Okay, so I never wanted to say that this was unique to Scandinavia. The important part was how we have a a lot of trust based systems (which of course probably exists elsewhere too, but not everywhere) that are really formative for how we make policy and implement it.
This trust should translate to trust to other people, but this has been eroded away for some time because the social contract is being violated.
Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.
I thought it was Morgoth, a valar and not an elf, who made them. In any case it twists the causal relationship because the goblins subsequently make their own pitiful conditions. I do not condone the terminology even if solely on the basis of how reductionist it is. Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people, you can translate trust between people and trust between a government if it is sufficiently representative.