Swedes and Norwegians: Friends or foes?

My co-worker and I were extolling the deliciousness of pickled herring the other day (because who doesn’t do that during the course of a work day?) when it came to my attention that her ancestral heritage is mostly Swedish.

I told her I was mostly Norwegian, but have maybe 15 percent Swedish blood in me from my mother’s side of the family.

“Well, you’re lucky you’re at least that much Swedish,” she retorted and then proceeded to tell me how much Swedes and Norwegians hate each other.

Hate may be too strong of a word perhaps; it’s more like an archrivalry. She knows this because her sister lived in Norway for six years and witnessed all of this competitiveness and making fun of one another.

Then my co-worker proceeded to tell a joke: “What do you call a Norwegian? A Swede with his brains knocked out...”

A rivalry between Scandinavians? Could this be? We all got along so well together in Minnesota, or so I thought. My Swedish ancestors, the four Nilsson sisters who emigrated from Hova, Sweden, to Northern Minnesota in the late 1800s, all hooked up with Norwegian men — last names Danielson, Erickson, Johnson and Anderson — and lived happily ever after, I think.

And if this purported rivalry was so, why did my grandfather, who emigrated from Norway, and his Norwegian-American wife, name my father Gustav Adolf, after the famous king of Sweden?

Curious about this deep-seated rivalry, I did what any mixed-race Scandinavian would do: let out an “uff da” and Googled it.

The first website I came upon was Yahoo? Answers, with an entry titled “Norway and Sweden BFF (best friends forever)?”

“Norwegians love to make fun of the Swedes,” a blogger named Nellie wrote, “because they have a lot of blond moments and are pretty slow in general, have no sense of humor, do not understand Norwegian that well, are damned cultural imperialists, and are just not that cool in general.”

Ouch! Take that, Swedes.

Then I came upon a column by Patrick Stout from The McDonough County Voice in Illinois, which began with this joke: “Ole’s feet hurt, so he went to the doctor. The doctor told him to get some loafers, so he brought home two Swedes.”

Stout told about a comedy routine at a local church group meeting that featured Eileen Johnson, who was born in the Norwegian haven of Thief River Falls, Minn. (still called T’ief River Falls by the old-timers), not far from my Swedish and Norwegian ancestors’ stomping grounds.

Johnson coincidentally had married a Swedish-American; seems there was a lot of mixing and matching going on back in the day.

Yet another website, The Local: Sweden’s News in English, had an article titled “Why does Norway Hate Sweden?”

One commenter had this to say: “The real situation between Norway and Sweden is that Norway hates Sweden, and Sweden couldn't care less about Norway. That’s why Norway hates Sweden.”

Another insightful person weighed in with this: “It seems to be like a sibling relationship, where Sweden is the much older sibling. On the surface Swedes seem to view Norwegians as cute — funny singsong language, smaller population, a bit blonder. And the Norwegians are happy for the Swedes to think what they like — they know they're the ones who inherited the family jewels.”

So I guess it’s true, at least most of the time the Swedes hate the Norwegians and vice versa. I just never knew it.

Can my co-worker and I continue to be friends now that we’ve discovered what should be an obvious rivalry? I think so. We still have pickled herring in common, but just in case, e-mail me your best Swedish jokes.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.