Now, this is a case of national pride of course, but it really sounds like the author has heard just one side of a story here. My impression is that Sweden and Norway (like the other Scandinavian countries) are about equal in most aspects. That's not wrong, is it?
Norway and Sweden are virtually identical as far as I can tell. Though I haven't lived there, I work with norwegians and visit a few times a year since 2008.
Standard of living might be a bit higher, but not drastically.
Naturally, Salaries are a lot lower in Sweden, but so are the prices. Food prices in Norway are often double, rarely less than 150%.
One interesting detail is infrastructure. Due to all the mountains and fjords, building highways in Norway is super expensive. Lots of tunnels. Smaller roads tend to follow the natural, winding shape of the land, making them slow and long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...
Whereas the nominal GDP per capita is huge (84k vs. 49k in Sweden and 47k in the US)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...
So yes, $84,000 is nice, but it's much much nicer in Sweden than in Norway in terms of what you can buy with it
1. There are more swedes in scandinavia than there are any other nationality.
2. Young people move to the cities to find work.
3. Youth unemployment rates are high across scandinavia.
4. Ease of mobility across the scandinavian cultures. Olso in particular is close to sweden, and swedes understand norwegian with very little effort (and vice versa).
Thus, you have young swedes moving into all of the larger cities in scandinavia, including Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg.
Debatable ;) But yes transitioning from Swedish to Norwegian and Danish is much easier than say, French to Italian.
My reply to another thread a while ago:
No, there's a clear difference between Sweden/Finland and Norway/Denmark.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&...
And they are very, very good at it. As a result, Sweden seems comparatively more active, in terms of industry and business in general. They have a lively entrepreneurial spirit, and a lively Internet startup scene. Norway is still lagging in this area, perhaps as a result of having become docile by not having to fight for its economy.
In terms of living standards, Norway and Sweden are on the same level, and at roughly the same gini index. Sweden's GDP is about 30% higher, but Norway's is 45% higher per capita.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3421.htm
So while manufacturing is smaller sector than services in Norway, it's not negligible at all.
You can definitely see that in the indie gaming scene: quite a few well known (and good) Swedish studios (Mojang of course, but also Arrowhead, developers of Magicka or Frictional, developers of the Penumbra series and Amnesia). Meanwhile I could not tell you of any Norwegian indie game dev, I don't know any (I'm sure they exist, but I don't know them)
I've lived and worked in both countries and while Sweden feels like one of the rich US states or parts of EU, Norway has out of this world standard of living. Can give you countless examples.
A neighbour of mine was a single father of three children, the government (NAV) was paying his rent, bills, other expenses, vacation(!), etc. for almost a year. That was social help not based on previous taxes or income.
Most Norwegians (IMH experience) who are serious about gaming would work one year and live the next year on the extremely generous unemployment benefits provided by NAV.
You probably have to add some commuters, but they will hardly change the big picture.
Another, probably little-known fact, [I can't dig out a historical reference -- I remember conversations with people] is that Norway offered Sweden to jointly engage in oil extraction in the early days, which Sweden declined.