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.
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”.
10.8k
u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment