Scandinavia and the World

Let's Party

I've heard of people huffing hand sanitizer, but never drinking it.

Stories about people drinking hand sanitizer because they can't get proper booze (probably because they're underage) exist here, but I'm not sure if it's something that actually happens. Same with a particular brand of windscreen cleaning liquid that also contains a lot of alcohol (and is said, I'm guessing accurately, to make you blind if you take too much of it). Obviously, none of these products are made for human consumption.

The drink that Finland is holding is Koskenkorva vodka with some salmiakki - or salty liquorice - flavour. Koskenkorva is a pretty famous brand of vodka here, and while just plain Koskenkorva is more popular than any of the other varieties, there are various flavours available. They're basically just mixed vodka-based drinks in a bottle.

The salmiakki flavour is particularly popular among younger people because the flavour of salmiakki hides the flavour of alcohol pretty well, and teenagers tend to like that in a drink (especially if it's a strong drink - Koskenkorva, in all of its varieties, is about 38% alcohol - or 76 proof, for the Americans).

I'm also a big fan of salmiakki flavoured vodka drinks (there are cheaper, less famous brands than Koskenkorva, and I like all of them about equally). I've not been a teen for a while now, so there's probably an element of nostalgia in my preference for these drinks. I do also enjoy just plain vodka, but if I'm having that I'll probably tend to have something better than Koskenkorva. Not that there's anything wrong with it - I just tend to prefer foreign (especially Russian and, strangely, Swedish) brands better than Finnish ones.

I'm not sure why everyone else brought a strong drink (about 35-40% alcohol) except Sweden (and, well, Faroes, if that counts). Sweden's drink is a cider - a particularly sweet one, IIRC. I've not had Kopparberg since my late teens, probably.

I've never stopped to think about the names of these Nordic drinks before, but with what little familiarity I have with the Swedish language, I'd suggest Kopparberg means "copper mountain", brennivin is something like "fire wine", aquavit seems to come from Latin (aqua=water, and I don't know what "vit" refers to). Gammel Dansk means "Old Danish". Salmiakki is simply the name of the flavour (and the type of salt that has that flavour). "Koskenkorva" means literally "the ear of the rapids", which is a pretty strange concept. Maybe there's a river that has a section with rapids, shaped a bit like an ear? I know the drink (and the company producing it) are named after a place. (They also have a pretty good Finnish baseball team.)

edited 21st Jul '17 5:13:11 PM by BestOf

Vit could also be of latin origin, maybe making it something like "water of life" or something.

"Living Water"

Yeah, "aquavit" is short for aqua vitae. Latin origin, archaic use.

Depends on which kind. The liquid alcohol kind, totally. (It happens with bloody rubbing alcohol you buy from the pharmacy) The gel kind not so much, the foamy soap-like kind that's more air than anything else, not at all.

Some very strong alcohols are also called "water of life" in French, so there may be a common trend here.

A co-worker had brought some salmiakki sweets at work once (the salted liquorice with ammonium chloride stuffing). It was a... strange experience, but not as awful as all my other co-workers made it to be. I never tried it with vodka, though, could be interesting. But it is a very unique taste.

I've had foreigners try salmiakki a couple of times. The reaction I found the most entertaining is also the one I'd probably suggest is close to an average of all reactions. It starts with "well, that's odd" and maybe a bit of "you call this candy?" and goes through "actually..." to "can I have another one?"

Even in Finland, one of the few countries where that kind of flavour is popular, if a bag of mixed candy contains salmiakki, quite often the kids will eat everything else and leave the salmiakki candies for the adults. (If the adults could pick anything from the bag, though, they'd probably still eat the salmiakki - it's an acquired taste, but you grow to love it.)

When it comes to alcohol, you can find mixed drinks for just about any relatively common flavour, so it's not very surprising that in Finland, where salmiakki is popular, there are many drinks with it as an ingredient. It's not just vodka, but the most popular salmiakki drinks do tend to be vodka-based. If I was having that with people who weren't already familiar with salmiakki, I might just offer them the drink first, because it really does go well (IMO) with strong alcohol.

Personally it sounds disgusting. I'm not that fond of salt in confectionery (I find the peanut butter used in US confectionery like Reeces Pieces and Peanut Butter M&Ms to be too salty and I miss regular caramel) to start with... and I don't like liquorice either. So that combination is just... {shudders}.

New one, with Sister North Korea making a rare appearance. It's quite sweet actually.

https://satwcomic.com/dear-sister

Poor thing.

Suck it, gender roles

Little Easter Witches

He Knows What He Likes.

I can understand the liking of rocks, far eastern Colorado is often as flat as paper and with zero mountains or significant terrain relief of any kind in sight.

Now where I'm at? It's more a show off decoration as the mountains are within walking distance and quite a few of them in this state are in excess of 4000 meters in elevation.

We have decorative rocks for parks and stuff despite having mountains.

I suppose not even SATW can be made to care about women's football? Darn shame.

Oh is there some sort of championship or something (I don't really follow sports).

The Women's European Championship, where Denmark did very well (They got silver; the hosts, Netherlands, won). Humon is Danish, so you might expect she'd be inspired to make a comic about it.

edited 12th Aug '17 3:16:46 PM by BestOf

Oh silver is indeed very good you would think (also wish they made a bigger deal about it here, when the men's is playing we have people rooting for wherever they are from or have some connection to (Canad is not very good at soccer))

Still better than Finland, though.

We're the only Nordic country that cares more about ice hockey than football. In ice hockey we're one of the 7 national teams that are head and shoulders above the next highest tier, but in football, we're probably the worst team in Europe, at least if you're not counting tiny countries like Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra, Gibraltar, and San Marino. Estonia, Iceland, Kosovo, and Cyprus all have a smaller population than Finland, yet their football teams - on the men's side - are better than ours. (Our women's team is decent.)

I'd be very surprised if Canada's team wasn't higher ranked than Finland's. The other Nordic teams are pretty good, and the best two of them - Denmark and Norway - are actually among the top-15 or so countries in Europe.

edited 12th Aug '17 7:03:09 PM by BestOf

I mean I know we tend not to make it very far, but as I said I don't follow sports. Like we are knocked out of rounds soon enough that as I noted people tend to cheer for their country of origin rather than Canada, so they have somewhere to cheer. I remember this being a thing a while back.

Oh apparently it's mostly that the men's team has only won the American (continent) Cup twice and thus doesn't usually qualify for world, since that part is broadcast less here. Mostly we like Canadian/Rugby Football (it has slightly different rules than American Football but if you are say contrasting it with soccer it's American Football) and hockey here.

edited 12th Aug '17 7:59:58 PM by phantom1

(Chop) Sticky Situation

You know that is kind of weird, that it is harder to work ones head around, I certainly know how to use my hands more than I know how to use chopsticks or really even a fork (I mean I know how to use a fork but like people learn to use there hands before learning to use a fork generally).

Quite an incentive to remember to wash your hands before and after though.

What a Crime to be Alive

We've got a lot of Swedish crime shows, too. A relatively large portion of Finland's TV production are also crime shows, though - and the same is true of our film industry. Crime stuff seems to be really popular, and it's been that way since at least the 90's. If a TV studio drops one of the Swedish crime shows, it'll quite likely be replaced by a Finnish one (or maybe one from the UK - we have a lot of those, as well).

We sometimes wonder why that's the case. Some say that life in Nordic countries is so peaceful and safe that we seek excitement by making dark entertainment. (Nordic drama and thriller films are also often full of really heavy themes - and on top of that, Finland seems to make at least a couple of big profile war films every single year.)

I think another reason why Nordic countries make so much crime stuff might be that since the studios are relatively small and can't promote their stuff as much as they'd like, they compensate for it by trying to create some controversy. At least that would explain why there's so much sex and violence in Nordic cinema. Then again, even if the film/show is quite exploitative, people rarely make a fuss about it; so if they're looking to create some lift by causing controversy, they're failing.