Scandinavian Culture Quotes

My novel 'Wolf Brother' is set in northern Scandinavia during the late Stone Age, so I was aware from the start of Norse influences. I used some Norse names, and the soul-eater Thiazzi is based on the Norse storm giant, Thiassi.

I'm actually in love with all of Scandinavia.

Haagen-Dazs (a clever Scandi-sounding name invented by Americans in 1961) was bought for its Euro-sounding sophistication by the kind of Americans who first bought those Mercs and Beemers, while Ben & Jerry's (now owned by Unilever) brought a post-hippy sensibility to bear. Buyers saw the brand as saying 'all-natural, organic and Fairtrade.'

As a Scandinavian, I like hopelessness and the weird austerity in the hopelessness of things.

First of all the name, and the color purple, I think those two things distinguish the Vikings as much as anything. You go anywhere in the country and say 'Vikings,' they know exactly where you are. You say 'Cardinals,' well, Cardinals who? There are a dozen Cardinals teams in the country in professional and amateur sports.

I think that being Jewish has generated an extremely strong sense of the importance of family. If I look at my Scandinavian colleagues, they don't have that urgency about family. All my movies are about that.

In Sweden everybody has this perfect surface. Everyone's very polite and controls their feelings.

Canada was for me very much Sweden, you know? Very much open people, that they read books, they go see films. I felt at home in Canada. And also, you speak French.

What Stieg Larsson was up to - it was the Swedish guilt over World War II. All of our neighbors had the most terrible experiences with the bad forces, but Sweden didn't. I think we use the thrillers in a different way. We never write a thriller like 'Who is the murderer?' The big question in most of our thrillers is... 'Why?'

Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.

'Vikings' has been a great experience. You get so many great friends. And I love Ireland and the people and crew. It's a beautiful place.

I like the slow Scandinavian pace. I don't need cliffhangers in every chapter because I don't want to make a Hollywood movie out of it.

The way we deny death says something about how we live our lives, doesn't it? At least in Sweden or Scandinavia, you don't have to search further back in time than maybe three generations to find another way to relate to death. People then had a different, closer relationship with death; at least it was like that in the countryside.

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

You'll find Swedes - maybe not as much as the Finns - thriving in melancholy.

I'm really looking forward to playing in Copenhagen again. Last time I stayed as long as I could, took pictures, signed autographs, and hung out until they through me out of the place!

I don't really have an issue with showing certain parts of my body. I'd rather not, but it's not a big deal. Growing up in Sweden, it's natural over there.

My father is from Copenhagen and he lived there until he was in his late 20s. We always grew up with a lot of Danish culture at home. My mother is Jewish but we always celebrated Christmas because we loved the traditions of Danish Christmas.

My wife is Swedish, so I'm familiar with the Scandinavian kind of odd humor. It's very dark and very deadpan.

Maybe there is something specifically Scandinavian that comes out of the long, dark winters - you have to learn to laugh at misery, in a way.

In my Scandinavian-American family, we were conditioned never to sit, at least not comfortably. I was endlessly going back to work. We longed for the fleeting respite of being useful and regarded sleep as a reward for exhaustion, always to be deferred until after the sun goes down.

I'm Swedish. Sweden is known for its melancholia.

I'm from Sweden, so I don't enjoy winter at all; there's nothing cute about it.

What is interesting to me about Vikings is that they were failed farmers.

You forget, when you're in the Scandinavian countries, you forget they don't speak English first and they speak better than I do.