The world has discovered this week that the Swedes are not very sharing food with their neighbors, but also the Swedes are in shock discovering that their social habits regarding the pittance are seen as an extravagance in the rest of planet Earth.
The #Sweedengate, as the Anglo-Saxon media have already baptized it, has been the epicenter of public debate this week in the Scandinavian country, opening newscasts and starring in all kinds of reports in the country’s main media.
With some nuances, the Swedes admit that yes, if everything is not agreed in advance they are not going to invite you to eat just because you’re at his house. But they have reason to do so.
I have ready an arsenal of excuses
“Swedish thinking is like this: the other child (or the other family) may have plans for another type of dinnerand you would not want to ruin the routine or its preparations, ”explains the Gothenburg Linda Johanson in The Independent. “I don’t think it has anything to do with not wanting to feed the other child or that it costs money or anything like that, it has more to do with tradition and wanting to eat with your own family.”
“It is part of our independence, not depending on the good will of others”
What tradition are they referring to? As explained in Atfonbladet the ethnologist of the University of Lund Hakan Jonsson Swedish stinginess could have its roots in Sweden’s rural past: “[En esa época] you needed to manage the food and have tight control over the food supply, which after the harvest had to last the whole year. So it was not possible for people to run downhill through the neighborhood offering impromptu dinners.”
Another anthropological explanation from the same academic: “Inviting another parent’s child to dinner could be how to say that the child did not receive enough food in his own house, that the parents did not take care of the child.”
And a third. Not sharing food is a sign of independence. An expression of national pride. “It’s part of our independence, not depending on the goodwill of others,” explains Jönsson. “Even today, when we give gifts, people can say, ‘Oh, that doesn’t mean anything, I got it for free.’
The balloons out have reached such a point that Swedish national television (SVT) has brought in a food safety expert to explain that it’s not such a bad idea not to offer food to your child’s friends: you run the risk of poisoning them.
A matter of state
The psychological security agency – a Swedish organization whose function is to control the external image of the country – had even considered that this whole affair was a premeditated attack on the Swedish people’s reputation on the part of Russia, annoyed by the Swedish change of position regarding NATO.
“A single screenshot has destroyed the view of the outside world of Sweden”, has recognized this Swedish government agency, as explained in Atfonbladet.
“A single screenshot has destroyed the view of the outside world of Sweden”
The conclusion, however, has been that we are facing a real viral. no swedish bots. This is how they explain it in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladetin an article titled Swedish stinginess is trending on Twitter.
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Despite the fact that most of the media have gone on the defensive, the truth is that Many Swedes have been hurt by this whole affair. They were not aware of their stinginess. And now they are willing to change.
“I just came from looking for my kids who had gone to play at a friend’s house and I confirm that they have been given food”explains Raquel Machín, the Asturian living in Swedish with whom we spoke to illustrate our previous articles on the matter and who, we assume, is not afraid of being discovered in her host country.
“The mother was super nervous and he stressed several times that he offered them the same thing and that there were things that they did not want to try,” he explains. “And me: of course, woman, chill, everything is ok. We have created a trauma for the Swedes and now they are trying very hard to do the thing of offering food well and naturally. Pubritines, they have taken it very seriously”.
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