Oh, I want to quote so many of the posts here. I'll do my best to restrain myself.
nikki191 said:
ReincarnatedFTP said:
What's the with Swedish/Norwegian thing? Is that like the Canada/America riffing? Because I have a couple of relatives that live in Oslo, and they constantly refer to Swedes as "those crazy Swedes".
same with the finns/swedes.. the finns i know say the same sort of thing, except much more vocally and not as polite
You're right. We are completely obsessed of beating the Swedes in everything but we do that. And we are not even remotely polite when it comes to this rivalry. In our jokes the Swedish people are a self-evident laughing stock and are almost always described as simple minded underdogs of the story. The biggest grudge we hold is for them wiping the floor with us in ice hockey every single goddamn time. I'm not a big fan of hockey myself but for some Finns losing to Swedes in it seems to be a national disgrace.
Anyway, we don't really hate them, it just looks like we do.
Sweden and Finland share a sort of a brotherly bond - with Finland being the stubborn, competitive little brother.
However we don't have any squabble with Danes or Norwegians. We consider both as sort of pleasant and altogether fine neighbours who we've known forever but never quite gotten familiar with.
Aardvark Soup said:
We do however put mayonaise on our fries, which the rest of the world apperantly sees as weird.
Finally! Someone (or apparently a whole nation of people) who share my odd culinary preferences! I hate ketchup, but mayonaise is great with fries. Hamburger dressing goes well with them too.
To the original question:
I don't exactly know what misconceptions there are about Finns, but by all means confront me if there are some! I'll list some which I think are quite popular abroad.
I guess one is that we drink a lot.
It's not a misconception. We come up with so many excuses for getting drunk it's downright depressing. And by drunk I don't mean giggly inebriation, I mean hammered oneself under the table - can't even get into a bar - crawling on all fours - passing out halfway puking kinda drunk. Somehow we have taken drinking to a level where we are sort of morosely proud of it. We even have a more or less popular saying:
You don't need to have fun without drinking, you need to drink without having fun.
We don't have polar bears any more than Norway has and neither do we have penquins. The latter one being a slight surprise when asked about the first time. At summer it's mainly warm sometimes even pretty hot and at winter it tends to get pretty fuck-ass cold. Not as freezing as I remember from my childhood, but still quite cold.
We also don't have igloos. Each winter a huge snowcastle is built in Kemi as a tourist attraction though. I recall it even serves as a hotel and other stuff like that.
Finnish people are often thought to be somewhat shy and reserved.
Also true - in a way. Generally we warm up slow but when you get to know us we can be pretty fiery. We can't argue though. We have an extensive culture of moping, sulking and looking sinister and utterly vexed, but we have little knowledge of actually solving the problems. Except perhaps by swinging our fists.
And then there's the legend that we greatly enjoy the habit of locking up naked in a scorching hot room and spanking each other with small branches of birch.
It is quite liberating actually. It has a deep cleansing feel to it. You should try some time.
