For the Love of Cod by Eric Dregni BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS

 Book Review-Five Stars

For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son's Search for Norwegian Happiness by Eric Dregni

For the Love of Cod is a very revealing comparative look into the Scandinavian successful social system, their social conscience of equal for all versus the U.S. system with crumbling, out of control inflation run wild in the land of the working poor, while one percent of America’s richest enjoy private jets and have the very best politicians that money can buy.

This eye-opening book is very well-timed for today's world.

For the Love of Cod is worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS;

I discovered we couldn’t afford to stay in hotels either. I’d already told Eilif about this grand plan, however, so I hesitated canceling his ticket. I wrote to friends and relatives in Norway, begging them to let us sleep in their spare bedrooms for a couple of nights. Norway is no longer the most expensive country in the world (as of this writing, it’s moved to fourth place), but it can now boast that it’s the “happiest country in the world,” according to the World Happiness Report from the United Nations in 2017. I was perplexed. My wife, Katy, and I had lived in Trondheim for a year, and it had never struck me as a glowingly joyous place, with its dark winters and reserved citizens. “What does ‘happiness’ even mean?”

She gave birth to Eilif outside of Trondheim the year we lived there. The Norwegian government paid for the delivery, plus gave us a bonus five thousand dollars to help with expenses. Could all of this financial help be one of the reasons for Norwegian happiness?

“I find tax evasion extremely dishonorable, particularly on a corporate scale,” Joffe of Trondheim had told me. “I’m very proud to pay tax. The money is in most cases put to very sensible use such as publicly financed education, health care, libraries, support for disabled and unemployed people, and so on.”

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I had assumed the main reason for Norway’s current success was the trillion dollars saved in the government’s oljefond, or oil fund, but every Norwegian I mently refuted my argument. Inger told me that Norway’s current status “comes out of hard work and luck.” Her husband, Knut, pointed out that this fund is thanks to Farouk al-Kasim, an oil engineer from Iraq who married a Norwegian. He knew Norway had to get foreign investment to establish the drilling technology but knew not to sell it to a foreign country and to plan wise investments early on. Inger chimed in, “This was a stroke of luck. We could have handled the wealth in a different way. In Africa or other places, they sell their resources and then it’s privatized.”

“Health care in Norway consumes 9 percent of GDP; the United States consumes 17 percent of GDP, and half of it is wasted.” Millions still aren’t even covered by health insurance in the United States. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Norway is one of the highest spenders on health care, and their costs are still significantly less than the United States. Denmark, for example, has excellent health care that only costs 7 percent of GDP.

The Finnish word sisu sums up this concept and means resilience, “guts, grit, determination,” or “stubbornness beyond reason.”

Tourists now are streaming into northern Norway in the winter to see the darkness. The coastal steamer Hurtigruten offers northern lights tours in the middle of winter and promises visitors that they’ll see the aurora borealis or their money back. I loved seeing the northern lights in January but didn’t know if enduring the winter was worth it, considering that all the darkness is just like being locked in a closet.

It’s no coincidence that Amundsen and Nansen knew that skiing was the best way of traveling over snow since I think of Norwegians as cooperative community builders, Tor Dahl corrected me: “Norwegians are the most competitive people on earth—except for maybe the Chinese.” For such a small country, Norway is remarkable not only in its exploration but also in its accomplishment of winning more gold medals in the winter Olympics than any other country, and by far.

The earliest evidence of skis is in Norway, and early runestones reveal carvings of Ullr, the Norse god of skiing. The famous story of two Birkebeiners skiing over a mountain with a baby king has spawned lengthy cross-country ski races.

I remembered what Petter, the bus driver in Trondheim, had told me, “If you wait for good weather, you’ll never be happy.”

Jan was very worried about Russia since NATO has been weakened. “Russia could easily march through Finland and Sweden since they are not part of NATO. Norway is impossible to defend with all its coastline.” Jan said that Norway was in big trouble if the United States pulled out of NATO.

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