Hej – and welcome to your weekly ScandiKitchen lesson.
This week, we teach you about how not to be the cleverest. Handy sayings can be found in this post – do read on.
Every week, we give a little lesson on how to be a bit more Scandinavian in your everyday life. If you’d like the full-length version of these lessons direct into your inbox every Friday morning, simply click here to sign up.
No boat
In Icelandic, the word for stupidity is heimska. Derived from Old Norse, heimskr, it meant that you were foolish and silly because you had never sailed away from home
Empty headed
In Norwegian, if you are ping in the bowl (Å være pling i bollen) it means empty-headed/stupid (from the “ping” an empty bowl makes when you tap it).
Slow train
In Sweden, if you are stupider than the train, it means someone is really stupid (Dummare än tåget).
Attic gnomes
Someone might say someone has gnomes in the attic (at ha tomtar på loftet) – meaning someone really isn’t that bright.
Rotten tree
In Finnish, if someone is rotten at the top of the tree (Olla latvasta laho), it means the person is a little feeble-minded. You can also say that he doesn’t have all Moomins in the valley.
Wet cardboard
In Danish, you might say that someone is cod-stupid (torskedum) – or that somesone is more stupid than snot (dum som snot) or even than wet corrugated cardboard (dum som vådt bølgepap). Harsh.
