[Arnt]

I cannot resist… I have to tell… when they did it, they had non-stop media coverage, as much as could possibly be done.

An hour or two after traffic switched, TV broadcast from Svinesund, the biggest of the road crossings to Norway, and a major route for road haulage, and a reporter said something like "here we have the driver of a Norwegian 18-wheeler, <name>. Well, <name>, what do think of the big reform?" Norwegian, looking a little dense and speaking slowly: "Uh, what reform?" There was big signage everywhere. The reporter tried dropping a hint, the Norwegian truck driver refused to have noticed any change in the driving rules. Camera showed the very big 18-wheeler. The reporter dropped increasingly clearer hints and looked discomfited, the Norwegian still said "no, what reform, is anything new?" and eventually they cut the interview and switched back to the studio.

[hnarn]

This almost sounds like a sketch since Sweden has “Norway jokes” where the punchline is consistently how dumb Norwegians are — a structure that I’m sure is mirrored in Norway and similarly in other countries (england/scotland, france/belgium maybe?)

[lb1lf]

Oh yes.

In Norway we have the exact same jokes about the Swedes.

One quip which did the rounds in the papers prior to the Swedes starting to drive on the right was that they would perform the switch in several phases - first heavy traffic, then cars a month later...

[stareatgoats]

> In Norway we have the exact same jokes about the Swedes

This is a fairly recent development. When I moved to Sweden in the 1970s, it was so bad I learned Swedish at accelerated rate in order to avoid the kneejerk compulsion of many (if not most) Swedes to tell their favorite jokes about how dumb Norwegians seemed to be. No doubt a consequence of century-old rivalry and the fact that Sweden during the early part of the last century was the larger, richer, most industrialized and organized society in comparison. And they believed much of it to be actually true, in the way that derogatory humor always evokes some degree of "no smoke without fire." To this day, I meet swedes who are surprised at hearing that bananas are not actually called "gulebøj" in Norway (bended yellow) - a reference to how Norwegian is not as anglicized as Swedish, as there has been a pushback against this trend in Norway historically. As Norway has become progressively richer these jokes in Sweden about Norwgians have more or less disappeared however.

The notion that Norwegians nowadays have the same jokes about Swedes is something I hear repeated, but it saddens me nonetheless because it doesn't rhyme with the spirit I remember from my childhood. If true, then it means that a fair number of my present (Swedish) countrymen are being denigrated, perhaps because Norway can now pride themselves on being the richest (real) country in the world per capita, so rich that a lot of swedes migrate here to take the worst paid jobs in restaurants and in hospitals. They are popular as employees because they understand the language and are hard working. And probably because they can take denigrating jokes, maybe because well, they used to do it too. But it's not all that funny, really.

[BurningFrog]

As I remember the 1970s joke wars, they were driven by tabloid newspapers on both sides, and all in good fun between friendly nations.

I learned later that many of the jokes were translated American "Polish jokes".

[stareatgoats]

> all in good fun

Well, not everybody's idea of good fun I guess, friendly nations or not.

But what do I know, I only visit Norway once in a blue moon nowadays. I have actually yet to hear a good "swede joke" at all actually; maybe they are just a myth?

[bewaretheirs]

> I have actually yet to hear a good "swede joke" at all actually; maybe they are just a myth?

Perhaps most of the good Swede jokes moved to Minnesota?

(seriously, a bunch of the intra-scandinavian humor seems to be of Scandahoovian-American origin. Like the "10,000 Swedes chased through the weeds / by one Norwegian" thing.)

[BurningFrog]

I think it ended in the 80s at the latest.

No joke can run forever.

[fl7305]

> As Norway has become progressively richer these jokes in Sweden about Norwgians have more or less disappeared however.

Yeah, the prevailing notion in Sweden is now that Norway is so much better off that we swedes should declare war on Norway.

After which we promptly surrender, and all our problems become Norway's problems instead.

[rags2riches]

Similar jokes were made when the outlook for a Swedish NATO ascension was bad. The much more cool-headed and diplomatically grounded Finns were set to join NATO without trouble. So the solution was obvious: Sweden should join Finland instead of NATO.

Relevant context is that Norway was the junior partner of a personal union with Sweden for most of the nineteenth century and until 1905. Also Sweden and Finland was one and the same realm for six centuries or so until 1809.

[mistrial9]

also some other Scandinavians captured and sold Finns as slaves until about 1100.. some things are hard to forget once known widely

[jackothy]

As a Norwegian I have bonded with Swedes on several occasions over having the same jokes about each other. Not that the jokes are always geniously funny or anything, but that would be both an unrealistic expectation and completely unnecessary. Some unserious rivalry is fantastic to have among friends.

[vidarh]

I'm Norwegian, born in '75 and we visited Sweden on holiday regularly, and exactly the same jokes were common when I was a child, with the nationalities swapped.

[triyambakam]

Saddens me that I'll likely never speak Swedish as well as you speak English. Jag bor inte i Sverige ochså.

[mistrial9]

the only Norge jokes I heard (in California) were about the cowardice of Swedes in battle.. nothing about being dumb.. that was well before the year 2000, admit

[ben_w]

I have no idea if the Scots think or joke that the English are stupid, but can say that the English have a joke pattern of "An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman…" and it's always and only the Irish who are picked on.

[arrowsmith]

In Spain they tell "Basque jokes".

The Basque person in the joke is always called Patxi, a stereotypical Basque name (kind of like calling an Irish person "Paddy").

[vidarh]

It is/was the same pattern in Norway and Sweden, and to some extent Denmark, with those three. I suspect a whole lot of these were recycled by publishers of cheap joke books and magazines.

[Arnt]

Supposed to be real. And it's not typical of the Norwegian/Swede genre — in that the direction is clear, while here it might be either a dumb Norwegian driver or a Swedish journalist having his leg pulled.

[m463]

"Bork, bork, bork!"¹

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Chef