Self-reliance, Scandinavian style

Book group tonight will discuss Tove Jansson's The Summer Book; re-reading it I'm trying to make sense of its chronology and it still seems to me it's not a tale of one summer but an almost random assortment of sketches about the life of a young girl and her grandmother (others are all minor presences) on one of the Baltic islands over various summers. It's not so much about the maturation of a single character, learning about herself and her family over a period of months, or years, but about the mentality of living on an island (even as a summer home): independence, self-reliance, all very much Scandinavian traits, much more so at least in the 20th century and beyond than they are American traits, despite what we may wish to think. That said, there's also an incredible isolation and snobbery that goes w/ the island mentality, the sense that no one's as good as this family, that the outsiders have no place among us, that it's OK that we're settlers on this island but anyone who comes after us should be greeted with suspicion and contempt. Not only is the family isolated but each person in the family is isolated: the grandmother's tough love toward the child, her indifference, so it seems, as to child's safety (in the first sketch she seems not to give a damn if the child drowns), the father's withdrawal, the complete refusal to talk about the death of the mother. It's not a style of self-reliance that we should emulate I think - it's a brutal, colonist's sense of self-reliance, this land is my land - but not your land.