Hell is other people, for Swedes

EUROPEANS can sometimes seem like a miserable bunch. The continent has produced downbeat writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre (“hell is other people”) and philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek (“What does love feel like? Like a great misfortune”). But although there are many reasons for Europeans to feel gloomy at present—from a migration crisis stretching from Greece to Germany to the possibility that Britain, one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe, may leave the European Union—many, instead, seem to be becoming ever cheerier.