The Jante law: why Norwegians don't brag

I never dreamed about becoming an author. But I always liked telling stories, and I liked writing them down. I remember sitting at the family cabin as a kid, writing a story on a notepad. It went on for several pages before I was finished. My mother was my first fan.

One time I entered a competition hosted by the local newspaper for a short essay. I don’t remember if the title was supposed to be “Typisk norsk å være best” — “Typically Norwegian to be the best” — or if that was just the title of my essay.

Either way, I wrote a humorous take about not actually being the best, but thinking you are. And that this was supposedly typical Norwegian behaviour.

Looking back, that was probably wrong.

Don’t think you’re anything special

In reality, Norwegians are usually very careful about claiming to be good at anything. It’s far more typical to say something like: “Don’t think you’re anything special.”

In fact, this idea is so common in Scandinavian culture that we even have a name for it: the Jante law — Janteloven.

The term comes from the Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, who in a 1933 novel described the fictional small town of Jante and its ten unwritten rules. The first one sets the tone: You’re not to think you are anything special. The rest are variations on the theme — you’re not to think you’re smarter than us, better than us, or that anyone cares about you.

Sandemose wrote it as satire. Scandinavians recognised it as documentary.

To be fair, there’s a warmer side to it too. The same instinct that frowns on bragging also flattens hierarchies: bosses eat lunch with everyone else, titles matter less, and nobody is too important to queue. It’s humility as social glue. It just gets heavy when you’re the kid with the notepad full of stories.

The essay with no winner

Anyway, my essay was meant to be funny and not too serious. I sent it in and waited nervously for the results.

After a while the newspaper announced that they had not declared a winner, because they didn’t think any of the essays were good enough.

That was a bit of a kick in the teeth. I remember it made my mum furious. She was ready to complain to the paper, but I told her not to. I figured they were probably right, and that my essay simply wasn’t very good.

You could say the Jante law won that round.

After that, many years passed before I did anything serious with writing again.

The part she never saw

My mum died of cancer in 2007. One of my biggest regrets is that she never got to meet my two fantastic daughters. She would have adored them and spoiled them the way only grandmothers can.

The second thing she never got to see was me becoming an author.

Because eventually, I did. In 2016 Tony and I finished our first book, and the Norwegian version of Viking came out in 2017. Since then we’ve published more than fifteen books, in three languages, across three genres. The English version of that very first story remains our best-selling book, with more than 2000 ratings on Amazon.

Not bad for a book that no publisher in Norway wanted. And not bad for a kid whose essay wasn’t good enough to win.

Just don’t tell anyone I said that. It wouldn’t be very Norwegian of me.