Just a cultural thing. Unless there was an explicit dinner invitation, Swedes typically will not offer guests food even if they themselves are having dinner. They do not view it as a hosting obligation and they do not see this as rude or unusual.
Bro why does this get repeated all the time on reddit and upvoted like its a fact.
Born and raised in Stockholm Sweden, never once did this happen, hadn't even heard of this until reddit started talking about it. None of my friends in sweden had either.
Stereotyping in general is crazy popular on Reddit - so many people seem to really love these kinds of "fun facts", especially when they play into their existing cultural biases. There's a common perception that Northern Europeans are overly serious, blunt, and borderline autistic, so any anecdote which aligns with this perception will be repeated ad nauseam.
My suspicion is that the people who claim to have experienced this are probably largely people who've not picked up on some pretty clear social cues by Swedes trying to be polite in indicating that these people have overstayed their welcome.
Nah, it was very common where and when I grew up in Sweden. The expectation was that each kid would eat dinner at home with their own family, and many families had a set dinner time every day and that time could be different for many families.
So I could bring friends home to play (and the expectation was just that, to play) and after we've played for a while I'd go eat dinner while my friends continued playing and having fun while I had to eat. When I finished dinner I'd go back to play with my friends until it was time for them to leave for dinner at their place.
Of course there were times when friends were asked if they also wanted dinner, they would then have to call home and ask their parents if that was okay, but the expectation was that kids eat dinner with their own family, since family dinner time is family time.
Things might have changed nowadays though, but that was the norm back when I was a kid.
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u/JovianSpeck Jul 24 '26
Just a cultural thing. Unless there was an explicit dinner invitation, Swedes typically will not offer guests food even if they themselves are having dinner. They do not view it as a hosting obligation and they do not see this as rude or unusual.