Top 5 Italian Myths About Sweden

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Since I’m about to get ready to move to Stockholm for a while, so I started telling all my friends and relatives about it.

I happen to hear almost very similar reactions in the beginning, and since they are all very wierd, I decided to put them together and write them for you.

There should be some drums noise here since we’re getting close to the TOP 5 of the “Italian myths about Sweden”.

5)Sweden is an expensive place to live, compared to Italy.

Swedish Money

Wrong, probably someone became really confused after mixing Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden in a sort of Scandinavian orgy.

I have realized that there are indeed “expensive” places in Scandinavia, but Sweden is not one of them, even comparing to big cities like Stockholm.

Especially in the last ten years due to the “Euro” crisis Rome became one of the most expensive cities of Italy and probably Europe.

Unfortunatly Italians have never been keen on realizing how important is envorinmental care. We never adopted construction systems (like wood) and energy (renewable) like in Sweden.

You can also check this survey of the top 10 most expensive cities of Europe.

As you can see two of them are Italian, Rome and Milan (and Milan is more expensive than London!). Also there isin’t any Swedish city on the list!

Keep in mind that most Italians I’ve talked to don’t even know that Sweden did not adopt the Euro and still has it’s own currency (lucky them!).

4) In Sweden everything works perfectly.

I don’t know exactly how things are for the Swedish burocracy, but one thing is certain…

In ANY of the world countries the government and burocracy works in a better way than in Italy!

You are lost in Italy and you need information? Almost like being lost in the middle of a desert!

Did you know for example that Italy has the highest number of police-type forces in Europe? Basically when you call the police you never know who is going to come, hopefully somebody!

No wonder that the Italians that went to Sweden told us that everything there works like clockwork!

3) It is cold (and people are cold).

Sweden coldWith a summer average of 20°C I guess that’s kinda scary, especially because Rome is very hot in the summer and we never see snow in the winter.

But there’s one thing that Italians (exept the northern Italians) don’t realize is that we are so spoiled with the weather that if there is a single rainy day we go crazy and we stop going out… not to mention the winters especially the last one where we had snow in Rome (the coliseum under the snow, pretty cool isn’t it?).

And aren’t Swedes more used to live a somehow “normal” life even in those extreme conditions…

Again it is true that is cold, but what about the people then?

I dunno! I cannot confirm it yet!

But what I can confirm is that Italians have the strange idea of relating human stereotipes with the outside temperature.

I’ve lived in Florida for almost a year and I swear that I did meet sometimes cold people even in tropical weather, no excuses then!

2) There is a huge number of people killing themselves in sweden because of the lack of sun: also known as “the suicide myth”.

suicide
image via wikipedia

Sweden has indeed a highly average number of suicide rates, which were in 2008 12.7 per 100.000 ppl.

But even though is almost double the number of the suicides in Italy (around 6 per 100.000) is still lower than the ones in France which are around 16 per 100.000 and France gets plenty of sunny days more than Sweden.

Check the statistics, you will find out that the rates will always be pretty different regardless of weather and sun exposure of the country.

And the number one of the italian myths about Sweden is…

1) Swedish girls are hot and easy to get!

Also known as “You want to go to Sweden ONLY for the girls!”Swedish Girls

Believe it or not this is the most common reaction (almost 80%) I get when I say I want to go to Sweden!

I wasen’t surprise to hear this all the time from my male friends… but I was surprised indeed when I heard it even from my female friends!

Quite impressive isn’t it?

Do Italians really need to be in Sweden to see a nice lady?

In Italy we do have nice ladies (that love Scandinavian men…) and since Italy is a big mix of the whole population of Europe even if most girls are mediterranean-like there are a some which are naturally blonde girls that look like Scandinavians.

And what about the “easy girl” myth then?

I think that the “easy girls” myth appeared a long time ago, when the female emanicipation in society in Sweden took place way before the one in Italy.

What is likely to have happened is that the Italians who came here in the past years misinterpreted the much more freedom and independence of Scandinavian women with them being “easy”.

I also personally realized, after living, as I wrote, for a year in the U.S., that Italians girls are quite the opposite and they have a big problem: even today Italian girls have problems to speak with somebody they like if he wasn’t introduced through friends or work.

And I was not surprised to realize that most of the Italians couples I know met in their working environment!

This only because, culturally speaking, Italians girls are still not “Scandinavian enough” to just talk with somebody if the like him or find him interesting. 🙂

Well, Sweden is getting closer and I’ll be very happy to bust more myths about Sweden soon, har stor jag swedish freaks!

6 thoughts on “Top 5 Italian Myths About Sweden”

  1. Very interesting! I think the myths are quite similar, except I’ve never heard that Swedish girls are easy! They are beautiful for sure, but there are more men in Northern Sweden than women, so I think the men usually treat the women they get very well! The people in Sweden in general are just gorgeous. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Hej! Great post!
    Haha, funny how myths can contradict each other! Swedes are “cold” but Swedish women are “hot”! 🙂
    My feeling is that Swedish women and girls are used to be treated like people, just like men are, and you’ll do great if you just treat them that way.
    Anyway, I hope you meet lots of great Swedes of all temperatures!

    Reply
  3. Hi

    The Suicide myth ’bout Sweden is actually a political statement which was coined during the cold war as a warning example of socialism……

    Sweden suiciderate (2004) was 18,7/100 000, 17th place in the world, of the countrys with statistics on the issue.

    One posible explanation of this high number is that the swedish bureaucracy really examines all kinds of “accidents”…… In some countrys deliberate carcrasches, drownings, and so on, is considered just accidents. In sweden they are noted as suicide if the circumstances points to it.

    In other countrys suicide might be a sin or embarresing so the families try to hide the fact.

    D

    Reply
    • Interesting point Daniel! I never thought about it like that. Though it seems to be very hush-hush when people commit suicide there, and in Skelleftea I heard so many stories of people who knew people who committed suicide. We even suspect a girl in our Kickboxing class did, as she just died and it wasn’t discussed what happened to her. But that was just what I observed.

      Reply
  4. Well…… it’s nothing people like to talk about.

    But in smaller communities it’s harder to keep secrets!

    And the government knows all 🙂

    By the way, another posible”reason” for the high swedish numbers is the lack of religious beliefs among the majority of people. It’s not seen as a sin rather as a posibility, kind of.

    Reply

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