In typical protestant style, working hard and becoming wealthy and successful is concidered virtuous, as long as you dont "act different" but remain "one of the people".
Of course the opposite culture exist in big cities, were hipsters and celebrities try to be as flashy and individualistic as possible.
Anyway, I don't think The Law of Jante is a real impediment to startup culture, the real cultural issue is that Scandinavia doesn't have the same risk-taking culture of the US.
Exactly. Courage is the biggest problem here.
The term "venture capital" doesn't exist in the Norwegian language. The closest translation is "risikokapital" which literally means risk capital.
This says a lot about our culture.
That's a big leap. In Danish we just say "venture kapital". There are thousands upon thousands of direct loanwords like this. I wouldn't read anything deeper into it.
Here's the "Jante Law", or Law of Jante, he mentions at the end: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
"... a pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian communities, which negatively portrays and criticises individual success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate."
[1]: http://artplant.no/