A stereotype which I have not found to be all that accurate.

In one of the Seattle coffeehouses where I sang during the early Sixties, one of the other singers was Britt Mongstadt, a young Swedish exchange student attending the University of Washington. Quite outgoing as I recall. She had a substantial repertoire of Scandinavian and other folk songs and for the short period of time she was here, she was one of the favorite singers at the coffeehouse.

Also, currently, in the cooperative apartment where my wife and I live, a Swedish woman named Mariam (don't recall her last name) maintains a pied á terre for when she is in Seattle. She and I got to talking about Sven Scholander, the Swedish lute-singer who was mentor to the young Richard Dyer-Bennet way back. Mariam loaned me a mess of CDs she had, a boxed set consisting of old recordings of Scholander, plus a whole batch of similar singers—modern day "minstrels," a tradition that she tells me is still alive in Sweden. Interesting stuff!

Mariam is quite friendly and outgoing.

Of course, there's a whole encyclopedia of jokes about how slow and thick-headed Swedish men are—told mostly by Swedish men….

Sven and Ole take jobs on a house construction site. Sven steps into the on-site trailer where the boss's office is. "Boss, when we build this house, do we start with the roof or the foundation?"

The boss looks at Sven, aghast, and says, "You start with the foundation!"

Sven sticks his head out the trailer door and shouts, "Hey, Ole! Come on down!"

Don Firth