Scandinavia

"'I gather [the Scandinavian countries]'re actually about the most up-to-date nations on the planet. In real progress, I mean, education, science, industry, art, law.'"
-Murder Bound, iii, p. 29.

Because Poul Anderson's Murder Bound is about the crew of a Norwegian ship and Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy is set in Sweden, I have googled Scandinavian countries and learned that:

Norway has at different times been united with Denmark and with Sweden;

each Scandinavian country has its own version of the Nordic model (see also here).

Questions And Comments
(i) Is the Nordic model what one character in Murder Bound means by "real progress"?

(ii) The "corporatist system" -

- a corporatist system involving a tripartite arrangement where representatives of labour and employers negotiate wages and labour market policy mediated by the government
-copied from here

- sounds like what Andrea has told me of Mussolini's fascism.

(iii) A welfare state is sustainable by taxation when the free market is expanding but not, or at least not as easily, when it is contracting.

Lauring says that, although "'Norwegians have plenty of personal freedom...'" (ibid.), he values the American request not to walk on the grass as against the European prohibition of walking on the grass and adds:

"'A lot of little things like that.'" (ibid.)

That is a very little thing. I would like to have read what the "'...lot of...'" other things were.

I like Sweden as Stieg Larsson describes it although it has military service. It seems to have a refreshing multiplicity of political parties, which is confirmed here.