How did I do?
- You did very well. I'm impressed by your Swedish skills:)
“I was reading your argument “stupidity is unscandinavian” as stating that there is no scandinavian stupidity. You appear to view my argument as “there is only stupidity in scandinavia.” I would never suggest that.”
- There's lots of stupidity in all countries, but Scandinavia is undeniably a part of the world that stands out in areas like
Quality of education
R&D expenditure per capita
Science
Innovation
Engineering competence
Business competence
IQ test performance
On the other hand, I'm aware that Scandinavian immigrants to the US used to have a reputation of being somewhat stupid, naive and easily taken in.
Actually, the Germans sometime speak of “Die dummen Schweden”; the stupid Swedes. The story behind this is that during the 17th century, Swedish soldiers acquired a reputation of easily falling prey to all sorts of fraud and trickery. However, today the expression is used mostly in connection with societal and political issues. For instance, you sometimes hear Germans saying things like “in Sweden, income is taxed so heavily that no one wants to work - how typical for Die Dummen Schweden!”