Differences and similarities Sweden vs. Scotland

Hello!



This is the answer to sweedishgirl15’s question directly from Scotland. To all the other fabulous readers, a girl wrote me and asked about differences between Sweden and Scotland and here is my answer.

There aren’t a lot of differences between the two countries, both of them have the same Christian valuation and the culture is the same. I’ve heard that the Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand played in Sweden this summer. It’s the same music on the radio I both Sweden and Scotland. You can't see if a person is from Sweden or Scotland when you look at them, and we are quite the same when it comes to our quietness.


The biggest difference that I recognised is how people treat each other. Like in school, the school in Scotland are NOT the same as I Sweden, firstly Swedes don’t wear school uniforms secondly they call the teachers by their first name and thirdly the students are aloud to bee cheeky. Yes, cheeky, I visited a school with pupils in the age 13-15 and some of them were really cheeky against the teachers, I’ve never seen that in Scotland. When I told one of the students that I thought it was rude to call the teacher Alfred instead of Mr Andersson, they laughed at me and called me old-fashioned.

And old-fashioned is maybe the right expression for a Scot, because comparing to Swedes we are very polite and old fashioned, at least on the country. A special thing with Scotland and the United Kingdom are that you can see a big difference in how you act against other people between the country and the big cities. For example when you take the bus here on the country you always say thank you, when you walk off, for me that’s a matter of course, but you don’t say it in Sweden and you don’t in the big cities like London or Edinburgh either.

So to sum up, Swedes and Scots are almost the same but in Scotland and the United Kingdom, politeness are very important, if you want to consider it old-fashioned all right, but in the same time, think about how cheered up you as a bus driver would be if the passengers thanked you? But all in all, I could live in Sweden without feeling like a stranger at all.
Hope that's an answer to your question, otherwise feel free to ask again, and again, and again it's just fun.

That’s all from me by now!

Bye / Linnea R