I suspect that few Americans would truly embrace a Scandinavian-style society. The tax rates alone would likely be a sufficient deterrent. Though I’m a freelance journalist, I essentially work until Thursday lunchtime for the state. And it’s not as if the money that is left in my pocket goes all that far: These are fearfully expensive countries in which to live.

The Scandinavians’ collective modesty, distrust of boasting and self-censoring of ambitions would also be hard for Americans to comprehend, I suspect. A Danish acquaintance who lives in Washington was recently back in Copenhagen having coffee with friends. She remarked, proudly, that her son was doing especially well in math. “There was a silence, and then someone changed the conversation,” she told me. “If I had said he was great at role-playing or drawing it would have been fine, but it was totally wrong to boast about academic achievement.”