Modern-Day Vikings Quotes

“In Sweden, everyone is assumed to have similar resources, so it seems inappropriate to pay for someone else.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Duktig is a word that carries strong emotional overtones: children who behave well are duktig; adults who are talented and independent are duktig. Someone who locks himself out of his own apartment or has to ask others for help in general is not duktig.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“As Americans maintain their privacy by protecting their space (e.g., big cars, privacy fences, gated communities), Swedes maintain their privacy by remaining quiet. Swedes are generally slow to divulge personal information, particularly when it comes to sharing problems.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Rather than the opportunity to succeed, the chance to be self-sufficient is what is important. One might say the American wants the freedom to do, while the Swede wants the freedom to be. Insistence”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Swedes are raised with the idea that people derive a strong sense of security from being part of a group, which in turn allows them to develop into strong and independent individuals.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Some 50 percent of Swedes retreat to summer homes, rented or owned, in the country each year.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Unlike the American Stars and Stripes or the British Union Jack, it has no particularly exciting or symbolic history.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“(Systemets were open on Saturdays until 1982, when a four-month trial of dry Saturdays found the number of house break-ins fell by 7 percent and assaults by 8 percent.)”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Nearly 90 percent of the price of a bottle of Swedish brännvin is tax (the more liberal EU import limits could drastically cut the state’s income). Sweden tries to justify its policies by advertising the health benefits of teetotaling in its stores. Based”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“As in other cultures, alcohol acts as a social lubricant for Swedes. One of the social and psychological functions of drinking in Swedish culture, writes ethnologist Åke Daun, is “to lessen the individual’s fear of making a fool of him- or herself—for example, the anxiety people feel about saying the wrong thing” (1996, 51). Alcohol helps some Swedes relax, assume a different “identity,” and feel less inhibited. As in Japan, another culture where rigid social conformity exists, something done while intoxicated “doesn’t count.” Unfortunately, this has led to an unflattering image abroad; some Swedes on vacation in countries far from home overindulge and have been known to make fools of themselves. The”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“To Swedes, however, socialism refers to caring for society as a whole and extending social welfare to all. Compared with the United States, where the individual’s rights tend to come first, Sweden places more emphasis on the benefit to the group than on the benefit to the individual.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Although Sweden’s labor party, the Social Democrats, has been in power for most of the past seventy years, state ownership of business has ranked lower than in many industrialized countries; in 1997 the state owned less than 10 percent of businesses compared with over 30 percent in France (Rekdal 1997). In”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“A 1970 report found that problems on the job and in one’s finances entered into the picture in at least one-half of the Swedish suicides investigated. A more recent study by the Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University (1996) found that about 10 percent of all suicides are related to unemployment.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Also, Swedes are often reluctant to express strong emotions, including anger or disapproval, a theme that emerges in many areas of Swedish culture. An American psychologist once noted that among his Swedish suicide cases it was “particularly difficult for them…to give open expression of anger, or a frank criticism of anyone in their immediate surroundings” (Austin 1968, 33). A”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Suicide has been included in Swedish population statistics (starting in church records) since the 1600s, and this may contribute to the country’s prominent reputation concerning självmord—literally, “self-murder.” Even”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“It is not shocking to see an ad or photograph of a nude man or woman in the daily or weekly press. To most Swedes nudity outside of a sexual context just isn’t a big deal. This”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“At 1.5 children per Swedish female (The Swedish Institute 1997), the rate is so low that deaths in Sweden outpaced births in 1997; immigration, however, compensated for the population shortfall. Sweden”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Socialism is not the same as social democracy, the political system that created Sweden’s welfare state.”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Sweden’s position of neutrality during World War II put the country in the position of not defending its neighbors against German invasion. This was not forgotten in Norway and Denmark and caused animosity in the past, but the nations have put the past behind them. Some”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes

“Slavery was abolished in 1355 because of church teachings stating that all men are equal in the eyes of God.§”
― Christina Johansson Robinowitz, Modern-Day Vikings: A Pracical Guide to Interacting with the Swedes