“Don’t beat about the bush, an English speaker might warn. And their arse.” Gå som katten kring het gröt – To walk like a cat around hot porridge When Swedes are accommodating for extra guests, they’ll often use this beautifully rhyming proverb to welcome them. “Nothing can make a guest feel more welcome than talking about their arse, and Swedish proverbs certainly do give a quick aside to a behind (see above). ![]() As with many opinions, potatoes, and behinds, it’s not always a perfect division.”įinns det hjärterum så finns det stjärterum – If there’s room in the heart there’s room for the arse They liken opinions to bottoms as both are often perfectly divided down the middle, not unlike the potato below. “While English speakers sometimes rather crudely compare opinions to arseholes (everyone has got one), Swedes take things one step further. When something strange is afoot, they’ll whisper to each other about those fishy owls and and their boggy surroundings.” Smaken är som baken, delad – Taste is like your bum, divided But what about owls in the bog? Yes, those crazy Swedes are at it again. “You may think there is nothing fishier than a buried dog, and that’s a perfectly logical assumption. Perhaps it’s the stench of a buried mutt, perhaps it’s the idea of a missing canine companion, or perhaps it’s just the absurdity of it all, but it’s definitely fishy.”Ītt ana ugglor i mossen – Suspecting owls in the bog ![]() “There’s something fishy going on here… There’s nothing fishier than a buried dog, right? Well, that’s what a Swede would say. Don’t ask what they’re doing with their faces so close to the letterboxes in the first place…” Det ligger en hund begraven – There’s a dog buried “While their English-speaking cousins are messing around getting their hands stuck in cookie jars, Swedes are getting their beards caught in letterboxes. In fact, it makes more sense at a glance than the one about the cigar anyway.” Skägget i brevlådan – Caught with your beard in the letterbox The Swedes talk about how how a close shot will never get you a hare, and that’s fair enough. ““Close but no cigar” gets a lot more violent in Swedish (and it has a much nicer ring to it!). Nära skjuter ingen hare – A close shot will never get you the rabbit It remains unknown how often Swedish cattle are milling about on frozen lakes, but it’s no stretch of the imagination to understand that a cow on ice would be definitely worth worrying about.” “This is a popular saying in Sweden, which quite simply means “Don’t worry”. Ingen ko på isen – There’s no cow on the ice The Local published a list of 10 odd sayings a while back, including some commentary about them, and here is the complete list. A few years ago, the Twitter hash tag #swedishsayings did exactly this and gained a lot of popularity and laughters, even among people who knew no Swedish at all. For packages it is December 5th for parcels going abroad.Sayings can become very amusing when they are translated literally, and Swedish ones are no exception. The deadline for sending Christmas cards abroad from Sweden this year is December 12th while domestically it is December 16th. ![]() "Given the different geographic and demographic conditions in different countries PTS cannot find that the current Swedish prices would be considered unreasonable from an international perspective," PTS said in a statement about the report. On April 1st the postage for the lowest weight class for letters was raised by seven kronor (9 cents) but at the same time the minimum weight was raised from 20 to 50 grams, which resulted in a reduction in prices for letters between 21 - 50 grams. With Christmas card season now on the horizon consumers will be comforted by the fact that Sweden is one of the cheaper countries to send a letter. For packages to Europe the price has increased by over 42 percent and to the rest of the world by 69 percent. In the Nordic region that makes Sweden the most expensive country of them all. They found that over the last decade the price for sending a package within Sweden in the lowest weight class, up to three kilos, had increased by nearly 35 percent. Sweden's Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) compared the cost of sending letters and packages in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany and the UK, with the findings published in Dagens Nyheter.
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