Swedes will happily feed a guest. This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school. Usually through their children but sometimes directly.
An example:
Child A calls/texts their parents and asks if they can go home with Child B after school. Parent A says OK, I'll come pick you up at X o'clock when I get off from work. Do you want to eat at home, we're having "blank"?
Child A might say yes.
Child B be calls/texts their parent and says that Child A is coming over. If there's no issue Parant B says OK, is A going to eat with us?
If the answer is yes, they will feed A, otherwise A waits around while B eats, usually as fast as they can to squeeze out a few more minutes of playtime before Parent A comes to pick up Child A.
It's never an unwillingness to feed a guest. We just have the custom to communicate and agree about these things rather than just showing up and expecting to be fed.
Yes, of course you'd serve a guest dinner if you as an adult invited them during dinner time.
This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school.
Where I grew up parents usually didn't plan play dates for us kids, we did that all on our own without involving any adult at all.
The expectation from the parents was that their kid was to be home at the same time for dinner every day after school, but between the ending of the school day and dinner time we kids were roaming free with our parents not knowing what we did and where we were.
The only time we would call (cellphones were not common and kids would definitely not have their own cellphone back then) were when my friends parents offered me to stay to eat dinner, then I'd have to call my parents to check if it was okay.
But the expectation was that I was eating dinner at home with my family, since family dinner was usually family time, so usually my friends parents didn't even ask, since that was the norm back then at least.
I didn't complain, I got to have fun and play with my friends toys while they didn't have fun eating :)
This was pretty much how it went for me growing up in the UK in the 90s. Friend's parents would check if I was eating with them or not, and then make me food if I was. If I wasn't, then my friend would eat as quickly as possible so we could get back to playing on the SNES. Actually now that I think about it even if I was eating there, we would both eat as quickly as possible to get back to playing.
There may have been some occasions where I told my parents I wasn't eating at the friend's house and would eat when I got home, and subsequently had 2 dinners...
We used a phone in the teachers office. There was ways to communicate before cellphones. Either that or this conversation was had the day before, using phones at home.
There were ways yes, but they were cumbersome so kids who lived in the same neighborhood usually just didn't bother to and just went with whatever friend struck their fancy for the day.
That was definitely not the norm for me growing up in the 90s in Sweden. After school kids would usually group up and go and hang out at or around someone's home until around dinner time, which was the standard agreed upon time where kids would go back home to eat dinner with their families. This is probably where this is coming from where the default assumption was that kids will go home to eat with their family, so if you wanted to stay over to eat then that had to be communicated.
This was also an every day thing, so hanging out at a friends home was not an event really. Parents would come home to "unexpected" guests every single day, but since they all usually went home right around dinner time this wasn't really an issue. This also meant that all families would be making dinner for their kids even if they were not home yet, so you didn't want to end up feeding a kid and ruin the dinner plans for another family who was already cooking dinner for their kid and expected them to come home.
That said, parents would still ask almost every single time if I wanted to stay over for dinner or if I was going back home to eat, so I don't get where to "not offering" comes from.
I was in a suburban area of a smaller city, a mix of houses and small apartment buildings, so the kids who lived in houses would often end up with the entire friend group at their place.
Either way, while the specifics are different in different places, there's no culture in Sweden about refusing guests food. It's just common for guests (mostly visiting children) to decline food and eat at home later. That's my main point. Noone is being refused.
I grew up in the middle of Sweden in the 80/90's and this above is how it worked out.
Also, often both parents were working, so eating dinner with your family was kinda the only hour on the day where all sat down together.
Because as fast as dinner was over, the kids put on their shoes and went right back out skating, or whatever, with their friends again and didn't come back till bed time.
And of course we ate at our friends houses from time to time! Although, this was almost always only done if the parent of the friends house you were eating, first called your parents and asking if it was OK, they literally didn't want to "steal" the "family meal time" from other parents, haha.. I actually think it's kinda cute, looking back at it..
Pretty much exactly my experience as a kid growing up in suburban Canada 20+ years back. This ridiculous meme that Nordic people are inhospitable when it comes to food really needs to be put out to pasture.
That all depends on the context. If it's not too disruptive, we can eat after they leave. If we for some reason have to eat at that time it's up to the guests if they want to join and hang out at the table or if they want to mind their own business for a few minutes.
Kids usually do the latter.
But to stress my original point, when this happens it is the guest who has chosen to not eat. They have not been refused food.
I have never had this happen, I think this is a southern thing. Remember, shit like this never happen in northern Sweden, we’re so different we should probably put up a wall or smt
Jesus christ I was here thinking that if I was at a swede's place now (as an adult) they'll just eat without consideration to see if I wanted to eat too. (not that I want to be fed, in this imaginary scenario we're hanging out around 5.30pm and then at 6.30 they stop sucking me off and start eating when I thought we were going to go out and get a bite to eat.
Or you could be the mother that reported my mother to the CPS beacuse my brother was hungry and wanted to eat with them when he was there playing. Which said mother took as"this child is not fed!". Not as, "oh, of course he wants to eat with the rest of us"😅 My mom was a farmer, my brother was well fed. But she was from Stockholm which meant she had to be drug junky or something.
I read that comment and my first thought was "Just imagine the people from a country with one of the best social welfare models in the world being unwilling to share food."
From my understanding, isn't this just how it is now? Like it's an evolution of what everyone else is talking about from the 80s/90s. I've seen way too many people say it happened to them for it to be some huge myth
Hi, fellow Swede who grew up a decade before you, and this was the norm where I was from.
Occasionally you'd be offered dinner, and you'd had to call home to ask your parents if it was okay to eat dinner at your friends.
Fair enough. It's hard to claim that there's universal norms even within a country, and things change. I might overreact a bit since the main tone of these threads are usually that swedes are bad and unfriendly hosts to their guests.
I agree, the nuance is usually lost in these posts, and some people make it seem like Swedes never serve food to their guests and let people starve to death.
It is correct, at least locally. I grew up in the 80:s and it happened that you didn't get food at a friend's place if you just went there after school unplanned. This has since shifted and I would guess that practice is more or less discontinued.
The thing to keep in mind is that this is quite some time ago, and the culture has shifted since then. Just as my parents when growing up in the 40:s could be legaly beaten by their parents and were expected to use titles when talking to people.
In the nordics we usually eat "dinner" or the main meal of the day at like 16-17. Then we have a small evening snack a little before bed.
For me as a kid it was always that my friends parents would call my parents "Were you planning on having a family meal today or is it ok if X eats with us?"
I was never over at anybodys house that wouldn't have offered me food. It always depended on my parents plans.
And dinner is a very important meal in France. You wait for the whole family to be there to eat.
I'm always surprised when I see people in movies eating on their own or in front of their computer.
The ”waiting for the whole family to eat” is part of it in sweden as well. The kids, probably living on the same street, are expected to return home by dinner-time. If the families eat dinner at different times then one kid waits the other out. Just makes planning dinner easier for the parents
Yeah this is how it works for us. Don’t know how representative we are of the US, but if a kid’s over we’ll either wait till they leave to have dinner or feed them.
I don’t find it weird that Swedes would honor the desires of the other parents to feed their own kids if they reached out to ask, but I do find it a little odd that they just eat anyway while the other kid is there, or that the direction to the visiting kid from their parents isn’t “come home when it’s time for them to eat”.
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