When I was in Sweden in the 80’s there was some rivalry. From the Swedish male point of view, the Danish women were interesting in an odd way—they were considered sexier than the average Swedish girl (chalk it up to the aphrodesia effect of strange stuff) mostly because they were known to sit in parks, wear more masculine clothing than Swedish women, while smoking thin cigars and playing chess—which was true. I saw a lot of women playing chess and smoking cigars in Copenhagen.
The Danes, on the other hand, thought the Swedes were a bunch of Snowflakes with all their Volvo safety technology, consumer protection laws, and the fact that they had recently been the first in the world to make a law that everybody had to drive with their lights on in the daytime. There were a lot of Danish jokes about things like that. I think they thought Swedes were generally a bunch of stupid pussies. And the Swedes had escaped five years of living under the Gestapo by appeasing the Germans—that hadn’t been forgotten.
Finns were considered a rough, quiet people, a dark people in mood and skin, hair and eye color—not part of the Scaninavian tribe—and good with knives. A people not to be fucked with.
Norwegians were considered slightly stupid and naive, mostly because they speak in a more sing-song way than the Swedes—which I always found beautiful. Then there’s that oil thing. The Swedes felt the Norwegians really lucked out on that one, and although both nationals are admittedly hard working, the Swedes gave you the feeling that they were more deserving because they were smarter and the Norwegians would just blow it somehow.
On the other hand, the Norwegians hadn’t forgotten that the Swedish security branch hadn’t been on station one night to protect the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme when he walked out of a theatre with his wife and some crazy sonuvabitch blew his head off. The Norwegians didn’t think much of the Swedish police after that. I was in a bar in Bergen, Norway one night and this Norwegian guy told me a joke that he thought was roll-on-the-ground funny:
Three bank robbers just robbed a bank and are in their hideout when a fourth runs in and says, “Guys, I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. Which do you want to hear first?” The robbers want to hear the bad news first. “Ok. The cops know you did it and they are on your tails as I speak.” The robbers start to freak out when the leader asks, “What’s the good news?” The guy starts to laugh and says, “The cops are Swedish.” Uproarious laughter erupted all around me in the bar. High fives all around.
LOL. I had come from an America much more divided than it is today—Vietnam War America, Generation Gap America, Fuck You Interest Rates America—and I came directly from spending many years in the southern states to this beautiful, calm Scandinavian country. I wasn’t about to take on, or get involved in their petty prejudices. I had enough of my own to shake. Besides, this was schoolboy shit compared to what I’d seen. It was about as serious as two rival high school football teams on a Friday night.
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