When an immigrant or anyone your tribe doesn't particularly care for comes along and is willing to do the same work for less, it breeds resentment. Unfortunately, that's human nature.

The U.S. has had to deal with this problem on a greater scale compared to countries that grew over millennia because of a liberal immigration policy and economic freedoms afforded to immigrants, and the aftermath of slavery. It's remarkable that this experiment has worked as well as it has (thank you, geography). But the ruling class dropped the ball over the last 20 years and ignored the rapid increase of those marginalized by immigration & trade side-effects, even though there still is a widely-held regard for the "melting pot", so now we got Trump.

It's worth noting that the current wave of immigrants is by no means the first to be marginalized, either. Irish immigrants in the 1800's, for example, faced very overt persecution for many of the same reasons (notably: "stealing" the jobs of non-immigrants), especially at the height of emigration from Ireland due to the Great Famine.

In the long run, we'll likely look back at all this fuss as another chapter in our history books, but I'm sure there'll be some other ethnic group immigrating in droves. The melting pot is a continual process. Slow and frustrating sometimes, but it works for the better in the long-term.

Out of curiosity, what's the proportion of rural or small-town population v. urban population in those countries? I find that tends to be the big dividing line here in the US, and am curious as to whether or not the same can be said elsewhere (i.e. if a lower rural:urban population ratio correlates with a higher probability for Nordic-style policy).

It's probably not the only variable at play here (economic development and education levels could be additional factors), but it might be influencing those variables in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways.

your whole nordic block has a population of 26.6 million. That's similar to Texas, not the us. in other words, what is applicable to those places may not translate to such a big country. if you start expanding it to be similar in size to the US, you'd need to take very problematic areas in, like Russia. similarly it can be noted that northern places in the us tend to have lower income inequalities in general (northernmost state, alaska ranks second within us, northernmost country, iceland ranks first within europe). nearly all states that border canada do well on poverty measures (the exception being new york).