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Speaking from an Icelandic perspective, I think the 'love of socialism' stems from the fact that we've pretty much always needed to rely on one another to just survive in the harsh living conditions. Of course, these conditions have improved drastically since the early 20th century but I think a lot of the culture remains.

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> needed to rely on one another

You would expect that to result in much more elaborate social rituals

As I understand it, Denmark and Sweden (and perhaps the other Nordic countries?) used to have more elaborate social rituals until relatively recently.

Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen .

I seem to recall that people could also referred by their job title, eg, "Mr. Programmer", and even listed in the phone book that way. But I can't verify that.

Social rituals have a cost. Nordic social rituals are there, but they are terse and focused around seeing certain behaviours as a duty. Look to more austere religious groups, and consider most of the Nordic countries were very much firmly Lutheran and largely saw "elaborate social rituals" as excess.

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