Scandinavia and the World

Go ahead. Who knows, maybe I'll add something to it once it's done, as well.

Oh, man. I didn't know that trope, but it applies to us Chileans a fair bit.

Like, what Best-Of said about Ol' Finny or Cringe in general?

Because every fuckin' body's got that.

Edit: Finn-cringe added!

edited 24th Aug '15 4:03:04 PM by God_of_Awesome

It's probably best to put the folder in the alphabetical order and change the text to avoid the first-person pronouns and so forth.

That we have that cultural inferiority complex going on. The average person worldwide is wayyyyyyyyyy more likely to have at least a notion of Argentina or Peru, or even Bolivia.

Did those tweaks and a bit more. (Also took out a lot that wasn't entirely relevant for the trope.)

I found this to be very interesting. Cant speak to it's accuracy, though.

I'm going to read through it and make some comments here. I'm not going to comments on everything, though - that list is bloody huge!

• The thing about believing the news: that's true, Finns generally tend to believe everything they read in the papers or see in the news. It used to be the case that people didn't really think any channel/paper's news were biased, but these days there's more suspicion. The right accuses the news (all news media) of having a bias towards red and green politics, while everyone else thinks it's too favourable to right-wing politicians who are good-looking and trendy, as well as pointless celebrities and celebrity/consumer culture. We have remarkably few competing media companies, presumably because the market is really small. Unlike the UK, you don't generally associate a news source with an ideology - so we don't have an equivalent of "Guardian readers" and so on.

Yeah, that's basically the welfare state (although it's also a couple of other things). In principle we don't accept that people who happen to get sick or in an accident or anything and lose the ability to work should become poor as a result, or that someone should be poor because they have to care for an unwell family member - or, for that matter, that a poor financial situation should hinder your chances of getting quality medical care and the best education available. For the most part we're still making sure that society takes care of all that, but with right-wing governments cutting everything we're slipping.

• Sports: Yeah, definitely ice hockey first. It's easily the most watched sport here. (And we're really good at it, too.) Football is still sometimes perceived as "elitist" or somehow faux-European - as if people were pretending to like football to look like they're in tune with the rest of Europe, rather than actually liking football. I, for one, prefer football over all other sports. I suppose the other thing is that Finns tend to go in for any sport where Finns are currently at or near the top - so it changes a lot. I don't really go in for that, myself - I don't always root for a Finnish athlete in a given event. (Like most Finns, though, I'd never root for Russia or Sweden in anything. I might side with other Nordic athletes over non-Nordic ones but never Sweden or Russia.)

• The thing about summer cottages (that's a direct translation - I've heard the phrase "summer home" used for something similar) is entirely true. If your family doesn't have one you'll go with a friend or relative to theirs, and when you settle down and get a steady job and so on you'll eventually buy/build one for yourself and your family.

• The thing about religions is accurate, as well.

• I had reindeer recently when I took a short trip to Lapland. I don't eat reindeer very often, though; it's kind of expensive and I don't really know many recipes for it. I've also had bear, hare, elk, and various birds. (Finns love to fish and they eat loads and loads of fish every week but neither I nor my girlfriend like fish so we're an exception.) EDIT: Oh, and about the reindeer in Lapland: they're everywhere. They're basically swarming all over the place, and when you're driving (things are far apart in Lapland - from where I went we drove South for 400 km and were still in Lapland) you have to constantly look out for any reindeer crossing the road or hanging out on it. Crashes involving reindeer must be common around there.

• I'm not sure if the milk thing is still relevant/different from other countries. You buy it with your other groceries, usually in 1-litre cartons. As the list says, it's never delivered, and never comes in bottles.

• The coffee thing is true, too. I'll have 2 or 3 cups (about 3dl each) at least once a day.

• The weather stuff is accurate, though I think the thing about it being cold in the winter is relative. -20 is cold-ish, and -30 is definitely cold. Still fairly common, though. I've been in -40. In the winter if it goes near (or even above!) 0 Celsius it's warm. And yeah, where I live there's loads of snow. Snowploughs are constantly taking care of roads and pavements, at least twice a day if it's snowing, so there are massive piles of snow everywhere.

• The mobile phone thing is out of date. I'm old enough that I didn't get my first one until I was maybe 11 or so, but these days every kid has one by the time they start school (so when they're about 7).

• The language thing is all true, as well.

• 6.12.1917 (meaning 6th December) is the day Finland declared independence.

• I don't think the stuff about marriage and sexual orientation and so on is any different from most European countries by now, so my only comment on it is that we're more aware and tolerant of LGBT people and their issues than we used to be. We still all "know" that all Swedish men are gay, but we're embarrassed that we "know" it (because of course we know that they aren't, and unlike when that "joke" was "funny" we no longer consider gay men inferior).

• I'm very happy that foreign films and TV shows on Finnish television (and in cinemas) are all subtitled, rather than dubbed over. It helps a lot with learning new languages.

• I've never heard of anyone paying or accepting bribes in Finland. I mean, except for corrupt politicians but the "favours" they get tend not to be considered bribes, as such; and in any case there's always a massive scandal when something like that comes out. I don't know if I'd notice if an official in a foreign country was trying to get me to pay a bribe to get processed or something - it'd probably just fly over my head because it doesn't ever happen in Finland.

• Nobody tips waiters or anyone else in Finland. It's just not part of our culture. We have institutions that are supposed to ensure that everybody gets at least a living wage.

• Dying at 65 would, indeed, be considered "too soon" - especially with the government trying to get people to work for longer before they retire. It used to be that everybody expected to be retired when they turn 60, but now there's talk of getting the average to 65 or even 70. That's crazy, and almost nobody in Finland likes that idea. It's only being pushed by wealthy people who either haven't actually worked for years or plan on retiring when they turn 50 or so.

• The thing about stopping for a red light even if there's nobody else around is true.

• We do use the metric system, just as the list suggests. Yes, in everyday conversation, as well - we're not using it and another system on the side. It's just the one.

• We do get disappointed if we ask a foreigner about Finland and they know literally nothing about it, or confuse it with Sweden or something. That happens quite a lot, though.

• The thing about fathers rarely taking a parental leave is no longer true. Both parents will always get at least a couple of months off (paid), in addition to the 3 months that the mother would automatically take, anyway.

• About phones and answering machines: nobody has a landline anymore. Some companies still have them but nobody has one in their actual home. Everybody has at least one cell phone. (And a desktop computer, obviously, as well as at least one laptop and/or tablet computer).

Well, I ended up commenting on more than I meant to.

edited 24th Aug '15 7:57:19 PM by BestOf

Best Of, I did feel like I should thank you for the bit of insight into Finnish culture, and being willing to talk about it. I found it interesting and was glad to learn a bit from your rant. Cheers.

Whales can talk.

But they have nothing to say to us.

That drinking whale is adorable.

The fact that the Netherlands has/is one of the largest sandy beaches in Europe is conveniently forgotten for the sake of this gag.

edited 27th Aug '15 4:35:04 AM by Kayeka

*snorts beach sand

NL beaches are mentioned in the commentary, but also that this way was funnier.

Stupid Vampire Werewolf Robot Martian Hitler.

Oooookay.

It could be the plot of Iron Sky 3...

edited 1st Sep '15 5:59:31 PM by Quag15

I'm glad Humon is only calling the Scandinavians cowards. If she had extended that to all Nordics I might've been a bit offended... (I guess even the Scandinavia thing is a bit much - while she does acknowledge that Norway fought back very bravely, Denmark also had a (fairly irrelevant) resistance movement and some volunteers from Sweden participated in the wars that Finland fought. It's true that Denmark and Sweden went really far to minimise damage to themselves rather than oppose Hitler (or Stalin) but they did at least do something.

Still, Sweden will remain one of the neutral nations. Interestingly enough, out of the neutral nations, it's the one nation which tends to get less flak for assuming this stance (unlike, say, Switzerland, Portugal or, more controversially, the Vatican City).

Sweden is actually a fairly interesting country in WWII. They were one of Germany's major sources of resources - the Swedish part of Lapland has massive iron reserves, and Sweden was quite willing to sell it to Hitler. Part of the reason why Germany occupied Norway was to ensure that the Allied powers couldn't interfere with Swedish iron shipments to Germany. If Sweden had refused to sell iron to Hitler it's conceivable that Sweden would also have been occupied.

This is why the Allied powers actually had a plan to invade Sweden. When Finland got invaded by the USSR Finland asked everybody for help. Sweden wanted to remain neutral but some volunteers did go to Finland to participate in the war. Germany didn't want to help because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (but reversed that stance, obviously, with Barbarossa and thus decided to send troops to Finland in the Continuation War.)

The Allied powers thought about helping Finland but that would have had them fighting the USSR. One "compromise" they came up with, though, was to send troops to Finland - but instead of fighting the Soviets the Allied planned to occupy Lapland, including the Norwegian and Swedish part of it, to seize the iron mines there. Sweden and Norway refused to allow Allied forces to travel across their Lapland into Finland, though, so the plan was abandoned.

Smile and wave.

Sweden is such a big ol' dork. I like what it does to the character dynamic to have the nominal leader of the group be socially awkward and self-conscious.

I'm not sure that's a particularly Swedish problem. I remember having an awful time when I was taking acting courses trying to know what to do with my arms and hands when talking (and I was far from being the only one).

edited 9th Sep '15 1:09:54 AM by C105

That reminds me of that saying about Italians. Stop their hands and they lock up because they don't know how to talk without moving them around.