In Europe

history, its shadowy archways are decorated with trolls and other mystic rural motifs, and some of its courtyards are reminiscent of Venice, the Renaissance, of the North's eternal longing for the lightness of Italy.
    I took a detour to Saltsjöbaden, a handful of red wooden houses and the huge Grand Hotel along the shores of a snowy lake, less than half an hour by train from Stockholm. Here, on a quiet December day in 1938, the famous Swedish ‘consensus model’ was born, a distant precursor of the Dutch polder model. Seated at the round dining table in the little room of the hotel tower, representatives of the government, employers and unions, under the motto ‘No rich individuals, but rich concerns’, laid the foundations for an impressive welfare state. The model meshed seamlessly with Swedish puritanical traditions, centralised government and ‘flat’ organisational structures.
    For almost eighty years, therefore, cool reason has governed here, and that can be seen all over Stockholm. The outlying neighbourhoods with their broad lanes and large, leafy courtyards remind one of the Amsterdam of H. P. Berlage and Cornelis van Eesteren. Homeless people, prostitutes and drug addicts are skilfully kept under control and neatly filed away. Here the bicycle locks are flimsier than anywhere else in Europe. Everyone dresses almost alike, there is almost no sprucing up, but that is also characteristic of a rural society. A rare individual may stand out, but largely by reason of his or her bearing. These are the bosses; you sense it, but you scarcely notice.
    In front of the Riksdaghuset I run into Magnus Lundquist. He has been standing here all day, holding a huge banner. Painted on the left of the banner is a crown of thorns, and below that a head covered in red blotches. In the middle is a large cross. To the right I see a detail of a hip bearing a deep wound. Near the top of the banner is a shining, kingly figure on a white horse, with a Star of David on his forehead. Beside him is a dove. Above that an angelic figure in a pose of beatification. The edges of the banner are lined with bible verses.
    Magnus’ big blue eyes look right through me. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘This is the real Jesus,’ he says. Tomorrow an exhibition will open here, on the theme of Jesus as homosexual.
    At dinner that evening I exchange national excesses with Lars-Olof Franzén, the thinking heart of
Dagens Nyheter
. I tell him about tons of cocaine being smuggled into the Netherlands with the express permission of the ministry of justice, about expense-account falsification in the public sector and large-scale fraud in the construction industry. In Sweden, people are outraged by the sums paid to directors in the form of golden handshakes, they find it preposterous; after all, we built up those companies together!
    A country can be known by its scandals. According to Franzén, issues like the ones we have mentioned are characteristic of a widening gap between common Europeans and the elite, here as well. ‘The Swedes are introverts, seemingly shy, but actually they are quite proud,’ Franzén says. ‘They use their own efforts as a benchmark. That is where their values lie.’
    While today's political leaders are concerned only with money and EU membership, old-fashioned equality and solidarity are still held dear by the common Swede. ‘Generally, people here feel that the politicians are busy selling out democracy. Nationalism doesn't play a particularly big role in that, more like a deep concern about the future of our society as such. The Swedes already miss the quality our health system once offered. And they think that today's leaders have fallen under the spell of greed.’
    He tells me that the first time he saw a beggar was in Paris in the 1960s. And he talks about how long ago he had heard people in New York talking only about money, about what everything cost, even down to a divorce. ‘It was unbelievable to me. I could never have imagined that would be normal in Stockholm too, thirty years later.’
    We talk about the influence Sweden had on the United States. During the famines in the nineteenth century, almost a quarter of all Swedes emigrated there. ‘Every family has uncles or distant cousins living in America.’ Roosevelt's New Deal was inspired by the example of the Swedish social democrats. ‘But I believe the influence now runs only in the other direction,’ Franzén says glumly.
    Watching TV that