#jante

just boys bein boys-- in luv 😌💜💜

I don’t know which country you had in mind when you say you are taking a trip to Scandinavia to re-connect with your family roots. That’s a very huge area with several distinct countries with their own cultural quirks and traditions. So my answer is a but scatter shot and off the top of my head.

Language might be an issue. Whereas the Scandinavian languages - Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian - are mutually intelligible, Finnish and Icelandic are different. Finnish is in a completely separate family of languages (the Finno-Ugric, to be exact). Icelandic is similar to Scandinavian languages but branched off from Old Norse long ago that I as a Norwegian cannot understand it. In your case don’t assume everyone speaks perfect English. Learn a few words and fail miserably. Trust me on this. People will immediately find you sympathetic and will be generally helpful and nice to you....in English. It’s the arrogance of presumption that rubs Scandinavians the wrong way.

Then there’s geography. Iceland is tiny. Norway has a lot of fjords and mountains. Denmark is flat. Sweden was neutral during the war (you know the one), and we're still a little suspicious of those guys - I know that’s not a geographical fact but being half-Norwegian I just want to rub their noses in it at the first chance I get. Ski jumping is not a popular sport in Denmark. See "flat". Nor in Iceland. Who knows why? Finns tend to go full on naked sauna whereas Danes don’t. Norway beats everyone else at winter sports - especially the Swedes. Denmark maybe very flat and therefore no large mountains to ski, but you will find LEGO’s though, and beer, lots of beer. They’re not good at winter sports like Norway is. Seriously the Danes drink a lot of beer. We Norwegians tend to drink akvavit, which is basically spiced vodka. Finns drink in shots of three i.e. vodka. 

Then there’s money. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are EU members. Norway and Iceland are not. So carry the right currency accordingly.

All five countries have similar standards of living, although I should you warn you that Norway is expensive by other European standards. All these countries have roughly similar political, health-care, and education systems.  If you talk to people on the streets you would be hard pressed to find significant differences in worldviews or political outlook from one country to the next.

Oh yes, nearly forgot. Remember Jante. Scandinavians - and this varies country to country but it’s very strong in Norway - tend to respect the laws of "Jante”. It’s a cultural tradition that’s now part of the DNA. The precise origin I don’t have time here to write about here. Basically it means that boasting is frowned upon, you should be very modest and not stick out. So being a brash and brazen in speech and manner - as Americans are generally perceived throughout Europe - is something that will elicit a roll of the eyes or an uncomforable wince.

Norway is a leading global provider of earnest sanctimoniousness. Also, everyone knows Norway is the best of the Nordic countries.

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In this house we love and appreciate good new ships! Jax n Dante are in the perfect bromance. :^) And by bromance I 100% mean fully romantic boyfriend dating with kisses and everything they just happen to call each other bro a lot.

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Neither Dante nor I had gone home last night. We’d just found out my dad was actually his dad too. For all these years, the two of them had been fucking around behind our backs. Behind my momma’s back. It nauseated me. It infuriated me. So we’d gotten drunk off our asses last night and didn’t go back home. 

Now here we are at school, just getting through early morning hoops practice, something that would have been so much better had we not had hangovers from Hades, and now having to get to first period. Coming out of the locker room, I look over at my brother. Fuck, he looked as bad as I did. I looked back ahead of us toward our lockers.