Meme

[beer_good_foamy]

Everyone's posting these, so since I wrote it up...

Describe your country's history - not as it really was, but as the average person in your country remembers it. What are the major events that everybody knows about? What's taught in schools? What do your politicians and media talk about when they want to boast about how great your country is? Or are there embarrassing episodes in your nation's past that everybody knows about but nobody likes to mention?

We're not looking for a balanced, measured or accurate view here. Broad generalisations and sweeping stereotypes are welcome.

The not completely reliable history of Sweden, as high school history goes.

* Long Ago. Ice age, stone age, bronze age. Nobody knows what was going on, but there are probably kings buried under every hill. People ate tree bark. Trolls ate people.

* Vikings. Who, depending on your political bent, were just friendly traders with advanced negotiation techniques or the righteous scourge of the lesser peoples down on The Continent. People sacrificed to Odin and Thor but were basically good democrats. Then we converted to Christianity even though being Pagan was more fun.

* Middle Ages. Nothing much happened, since most people died from the plague. Kings had funny names like "the lisping and limping" or "the weak-brained", and all of them died violent deaths except that one guy who was king four times over. We were definitely not ruled from Denmark! OK, most kings and noblemen and tax collectors were evil Danes and Germans for a while there, but everyone lived out in the woods and ate tree bark and had no idea what was going on in the cities so we were totally autonomous anyway.

* 1500s. King Gustav Vasa started a rebellion all on his own, kicked out the Danes, made us Protestants instead of Papists (who, as far as we know, are still evil, still pray in Latin, and probably still have an inquisition), centralized government, snarked at the peasants (no, really, he ruled the country by snark) and had bad teeth. Had a bunch of sons, at least two of whom were certifiably insane. The ones who were comparatively sane built...

* 1600s. The Empire. Gustavus Adolphus won the 30 years war single-handed, except he died a few years into it because the Germans fought dirty, Queen Christina was a Papist and a lesbian (the latter of which was far more acceptable), and then there were a bunch of kings named Charles who walked on water (literally) and killed embarrassing amounts of Danes, Poles and Russians (in a very fair and democratic way, mind) until the Russians started hitting back for some strange reason. Charles XII was either the greatest war hero ever or an insane psycho (depending on your political bent) and was probably assassinated by his own men.

* 1700s. In the countryside, people ate tree bark. In Stockholm, people wrote songs about booze and held costume balls. We kept picking fights with Russia and were the moral victors every time. Kings were powerless and wished they had absolute power like in France. King Gustav III got absolute power like in France and was assassinated at one of the costume balls. He was gay (or possibly just wannabe French) and supported the arts, which is why we have a state lottery.

* 1800s. Gustav IV picked yet another fight with Russia and somehow managed to lose Finland (which must mean we had a Finland to lose, cool, we probably treated them well) and got fired. We replaced him with one of Napoleon's generals who liberated Norway from the Danes instead. Peace broke out and has raged unchecked since, which makes for boring history. At some point, we became awesome at making things out of steel and wood. Even so, we were very poor and those who were sick of tree bark emigrated to America.

* 1900s. We graciously insisted on giving the Norwegians their independence, and in return they neglected to mention that their entire coast is one big oil well. The bastards. As if by magic, we were suddenly a democracy in which everyone had food and a vote and possibly a Nobel prize.

* World wars I and II. We were neutral and too busy building a welfare society to care what was happening down on The Continent. Sure, we allowed the Germans to use our railways and sold them stuff they needed, but in our defense, we stopped doing that after D-Day. Besides, we totally almost sort of kind of helped the Finns fight that evil dictator with a funny moustache, whatshisface... Stalin.

* 1940s-28 February 1986. Social democratic welfare state. Life was perfect. Everyone was rich. Everyone had a job. Everyone moved to the city and wrote a lot of books about eating tree bark. Ingmar Bergman, IKEA, ABBA and Björn Borg ruled and we were the shining beacon of democracy and civil rights and the envy of everyone except the Americans who kept getting us mixed up with the Swiss (if they thought of us at all).

* 1 March 1986-now. Our prime minister got killed by a wino (or possibly unspecified evil foreigners) and everything fell apart. Suddenly we're all unemployed and poor even though we're richer than we ever were. Conservatives started winning elections by promising to get us back to the social democratic welfare state. We get cheated out of a well-deserved Eurovision win every year. But at least we're better off than the Danes.

Comments

[deird1]

*applauds*

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

*bows*

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

I now know so much more than I did before! :)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Yay! Go Swedes!

[willowy-dawn.livejournal.com]

All that Americans know of Sweden is that after Havana and Moscow and Hanoi and Paris, it's the most EEEEEEVIL bastion of EEEEEEVIL Socialism anywhere in the universe because everyone has sex there all day that the government pays for.

I'm not american, just ask the natives.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

*nods*

'Tis true. We're convinced you guys are the root cause of all evil socialism in the world. And we hates it.

[jnb71976.livejournal.com]

Indeed. We also resent all of you for having a higher life expectancy than us Americans, even though with your evil socialism you should all be poor and dead already. It vexes us.

I don't mind you guys as long as Ikea keeps providing me with those yummy lemon filled cookies I like so much.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I like Swedes.

[lynnenne]

And according to American propaganda, the socialist welfare state has led to the highest suicide rate in the world! Because no one is motivated to work for anything! But they don't realize that it has nothing to do with that at all. I mean, if I lived in a vast, glacier-covered wasteland north of 60 where it was dark for six months of the year, I'd wanna kill myself, too.

Oh, wait...

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

"You're never going to get me to do anything Swedish people do." - Peggy, Mad Men :)

[ubi4soft.livejournal.com]

Funny Sweden (tall blond slender people having a lot of nekkid sexy times)

I grew up loving ABBA and hating Björn Borg ('cause Ilie Nastase, duh), but lately the constant in my life are the Nokia cell-phones.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

...which are Finnish. ;)

I'm of the generation who knew Björn Borg more as a pathetic coked-up millionaire playboy than a tennis player, so no argument there.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Americans also remember Sweden for the Stockholm Syndrome.

Here's a troll, but I can't remember if it's by a Swedish artist or a Norwegian one.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Americans also remember Sweden for the Stockholm Syndrome.

Unless they watched Die Hard where it's the Helsinki Syndrome. :)

That's a Norwegian troll. Here's a Swedish one, which obviously looks much smarter:

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

More education! Yay! But what about Volvos?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Volvo was sold to the Chinese a few months ago. We're all still in denial. :(

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I hope you haven't had to go back to eating tree bark?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Only when we run out of rotten fish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcnfEVqNdoA).

[shapinglight]

I did not know that tree bark was so important in Swedish history.

:feels very enlightened:

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well, the serious answer is that crops tend to fail in cold weather, and you need some kind of flour to survive 4 months of winter. And the one thing we've never run out of is pine trees, so... Later, we built a tissue paper industry specifically to get revenge on the trees.

[gillo]

The tree bark is very intriguing. Does it come flatpack for self-assembly? (Yeah, I know - you did that joke first. But, hey, it's a Swedish joke. There aren't so many of them, so it's OK to share.)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I think the proper Swedish joke here is that we take any excuse to strip anything naked, including the trees. :)

[gingerwall.livejournal.com]

yay! thanks for the enlightenment.

[gingerwall.livejournal.com]

Also, do people in real Sweden tell Sven and Olie jokes? Because older American ethnic Swedes (aka, your friend's grandparents) do and they make no sense.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Heee! :)

"and killed embarrassing amounts of Danes, Poles and Russians (in a very fair and democratic way, mind) until the Russians started hitting back for some strange reason"
We have a popular movie about defending Riga from you guys in a happy, fun-loving way. I think we generally liked you, though. I hear you introduced us to the joys of literacy.

[beer_good_foamy]

What's the movie called? Would be fun to see!

Fun fact, one of the first Swedish universities was actually built in Tallinn. We like to think we treated our Finnish and Baltic colonies pretty well. Of course, we would think that... And we did rather shamefully back down to the Soviet Union when they demanded that we return Baltic refugees after the war. So.