But also well beyond other countries with developed welfare systems, such as France. I think these discussions always miss one key factor: Language.
If you don't speak English quite well at an early age (already at 10-13 years old) you are much less likely to get into software development at an early age. If you don't get into software development at an early age, you are much less likely to do a software based startup when you are in your twenties. There is a thousand times as much documentation, conferences, tutorials, courses, online fora etc in English as in other languages and this is how new ideas in IT spread. Only months or years afterwards, it's translated to Spanish or Chinese, and only if it has caught on. Just about everything new in IT spreads through English, whether it's AI or web development or anything else.
The Scandinavian languages are not that different from English, the countries are small and consume a lot of music, movies, TV etc from the US/UK. Movies and TV have never been dubbed, except for toddlers. So for the last 50-60 years or more, Scandinavians have been quite good at English. Your average 70 year old Scandinavian speaks English better than your average 20 year old Italian. A drunkard on a bench in Scandinavia is likely to speak better English than most academics I've met in Southern or Eastern Europe.
We live in an era of software driven startups. It's easy to forget that it was not always like that. There were times when successful businesses were driven by mechanics (GM), electronics (Sony), chemistry (Kodak), trade or other factors. Now it's software, and whether your language, framework, or library of choice is C, C++, Python, Lisp, Java, PHP, JS, HTML, CSS, Tensorflow, React, or almost any other tech that the unicorns are built with, the new developments in that tech will initially have spread from English speakers to English speakers. The fact that the largest software companies in the last two decades have all been American then reinforces that trend.