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Perhaps there are SIX Nordic countries after all
The Dutch feel they belong to the Scandinavian clan
By Petteri Tuohinen in Lelystad and Harlingen, Holland
When you've spent two years living in Belgium, you start to doubt those elementary school claims that there are five countries in Scandinavia, or the Nordic region.
At least from the social bedlam of Brussels it starts to look as though The Netherlands and the Dutch behave in many ways exactly like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Could Holland be the elusive sixth Nordic?
In the city of Lelystad, in Holland's youngest province of Flevoland, Tom van Oosten prepares Baltic herring in his fish restaurant and sings along to a medley of Dutch folk songs coming from a loudspeaker.
Van Oosten is firmly of the opinion that the Dutch belong to the Scandinavian clan. He says the Danes and the Dutch differ only by virtue of their language. "The Danes and the Swedes have always been able to fish, too", he says.
This is all very well, but then the Spanish and the Greeks can claim as much, so perhaps van Oosten's views are coloured by the humble Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras), which attracts him to the Scandinavian countries.
In statistical terms, Holland as a society is relatively close to the Scandinavian model. For example, the position of women is much the same here as it is further north, and the same goes for the absence of corruption.
According to the Berlin-based Transparency International, all the Nordic countries were among the top eight nations in the Corruption Perception Index for 2003. Holland nudged into 7th place, just ahead of Norway. Finland held on to its position at the top of the pile.
From Brussels I have also noticed that there is more of the north than the south in the spoken culture of the Dutch. When a Dutchman opens his mouth, he tells things like they are, concisely and without any of the flowery speech-for-speech's-sake airs of the southerners.
For this reason, perhaps, the first President of the European Central Bank, Dutchman Wim Duisenberg, was well liked - at least among the Scandinavians. Now Duisenberg has handed over the reins to Jean-Claude Trichet of France. Trichet's statements are a good deal more difficult to interpret.
If one goes out of an evening in Holland, it all feels rather like being at home. Generally everyone pays for his or her own drinks, and the women - a considerable number of whom are blondes - tend to drink pints of beer just like the men. It's all a far cry from Gallic fiddling with wine-glasses.
Maybe these fair-haired women are in fact of Viking stock. The Vikings came here, after all. Around 900 AD one of them, Gerulf by name, got himself christened and (after murdering his boss Godfried) made himself "Count of Holland". This was the name by which the northern parts of the country became called.
Of course one does not have to look very far to find differences from the Nordic countries, either.
The most well-known is probably the liberal Dutch policy on drugs, which does not seem to be under any great threat hereabouts. The Dutch Minister of Justice recently caused a bit of a stir when he urged prosecutors to ignore smuggling cases at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport when passengers were found with less than 3kg (!) of cocaine in their luggage. The drugs will, nevertheless, have to be surrendered to the authorities.
There is also room down here for improvements in IT and in banking services. At weekends, the Dutch can only dream of being Scandinavian and paying their bills from home via the Net.
Relative to the Finnish experience in particular, one obvious difference is in the number of foreigners in the country. In the largest cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, the share of immigrants from outside Europe is already around 30%, which has prompted - even in traditionally tolerant Holland - fierce debate on the subject of stemming immigrant flows.
But let's forget the differences for now.
On the shores of the North Sea, sales engineer Harold Munsterman is tinkering on the deck of a tugboat. Munsterman has the necessary credentials for a geographical determination of the Dutch mentality, since he has had business dealings with both the Scandinavians and with people from Southern Europe.
"Our way of thinking is very close to that in the Nordic region. It is easy for us to work with the Scandinavians, because we both accept that a deal is a deal. The Southerners like to laugh and joke a lot, but it is always tough to squeeze the truth out of them", charges Munsterman.
Then again, one might imagine the Dutch are even closer to the world of the Brits. Practically every Dutchman and Dutchwoman you run into speaks nearly flawless English, and the countries share both a colonial past and a close relationship with the United States.
Munsterland is not so sure. "The British live on their island and hence they are are also intellectually alienated from the continental Europeans", he argues.
In the streets of Harlingen, a seaport town a little to the north, there is a scent of gingerbread cookies on the air, and the wind off the North Sea cuts almost as sharply as it does in Helsinki.
In a quiet home furnishings boutique, the blonde owner Corinne Hoek echoes the views of Munsterman: Holland definitely belongs with the Scandinavians, at least if you compare it with neighbouring Germany or Belgium.
"The intellectual landscape is the same", she offers.
Around here the Germans and the French are not particularly well-liked, even though to Helsinki eyes they live right next door to the Dutch.
There still seems to be a certain amount of Second World War baggage: Holland was occupied by the German forces from May 1940 all the way through to the spring of 1945.
Things are not improved by the fact that when Germans pay a visit to Holland these days, they tend to speak German with the locals, which annoys the Dutch. In the same way, French tourists apparently expect the Dutch to speak French with them. Two more reasons, then, why the Dutch would prefer to align themselves with the north rather than the south.
Hoek thinks long and hard before she makes any remarks about the Germans. Her hesitation is perfectly understandable: the Germans are the next-door neighbours and they have to do business together.
"What's good about the Germans is that there is still a border between us", she laughs.
On a more serious note, Hoek admits she gets a twinge of angst when German customers come into the shop. She feels that they do not respect her as a Dutchwoman at all.
"They don't even say 'Thank you' in Dutch, even if the two languages are so close", she complains.
An elderly lady who passes, pushing her rolator, takes exactly the same view as many other locals in Harlingen: The Netherlands belongs to the north.
"The Nordics, they stand out in the sense that they are better behaved", she says firmly.
The Dutch feel they belong to the Scandinavian clan
By Petteri Tuohinen in Lelystad and Harlingen, Holland
When you've spent two years living in Belgium, you start to doubt those elementary school claims that there are five countries in Scandinavia, or the Nordic region.
At least from the social bedlam of Brussels it starts to look as though The Netherlands and the Dutch behave in many ways exactly like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Could Holland be the elusive sixth Nordic?
In the city of Lelystad, in Holland's youngest province of Flevoland, Tom van Oosten prepares Baltic herring in his fish restaurant and sings along to a medley of Dutch folk songs coming from a loudspeaker.
Van Oosten is firmly of the opinion that the Dutch belong to the Scandinavian clan. He says the Danes and the Dutch differ only by virtue of their language. "The Danes and the Swedes have always been able to fish, too", he says.
This is all very well, but then the Spanish and the Greeks can claim as much, so perhaps van Oosten's views are coloured by the humble Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras), which attracts him to the Scandinavian countries.
In statistical terms, Holland as a society is relatively close to the Scandinavian model. For example, the position of women is much the same here as it is further north, and the same goes for the absence of corruption.
According to the Berlin-based Transparency International, all the Nordic countries were among the top eight nations in the Corruption Perception Index for 2003. Holland nudged into 7th place, just ahead of Norway. Finland held on to its position at the top of the pile.
From Brussels I have also noticed that there is more of the north than the south in the spoken culture of the Dutch. When a Dutchman opens his mouth, he tells things like they are, concisely and without any of the flowery speech-for-speech's-sake airs of the southerners.
For this reason, perhaps, the first President of the European Central Bank, Dutchman Wim Duisenberg, was well liked - at least among the Scandinavians. Now Duisenberg has handed over the reins to Jean-Claude Trichet of France. Trichet's statements are a good deal more difficult to interpret.
If one goes out of an evening in Holland, it all feels rather like being at home. Generally everyone pays for his or her own drinks, and the women - a considerable number of whom are blondes - tend to drink pints of beer just like the men. It's all a far cry from Gallic fiddling with wine-glasses.
Maybe these fair-haired women are in fact of Viking stock. The Vikings came here, after all. Around 900 AD one of them, Gerulf by name, got himself christened and (after murdering his boss Godfried) made himself "Count of Holland". This was the name by which the northern parts of the country became called.
Of course one does not have to look very far to find differences from the Nordic countries, either.
The most well-known is probably the liberal Dutch policy on drugs, which does not seem to be under any great threat hereabouts. The Dutch Minister of Justice recently caused a bit of a stir when he urged prosecutors to ignore smuggling cases at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport when passengers were found with less than 3kg (!) of cocaine in their luggage. The drugs will, nevertheless, have to be surrendered to the authorities.
There is also room down here for improvements in IT and in banking services. At weekends, the Dutch can only dream of being Scandinavian and paying their bills from home via the Net.
Relative to the Finnish experience in particular, one obvious difference is in the number of foreigners in the country. In the largest cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, the share of immigrants from outside Europe is already around 30%, which has prompted - even in traditionally tolerant Holland - fierce debate on the subject of stemming immigrant flows.
But let's forget the differences for now.
On the shores of the North Sea, sales engineer Harold Munsterman is tinkering on the deck of a tugboat. Munsterman has the necessary credentials for a geographical determination of the Dutch mentality, since he has had business dealings with both the Scandinavians and with people from Southern Europe.
"Our way of thinking is very close to that in the Nordic region. It is easy for us to work with the Scandinavians, because we both accept that a deal is a deal. The Southerners like to laugh and joke a lot, but it is always tough to squeeze the truth out of them", charges Munsterman.
Then again, one might imagine the Dutch are even closer to the world of the Brits. Practically every Dutchman and Dutchwoman you run into speaks nearly flawless English, and the countries share both a colonial past and a close relationship with the United States.
Munsterland is not so sure. "The British live on their island and hence they are are also intellectually alienated from the continental Europeans", he argues.
In the streets of Harlingen, a seaport town a little to the north, there is a scent of gingerbread cookies on the air, and the wind off the North Sea cuts almost as sharply as it does in Helsinki.
In a quiet home furnishings boutique, the blonde owner Corinne Hoek echoes the views of Munsterman: Holland definitely belongs with the Scandinavians, at least if you compare it with neighbouring Germany or Belgium.
"The intellectual landscape is the same", she offers.
Around here the Germans and the French are not particularly well-liked, even though to Helsinki eyes they live right next door to the Dutch.
There still seems to be a certain amount of Second World War baggage: Holland was occupied by the German forces from May 1940 all the way through to the spring of 1945.
Things are not improved by the fact that when Germans pay a visit to Holland these days, they tend to speak German with the locals, which annoys the Dutch. In the same way, French tourists apparently expect the Dutch to speak French with them. Two more reasons, then, why the Dutch would prefer to align themselves with the north rather than the south.
Hoek thinks long and hard before she makes any remarks about the Germans. Her hesitation is perfectly understandable: the Germans are the next-door neighbours and they have to do business together.
"What's good about the Germans is that there is still a border between us", she laughs.
On a more serious note, Hoek admits she gets a twinge of angst when German customers come into the shop. She feels that they do not respect her as a Dutchwoman at all.
"They don't even say 'Thank you' in Dutch, even if the two languages are so close", she complains.
An elderly lady who passes, pushing her rolator, takes exactly the same view as many other locals in Harlingen: The Netherlands belongs to the north.
"The Nordics, they stand out in the sense that they are better behaved", she says firmly.
Excuse the long article.
I agree that the Netherlands seems very similar to the Nordic states in many ways but I have a hard time thinking of Holland as a Nordic country. What do you think?
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