"Taking a different approach to other nations contravenes jantelagen, the Scandinavian societal rule that forbids sticking your neck out or being noticeably ambitious."

"'If this succeeds, the first casualty will be jantelagen,' Annie said. 'We’ll be so pleased with ourselves.' Yet as the death toll rises, a significant number of people believe Sweden may have made a fatal error of judgment.... The state claims that the curve of infections has flattened. But as the weather warms up there are fears that the numbers will rise sharply if partygoers ignore the rules. For Plan B and other venues, their future livelihood may depend on their ability to enforce social distancing while still holding public events. 'I hope they don’t impose more rules,' said Ellen. 'Otherwise the summer could be ruined.'"

From "Sweden: the young dance at a distance amid growing fears about fatal coronavirus misstep/In a world on lockdown, the country has so far refused to introduce harsh public restrictions" (in The London Times).

Jantelagen — I'd never heard of that! It means the Law of Jante. Jante is the name of a fictionalized town in a novel by Aksel Sandemose called "A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks." Sandemose — who was was Dano-Norwegian — was satirizing the culture of Nordic countries. Sandemose identified 10 rules these people were following:

1. You're not to think you are anything special.
2. You're not to think you are as good as we are.
3. You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
4. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
5. You're not to think you know more than we do.
6. You're not to think you are more important than we are.
7. You're not to think you are good at anything.
8. You're not to laugh at us.
9. You're not to think anyone cares about you.
10. You're not to think you can teach us anything.

There's also an 11th rule, which is considered to be the penal code: "Perhaps you don't think we know a few things about you?"

While the original intention was as satire, Kim Orlin Kantardjiev, a Norwegian politician and educational advisor, claims that the Law of Jante is taught in schools as more of a social code to encourage group behaviour, and wants to credit it with making Nordic countries have high happiness scores. It has also been suggested that contentedness with a humdrum lifestyle is a part of happiness in the Scandinavian countries.... [H]owever, there have also been articles which link the Law of Jante to high suicide rates. Backlash has occurred against the rules, and in Norway someone even placed a grave for Jante Laws, declaring them dead in 2005.... [O]thers have questioned whether they will ever go away, as they may be firmly entrenched in society....

Interesting that the worldwide lockdown could be the occasion for Sweden to break out of the limitation of the Law of Jante. You'd think people who'd internalized those rules would be the first to shut down, not the last to go along with a shutdown everybody else accepted as necessary. I'm speculating about the causation. Maybe if you're not to think you are anything special, it doesn't matter so much if you die.

ADDED: Rule 5 — "You're not to think you know more than we do" — made me think of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row":

At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyoneThat knows more than they doThen they bring them to the factory
Where the heart attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row