Is Wonderful Scandinavia a hoax?

I have spent some time lately commenting on left-wing tendencies in Denmark – identity politics and social justice activism. Some might find the coverage unbalanced. Well, a bomb – or at least a bomb threat – last week was a sort of wake-up alarm to let us know that the right-wing stalwarts are not biding their time waiting for the Muslims to pack up and head back to warmer climes. The bomb threat was aimed at an advertising agency that made a video for SAS’s website. The video asked what is actually Scandinavian, that is, what cultural brand symbols from the Nordic countries actually originated here.

“Danish” pastries? No, they’re from Austria. Rye bread? Turkey. Democracy? Greece. Open-faced sandwiches? The Netherlands. Bicycles with large carts for children? Germany. Even maternity leave? Switzerland. On and on, mercilessly. What is Scandinavian? Absolutely nothing. There’s no such thing as Scandinavian culture. Scandinavians have depended totally on inventions from the rest of the world. Everything is imitated, borrowed, imported, plagiarized.

Not even meatballs?
Why would SAS want to be so blunt and cruel, deflating the pride its customers take in their ethnic heritage? No, wait, they meant it as a compliment. Scandinavians, since the legendary seafaring and plundering Vikings, have brought back the best things from the outside world and put their own unique stamp on them. If you remember that the northern extremity was one of the last regions in Eurasia to be populated, then it doesn’t seem unlikely that some useful artifacts would have been devised earlier in the evolution of our species. The punchline is “We are travelers.” And collectors. That’s how we developed such a wonderful array of customs and concoctions. And the easiest way to continue this cosmopolitan scavenger hunt is to fly SAS.

Not everyone saw it that way, though. Negative comments poured onto the FB page. “With its disgusting advertisement, SAS demeans everything genuinely Norwegian, genuinely Swedish and genuinely Danish,” wrote Søren Espersen (DK) from the Danish People’s Party. “At the same time, SAS spits on every proper and fair Scandinavian.” Even the notorious far-right website 4chan got into the act (DK). Its users set up many threads, each with hundreds of comments, linked to the video, in what appears to be a coordinated attack. The video is part of a Jewish plot to undermine the white race, they wrote. According to journalist Kevin Shakir, the video’s references to all those other countries, shots of people with various skin colors, allusions to customs and cultures blending together across borders – it all looked to 4chan like an attack on white nationhood. They went so far as to dox employees of the advertising agency.

What’s wrong with learning from others?
We didn’t mean to offend anyone, said an SAS spokesperson. We wanted to say only that travel “lies deep in our Scandinavian DNA” and is enriching for us as both individuals and a society. Although the company maintained that it stood behind the campaign one hundred percent, it removed the video, which had already been seen by over half a million users. Later it posted a shorter version, omitting the “absolutely nothing” riposte. Not because it regretted the first, though, simply as part of its normal practice of making several versions of an advertisement. The original had of course been reposted on YouTube and shared all around the world it depicted.

The bomb threat came by email. Police evacuated the building (DK) in central Copenhagen and searched it. A hostel above the fitness center where the ad agency employees were relocated was also evacuated, sending some of its guests to stand on the sidewalk in their pajamas and freeze. No bomb was found.

“Away is nice, but home is best”
That’s a Danish saying. SAS’s critics would certainly endorse at least the second part. I’m still a little mystified about their real rationale or argument, though. Do they think the claims in the video are false and these phenomena really did originate in Scandinavia? Do they want to be able to pretend in peace that they did? Do they feel that Scandinavia improved these things so much that it deserves the title to them? Are they worried that contextualizing features of the region’s image will hurt tourism? Or are they just ethnic purists who fear that enthusiastic tourism will melt humanity into a single intermingling beige race?

I wonder whether there weren’t any woke trolls chiming in about all this cultural appropriation or at least the carbon emissions from this contemporary treasure hunt. From the video, it looks so easy to hop on a plane and feast on the world’s bazaar that you forget that the price of all our imports, souvenirs and cross-cultural experiences includes calamitous weather, mainly in the poorer lower latitudes from which SAS can safely return us.