The Scandinavian phenomenon that deem other peoples achievements and success unworthy, the so called Jante Law, has got resistance from the Swedish conservative party in the form of a proposal for a law against discrimination that could be caused by the Jante mentality, written by Finn Bengtsson and three other politicians. A tricky thing to achieve when the Jante Law itself has only once been formulated in words, and that was by the half Danish, half Norwegian, writer Aksel Sandemose. In his book A fugitive crosses his tracks he formulates the phenomenon in the following ten rules:
The ten rules state:
- Don’t think you’re anything special.
- Don’t think you’re as much as us.
- Don’t think you’re wiser than us.
- Don’t convince yourself that you’re better than us.
- Don’t think you know more than us.
- Don’t think you are more than us.
- Don’t think you are good at anything.
- Don’t laugh at us.
- Don’t think anyone cares about you.
- Don’t think you can teach us anything.