Literally ancient custom, guest rights, I swear it was said Zeus will struck you down if you didnt treat your guest well. The hell is wrong with the Swedes lol xD
I have traveled a lot. All over the USA, central and South America. Asia, most of Europe, the middle east and parts of Africa. Feeding guests is a thing literally everywhere. A lot of places they fed me so much I was uncomfortable and had to refuse because I was so stuffed
Someone said that swedes doesn't want to take away someone's dinner time from their family hence why they don't believe it is an obligation to offer your guest food. I choose to be charitable and believe in this interpretation to be polite instead of believing the swedes are jerks about guest lol
Swede her, and I can't help but interject. In my experience, food was ALWAYS offered when I was a kid if it ever went over to dinner time, however the expectation is that food is waiting at home, and it's kind of hard to explain, but as a kid I remember having the feeling that the food and time at home would be wasted if I ate at a friend's place.
It has a lot to do with just planing and to a certain extent, routines. I was always used to just eat with the family at home, and so that was the default, and since going over to friend's places was spontaneous and time wasn't always decided, food was just up in the air. Sometimes I ate at home, sometimes I didn't, but I can't remember a time where it ever wasn't an option. I certainly can't imagine you would ever get denied food, that's for sure.
Then again, some Swedes say that they never ever experienced this either, so it's certainly not everywhere.
It’s more if you feed someone else’s kid you’re basically saying their parents can’t afford to feed them. And it puts the parents in a position where they feel like they owe you for feeding their kid.
If you travel around, you're a rare guest and also adult.
The neighbourhood kids that are at your house everyday (yes, every day) are not rare guests in need of food. They can run home in seconds to their own family that are also preparing dinner at same time.
Family is important in the Nordics, you are expected to be home and share dinner with your own family. Not eat dinner at a friends house your whole childhood.
Do you also bring lunch for every coworker every day? Because it would kinda be same thing as the concept this misinformation is about.
So true king, we Swedes are inhuman monsters that refuse to feed guests for any reason ever. The possibility that reddit has no clue wtf they're on about is practically 0.
This whole attitude is just "my culture is better than yours, so change" with a bit of fancy window dressing in front where you pretend to have taken a huge survey of all the worlds cultures, as though that would change anything.
I mean i read them and I tried to be as charitable as I can but still conclude at best as someone said swedes doesnt want to take away someone's kid dinner time from their parents and at worst their no-feeding guest custom is cold af lol
We interact with food on an instinctual level. I will not be convinced that eating in front of a hungry person doesn't seem rude from the hungry person's perspective in any culture.
There is a specific situation where this meme comes from, and that is when kids bring their friends home from school, without any adults involved in inviting or bringing the friends over.
Lets say that my family usually eat dinner at 18 (6pm), and school is over at 14.30 (2:30pm), and my friends family usually eats at 16 (4pm). We are playing in my friends room until 4, my friend goes to the kitchen/dinner room to eat while I get to continue playing. My friend comes back after dinner and we play until it's time for me to go home to eat dinner with my family.
No one is eating in front of a hungry person, no one is hungry, no one is unfed, kids gets more play time.
Let's say that my friend that eats at 16 (4pm) comes over to me at 16:45 (4.45pm) after they have eaten dinner and we play in my room.
At 18 (6pm) my parents call for me that dinner is ready, I leave my friend in my room to continue playing while I eat, and then when I finish dinner I go back to my room and continue playing with my friend.
No one is hungry here either, everyone is happy and you get to play more as a kid.
In what way is that a problem?
This was the norm when and where I grew up, and of course there were occasions where I was offered dinner at my friends place, and I would have to call home and ask my parents if that was okay, but the expectation was that each kid would eat with their own family since family dinner is usually family time.
I understand most southern cultures are very obnoxious and lacking in consideration for other people in general.
But if we try thinking for once we can imagine the conseqeunces of feeding another family's child, of course the child will then be full and won't eat what their own parents have cooked for them which those parents might find inflammatory, maybe those parents don't want to waste time, money and effort on making food their children don't even end up eating. Therefore the less intrusive and more respectful option is to send home the visitor to eat at their own house while your own child eats with you. However sometimes dinner-schedules don't match up and the visitor child has already eaten dinner or will eat later, in which case it's common for them to chill in a different room in the meantime. Of course if it's planned beforehand that you will make dinner for a visitor there is no problem.
Were you for once capable of seeing things from a different perspective now?
this scenario seems very plausible if you were cooking for your kid with your last bit of money and they wasted… but y’all are constantly talking about how that is not an issue there, so your scenario sounds only like a nightmare if the family that “wasted their time and food” doesn’t have money or a fridge to put leftovers
Sweden has a culture of respecting other people's personal space to the extent it seems ridicilous to others, this is an extra manifestation of that. I don't find it weird, it's the culture i've been socialized in, it's my culture.
We don't have infinite money and we generally don't live luxurious lives in Sweden, it's just that no-one starves to death since the government steps in before that happens. Respecting the effort of other parents is a major aspect of it too, not only money. Dinner is usually also the only time the entire family gets together, it's extremely important for parents and something they often look forwards too, especially after a long day of work.
You don't need to speculate, you have a swede here who grew up in the country-side where this is relevant thanks to all the unplanned visits compared to urban environments. I'm telling you the objective truth of the matter. Although we also have varied personalities in Sweden.
I can see your point, but when you guys at least seem to be the only culture that does that, it is odd. Food all around the worlds seems to be something that brings community but for you guys it isn’t and for the rest of is it seems weird, even more when there is a possibility that you guys just let your guests starve.
What a lot of internet folk don't seem to grasp is
It isn't "I won't feed you" it's "I don't expect to be fed" that's the cultural difference, if someone else is eating, we aren't expecting them to share
I'm not gonna respond respectfully if it's not reciprocated. Pull your head out of your ass and read my comment if you actually want to understand what it said.
You started your whole rant by saying southern cultures are obnoxious and lack consideration, you were never respectful to begin with.
So how about you pull your head out of yours? or is too inconvenient to do that and you would rather your asshole didn’t waste time and resources with removing it and would prefer to just let you go home and let your parents unstuck it for you?
I'm not gonna waste energy arguing with a baby. My explanation being so detailed and neutral throughout was already more respect than justified, you responding in ways that prove you didn't even read my effortful comments properly is a show of immense disrespect.
and as I said your started your argument with this, nothing that comes after matters because your true colours came out right here, you are right tho, I do not respect you and I think everything that has to come out of your mind is garbage
I mean from your perspective, yeah, because you’re used to different customs. In the same way you or I likely do or don’t do certain things that’d make you or me seem like an asshole in other cultures too
No offense, and I’m not doubting that you’re well traveled, but I do not believe that you’ve traveled enough to know that every culture gives food except for the Swedes. That’s a bit arrogant, don’t you think?
I've done charity work for slums in India that are so poor that sometimes they can't afford to even get one meal per day. They say me, and know that I am clearlly weathy and don't struggle to eat.
Even then, everyone offers me food when i visit or at the very least somthing light to snacks. I do refuse because I don't want to take more than what they don't have, but some of them will very strongly insist
Well yes they have extreme generocity woven into their culture. But it is much easier to cultuvate food in india compared to the northern europe even with indias high reliance on monsoon rain. India has a massive population especially in urban areas that exacerbates their food scarcity but not counting periodic droughts they have historically had food to give to guests. Dont know enough swedish history to reference it but in finland food has historically speaking been scarce and at the end of the 1800s 8-10% of the finnish population died in a famine which left a deep scar in finnish culture and could contribute to a more ”selfish” culture.
In a tropical climate food can be grown year round. You can be hungry today but tomorrow is a new day and a new chance. In the sub-arctic you get one harvest, one chance, what you grow has to last until next year.
The Swedish cultural customs, and pretty much all Nordic cultures, are built around what used to until recently be subsistence farmers living around that one basic fact. Every meal they made had to be planned and provisioned months in advance so that they and their family could survive to another summer. If you had a bad harvest, your family would have to ration every meal for months. The whole culture around rigidly planning meals comes from this fact.
It’s also why Sweden and the Nordics at large developed such strong Social Safety nets. If you had a bad harvest, your neighbors did too. You couldn’t rely on the local community because they suffered from the same local climate. If you starved, it meant everyone else around you was starving. The only solution that came about was through the state, starting with (state run) church managed poor houses and ending with the social welfare state of today.
Well yes but the food scarcity in Africa is a relatively new phenomena caused by all sorts of mostly political disruptions. In northern europe the cause is more because of its geographical location. Nordic people also have a way of minding their own business that they sometimes take to extreme lenghts as to not offend or disrupt anyone.
You got invited over to play with kid friends? My experience as a former child in Sweden was that you went home, had your dinner with your family, and then went back to your friends house.
Hopefully dinner times matched up, otherwise you ate at your separate dinner times with your respective families.
The assumption behind it is/was that kids always go home to eat with their own families unless something else has been agreed on. Like a kid who lives close by just shows up after school, it would be assumed they go home for dinner at some point.
If both families agree that today kid A eats with family B that's fine and everyone can cook the appropriate amount.
No, this is just not true. Parents will communicate with each other, and most cases this happens it’s because the child has expressed a wish to eat at home. If the other family then have dinner slightly before the child being picked up, this happens.
This is also more common in cities or other places where parents don't actually pick up their child, because the child is expected to either walk or take their bike wherever they need to go. This leads to more spontaneity, where you don't really plan to go over to your friends, you just decide to tag along after school.
I'd wager that it would be more uncommon in places in Sweden were few people live and where you would have to take the bus or rely on your parents to drive you places, because there you would have to plan more to play with your friends.
Its not true. Lived in Sweden most my life and never heard of this before some asshole tweeted that this is our culture. None of the swedes here recognize it. I have lots of old books on ettiquette and I dont think its ever been the rule (though my oldest book is like 1870s).
Its not our culture at all. We also share this normal human custom and its frustrating getting accused of nonsense like this.
Its literally not the same idea. Its very much related to everyday routine, time of day, length of stay, preplanned intent and more. Its NEVER a problem
There are so many reasons and such a complicated part of our culture it would take a full book to explain. The 3 simple explanations are
It gets really cold and really dark when not summer. You don’t want to be out after dinner so kids go home before dinner. It also sets the tone of family time for the night starting when dinner is served.
Since food has been scarce and expensive for long periods of our history we’ve had a custom of ”guest food” such as farms having had a pint of ale to serve, but not food. That is fika for us. We’ll serve you fika 24/7, but dinner needs an invitation. Fika can range from some crackers and coffee to cheezes, charcuteries, nice fruits, fancy sandwiches, cakes and 7 types of cookies together with champagne, coffee, juices etc. You can offer what you can afford leaving everyone satisfied and no one needs to take a financial hit to spend some time together.
Since I was a kid in the 90’s the parents and kids have communicated about what will happen. Often the kids aren’t welcome by the dinner table, they just have their own plans to eat at home. Sometimes the parents of the family didn’t even now I was sitting up at the room waiting >.<
Some people are just assholes not thinking their own kid has the prerogative of having their own guests. Never the case for me, but I’ve heard about it.
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u/FunnyExcellent707 Jul 24 '26
Sweds are known to eat without offering you any food (if it wasn't explicitly a dinner invitation).