I'm Glad I Left the North

3 Unwritten Rules of Scandinavia ...
Meg DuPer | 26 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGZrLPD1Rnk

One more reason why I'm not likely to return to Scandinavia and not all too happy with having too many Scandinavians close by even in Paris.

I'm Swedish and part Norwegian (1/4, basically). But I was raised in Germany and Austria and more specifically big cities.

It's not the American culture. It's not halfway to it. But it's perhaps a third or quarter to it.

On top of that, I became a Christian believer in the US. Lots of media I consume have US or other Anglo-Saxon origin. If you know Kent Hovind (whose surname and origins are Norwegian) you will hardly find him a very Scandinavian personality. A cultural comparison in Sweden would be Billy Butt ... who's an immigrant.

Now, what would a Scandinavian observer do as sabotage in Paris?

A) As I have a minoritarian religion, today, Roman Catholic NOT in Communion with Prevost AND holding to traditional doctrines like Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism, I need to be performative for it. As I have the goal of getting someone to start a publishing house, seeing even small Catholic oppositional ones are letting me down, I need to catch attention for that.

As a result, the Scandinavian observer, who values not taking up social space, is not my best friend.

B) As I maintain my writing without an income, pending the change I seek, I sit in the street with a cardboard to my blog URL, offering online reading and accepting money.

A Scandinavian will typically see this as being high maintenance, again, not my best friend.

C) This may strike some as a Scandinavian weakness in me, but I have a need of not being surrounded by too multiple social "deep" interactions, among which inquiries about how I am.

A human weakness is being more irritable after sleep privation.

A typically Scandinavian will note some irritability.

Thanks for showing again why Scandinavia is not the place for me!

On top of that, so C 2, loads of Scandinavians have internalised that "Science" is about reason, but "Religion" about emotions, and from that prejudice will take me as excessively emotional even when I'm simply stating the dogma of my Church or some basic apologetics argument for it.

Sweden is among top 5 countries with most Atheists.