“So, after spending some time in Denmark and Sweden, two of the world’s happiest countries, what have we learned about and the “good life?"

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I recently posed this question to my study abroad class, “Exploring the Good Life in Scandinavia,” at our last class meeting in Copenhagen. Over the course of two weeks, we’d heard guest lectures from experts on Scandinavian culture. The students conducted informal and structured interviews with residents, read research articles, compiled out surveys on happiness, and simply observed daily life.

Here are some of our observations and conclusions about a region that consistently scores at the top of life-satisfaction surveys: