Fredrik Rydström | The Lithuania Tribune
Though Lithuanians aren’t famous for their wittiness and outgoing behaviour, the volume of Lithuanian “jokelore” is nonetheless impressive and could probably make up a smaller library on its own. As is the case in most European countries, a great share of these jokes has particular ethnic targets. What dominates in Lithuanian, as well as in Latvian tradition, are jokes denigrating their slightly better-off Estonian neighbour, usually by portraying them as unnaturally “slow”.

Accordingly, it is frequently asserted that an Estonian gets angry three days after being told an insulting joke, has a hangover three days after drinking, gets an erection three days after looking at a pornographic magazine, and ejaculates three days after having sex.

One may question why Lithuanian ethnic butts do not target Russians rather than Estonians, considering decades of cultural patronage and the animosity inherited from the Soviet era. The main reason for this is that a vast bulk of those jokes denigrating Estonians actually is of Russian origin. In fact, many of the jokes has only been targeting Estonians when retold and interpreted by their Latvian and Lithuanian neighbours, while they originally were just as likely to be aimed to ridicule Finns. Moreover, those studies being made on modern Russian jokelore reveals that ethnic butts are far more common to address Estonians and Finns than Latvians or Lithuanians.

However, an evident reason for this is that Russians in general have a quite blurry understanding of the Baltic States and tend to confuse their ethnic, cultural and linguistic markers. For example: “Estonians finally translated the fairytale ‘Peter Pan’ – in it they have named him ‘Питарас Пенис’ (Pitaras Penis).”

It is interesting to compare these ample sources of ethnic butts from the Baltic States with their Nordic counterparts, especially so since the majority of Baltic jokes targets a specific ethnic character: the Estonians. It would seem logical that the Swedes would play the far from enviable part as the Nordic equivalent to Estonians, having in mind the size of the population and that the country for long constituted the dominant economic power in the region. However, this is only true to a lesser extent, although the Swedes indeed are the main target in the majority of Nordic jokes in general and in the Norwegian one’s in particular.

The scale of how Swedes and Norwegians have constructed and utilized jokes about each other is largely unparalleled in Europe. This practice of denigrating each others national characters in the form of humorous anecdotes, albeit conducted in a friendly fashion, actually ensued in a virtual war in the early 1970s, widely refereed to as “vitsekriget” (the war of wits), which was fought out on the pages of the popular press. Although a symbolic truce was negotiated by the most prominent figures in this debate already in 1975, jokes about the inconceivably slow nature of the neighbour are still widespread and indeed very popular among both Swedish and Norwegian children today.

In similarity with those Baltic jokes targeting Estonians, Swedish and Norwegian ethnic butts are generally succinct and to the point, and accuses the counterpart of being unnaturally “slow”, without resorting to express blatantly xenophobic opinions: “What is the difference between Norwegians and outer space? We still have hope about finding intelligent life in outer space.”

However, if an Estonian equivalent exist in Nordic jokelore it should be the Finns, whom frequently are made fun of for their alleged asocial behaviour and deep-rooted drunkenness by their Nordic neighbours: “A Norwegian, Swede, Dane and a Finn were transported to a deserted Island as a part of a physiological/sociological experiment. After a year the scientists return. As they approach the Island, the Norwegian was fishing, the Swede had established a government, the Dane had established a farm… and the Finn was still drunk.”

The Finns have, however, not been showing any signs of resentment against their neighbours’ malicious verbal attacks on their nation and culture, but, on the contrary, actively cultivated the mythmaking of themselves as reserved and introvert heavy drinkers. As such, many Finns take great pride in being described in this fashion, and even perceive these attributes as precious national trademarks which separates them from their Nordic neighbours; important enough for a nation that have fought hard for its independence and not had the opportunity to enjoy it for very long.

The self-ironic Finns, then, possess an unparalleled ability to laugh at the jokes being told at their expense. Their Baltic counterpart is without a doubt the Latvians, whose relatively dark humour generally targets the perceived weaknesses and historical atrocities of their own nation. For Latvians, some anthropologists argue, ridiculing the thoughts and acts of those generations, which grew up under totalitarian rule functions as a form of national therapy.

Though Lithuanians and Latvians have been fairly innovative in finding ways of making fun of their Estonian neighbours’ alleged slowness, you rarely hear them accuse the Estonians for being a nation of drunks. Instead, although both the Baltic peoples and the Finns are known to almost never pass down a drink, the majority of jokes concerning drunkenness nevertheless paint a cohesive picture of the Russians as an intoxicated nation.

What seems distressing, however, having this short exposé of the traditional ethnic jokelore in the Baltic Sea region in mind, is that it barely exist any ethnic jokes about the Baltic nations in the Nordic states and vice-versa. It therefore appears like that the Iron Curtain still cast its shadow over how the people inhabiting both regions view each other. Thus, twenty years of increased cooperation and communication between sovereign states has not left any significant mark in the region’s jokelore.

What this indicates is that social and cultural interaction between the Nordic and Baltic states has been lagging behind political and economic cooperation. Despite efforts to draw these regions closer together, this process, regardless of its success on a purely political level, has been lopsided and failed to engender a proliferation of interregional stereotypes in the public mind, which, in the long-run, could constitute the basis for the construction of new types of ethnic jokes. Stereotypes, then, are essential in bridging differences as it shows that one are aware of and not totally indifferent towards one’s neighbour.

Positive and negative stereotypes about the Nordic states do exist, albeit in an embryonic form, in the Baltic States. These suggest that Baltic people, although regularly admirers of the Nordic well-fare model, tend to perceive their Nordic neighbours as reserved, silent and even cold.

On the other side of the Baltic Sea, however, stereotypes about the Baltic nations hardly exists at all, and the peoples inhabiting these countries are, by and large, viewed as peripheral at best, and with indifference at worst. Though ethnic jokes targeting the Baltic peoples are prevalent, these are frequently outright xenophobic and just as often told about Russians and Poles as well. For example, a so-called urban legend, which has been popular for well over a decade, concerns the Scandinavian man who gets his car stolen in Stockholm or Copenhagen. Subsequently, when on vacation in Estonia, he finds his car parked on a backstreet in Tallinn with the original number plates still attached.

One might disagree and argue that the cross-border cultivation of ethnic and cultural stereotypes only would result in tendencies of increased animosity and regional polarization. However, before making such an assumption, one should reflect on this popular Swedish joke: “Why will there be a war between Sweden and Norway in about 1000 years from now? Because then they will finally understand our jokes about them.”

Fredrik Rydström is a distinguished academic from Sweden who graduated Vilnius University in Spring 2010. He has lived for almost two years in Lithuania where he ound true love: the kibinas. Fredrik has held several lectures about and specialized in Baltic-Nordic relations.