Globe Corner Blogs

The other day I was wasting a lot of time playing on Facebook and I got sucked into one of those stupid-yet-addictive quizzes that are popping up everywhere. They have one for everything imaginable and I saw that one of my friends had completed the “What is your true inner nationality” quiz. Naturally I had to take the quiz as well. Turns out my true inner nationality is “Swedish.” Hummm… never thought I was particularly Swedish. Even though I am proud of my Norwegian-German from Russia via Ukraine roots, I think that my inner-nationality is American. However, I have been told I have the soul of a Romanian by a Romanian, that I must be Croatian because I like red wine with fish, that I look really Bosnian, and that I was Icelandic by a sober Icelander. I would like to think that my inner nationality might be a New Zealander (I like the accent) or Canadian (I would like to live in Vancouver), but I never considered Swedish. It never crossed my mind.

But wait a minute, everything around me seemed to have a Swedish connection. I immediately thought of that Mastercard commercial where the father and son go to Norway to see the “homeland” and learn that they are actually Swedish. Maybe that is happening to me? Maybe Grandpa was wrong, and we are Swedish. This is somewhat devastating – almost treasonous. My whole world started to cave in on me as everything seemed a little more Swedish. I glanced back to my Facebook newsfeed and all of my friends were taking the inner-nationality test and they were all Swedish too. Then messages started to pop up on my screen in Swedish. Was my world turning Swedish? Everywhere I looked I started to notice suspicious Swedish infiltrations in my life. For example…

1) I am planning a trip to Eskilstuna, Sweden this summer. When I was looking for information about it in the Rough Guide to Sweden, the only thing that I found was that it was the murder capital of Sweden. Well, it was either Eskilstuna or Ronninge – my other Swedish destination. I am too distraught to remember clearly…but one of them had the distinction of being the murder capital.

2) One of my best friends is Swedish. She is the reason that I am going to risk my life once again and venture to Eskilstuna, Sweden or Ronninge for that matter. I might compare it to visiting relatives as one night over drinks her boyfriend and I decided that we were like cousins. So now I have family there.

3) IKEA

4) I am currently reading Christina…Queen of Sweden. Highly recommended.

5) My celebrity chef crush is on Marcus Samuelson. I own his beautiful cookbook Aquavit and it is the the only cookbook that I look at regularly. Marcus Samuelson is Swedish.

6) I love Swedish Meatballs and I have a lot of them in my freezer.

7) I have a large map of Sweden on my wall. (This may or may not count…my roommate left it because she moved to…Sweden.)

My sheets are blue and yellow, kind of like the Swedish flag. I bought them because they were on sale, but now I am questioning my motives.

9) I may have been hallucinating, but I really think that Jon Stewart is having special reports from Sweden this week on the Daily Show. Either that or I dreamed that he said “Sweden” directly to me.

10) I took that stupid “which Muppet are you” Facebook quiz…and I am the Swedish Chef.

The obvious question for me is, “Why are you taking all of these Facebook quizzes in the first place and why are you writing about it?” But maybe it took Facebook to make me realize that I might be a Swedish wannabe. It might not be so horrible after all. Six weeks of vacation a year would be nice!

By the way, The Globe Corner Bookstore is now on Facebook. The store has not participated in this quiz as it likes to think of itself as “global.”

Read more: Facebook, Heritage, News, Norway, Scandinavia, Sweden


Lisa can usually be found staring longingly at the Eastern European shelf at the Globe Corner Bookstore. However, she really wants to go to Colombia.

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