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It seems like a lot of people can't get enough of being told how to live their lives by Scandinavians. That's what you might assume by the truckload of English-language books, articles, and TED talks emerging in recent years, all urging readers to adopt lifestyle philosophies that hail from various Nordic cultures. First came the craze for Danish hygge (pronounced HOO-guh) a striving for cozy, primarily domestic wellness that some authors claimed lay behind Danes' apparent satisfaction with their lives. Then we discovered Swedish lagom (LAW-gm), a term broadly meaning "just enough," whose use as a moderating folk principle, boosters suggested, has helped Swedes achieve their unusually high levels of happiness. Now, as Sweden's neighbor Finland tops this year's Northern European happiness league, Finnish writers and pundits are getting in on the act, tossing their own mythologized national mental attitude-called sisu-into the crowded Nordic life-hack market. Sisu= fortitude; inner stamina; grit.

"...for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. ... Just days after International Women's Day a new pronoun, hen (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the online version of the country's National Encyclopedia. ... critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children ... toddlers cannot weigh arguments for and against linguistic interventions and they do not conceive of or analyze gender roles in the way that adults do ... One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys 'gender-coded' them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys."