psychomath, that view of Scandinavian countries as culturally cohesive is one that fits my childhood very well; not so much these days, at least not when it comes to Sweden and Denmark
as for villages, well large parts of Sweden, at least, haven't had a village culture in the British sense since the 17th/18th century when the Great Shift broke up the villages; it's been more isolated farmsteads; records and literature from the 19th/early 20th century suggest that there was an even stronger sense of divide between the rich and the poor and that Britain, not to mention America, was thought of as a place where the lower classes were treated more as human beings
travellers from abroad in the 18th and 19th century described Swedish peasants in terms that are reminiscent of literary descriptions of the Russian rural proletariat: as ignorant, dirty, hungry, alcoholic, without hope
this is why my great-uncles and great-aunts were so eager to get out of the country, not just to the US but also to Britain: they wanted a new home which they perceived as less class-ridden, where you could reinvent yourself
what happened afterwards was a result of some very hard work on the parts of socialdemocrats who somehow managed to present a new welfare system, a cohesive educational policy, and heavy taxation as a win-win situation which would benefit everybody from the former squire to the former farm labourer
it was not God-given, it was not driven by some historic necessity: it was a choice
but for some reason, the time was right, the people were right, the circumstances were right: it worked
in recent decades, this image of the cohesive society has been threatened by an influx of immigrants (Sweden takes far more refugees than the UK does)
again, it has been a deliberate choice by some politicians (sadly not all) to stand up and defend the idea that a good society is one where everybody can have their needs met