In Finland it’s very uncommon to annoy someone by insulting their mother. Therefore insulting someone’s mother is not very effective, it’s more like a very weird way of derailing from the subject of the argument and leaves people more confused than angry.

We sure do respect and love our parents, but you probably wont see Finns getting extremely offended when you tell that their mother is stupid, fat or whatever. 

Someone might even ask “Where do you know her from?” 

obligatory-subject-element:

finnishrogue:

Scandinavians/Nordic families not feeding their friends/guests

Uhh… I genuinely don’t know why we’re talking about this but I have to say a few things because you all are acting frustratingly flippant and too ready to jump into conclusions…

I can obviously only speak for my culture in Finland but a lot of the posts were written about Swedish people and I recognized some of the stuff, so here’s how I have been taught regarding this:

• We absolutely do fucking feed guests who stay the night. Whoever said we don’t was either a liar or was staying over with someone who absolutely hated him. So, yeah, let’s get that out of the way first: Maybe take stuff you see online with a grain of salt.
• There’s a difference between formal dinner guests and someone who pops into the house somewhat uninvited. The former group is invited becauseof food, and that’s what we will provide for them. The latter is not expected to stay for very long, and if you start preparing them meals, it’s very much possible that they will be late from wherever they need to be next, or that someone else is preparing them food somewhere else and this is all a waste. Your guest might even think that you’re holding them down unnecessarily, and this is seen as awkward. This general sense of not burdening people in anyway whatsoever is taken very seriously by both parties.
• There’s a strong shared understanding that you do not go empty someone else’s fridge when you don’t know how little food they might have left for the rest of the month to feed their own family. You will leave before they start eating, not because the family kicked you out, but because you don’t want to humiliate them by forcing them to provide something for you and then not eating themselves. If they didn’t formally invite you over in the first place, you will assume they don’t have extra food.
• Of course there are layers to this, but in general: if a Finnish family starts hustling because of your sudden visit and starts preparing a big meal you will eat together with everyone, it’s because they don’t know you very well yet. If they don’t do much of anything and don’t steer away from their own daily routines, it’s because they trust you and are comfortable with you. They expect you to be casual and ask for food if you get hungry, or take some snacks freely from the table, or they trust that whoever is closest to you (e.g. when you’re a spouse/best friend of one of the siblings) will provide food for you separately. In short: if nothing much happens when you enter the house, consider that a GOODsign: they have lowered their guard around you and think you’re one of them.
• Related to the previous point: it’s very likely that the family neversits down to eat meals together anyway. So if someone in the household eats when you come in, you’re not necessarily asked to join, because you’re expected to eat at your own time (together with the person in the family you’re closest to). This kind of eating might not be the healthiest, but it is what it is, and regardless, it’s a sign that you’re more than just a random guest, not a sign of disrespect.
• If this is about a kid visiting his/her friend’s house, there’s again the idea that family dinners are formal and awkward, and the parents don’t necessarily want to bother you or make you feel like there’s any levels of formality present. They will assume their own child will take care of your needs and ask if you’re hungry, and in the meantime, they try to not interrupt whatever you and their child are doing together. There’s a shared understanding in Finnish culture that adults should give children a lot of space and not constantly supervise their every activity or try to organize them family-get-togethers at every hour, because that lessens the time the children can be alone together and get creative with their plays. It also increases the risk that the children will end up leaving the house and going somewhere else to be in more privacy. It’s better to have the kids in the house or somewhere nearby, doing whatever they want uninterrupted, than have them escape you entirely because you’re inviting them to sit-down meals and asking them awkward questions while at it.

TL;DR: Trying to not embarrass or inconvenience others and giving everyone as much space as possible is more important to Finnish people than force-feeding guests at every opportunity. Yet this doesn’t mean we don’t serve you food if you stay for a longer time or if you were specifically invited to eat food together with us. Dinner invitations are usually seen as formal, though, and we would rather drop formalities as soon as we get to know you better. You can view this as strange, but know that our intention is not to be rude or inconsiderate, actually it’s quite the opposite.

This is such a good summary. When I was growing up, it was much more common in my family not to sit down to eat dinner together than it was to gather around the table. And when visiting friends as a kid, there was an understanding that once dinner time rolled around, it was time for me to leave as it was also dinner time at my house - it created a natural time limit to hanging out together and made sure the family would just be among themselves for after dinner evening activities like washing up or going to the sauna and eventually going to bed. The only times I kept hanging out with friends past dinner time was during sleepovers and I definitely didn’t go hungry then, or when we’d get together after meals at our own houses. Overall I remember how I’d play around with friends after breakfast until lunch time, then we’d all go to our own homes to have lunch and maybe agree to meet up again after we were all done eating, and then go home again for dinner and maybe get together again after that if it wasn’t a school night and it wasn’t very late yet. This was hardly an inconvenience because we all lived relatively close to each other (within a three mile radius or so) and the infrastructure is set up so that even as a kid you can safely walk or ride your bike to your friend’s house even if it’s a little further from yours. When visiting a friend who lived considerably further away where drop-off and pick-up by car was required, it was usually set up as a full-day play date by the parents, and in those instances we’d eat with the family whenever they did.

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine unofficially lived with me and my parents for a few years and we always fed her - but again, it wasn’t a custom in my house to sit down to have dinner together, so my friend and I would get our portions of food from the kitchen and then eat together in my bedroom, while my parents ate somewhere else. By that age we also cooked dinner for ourselves and everyone else more often than not.

Even as a grownup I don’t remember many times when I would’ve offered a full meal to my friends or been offered a full meal while visiting. Tea and coffee and assorted snacks and goods are a must, but full lunches and dinners have been rare. A lot of the time we’ll still schedule hang-out times between lunch and dinner so we end up going home to eat. If for any reason a friend is over at my place when it’s time to eat, of course I will offer them food, and vice versa - but it’s also not uncommon for my friends to refuse the offer and say they should be heading home rather than stay for a shared meal. Idk, we just like to eat at home I guess.

All excellent points. I’d like to add that when I was a kid, I was specifically told not to accept food when I stayed playing at my friends’ homes. Part of it was the aforementioned politeness re not wanting to place my friend’s family into a position where they’d have to provide me with food if it was something they might later be short of. But more importantly, it was a question of pride that my family was able to provide for themselves. We had food in our house and we did not act like we couldn’t feed ourselves.

On the flip side, during the 90’s recession when things really did get rough and we actually couldn’t afford food, I was told to maybe time my visits to a few of my friends’ houses at a ‘convenient’ time when they were soon going to have dinner, I was never sent away hungry. (These were families where the grownups had jobs and the income was steady.)