Not to belabour this too much, but run across this tidbit presented on this question:
What do Danish people think of Swedish people and vice versa?
Danes think Swedish women are beautiful. That Swedes in general can be rigid and boring, not as fun as Danes. Envious that Sweden is a bigger country and is that bit further ahead in economic prosperity. That Swedish cooking is awful. In particular that the Danish variant of marinated herring is so much better than the Swedish counterpart (that IS true). That Swedes can't hold their booze (something Danes are phenomenally good at).
Some say that Danes are the "Italians of Scandinavia" with big arm movements and loud exclamations. The Danes are proud of this.
I'm Danish by the way but live in England.
Zander Lindström, knows Swedish
Answered Dec 12, 2017
I’m swedish.
Well it all depends on who you ask. Intellectuals, or people who spend much time with the danes or people who found out how to understand the language, those kind of people are generally positive to Denmark/Sweden. There’s some rivalry in football and we both think the other can’t cook properly. I’d say most people are like this, and if they don’t understand eachother, they speak english.
If you however where to visit a small town with rednecks, then they don’t like danes or swedes. I mean not as in that they hate eachother, but they usually think that the other language is stupid and ugly and if you would bother to speak danish/swedish to them, they wouldn’t even bother to understand it. I think a good comparison here would be how rednecks in the southern USA don’t like people from the north.
My personal experience with danes is that they are friendly people who aren’t afraid to be themselves and that take life with a smile. Like if something goes bad for a swede, the swede would go depressed or keep the anger to him/herself untill exploding. A dane would go more like “huh… that sucks, i better get myself a cold one”. That’s highly stereotypical, but i think there’s some truth to it.
Swedish stereotypes about danes is that they speak swedish with food in their mouth’s who smoke indoors and in their cars. The men are a little fat and bald and always drink beer, while the women are heavily sunburned from solariums and with hanging titts who smokes while brestfeeding and stuff.
The danish stereotypes about swedes (from what i know) is that we are very strict, arrogant, can’t handle alcohol and that we all have yellow teeth from snus (tobacco that you put under your lip).
Also swedes care very much about our nature, same goes with Norway and Finland. Danes don’t care as much, and here’s where it usually impacts. I’ve experienced danish, german and dutch people who don’t care about catch and release (unless they’re fishermen ofcourse) and can catch and kill several fishes even though they aren’t gonna eat them, who throws their trash into the wild and who steal road signs that warns about moose’s as an exotic souvenir. I don’t say all danes are like this, but we don’t have the same problems with norwegian and finnish tourists for example. However, the swedes get all crazy when they can buy cheap alcohol even in the food stores in Denmark and can get wasted like hell and walking the streets.
Many swedes view a visit to Denmark like a visit to the continent, almost everything is diffrent than from Sweden, Norway and Finland. They view them as some sort of hybrid between nordic people and dutch people. Whenever you see a trucker in Sweden, Norway or Finland, they drive swedish trucks, and Volvo are among the most popular cars. When you go to Denmark however, the truckers drive MAN and Mercedes mostly and regular people drive german cars. In Sweden some people can get a bit annoyed almost if you don’t drive a Volvo.
Long story short, smart people respect eachother and see themselves as one people with two dialects, while dumb and ignorant people view eachother as annoying people who can’t speak properly and danes don’t like when swedes get wasted in Denmark and swedes don’t like it when tourists don’t respect nature.
Also, don’t mention any of the 34 wars we’ve had the last 1000 years.
Karl