This may come as a surprise to North Americans, who judge happiness by the number of smiling faces, but according to Eric Weiner in the Geography of Bliss, the dour-looking Swiss are indeed very happy.

Weiner points to three key factors that underpin Swiss happiness: love of nature, trust in others and control of envy.

The Swiss are clearly avid outdoors enthusiasts, and Weiner points out that this gives them lots of chances to experience what E. O. Wilson calls biophilia, that feeling of happiness and peace engendered by being out in the natural world.

According to Weiner, the Swiss also trust their fellows and are the happier for it. The level of trust here usually comes as a bit of a shock to North Americans. I was amazed and delighted the first time I ordered something online here and was able to pay for it after it arrived. I was less delighted but certainly amazed when my landlord suggested leaving a key with my neighbor, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. (It's not in big-city US.)

If the Swiss know and trust their neighbors, Weiner also suggests they avoid giving them cause for envy. Bragging about possessions or talking about money are considered unpleasant and ill-mannered.

 Switzerland, Lausanne : A sculpture of legendary Swiss hero William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell) holding his crossbow is seen in silhouette at sunset

But there is more to the story of Swiss happiness. Weiner's key factors (trust, envy, nature) are tied not only to happiness but also to some serious potential unhappiness.

Heimatort
Weiner emphasizes the importance of place for the Swiss. In fact, I think that trusting others, controlling envy, and a love of nature grow out of a Swiss sense of place, a sense of belonging to a specific place and community, and this is actually what secures happiness in Switzerland.

Heimatort, one's ancestral community, has a powerful cultural salience that carries over to the structural significance of one's community of residence or Gemeinde.  These place-identities are reinforced as in-group identities in German-speaking Switzerland by the use of dialect, with each region or even community speaking its own variant.

Insiders and Outsiders
But if some are inside the small community, that means others are outside, lots of others. Not exactly a recipe for national cohesion or even, perhaps, happiness. The modern Swiss political genius, according to Jonathan Steinberg, has been to encapsulate difference and represent it in the political process, allowing different groups to flourish while living side-by-side.

There's one group, however, that can't be represented in the political process, can't be easily encapsulated and merged into the social fabric: immigrants. They have no Heimatort here, no community of identity with their Swiss neighbors. Perhaps it's because they aren't predictable. (Who knows how people behave where they come from?) Maybe that's why they seem somehow less trustworthy.

It is actually fairly common here to explain someone not hewing to the norm, making noise late at night for example, by saying that they are foreign. Absurdly enough, I've said it myself when confronted with a beer bottle left at my gate or noisy neighbors.