Hospitality is a concept of great importance in all the peoples that are on the shores of the Mediterranean, but not so much in other cultures. And no, when we use the expression “play swedish”We don’t do it for nothing. In recent days, a heated debate has found heat on social networks. The protagonists? Not only Swedes, but also Finns, Norwegians and even Dutch. It all starts with this story on Reddit:
I remember going to the house of my Swedish friends. And while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled that dinner was ready. She told me to WAIT in her room while they ate. It was amazing.
We could all think that it is an isolated case. Perhaps a somewhat closed family that does not like to have a stranger hanging around their table while they eat. Or they just weren’t in the mood to share the moment with someone else. It wasn’t like that. Within minutes someone brought this other story.
“I stayed overnight at a friend’s house. When we woke up, she said she was going down for a bit. After about 15 minutes, I went downstairs to see what was going on and saw that they were having breakfast. They see me and tell me that they are almost done and that they will be back soon. I still think about it 25 years later.
Coincidence or custom?
Similar stories and experiences have been piling up on Twitter and Reddit commenting on other embarrassing experiences. And no, it seems that our fellow northerners do not like to share food with their guests. Neither do the Dutch., which according to several users: only the close family is invited to lunch or dinner, and the rest go later for a drink. According to him, “you are not going to invite everyone”. Not only that: in Flanders and southern Belgium at parties and weddings there’s no food. Something loose to snack on and that’s it.
This map posted by @LoverofGeography on Instagram well illustrates the phenomenon that has given rise to this heated debate. In it you can see the countries that have the most possibilities to offer food to the guests and confirms what users were saying: as you can see, Northern Europe is more reluctant to do so.
Our colleagues from Directo al Paladar have contacted a person based in Sweden for more than a decade to understand what moves them to do this. With this phrase he summed it all up: “In general, Swedish people with food are like my grandmother used to say. husmias. If you take your child to someone’s house to play one afternoon, you have to agree in advance whether he is going to stay for lunch or not and at what time you are going to pick him up. If you’re late and you’ve told him not to eat, they do send him to the corner.”
This is depraved ???????????? https://t.co/IaUIIz7W4v pic.twitter.com/5LdzCTOMTP
— worms cited (@christapeterso) May 28, 2022
And well, the Swedes too have raised their voices to defend themselves on Twitter, as expected. Some of his arguments were purely economic, stating that they had been very poor in the past or that the main reason is out of respect for the child’s family, because they do not know if they have any allergies or intolerances. There are also those who comment that when you go to a house party, you are expected to bring your own drinks and contribute a snack or collective snacks such as chips or fruit. But the truth is that there are more complex cultural reasons.
As explained in the DAP article: “We southerners offer food to anyone and we don’t have in mind that we will be compensated but the Swedes see any offer as a binding contract to which in the future they will have to answer reciprocally. This offer and acceptance implies the beginning of a relationship, and if they are still not clear that they want a relationship with you (of any kind), you put them in a commitment and it is violent for them to accept “.
For us Spaniards, there is definitely a common recognition among people in most (usually poor) countries that easily you may be the one who needs the food next time. It is a social good that exceeds the cost of individual acts of hospitality.
We knew that the Norse were colder, but no one expected that entire cultures could violate the most fundamental laws of hospitality. There were those who thought that caring for and feeding their guests was an immutable and elemental aspect of all human culture, only with varying degrees of how far that hospitality went. It was not the case. But we’re not going to sacrifice our healthy cultural relativism just because this has raised our eyebrows, are we?
Image: Unsplash