Ten commandments Quote by Anu Partanen

““the Scandinavians—that is, the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians—even have a literary phrase to describe this tendency. The phrase is “the Law of Jante,” and it is shorthand for a list of ten commandments created by the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose in his 1933 novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. Sandemose’s ten commandments referred to the mentality of a fictional town called Jante, but the rules were immediately understood to capture the larger disposition of Scandinavians in general. The commandments are: 1. You are not to think you are anything special. 2. You are not to think you are as good as we are. 3. You are not to think you are smarter than we are. 4. You are not to convince yourself that you are better than we are. 5. You are not to think you know more than we do. 6. You are not to think you are more important than we are. 7. You are not to think you are good at anything. 8. You are not to laugh at us. 9. You are not to think anyone cares about you. 10. You are not to think you can teach us anything.””

— Anu Partanen