Scandinavia – a homogenous region.....

   The Scandinavian countries are usually considered a homogenous cultural region. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are languages so closely related that Scandinavians understand each other without difficulties. During long periods of history the countries were joined together in unions. The societies are almost entirely protestant, there exist only small ethnic minorities and the modern political systems were formed by strong liberal and social democratic parties.
   These and other common features make the Scandinavian countries especially interesting for systematic comparison.

...with interesting cultural differences.

   Contrary to what one might expect, the symbolic patterns of everyday life differ quite considerably between the three countries.
   According to Norbert Elias' theory of social figuration and civilisation, the main reason for these differences of national habitus lies in the different forms of contact and conflict between the dominant social classes of pre-modern times, e.g. nobility and bourgeoisie.
   In the Scandinavian countries these forms varied. A classic court-centred society (such as in France or Austria) existed only in Sweden, while e.g. Norway had lacked a noteworthy nobility since the Middle Ages.

   Due to the greater importance of the aristocracy in Sweden, the need for social distinction was greater there than in any other Scandinavian country. Since the time of King Gustavus II Adolph (1611-1632) the Swedes thus abandoned the use of personal pronouns when addressing each other in direct speech, using instead titles and indirect speech to mark status distinctions. In the 1930s a Danish journalist wrote:
   Where one without ceremony would say in Danish: 'Will you come back soon?', the Swedes say: 'Does director Johansson believe that director Johansson will be back soon?' A Swede demonstrated this to me by quoting a sentence in which 'director Johansson' appeared 5 - read five – times.
   It is only slightly exaggerated to claim that until the 1960s, one was not allowed to speak to a person without being introduced to him or her, i.e. to learn that person´s name as well as title. The system of titles was complex.
   In manuals of etiquette large sections dealt with subjects like "Inherited titles", "The same titles in written and in spoken language", "Different titles in written and in spoken language", "Male professional titles", "Women's professional titles" etc. (see picture).
   In Denmark and Norway it was not common to use titles to such an extent. Neither books on etiquette nor foreigners’ travelogues refer to any use of formal titles comparable to the Swedish.
   The most extreme contrast is to be found in Norway, where no court society had influenced the symbolic patterns of everyday life. Thus, an old cleaning woman, Josephine, from Oslo learnt to distinguish only two types of person. Those tending to corpulence she called "directors", while those on the slimmer side were "merchants".

   It is a truism that gender roles are social constructions, and by no means biological constants. No wonder, then, that gender roles differed in the three Scandinavian countries as well. Because of the legacy of court society, the interaction between Swedish women and men was more hierarchical, distanced and formalised, but maybe also more romantic than between Danish and Norwegian women and men.
   According to a Swedish manual of etiquette, a Swedish man should bow deeply from the hip, with a straight back (picture to the left), when meeting a women. This gave him at the same time a splendidly stiff, almost robot-like expression. The woman should receive the kiss on the hand with the same straight back and the mien of a ruler. Obviously, the behaviour of the man and the woman was not symmetrical, e.g. there was no eye contact.
   According to a comparable source, – a contemporary Norwegian book on etiquette (picture to the right) –, meetings between Norwegian men and women were more symmetrical and egalitarian, and less formalised. Both the woman and man used the same gestures, taking each other's hand and looking into each other's eyes. There is no (pseudo-) submissive bowing. Their clothes are plainer (street dress and fur instead of evening gown and tail coat).
   The cover of the Norwegian manual on etiquette indicates where the reason for the more formalised and distanced gender roles was to be found, i.e. pre-modern, court society.