Cultural stereotypes are fun. They satisfy our human urge to make sense of other people, and make us believe we can predict someone else’s behavior. In an international community such as Lund’s, it’s especially easy to get our fill of lighthearted, inter-cultural teasing.
Swedes are hardly immune to this banter, although no stereotype about them might be as pervasive as the belief that they’re difficult to become friends with. Virtually every foreign student in Lund will attest to this belief, or at least acknowledge that it exists.
Whether true or not, the discussion of Swedish shyness has certainly delighted many of my past fika and dinner conversations, and having given the topic much thought I would like to offer an alternative perspective.
Set Swedish stereotypes aside for a moment, and consider rather the characteristics that foreign students share.
Coming from abroad, they arrived here after first detaching themselves from family and friends. They might at times have second-guessed their decision to travel somewhere unfamiliar, but the prospect of making new friends or earning a prestigious degree ultimately got them onto that plane. Arriving here was no doubt thrilling, but the feeling of being a complete stranger took little time to settle in.
By virtue of deciding to go abroad, foreign students in Lund are hardly a representative sample of their native populations. On the contrary, they are disproportionately the outgoing types who are undaunted by making connections from scratch. Throw together a bunch of these young, thrill-seeking students deprived of friends and you’ve got a party, or pretty much VGs on any given Wednesday night.
If Swedes seem less friendly by comparison, it is likely because the comparison is unfair. A concentrated group of social butterflies will invariably appear more outgoing than a mixed bag of introverts and extroverts.
The other side of that coin is that Swedes, unlike their foreign counterparts, often already have social networks, thus negating the circumstances which typically compel foreign students to reach out to more people. Don’t necessarily mistake this for Swedish unfriendliness! I would hardly consider myself wary of foreigners, but back home even I rarely sought the friendship of international students simply because my hands were already full with local friends.
This is not to say that I don’t believe Swedes are tough blocks of ice, or that more effort on their part wouldn’t be more welcome. I simply advocate being receptive to multiple explanations when it comes to people’s behavior. Blaming the Swede’s nature can be tempting, particularly when feeling socially excluded, but attributing that difficulty to external circumstances rather than someone’s personality flaw would allow us to be kinder to ourselves and to Swedes.
Half-serious suggestion? Befriending a Swede who is abroad might be the easier way to go!
