Newsletter from the Nordic Labour Journal 4/2014
Editorial: A piece of Nordic contemporary history
On 22 May 1954 the agreement on a joint Nordic labour market was signed. 60 years on the Nordic Labour Journal talks to Nordic citizens who in each of the six decades tried their luck in a different Nordic country — and we look at how the agreement came to be.
Mapped: Nordic migration between 1960 and 2010
There have been major changes between 1960 and 2010. Sweden has the most emigrants, Norway takes in the most immigrants - not only from other Nordic countries, but from former eastern European countries and other parts of the world too.
Bold Nordic agreement without a political “father”
The common labour market is the jewel in the Nordic cooperation. It was established as early as 1954, three years before the five first member states of what would become the EU signed the Treaty of Rome.
“Sweden was somewhere you could make money”
Early autumn 1954, and Gösta Helsing is 17, one of nine siblings living at home in a small village in Vörå in Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia. Post-war Finland is poor from paying reparations to Russia and there are few jobs. The small farm cannot sustain all nine siblings. Many neighbours, friends and relatives are moving to Sweden.
Moving gave several identities
Gunnel M Helander came to Sweden with her family aged four in late summer 1954. She now lives in Hanko in Finland’s south-westernmost point and is a retired architect. She feels Nordic: Swedish, Finnish and Ålandish. Her removal van has made many trips between Sweden and Finland.
An interest in engines took him to Sweden - but it didn’t pay enough
Per Billington moved from Norway in 1984 to work at Volvo’s research department in Gothenburg for one and a half years. It shaped his entire career. This is where he learned ‘ordning och reda’ — Swedish ‘proper order’ — and he learned to love diesel engines.
Always Norwegian at heart
This August Norwegian badminton player Erik Rundle has lived in Denmark for longer than he lived in Norway, and he doubts he will ever return for more than holidays and to defend his badminton titles.
Longed for Icelandic nature — became head of an aluminium plant
When US aluminium giant Alcoa built a smelting plant in Iceland in the 2000s, Danish Janne Sigurðsson quit her job in Denmark and moved to Iceland. She was a stay-at-home mother for a while. Now she heads Alcoa’s largest aluminium smelting plant in Europe.
“Swede moving to Norway, what do I need to know?”
On 13 December 2010 Charlotte Lundell started working as Brand Manager at Orkla Confectionery & Snacks. The first thing she did when she got the job was to google: “Swede moving to Norway, what do I need to know?” At the time she was one of 80,000 Swedes working in Norway. In 2013 she is one of 90,000.
What about the next 60? New report predicts continued success for the Nordic model
“We need to make adjustments going forward, but if we do we have every chance of succeeding,” says the Managing Director of the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Vesa Vihriälä. He is just finishing a report on the challenges facing the Nordic welfare model in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
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