New Delhi: A debate is raging on Twitter over a peculiar topic of whether or not Swedish people feed their guests. The matter gained global attention after a Reddit user narrated an incident from his childhood at his Swedish friend's house while responding to a question, "What is the weirdest thing you had to do at someone else's house because of their culture/religion?"
"I remember going to my Swedish friend's house. And while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled that dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to WAIT in his room while they ate," the user wrote.
Another user narrated a similar incident at a Swedish person's house. "I slept over at a friend's house," the user wrote. "When we woke up, he said he's going downstairs for a few minutes. After about 15 minutes, I go on the stairs to see what is happening and they're eating breakfast. They see me and tell me he's almost done and will be up there soon," the user further said. The story concluded with the user writing, "I still think about that 25 years later."
A screenshot of the stories has been shared by a Twitter user @SamQari. Soon, similar stories related to this habit of Swedish people and strange cultural habits in other countries flooded social media and #Swedengate started trending.
At the time of writing this report, @SamQari got over 128.9K likes for sharing them on Twitter. "Not here to judge but I don't understand this. How're you going to eat without inviting your friend?" he wrote.
As the debate gained traction, an opinion piece by Linda Johansson in The Independent offered a Swedish perspective to the issue.
"The Swedish thinking goes like this: the other child (or the other family) may have plans for another kind of dinner, and you wouldn’t want to ruin the routine or preparations. I don’t think it is anything to do with not wanting to feed the other child or because it costs money or anything like that, it’s more to do with tradition and wanting to eat with your own family," she wrote in the opinion piece.
Thousands of social media users weighed in on the topic. Pop star Zara Larsson tweeted, "Peak Swedish culture."
"I've been to Sweden one single time and they didn't even let me inside. They made me sit on the porch while they were inside having 'family time'. My friend came outside ONCE to 'check on me', but i know he didn't really care," tweeted another user.
An Instagram account that goes by @loverofgeography compared the trait of Swedish people not feeding their guests with the rest of Europe. The post explained how countries like Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway that don't appear to feed their guests tend to be more "economical" with their food.