of workers in Sweden earn four times as much as the bottom 20% (OECD). There are some signs in the Scandinavian countries however that the fabric is coming under strain, especially from the changing expectations of the countries’ youth. The inexorable rise of social media presages a Millennial backlash against the Law of Jante… University of Bergen academic Cornelius Cappelen points to the pervasive influence of online platforms to effect behavioural change and undermine the Jante mindset, ie, bragging on Facebook, Instagram, Vlogging, etc, all promoting “rampant individualism” (Cappelin) [‘Law of Jante’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Jantelagen: Why Swedes won’t talk about wealth’, Maddy Savage, BBC, 18-Oct-2019, www.bbc.com].
(Photo: Sveriges Radio)
Exo-group influences
Aside from pushback from a social media-fuelled Scandinavian youth, challenges to the unspoken social norms of ”Jante-ism” may emerge from other sectors of society. Sweden is increasingly a migrant society, estimates put the proportion of Swedish citizens with a foreign background at around 25%…this growing diversity exposes the community to the influence of outside cultures, many of which have very different socio-cultural norms to the ‘native’ ones, such as the celebration of achievements, skills and talents of the individual (Savage).
Helsinki: Vanha kaupunki (Source: Multi Briefs)
🇩🇰 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇫🇮 🇮🇸
Sandemose’s stern image on a Norwegian jet
Endnote: TPS
Scandinavia’s Jante Law evokes similarities with other cultural phenomenons such as the (albeit less institutionalised) “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. This millennia-old cultural phenomenon—deriving from Ancient Greek and Roman sources—is conspicuously present in but by no means unique to the cultural ethos of Australia and New Zealand. Having freed themselves of the status of British colonies far away in the South-west Pacific, Australians and New Zealanders created through war and statehood a new and separate (mythic) identity for themselves as a ‘superior’ type of Briton…one in which “Jack was as good as his master”. This sustained myth of classlessness, sometimes described as a kind of “ideological egalitarianism down under”, was a conscious attempt to distance these “New Britons” from the rigid class system of the mother country.
⊡ Jante laki in Finnish and Jantelögin in Icelandic
⊞ a sort of mock “informal Scandinavian Ten Commandments” (Booth)
⊟ Sandemose himself by all accounts was hardly a model Nordic citizen, irritable of nature, of questionable morality and thoroughly unpleasant to family according to his granddaughter Iben, also a writer (Booth)
⊠ UN World Happiness Report (2018) ranked the top three countries, in order, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Previously in 2016 Denmark topped the world poll
In the free-for-all to secure colonial possessions in the New World, the Swedish kingdom was slow off the mark in comparison with other European powers. France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and England, all beat Sweden to the punch in establishing footholds in the Americas. When Sweden eventually did so in the 1630s, the achievement was a modest one. One historian described the Swedish colony in North America as “the smallest, least populated and shortest-lived” of all those established by the major European powers (HA Barton).
The initial settlement (1638) was on the shores of Delaware (present-day Wilmington, DE)… later the Swedes extended their colony to portions of land in Pennsylvania and New Jersey★. The first expedition was somewhat derivative, it’s leader was in fact a Dutchman, Peter Minuit. Minuit’s main claim to fame was the purchase of Manhattan Island from the local tribes, but his dissatisfaction with the rewards afforded him by his Dutch masters led him to defect to Sweden. The Dutch colonists ensconced in the Delaware River Valley were openly hostile to the new Swedish colony which they saw as encroaching on their turf. Minuit purchased land from the Lenape Indians (the local native Americans) with the intention of growing tobacco, and a fort (Fort Christina) was built as a base to exploit the fur trade in North America.
The Swedish South Company (AKA NyaSverige-kompaniet) was responsible for making New Sweden work and the colonists made a fair fist of it in the formative days but ultimately the Swedish colony floundered due to a combination of prevailing conditions and circumstances. The untimely death by misadventure of its experienced leader Minuit was a blow to its crucial formative development. The government tried to entice Swedish and Finnish※ settlers but never managed to attracted more than a few hundred (eventually they were compelled to resort to populating it with Sweden’s criminal classes). As well as a lack of manpower, the requisite government support to make it a success was not forthcoming.
The hard-line approach of Minuit’s successor as governor Johan Printz to ruling New Sweden met with resistance and desertion from the settlers. Printz’s successor, Johan Rising, ascerbated the already frought relations with neighbouring New Netherlands by aggressively attacking them upon assuming command. This provoked a fierce and decisive retaliation from the Dutch commander Peter Stuyvesant who captured Fort Christina and drove the Swedes’ colony out in 1655, never to return.
All in all New Sweden in North America lasted a mere seventeen years. Despite this failure the colony did leave a Swedish legacy for the future United States – Nya Sverige gave North America the log cabin, an iconic emblem of pioneering America settlement. At the same time it brought the Lutheran religion to North America, to add to the growing patch-quilt of Christian faiths in the New World.
🇸🇪Postscript: Sweden’s “small e” empire In keeping with its small-scale North American colony, Sweden’s imperial reach overall across the globe remained modest. There were limited holdings in the Caribbean under the auspices of the Swedish West India Company – comprising briefly Guadeloupe (1813-14) and more substantially Saint-Barthélemy (St Bart’s) (1784-1878). The latter was the fulcrum of the Swedish slave trade in the period. In the 17th century the Swedish monarchy also held colonies in Africa known as the Swedish Gold Coast (Svenska Guldkusten) – in present-day Benin and Ghana. Like Swedish North America, Stockholm’s Gold Coast possessions were short-lived, with the Swedes levered out of the region once more by its imperial rivals from Europe.
𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻𓆻
★ the New Jersey colony Fort Elfsborg was beset with a nematoceran plague, earning it the nickname “Mosquito Castle”
※ Finland was then part of the Kingdom of Sweden
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Referenced sources consulted:
‘America’s Forgotten Swedish Colony’s, (Evan Andrews), History, 22-Aug-2018, www.history.com
‘The Swedish Come to America’, (Thomas R. Kellogg), Founders and Patriots of America, www founders patriots.org
‘Swedish colonial empire’, New World Encyclopaedia’, www.newworldencyclopedia.org
THE modern history of Sweden has been one of continuous, peaceful state existence. Non-participation in any war since 1814, no political assassinations in the country for nearly two centuries (following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792). This remarkable run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent democratic socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene🔻 (Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
‘Clouseauesque’ policing The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/].
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér (Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other leads (injudiciously, witnesses with key information were ignored). After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service, 30-Jun-2020, www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
The suspects and the conspiracy theories◘ In the 34 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both the superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result” Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen), The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite being bereft of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
‘Skandiamannen’✪ Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, (with actress Lena Nyman), appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ 🔻
‘Resolved’ but left up in the air? Earlier this year the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
(Source: www.latimes.com)
Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
(Source: www.cnbc.com/)
𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪 ＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin ⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier ✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan ◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency ◕ among the multitude ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM, was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet
As countries try to deal with an epidemic that is novel to the world of public health, with no tried-and-true templates to follow, there have been various quite differing approaches to the COVID-19 crisis. Some of these approaches have inevitably roamed into the realm of the controversial and polemical, polarising people at home and abroad. In previous blogs 7dayadventurer.com has sketched the go-it-alone path adopted by Sweden✱,〘Two Antithetical Approaches to the COVID-19 Crisis: A Controversial Outlier Versus a a Low-key Over-achiever (10-May-2020)〙and the denialist response of President Bolsonaro to the epidemic in Brazil〘Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding? (02-Apr-2020) 〙.
Belgium’s unenviable record – with an asteriskThis blog turns the spotlight elsewhere, on to an unlikely duo, two vastly dissimilar countries whose strategies towards the pandemic have proved controversial, each in it’s own way. Belgium, a small European state, has surprised and shocked many observers by its prominence on the table of world’s worst affected countries. The country has recorded 815 deaths per million of population (as at the 1st of June), easily the worst per capita toll in “First World” Europe (next closest Spain, 580/one million). Although Belgium has some distinguishable factors which contribute it its fatality rate—the country and especially the capital Brussels is the sixth-most dense in Europe, and Brussels has a very international and mobile population, a high number of Belgians reside in nursing homes (accounting for more than half of the disease’s victims)✬—there’s another (statistical) factor that goes a good way to explaining why there has been 9,580 recorded victims of the disease⊡. Belgium counts both the deaths confirmed as resulting from coronavirus and the deaths which are suspected to have been caused by the disease (most countries do not include this second category in their official COVID-19 counts)✪. (“Is Belgium the world’s deadliest COVID-19 country or just the most honest?’, (Bevan Shields), Sydney Morning Herald, 01-Jun-2020, www.smh.com.au).
🔺 Belgians returning home to a coronavirus-hit country
In defence of over-counting
Belgian virologist Prof Steven Van Gucht has deflected criticism of both Belgium’s numbers and its method of calculating corona casualties, commending Belgium for its honesty in selecting the more inclusive determination of the death toll. Van Gucht has argued that “public health shouldn’t be a political game or a contest on who is doing better than someone else”, adding that other governments not being honest with the public about the true scale of their outbreaks will be caught out on it later. Not everyone in Belgium applauds such transparency and honesty with the corona data, some within the kingdom’s business leadership have expressed alarm than the methodology used to ‘inflate’ mortality and morbidity numbers may have a deterrent effect on tourists returning to Belgium once the economy reopens (Shields).
(Source: www.graphicmaps.com/)
El Salvador’s tough stand on lockdown transgressors part of a worrying authoritarian trend?
Pre-existing conditions in the Central American country of El Salvador have dictated the government approach taken to coronavirus. El Salvador’s high incidence of both gang activity and homicide prompted president Nayib Bukele (at 38 youthful and very social media savvy, eg, >1.9 M Twitter followers) to act hard and fast. Bukele’s government took a preemptive approach to the outbreak, schools and colleges were suspended and a state of emergence declared before the country had recorded its first confirmed case of the virus. Borders were closed, public gatherings in excess of 500 people banned, anyone caught driving cars without a sanctioned reason were detained at confinement centres for a 30-day period. Quarantine-breakers have been dealt with, summarily and harshly. Towns in El Salvador deemed to not be complying with the president’s strict lockdown orders have been cordoned off by the police, barring public egress [‘Savior or Strongman? El Salvador’s millennial president defies courts and Congress on coronavirus response’, (Patrick Oppman), CNN, 21-May-2020, www.edition.cnn.com].
(Source: El Salvador Presidency via Reuters)
The new Salvadoran president has gone particularly hard on the country’s street gangs, the maras, who he fears would take advantage of the state of emergency to increase their criminal business activities when the security forces were busy policing the lockdown measures. Most controversial has been Bukele’s treatment of gang prisoners during the crisis – shockingly dehumanising images have emerged of large numbers of half-naked convicts shackled and huddled together in tight-knit formation (with zilch regard for social distancing), resembling a great amorphous mass of “human cargo” [’El Salvador’s president accused of using coronavirus to bolster autocratic agenda’, (Patrick J Mc Donnell & Alexander Renderos), Los Angeles Times, 01-May-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].
Recently Bukele has copped a lot of flak for the way he’s handled the crisis, including from labour organisations decrying the draconian quarantine measures as abuses of human rights. The legality of his actions has been questioned as has the increasing militarisation of the regime [‘One Year After Taking Charge, Nayib Bukele Faces Severe Criticism for Handling of COVID-19′, (Zoe PC/ Tanya Wadhwa), News Click, 03-Jun-2020, www.newsclick.in/].
El Salvador’s ‘hip’ president: taking a selfie before his speech at the UN 🔻
Shades of the White HouseAs an outsider—both as the son of an immigrant family from the Middle East and from a minor centre-right party which sits outside the political establishment traditionally dominated by the two main parties in El Salvador)—the president has deliberately attempted to work outside the mainstream including the National Assembly (NA) to achieve his aims. And he’s not adverse to employing military muscle to intimidate opponents⌽ while also reaching out to El Salvador’s impoverished with cash and food handouts (to buttress his personal popularity with the social base). Political opponents in the NA have accused Bukele of using the pandemic to consolidate an authoritarian regime, and of seeking to violate the national constitution (Oppman). The similarities seemingly extend to shared personal traits. President Bukele has disclosed his prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine, while referencing Trump’s use and endorsement of the drug. The El Salvador authorities have managed to hold the death toll thus far to 53 (06-Jun-2020) at the cost of drastic restrictions on individual liberties.
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✱ Sweden‘s top epidemiologist has now conceded the government’s laissez-faire approach was seriously flawed – with a status quo of 43 fatalities per 100,000 people and Sweden finding its borders with its Scandinavian neighbours remaining firmly closed [‘Top epidemiologist admits he got Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy wrong’, (Bloomberg), National Post, 03-Jun-2020, www.nationalpost.com]
⊡ as at 06-Jun-2020
✬ some countries simply don’t count deaths occurring in nursing homes in their COVID-19 tallies, the UK only belatedly included them later in the crisis
✪ if Belgium applied the same criteria as most countries the recorded number of deaths by COVID-19 would be around half of what it is
⌽ such as deploying the army inside the Legislative Assembly as ‘bouncers’ [‘Nayib Bukele’s military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador’, (David Agren), The Guardian, 16-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]
The Coronavirus outbreak has brought out both the good and bad in human nature, but as everyone tries with varying success to cope with the strange and new reality of lockdowns, closures, social distancing and restrictions on movement, it has brought out the downright weird and bizarre as well. In 1929 when Wall Street collapsed, triggering the Great Depression and a devaluing of the money currency, there was a run on the banks as people desperately tried to salvage their evaporating savings. In March when people in the ‘burbs heard the pandemic was not likely to go away any time soon, there was a run on the supermarkets, efficiently stripping the shelves bare (like locusts in a corn field) – of toilet paper! Somehow, the crux of what is needed for civilisation to sustain itself during an enforced hibernation has been reduced to this, apparently now the most precious of household commodities in a lockdown survival strategy. Widely circulated media footage of shoppers coming to blows in supermarket aisles over the providence of a single roll of loo paper and profiteering hoarders trying to flog bog rolls on eBay at an insane $100 a shot, is surely proof of the arrival of a new and dynamic currency (what price the toilet roll futures market?)✥.
(Source. www.mix1023.com.au)
Once the epidemic got in full swing, the demand for face masks, especially in those countries with a culture of wearing protective masks, quickly outstripped supply. Accordingly some people have resorted to ‘improv’, mask substitutes – scarves and bandanas, face shield visors and so on. Sometimes people are a bit creative, eg, converted bras, vacuum bag filters, and sometimes grossly inappropriate (and utterly gross) or bizarrely impractical.
KKK hood shopper, an injudicious choice of replacement for a face mask, San Diego, Ca. (Image: Tiam Tellez (FB))
A comfy 15L plastic bottle-head in lieu of face mask (Source: www.dailystar.co.uk)
Agencies tasked with enforcement all over the world struggle to come to grips with the need to make everyone social distance. India’s efforts at least have resulted in some comical outcomes (light relief perhaps from all the descending gloom). In India’s west coast tourist spots, foreigners found at the beach by local police have been forced to write out apologies 500 times for breaching the stay-at-home rules. Elsewhere, in southern India, in one village the mandated use of umbrellas outside (in any weather) is the prescribed method for enforcing social distancing.
(Photo: Hindustan Times, source: UGC)
Meanwhile, officials in the Swedish city of Lund, confronted with the Herculean task of stopping the multitudes ignoring voluntary social distancing guidelines, have gone for the unorthodox! To discourage people from crowding together in outdoor recreational areas, a frustrated LundsKommun (city council) has resorted to the somewhat “left-field” measure of dumping chicken manure all over the city’s main park.
(Source: www.internewscast.com)
Has any other natural or unnatural phenomenon ever inspired such an array of whacky bizarre headlines (a la “Ripley’s believe-or-not!”) as this minuscule spiky particle pathogen has? In an atmosphere heightened by anxieties over a sense of that which we cannot control, “miracle cures” have saturated social media channels, everything from Llama Antibodies Could Help Scientists Stop the Coronavirus Pandemic? to Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? to Colloidal silver toothpaste will fix your Covid virus. Then there’s the “contributions to the debate” from the White House, a kaleidoscope of quack cures being incredulously recycled by “The Donald” who continues to be in the thrall of non-scientists sprouting convenient opinion to him (“UV light and disinfectant injections killing the virus inside human bodies”, “hydroxychloroquine and bleach“, etc). The Covid-19 pandemic has been somatotropin for conspiracy theorising, with no handbrake applied to how asinine they can get…the 5G network is an ‘accelerator’ of coronavirus; Bill Gates Foundation’s COVID-19 Vaccine is a Satanic Plot; Not a pandemic but a plan-demic; Coronavirus hoax is an Agenda 21 plot to microchip us; etc. ad nauseum⌖. (‘Miracle ‘coronavirus cures’ haven’t changed in 700 years’, (Jennifer Wright), New York Post, 18-Apr-2020, www.nypost.com)◨.
Suspicious-looking 5G mobile towers
PostScript: the coronavirus crisis leads to some surprising scenarios. A report on a news bulletin a couple of weeks ago disclosed the trials of tribulations the super rich have had to endure at this time. Because of social distancing measures, many of society’s wealthy burghers have for safety concerns dispensed with the services of their house maids and auxiliary staff. This has resulted in grievous inconvenience and vexation for the plutocrats as they are now forced to learn for themselves how to use washing machines and other appliances in their palatial homes…ahh, those eternal First World problems – they just never let up.
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✥ when Covid-19 first hit the US,eight of the eleven states in which cannabis is legal, declared ongoing access to the narcotic an essential service for medicinal and recreational users. This prompted, in microcosm, a similar run to that on toilet paper, on marijuana outlets by aficionados of the weed. Consumers flocked to their local dispensers to stock up on essential ‘pot’ for the long, hard days of confinement ahead. This panic-buying of cannabis led some with a vested interest in the industry to talk up the prospects of a medicinal marijuana-led recovery of the US economy once the cloud of coronavirus disperses (‘Aurora Cannabis and Tilray set to detail hoarding of marijuana during COVID-19’, (Max A Cherney), Market Watch, 09-May-2020, www.marketwatch.com)
◨ plucking supposed panaceas out of the ether in time of pandemic has been ever thus…in the Black Plague they tried onions to ward off the disease, in the coronavirus crisis the equivalent recommendation is garlic (same degree of effectiveness)
⌖ the authors of these expressions of coronavirus denial, once thought largely confined to the United States, are spreading to different parts of the world, ironically enough, like a virus in themselves. They are drawn from different groups of society—anti-vaxxers, 5G truthers, sovereign citizens, QAnon believers and other Alt-Right, fringe conspiracy theorists—that have through ”cross-pollination” of their beliefs, converged into “a virulent if not entirely coherent umbrella movement against coronavirus lockdown measures“ (’Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers’, (Cameron Wilson), BuzzFeed, 11-May-2020, www.buzzfeednews.com.au)
When a novel virus comes along, such as we are facing now, there is no medical vade mecum, no universal guidebook to follow, no one proven route to safely navigate the crisis. Governments weigh up the choices, then in consultation with medical experts, decide on a strategy and do modelling on how to chart the optimal course through the unpredictable straits of COVID-19. Local factors in each country, the conditions, the capacity to respond, the culture, all shape what direction the fight against the virus takes.
The following focuses on just two of the 212 countries and territories which have reported cases of the novel coronavirus disease. The two countries, Sweden and Vietnam, have very different societies, cultures and political systems. Each has followed its own distinct strategy and have produced results that are polarities apart from each other.
🇸🇪SwedenOne thing you can’t accuse the home of ABBA and Ingmar Bergman of is sheepishly following the flock. While countries like the US and the UK ‘sleepwalked’ for precious weeks at the start of the crisis, Sweden went out on a limb. From the get-go, Sweden identified itself as an outlier, a contrarian country in the coronavirus war. It adopted a particular course and implemented it. Or to put it another way, Sweden opted for a “change very little”, “wait and see” position, which amounts in effect to the pursuit of a “herd (or community) immunity” approach. Put simply it means you intentionally expose as many people as possible in the community to infection and so (the theory goes) the majority become immune to the virus. It’s effectiveness hinges on (quickly) minimising the number of high-risk people overall. For it to work, there needs to be an infection rate of at least 60%. Critics of herd immunity, and there are many in both the medical and non-medical world, describe it, among other things, as a “let it rip” strategy✱.
Getting back to Sweden’s experience, the Social Democrat government under Stefan Lofven, and state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, were at the outset confident of success with a “let it happen ASAP” approach. Sweden stopped organised sporting fixtures and closed university buildings but it eschewed a strategy of mandatory lockdowns (restaurants, bars, cafes and schools for pupils under 16 all stayed open) for a libertarian-like “principle of responsibility”, trusting the Swedish populace to “behave like adults” and do the right thing voluntarily.
The figures tell a different and disconcerting story: Sweden with a population of just 10.33 million has a reported Covid death toll of 3,225 (as at 10-May-2020) – with capital Stockholm overwhelmingly the primary hotspot. As illustrated below, compared to it’s Nordic neighbours Sweden’s mortality figures resonate like a distress beacon in the ocean, and in per capita terms it even outstrips the horrendous, spiralling toll of the US.
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The mortality rate for Sweden has prompted even the Swedish chief medical scientist Dr Tegnell to comment that it is now a “horrifying large number” [‘Sweden’s near “horrifying” death toll of 3,000 from coronavirus with 87 new fatalities, including a child under ten’, (Ross Ibbotson), Daily Mail (UK), 07-May-2020, www.dailymail.co.uk]. The body responsible, the Swedish Public Health Agency has come under mounting pressure (increasingly internal) for the current situation. A group of 22 scientific researchers from Swedish universities and institutes have called on the SPHA for a rethink of the strategy and a more cautious approach [‘Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed’, (David Nikel), Forbes, 14-Apr-2020, www.forbes.com].
A consequence of “granny-killer metrics” A leading molecular virologist from Sweden’s Karolinska Insitutet has accused the government of taking unnecessary risks and sacrificing the elderly (half of the total deaths are from aged care homes), as well as placing the health of their carers and hospital workers in jeopardy [‘Sweden urged to reconsider controversial coronavirus advice as infections rise sharply’, (John Varga), Express, 07-May-2020, www.express.co.uk].
A Stockholm bar: elbow distancing only
Defending the hard to defendThe Swedish authorities have tried to defend its strategy—citing dramatic drops in the use of public transport and a survey which the agencies conclude is evidence that people are practicing safe distancing from each other during the crisis (Ibbotson)—unfortunately the visual evidence from photos and videos within Sweden suggests otherwise with crowded restaurants, bars and parks still the norm and few people seeming to be social distancing. So far, the government for the most part is holding the line and appears to be committed to the long haul, although they have now given some ground, banning outdoor gatherings of more than 50 (Nikel)ㅁ.
There are some outside observers who still take a sanguine view of outlier Sweden’s methods of dealing with the crisis. Stanford School of Medicine (US) professor, Michael Levitt, has been critical of other countries with a different approach, the so-called “first mover” countries like Australia, Austria, New Zealand, Denmark, Czech Republic, Israel and Greece, who he says have paid too heavy a price for locking down their communities – resulting in severe damage to their economies, social upheaval, the loss of an academic year for students, and still having not attained herd immunity [‘Granny-killer metrics don’t add up in Australia’s costly coronavirus battle’, (Andrew Probyn), ABC News, 08-May-2020, www.abcnews.com.au]. No doubt the decision-makers in Sweden would find this external support comforting, and of course Sweden could turn around and say to the growing number of doubters that it’s approach is keeping people in jobs, keeping businesses from closing down, and the economy afloat … but at what a human cost! This is the Solomonic trade-off.
(Source: www.irishtimes.com)
Update since originally published: (information updated to 21-May-2020) SWEDEN has overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium to record the highest coronavirus per capita death rate in the world. Sweden has recorded 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants, higher than the UK, USA and Italy (www.express.co.uk/).
☤~ ☤~☤
🇻🇳VietnamWith international media attention on the COVID-19 dilemma focused largely on the US and the Eurocentric world, the efforts of Vietnam in the war against coronavirus has garnered little notice till recently. Many observers would be surprised to discover that the South-East Asian country has had zero recorded deaths from the virus, out of a total of 288 confirmed cases (10-May-2020). Surprising…for a few reasons. First, it seems a bona fide claim, unlike some of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours who claim also to have done well with little to substantiate it. As a general rule, S.E. Asian numbers, even more so African numbers, are often problematic as there has been an inadequate amount of testing carried out to gauge progress accurately✮.
(Photo: AP)
Second, Vietnam shares a (northern) border with China, the country of coronavirus origin, plus in normal times Vietnam is a busy destination with frequent international flights from nearby Taiwan, Hong Kong and China itself, leaving it, one would think, quite susceptible to to the importation of the infection. Third, Vietnam has an estimated 97 million people but for a medical emergency of this magnitude it lacks the allocatable resources and health infrastructure of the more economically dynamic Asian states. It simply can’t afford to engage in the level of mass testing that say South Korea has managed [‘Vietnam shows how you can contain COVID-19 with limited resources’, (Sean Fleming), World Economic Forum, 30-Mar-2020, www.weforum.org].
Why has Vietnam done so well in the war against the “invisible enemy”?Part of the explanation is that Vietnam has approached the crisis very much like a military campaign. In fact war rhetoric has been employed by the government, which constantly speaks of “fighting the enemy”. The country’s response was early and proactive, border closures, rigorous mass quarantines of whole towns for weeks, were implemented up front, not just as a last resort like some places elsewhere [‘How Vietnam is winning its “war” on coronavirus’, (Rodion Ebbighausen), DW, 16-Apr-2020, www.dw.com]. The authorities conducted targeted testing and thorough contact-tracing procedures. To compensate for the country’s limited resources they created low-cost test kits for wide distribution (“70-minute rapid test kits”).
“Rice ATMs” initiative: Made available 24/7 to Vietnamese people during the time of pandemic
(Photo: www.vietnamnet.vn)
An ingrained culture of compliance The key to what Vietnam has achieved is the central government’s ability to secure almost universal integration into the fight against the disease. Communist Vietnam’s authoritarian one-party state structure with a highly organised army and security apparatus makes this task more easily obtainable (whereas in a liberal society where plurality is the norm this would be nigh on impossible). The regime can much more easily mobilise the people to adhere to it’s rules and restrictions…there is a prevailing culture of compliance, and a range of effective mechanisms in the hands of Hanoi to attain that compliance. The government-controlled media and the high numbers of Vietnamese people exposed to social media have facilitated this. Apps have been a standard part of the public information campaign to get the government message out – and the degree of transparency about COVID-19 and the government’s plan to counter-attack it, has raised public confidence and made it more receptive to what Hanoi is saying [‘The Secret to Vietnam’s COVID-19 Response Success’, (Minh Vu & Bich T Tran), The Diplomat, 18-Apr-2020, www.thediplomat.com].
The government has called on a raft of idiosyncratically-Vietnamese cultural devices to creatively drive home it’s theme. ”Viral hand-washing” songs have been popularised among the people and most effectively, the regime have resorted to propaganda art, something with a long tradition in communist Vietnam. Calling on the familiar slogan, “In war, we draw” (again, invoking the war metaphor), the government has fostered a patriotic response in Vietnamese to get 100% behind the war on the virus (#TogetherWeWillWin), resulting in the production and dissemination of visually-powerful and meaningful posters like these two (above and below). COVID-19 has also prompted the release of special stamps to help unify the Vietnamese people [‘“In a war, we draw”: Vietnam’s artists joint fight against Covid-19’, (Chris Humphrey), The Guardian, 09-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com; Fleming].
Coercion and collaborationAnother side of Vietnam’s use of “soft power” to get everyone thinking as one can be seen at work in the coronavirus emergency. The socialist ethos in Vietnam operates on one level as a “surveillance state“…ordinary Vietnamese are conditioned, not just to obey rules, but to help the authoritarian regime’s realisation of it’s goals by spying on neighbours and reporting back to the authorities the activities of non-conformists or of anyone breaching the public health regulations (Humphrey).
Notwithstanding this further encroachment on civil liberties, the Vietnamese people as a whole, having accepted the seriousness of Hanoi’s fight against coronavirus, are on board, and appear genuinely proud of their country’s success in avoiding thus far any serious outbreak of the epidemic in a country with a healthcare system woefully ill-equipped to deal with harmful effects on it’s large population (Ebbighausen).
The Vietnamese achievement, having been successful so far in keeping a lid on the epidemic, might lead it’s citizens to feel or at least hope that they are out of the woods. But even if they are in the clearing now, there’s another forest looming largely in the shape of the economy, which of course is another matter entirely. Over 85% of Vietnam’s enterprises have been adversely effected by the crisis. Tourism, which Vietnam like so many is highly dependent on, could be looking at a loss of $US3 to $US4 Bn in 2020, and so on down the line of the country’s businesses. At the moment business leaders in Vietnam are preoccupied with exploring new economic opportunity that may arise for the country post-crisis [‘Vietnam is set to lose billions due to coronavirus, and it’s already feeling the impact of the deadly outbreak’, (Kate Taylor), Business Insider Australia, 25-Feb-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].
EndNote: Peering inside that can of worms
The UK Johnson government initially toyed with the idea of going the herd immunity route, before being awakened to it’s senses by a vociferous chorus of British medical experts recounting the dire ramifications of such a gamble.After chief epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson did some remodelling, the UK government (belatedly) switched to a suppression approach. The Netherlands in March announced it would follow Sweden’s strategy but the Dutch prime minister then walked back the herd immunity line, opting instead for what has been described as “lockdown light” [‘Caught Between Herd Immunity And National Lockdown, The Netherlands Hard Hit Bt Covid-19 (Update)’, (Joshua Cohen), Forbes, 27-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com]
𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟
✱ the medical critics would be quick to point out that, if herd immunity can’t be accomplished by vaccination (and there is no vaccine for coronavirus yet, not even on the horizon), then it is an extremely risky business to dabble in. It puts the old and vulnerable into the position of sacrificial pawns for the greater good; it can also expose a country’s health-care system to intolerable demands on its resources (not to neglect the heightened personal danger for nursing staff and medics); a third drawback with the approach is that mortality from coronavirus is a reality for the under 70s and under 60s as well
ㅁ in an implicit admission of a failure of it’s voluntary compliance arrangements, Sweden announced recently that it would close bars and restaurants which flaunted the social distancing guidelines [‘Sweden is shutting down bars and restaurants where people defied social distancing guidelines’, (Kelly McLaughlin), Business Insider, 28-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com]
✮ like Myanmar for instance which admits to only six deaths from the virus. A population of 55 million, according to a World Bank estimate it has only 249 ventilators in the whole country. The Myanmar regime’s lack of transparency, the sheer logistics of trying to safely social distances and the attribution of it’s very low fatality level to the country’s diet and lifestyle, cast more than reasonable doubts on the true extent of the epidemic in the republic [‘Zara’s Billionaire Owner Was Praised For Helping in the Coronavirus Crisis. Workers In Myanmar Paid the Price’, (Nishita Jha), BuzzFeed News, 07-May-2020, www.buzzfeed.com]
Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.
Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank& PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!
🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummyfor the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)
Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).
(Photo: AP)
China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].
(Photo: AP)
Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].
Life on Planet Trump
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].
🔺 Trump impersonating a giant bully rabbit (Photo: CBS News)
Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.
Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].
(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The “Trump of the Tropics”
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.
When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].
🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?
Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].
🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast
Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].
Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights?
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].
🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)
<╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍^╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍>
❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results – transparent governance at its finest!
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)
At the onset of world war in 1939 the principal adversaries of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler were clearly seen to be the United Kingdom and (initially at first) France. So, why did the Third Reich focus so much on Norway in the global conflict?
War strategy was part of the answer. German military planning ante bellum had pinpointed Norway’s geo-strategic importance. It was also aware of the danger of a blockade of Germany’s sea-lanes posed by the British Navy. By controlling Norway’s long (16,000 mi) coastline, Germany could control the North Sea, providing the optimal maritime attack route for an assault on Britain. It would also ease the passage of Germany’s warships and submarines into the Atlantic Ocean. As far back as 1929 German Vice-Admiral Wegener outlined in a book the advantages of seizing Norway in a future war to expedite German naval traffic [C N Trueman, “The Invasion Of Norway 1940”, www.historylearningsite.co.uk . The History Learning Site, 20 Apr 2015. 5 Feb 2020]. The Nazis believed that Norway’s strategic ports were the key to control of the Atlantic and to the overall success of Germany in the war (‘Nazi Megastructures’).
Norway’s proximity to Sweden was another factor in Germany’s focus on the Scandinavian country, arguably the main consideration in Hitler’s and the Nazis’ calculations. Buried in the north of Sweden—mainly at the Kiruna and Gällivare mines—were vast quantity of high-grade iron-ore. In 1939 Germany imported ten million tons of the mineral from Sweden, all but one million of it from these mines [‘The Nazi Invasion of Norway – Hitler Tests the West’, (Andrew Knighton), War History Online, 01-Oct-2018, www.warhistoryonline]. This raw material provided the steel for the German war machine – its armaments and equipment (weaponry, tanks) and aircraft.
Kiruna mine 🔼
As Sweden was (like Norway up to April 1940) a neutral country in war-time and was freely selling iron-ore to the Germans, why did Hitler need Norway? The problem was the port of Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden, from where the Nazis transported the precious loads of ore…in winter it would freeze over. To meet the exigencies of “total war” the Nazis needed to keep the production lines rolling, the war schedule couldn’t afford long delays in the delivery of the iron-ore. The solution lay in Norway – the northern port at Narvik by contrast didn’t freeze over and was accessible all year round. Logistically, the Germans could easily re-route the Swedish iron ore via the Norwegian coast (Trueman). What made this more pressing for the Germans was that Britain spurred on by Winston Churchill was planning to mount a expeditionary force to capture the Swedish iron-ore mines to deprive their enemies of it [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)].
In April 1940 Germany, concerned that Britain was trying to engineer Norway into the war, implemented Operation Weserübung, invading both Denmark and Norway at the same time. Neighbouring Denmark for Germany was a staging post and base for its Norway operations. Denmark capitulated virtually immediately but Norway, with some limited and not very effective help from the British, French and Polish, held out against the massively superior might of the Nazi Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for over two months.
🔼 Quisling inspecting the Germanske SS Norge troops in Oslo
The Norwegian surrender came, inevitably, after the Allies withdrew their support. The German Wehrmacht stayed in occupation of the country for five years guarding the precious iron-ore route. Hitler, wanting to project a veneer of legitimacy, installed a pro-German Norwegian puppet regime under Vidkun Quisling, a fascist collaborator and leader of Norway’s Nasjonal Samling party✱. Quisling, evoking an ancient Viking concept, the hird✧, formed his own paramilitary organisation [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)], however real power lay with the Hitler-appointed Reichskommissar Josef Terboven.
Hitler had another, ideological motive for extending the scope of his Third Reich empire to Norway. The Nazi Führer was an ardent admirer of Viking and Norse culture. Nazi ideology rested on a belief in so-called “Aryan superiority” which elevated Nordic people such as the Norwegians. This ideology was reflected in SS recruitment posters circulated in Norway (and Denmark) during the German occupation…propaganda aimed at an historic appeal to Norwegian manhood, conflating of the Wehrmacht soldier spirit with the valour and exploits of Viking warrior culture [‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’, (Eleanor Barraclough, History Today, 68(4), April 2019, www.historytoday.com].
The Nazis’ program of Lebensborn –intended to create “racially pure” offspring was practiced in Norway, resulting in somewhere between ten and twelve thousand babies being born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers⊚ (‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’).
🔼 (L) Quisling, (2nd from L) Himmler, (3rd from L)Terboven
Hitler’s preoccupation with Norway, its natural resources and its supposed Aryan virtues, was to have critical and fateful repercussions for the “big picture” war strategy of the Third Reich. The Nazis fortified Norway more heavily than any other nation it occupied during the war, several hundred thousand German soldiers (regular army, Waffen and Schutzstaffel – SS) were stationed there – a ratio of one German soldier for every eight Norwegians! [‘German occupation of Norway’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. When the Allies launched their decisive D-Day operation in 1944, these unused, excess troops in non-combative Norway may very likely have been vital to the German efforts to stem the Allies’ major offensive at Normandy.The Nazis used ancient Viking rune symbols on their uniforms and flags, like the SS’s sig rune insignia (above)
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𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶
✱ adding a new word, ‘quisling’, to the lexicon. The charade was maintained with Hitler declaring that occupied Denmark and Norway were under the protection(sic) of the Nazi state, Hitler‘s ScandinavianLegacy, Ed. by John Gilmour & Jill Stephenson, (Introduction) (2013)
✧ in Old Norse, originally a retinue of informal armed companions, analogous with a housecarl, a household bodyguard
⊚ the most famous of which is Frida (Anni-Frid) of the Swedish pop group ABBA
Contemporary Scandinavian society is rich and appetising fodder for sociologists and behaviouralists. The peculiar strain of egalitarianism that runs through the Nordic countries manifests itself in a concept known as Jantelagen in Swedish or Janteloven in Danish and Norwegian⊡. The origin of the word ‘Janteloven’ comes from a 1933 satirical novel by a Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose. A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, set in a fictional Danish town called ‘Jante’, is “a thinly veiled roman à clef about his hometown Nykøbing Mors”, Denmark, in which he skewers the inhabitants for their foibles – “pettiness, envy, backbiting, gossip, inverted snobbery and small-mindedness” [‘The Law of Jante’, Michael Booth, Paris Review, 11-Feb-2015 www.parisreview.org]. One small portion of En flyktning krysser sitt spor (the Norwegian title) is of lasting significance, the “Laws of Jante”⊞, the list of ten principles designed to put non-conformists in Nordic society in their place. Sandemose’s so-called ‘Laws’ draw on long and widely held, deeply engrained Scandinavian attitudes⊟.
(Source: worldlife expectancy.com)
The Swedish South Company (AKA Nya Sverige-kompaniet) was responsible for making New Sweden work and the colonists made a fair fist of it in the formative days but ultimately the Swedish colony floundered due to a combination of prevailing conditions and circumstances. The untimely death by misadventure of its experienced leader Minuit was a blow to its crucial formative development. The government tried to entice Swedish and Finnish※ settlers but never managed to attracted more than a few hundred (eventually they were compelled to resort to populating it with Sweden’s criminal classes). As well as a lack of manpower, the requisite government support to make it a success was not forthcoming. 
(Source: El Salvador Presidency via Reuters)
The government has called on a raft of idiosyncratically-Vietnamese cultural devices to creatively drive home it’s theme. ”Viral hand-washing” songs have been popularised among the people and most effectively, the regime have resorted to propaganda art, something with a long tradition in communist Vietnam. Calling on the familiar slogan, “In war, we draw” (again, invoking the war metaphor), the government has fostered a patriotic response in Vietnamese to get 100% behind the war on the virus (#TogetherWeWillWin), resulting in the production and dissemination of visually-powerful and meaningful posters like these two (above and below). COVID-19 has also prompted the release of special stamps to help unify the Vietnamese people [‘“In a war, we draw”: Vietnam’s artists joint fight against Covid-19’, (Chris Humphrey), The Guardian, 09-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com; Fleming].
(Photo: AP)
(Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)
Norway, Sweden and Denmark (www.geology.com)
Norway’s proximity to Sweden was another factor in Germany’s focus on the Scandinavian country, arguably the main consideration in Hitler’s and the Nazis’ calculations. Buried in the north of Sweden—mainly at the Kiruna and Gällivare mines—were vast quantity of high-grade iron-ore. In 1939 Germany imported ten million tons of the mineral from Sweden, all but one million of it from these mines [‘The Nazi Invasion of Norway – Hitler Tests the West’, (Andrew Knighton), War History Online, 01-Oct-2018, www.warhistoryonline]. This raw material provided the steel for the German war machine – its armaments and equipment (weaponry, tanks) and aircraft. 
Kiruna mine 🔼
In April 1940 Germany, concerned that Britain was trying to engineer Norway into the war, implemented Operation Weserübung, invading both Denmark and Norway at the same time. Neighbouring Denmark for Germany was a staging post and base for its Norway operations. Denmark capitulated virtually immediately but Norway, with some limited and not very effective help from the British, French and Polish, held out against the massively superior might of the Nazi Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for over two months.
Hitler had another, ideological motive for extending the scope of his Third Reich empire to Norway. The Nazi Führer was an ardent admirer of Viking and Norse culture. Nazi ideology rested on a belief in so-called “Aryan superiority” which elevated Nordic people such as the Norwegians. This ideology was reflected in SS recruitment posters circulated in Norway (and Denmark) during the German occupation…propaganda aimed at an historic appeal to Norwegian manhood, conflating of the Wehrmacht soldier spirit with the valour and exploits of Viking warrior culture [‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’, (Eleanor Barraclough, History Today, 68(4), April 2019, www.historytoday.com]. 
The Nazis’ program of Lebensborn –intended to create “racially pure” offspring was practiced in Norway, resulting in somewhere between ten and twelve thousand babies being born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers⊚ (‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’).
🔼 (L) Quisling, (2nd from L) Himmler, (3rd from L) Terboven 
The Nazis used ancient Viking rune symbols on their uniforms and flags, like the SS’s sig rune insignia (above)