AHQ/AHC: Anti-Scandinavian Sentiments a thing?

Plateosaurus

In terms of ethnic European cultures, Anti-Slavic sentiment has long occurred throughout history, as did Ant-Italian and Amti-Irish sentiments, where all of them were discriminated and persecuted against. However, has anti-nordic sentiments ever happened, where people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland (and Finland) were historically discriminated against? If this is not the case, how could this hypothetically happen, especially in North America?

I suppose a good option would be Anti-Lutheranism movements, or something to do with a longer-lasting and more successful New Sweden colony.
 
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Aghasverov

Aghasverov

Plateosaurus said:
Ant-Slavic sentiment has long occurred throughout history, as did Ant-Italian and Amti-Irish sentiments, where all of them were discriminated and persecuted against. However, has anti-nordic sentiments ever happened, where people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland (and Finland) were historically discriminated against? If this is not the case, how could this hypothetically happen, especially in North America?

I suppose a good option would be Anti-Lutheranism movements, or something to do with a longer-lasting and more successful New Sweden colony.
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The only thing that I can think of, is that in some of the American Midwest, Scandinavian settlers (who were quite numerous), particularly Swedes, were sometimes characterized as being, well, dumb and under-educated.... Think "Polack jokes" but with a different target...
Other than that, maybe Scandinavians could be tarred with the same broad brush that Germans were tarred with during WWI... "well, they're practically German..."
Can't think of much else, as generally Scandinavians were rather good at assimilating to the local population within a generation or two....
 

Booster Gold

Born in the USSA said:
Ben Franklin thought they were swarthy barbarians so there's that.
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Clearly Ben Franklin didn't know what swarthy meant.

As to the OP, I'm not sure there was much anti - Italian settlement outside of the USA's weirdly aggressive racism and I think that was an outgrowth of numbers, so your best bet is just more Scandinavian immigration.

Though you'd be hard pressed to get that kind of population pressure with climate conditions being as they were over the past few hundred years. Maybe a heavily Scandicised Baltic?
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Aghasverov said:
The only thing that I can think of, is that in some of the American Midwest, Scandinavian settlers (who were quite numerous), particularly Swedes, were sometimes characterized as being, well, dumb and under-educated.... Think "Polack jokes" but with a different target...
Other than that, maybe Scandinavians could be tarred with the same broad brush that Germans were tarred with during WWI... "well, they're practically German..."
Can't think of much else, as generally Scandinavians were rather good at assimilating to the local population within a generation or two....
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Ah yes, we still have Sandihoovian dialect jokes back home :)

One of the issues with Scandinavians though, is that they did 'everything right'. From the beginning, Scandinavian Lutheran leaders did outreach and colaboration with American Protestant groups and found themselves aligned on many issues relating to the Social Gospel, Prohibition, etc. Scandinavians were also loyal Republican voters from 1860 onwards, and eventually became closely associated with the Progressive Movement. Which isn't to say that there wasn't biases against Sandinavians - of course there were - but due to their politics and religion, they became one of the most accepted immigrant communities in the United States.
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

Neoteros said:
Indeed, along with Germans. According to him, everyone that wasn't of Anglo-Saxon stock was basically trash, he was H. P. Lovecraft a couple centuries ahead of schedule. :D
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Now, granted, I have known a couple Germans (Austrians really), who were a bit "Swarthy" , at least compared to me... but they were "mountain folk" , Vorarlbergers, so maybe they just had a "snow-tan" x'D
OTOH, I once worked with an Austrian girl who was so white, that if she wore a skirt to work, you'd swear she was wearing white hose 😳 She wasn't just "white" , she was translucent.....
 
Mr_Fanboy

Mr_Fanboy

I’m sure that someone living anywhere near the coasts on the British Isles tended to hold some pretty strong anti-Scandinavian sentiment.

More seriously, anti-Irish and anti-Slavic sentiments ultimately stem from the notion that they are somehow backward compared with the rest of Europe. Now, many Medieval Christians were obviously uncharitably inclined toward the Viking raiders, but once they stopped raising and started practicing Christianity, these negative stereotypes melted away. Indeed, to the extent anyone has stereotypes about Nordic countries today, it is that they are industrious and well-organized societies (which would be basically accurate as far as these assessments going, given the high standard of living over there).

If you can figure out a way to make Scandinavians relatively poor vis-à-vis Western Europe, kept them pagan, or both, negative stereotypes will likely stick around.
 

Sardar

I mean you could have anti-scandanavian sentiment in a world where Northern Europe is poorer and less powerful compared to Southern Europe. So instead of the Brits and Germans being the most powerful, you would have the French, Italians and Spaniards dominate the 19th century instead.
 
Neoteros

Neoteros

Aghasverov said:
Now, granted, I have known a couple Germans (Austrians really), who were a bit "Swarthy" , at least compared to me... but they were "mountain folk" , Vorarlbergers, so maybe they just had a "snow-tan" x'D
OTOH, I once worked with an Austrian girl who was so white, that if she wore a skirt to work, you'd swear she was wearing white hose 😳 She wasn't just "white" , she was translucent.....
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Maybe that's what was up back in Franklin's days - those German and Nordic immigrants were rural folk, their skin weathered by decades working in the fields.

And maybe this might be one of the reasons why naturally dark skinned people tend to have it rough in places where lighter skin tones predominate, their natural colour vaguely resembles that of the locals doing heavy/manual labour - that's a common sentiment in Asia, but it was quite widespread even here in Italy with regards to southerners, that ticked both boxes, really - farmers, and dark skinned when compared to northerners, on average.

That said, 3/4 of my grandparents were southerners, one of them was a farmer from Veneto, I'm paler than a ghost - comes with suffering hot weather so much I spend entire summers walking in the shadows - several doctors straight up told me I could have a heart attack if I ever went to a sauna. :D
 

Arkenfolm

Only Finns ever had any real amount of discrimination (although I suspect more isolated sentiments occurred elsewhere), and that was mostly because of perceived political affiliation (many Finnish communities were aligned with the Socialist Party) and occasionally perceived "Asiaticness" (hence the old term "China Swede"). There was a court case IIRC over whether Finnish immigrants were legally "Asians."

Other anti-Scandinavian sentiment is even more historical and related to Sweden's militarism in the 17th/18th centuries. I believe you can find descriptions of Sweden at least as a backwards, violent, and authoritarian country based on its militarism and internal politics in that period.
Booster Gold said:
As to the OP, I'm not sure there was much anti - Italian settlement outside of the USA's weirdly aggressive racism and I think that was an outgrowth of numbers, so your best bet is just more Scandinavian immigration.
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There was though. This incident and the trial regarding the incident was severe enough to damage relations between Italy and France and cause anti-French riots in Italy.

EDIT: Changed wording, didn't like how I worded this post
 
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DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Arkenfolm said:
Only Finns ever had any real discrimination, and that was mostly because of perceived political affiliation (many Finnish communities were aligned with the Socialist Party) and occasionally perceived "Asiaticness" (hence the old term "China Swede"). There was a court case IIRC over whether Finnish immigrants were legally "Asians."

Other anti-Scandinavian sentiment is even more historical and related to Sweden's militarism in the 17th/18th centuries. I believe you can find descriptions of Sweden at least as a backwards, violent, and authoritarian country based on its militarism and internal politics in that period.

There was though. This incident and the trial regarding the incident was severe enough to damage relations between Italy and France and cause anti-French riots in Italy.
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This is true - the Finns often were very closely associated with the Wobblies, especially in the Minnesoa Iron Country and Michigan Copper Country in the UP. the community ended up getting pretty hard during the First Red Scare and the anti-Immigration wave of the First World War and the 1920s. There was a pretty notorious lynching of a Finnish-American in Duluth around this time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Olli_Kinkkonen
 

Aichi72

England and Scotland stay Catholic. Spain wins the Dutch Revolt and the Habsburgs win the Thirty Years' War. Protestantism ITTL is limited to Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and possibly the Baltics. Cut off from the wider and richer Christian world, these areas are maybe ITTL considered the backwards backwaters of Europe. Perhaps this and the lack of Protestant countries among the great powers to favor other Protestant areas causes these groups to receive greater discrimination than OTL.
 

lefthandhummingbird

Many Nordic immigrants (as "Scandinavian" doesn't include Finland) where active within organised labour and socialist movements. Increasing that association could mean having them labelled as security risks during the Red Scare.
 
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