h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Revisiting this thread, and discovering others like it ("What's wrong with? - Americans/the French/the Germans", et c) is that the Scandiwegians haven't had a major war with anyone for a long time and therefore lack the opprobrium that can be fairly heaped on the British, the Germans, the French, the Americans.

OK, there was 1940, but the Danes had to make a pretty hard call... "We live on a peninsula whose only indefensible land border is with a major world power. Which has just invaded us. It's flat. Those German tanks currently rolling over it will be in Copenhagen by teatime. On the same day they invade. Far better just to surrender now and take no hits. The result will be the same with less dead people and shell craters in the landscape. Tomorrow is a new day and so is the day after that"

Meanwhile in Norway:

"Damn, not even the mountains and fjords and things are slowing them down. We'd do what the Danes did, except that the British and French have just landed and expect us to fight."

Sweden:

"Damn, Germans to the south of us, Germans to the west of us, and very damn nearly Russians to the east of us. We'd better get Volvo and SAAB to build as much kit as they can for the Army but do what we can to stay neutral"

Finland:
"Talk about a rock and a hard place. We've just fought a crippling war with the Russians and at least we fought them so hard and caused them so much damage they won't want to do it again for a long time, but sooner or later two hundred million of them are going to defeat four million of us. Even though we outnumber them one to fifty." (Finns tend to think like this about the war with Russia). We keep Stalin out of Finland, and now Hitler wants us on his side for Round Two. Well, if we side with the Germans against Russia at least wwe can grab back what they stole from us. Yeah, bring it ON!"

Apart from the Finns, Scandinavian countries have fought reluctantly and not well and this has persisted for three hundred years: Scandinavia's last bid for world power status was when the great Swedish king Gustaphus Adolfus took an army into Russia at the end of the seventeenth century, and set the template for all later invasions of that country: you do well at first, then you're defeated by the vast distances involved and the perils of resupply in a Russian winter. Your army is weakened by a futile siege of Leningrad, winter sets in, the Russians wait for the right moment, and before you know it, the Cossacks are watering their horses in your capital city and you're wondering what the heck happened. Except that you blew it - you invaded Russia and your nation's status as a world power is utterly destroyed. As happened to Sweden four hundred years ago when they were regional top dog.

My theory is that the Scandinavians have presented such a small threat to the world for so long that nobody's frightened of them (except - be very worried about being in a roomful of drunken Finns reliving the Winter War, the Continuation War, and what we'll bloody well do to the bloody Russians next time to get Karelia back. This sort of strategic planning can get physical.)

Hence two pages of What's Wrong With Scandinavians and twenty or thidrty of What's Wrong With Americans - a nation with the capacity to invade Russia but which so far has not tried...

As this commentator points out, there are quite a lot of "what's wrong with..." pages on h2g2.

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Posted Jul 9, 2007 by kea ~ mine is the level head, yours is the one things would roll off of
Sorry to see you back on this rant, Kerf


>> i have a good mind to start a "whats wrong with Brits" thread<<

Too late F19585?thread=405435


There is a tradition on h2g2 of "what's wrong with...." threads, thusly:

F19585?thread=249655

F19585?thread=2001975

F19585?thread=197502

F19585?thread=403536

F19585?thread=668064

F19585?thread=368939

F19585?thread=405431

F19585?thread=457148

F19585?thread=340808

F19585?thread=326007

F19585?thread=470221

F19585?thread=308630

F19585?thread=294388

F19585?thread=268947


(and of course the WWW New Zealanders thread was full of compliments , a feat not even the Canadians managed )

(sorry Ivan, I can't find WWW Australians )


Not that I expect that list to make any dent in your (Kerf's) jingoistic fervour

Reply

The Swedish guys wear very tight pants.

That is* just wrong...

What's wrong with Scandinavians?

hmmmmm - all I can think is that I love their accents (men mainly) which leads to a lot of day-dreaming by me...

Anything else you can think of?

nope... just the accents

I'm trying and failing to think of when I've actually met a Scandanavian.

That said, my general impression is of liberality, clean cities, high living costs, high taxes (which pay for excellent healthcare, education etc). I believe Sweden is the only country in the world with a 100% literacy rate. That may not be true but they certainly perform very well in such measures.