The Jante Law

It struck me that maybe there are people that don't know what the `Jante Law´is.
Scandinavians like all people have cultural codes. The `Jante Law´ is a mentality that thrives in the villages and towns across the region and exist among its inhabitants. It is a restrictive law rather than a progressive law and is a self-imposing restriction that can be painful for those ambitious enough to seek success and a reminder to others that one must literally not get too big for their boots.
An example could be if you somehow make a success and people start coming to you talking about it...then you have to have like a sad expression on your face when you talk about it. You can't look too happy because then people become jealous. No, instead you maybe should start talking about something that is not so nice in your life instead. That will make the person you talk with to feel you are not having more success than himself. If you don't the person probably will start feeling jealous when he think about your success and start making you excluded of the society.

Here are 10 rules that define the `Jante law´ and that many times are used against a person in prosperity:

1. Don't think that you are special.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
   
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.

As an unwritten set of rules to limit ambitions or attempts to be successful in order to protect other people’s jealousy, the `Jante Law´ is human nature itself. The unconscious need to put down or put ‘in their place’ those who seek to elevate and elongate their personal levels of economic and educational achievement. This is something that many non-Scandinavians suffer from too.
The law is meant to preserve social stability and uniformity, and the `Janters´ who break the "unwritten" law are treated with suspicion or even hostility.

Everybody who moves into Scandinavia from abroad will sooner or later feel the presence of the `Jante law´ while the people who have been living there all their life are so used to it that they don't recognize it in the way they behave.
When you as a Scandinavian have been living abroad it's many times not fun to return and become under the influence of the `Jante law´ culture again. When you have got to taste the freedom you like it and you start resisting the bondage which means you don't fit in the context.