Advice

Six Scandinavian Girlfriends We’ve All Had

Scandinavian women. What can we say? We’ve fallen in love with them; occasionally more than one at the same time. Whether we’ve become their lovers, girlfriends, boyfriends, or partners, better or for worse, we’re thankful for it.

Here are six Scandinavian women who may have been your girlfriends, or who may one day be your girlfriends (we can only hope):

The One Who Lives in a SKAM Episode

You meet her at a house party; her oxford shoes and red lipstick pull you in immediately. She has this way of toying with her hair that makes you long for Sunday brunches at outdoor cafes and strolls in Frogner Park in Oslo with her French Bulldog, which you just assume she has. “I hate drama,” she tells you.

Things are great until you realize that the majority of her texts to you are emojis. At first you think the combination of the monkey covering its eyes and the disco dancer is cute, if confusing. But then the one with the knife creeps in. “I’m not talking to Stine right now,” she writes, and you see that the “drama” she so adamantly proclaims to avoid is what fuels her.


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The One Who Lives for Roskilde Festival

She’s already got her tickets for next year; this year’s festival ended yesterday. She’s been going to Roskilde since she was fourteen and laughs in your face when you tell her you’ve considered staying in the quiet camp. She knows all the tricks: how to sprint towards the best campsite, where the cleanest showers are, how to charge your phone, how to avoid the Roskilde plague (but she still comes home with a cough every year anyway). She can rattle off not just the headliners for the past ten years but which day they played and on which stage. Unsurprisingly, her taste in music is impeccable.

If you’re someone who reads Pitchfork reviews in your free time, she’s your dream girl. Otherwise, be forewarned: she will choose the Orange Stage over you.


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The Visa Expert

She knows more about the immigration laws in your country than you do, even if you’re Danish. She has to; she’s been fighting to get permanent residency for six years now. At first, you want desperately for her to be able to stay. But when all of her extra cash from her underpaid job is going to her immigration lawyer and she almost has a heart attack every time a letter about her green card arrives in the mail, you start to wonder if you’re being selfish in asking for her to stay for your sake. After all, you’ve only been together a year.

Maybe you could move with her to Argentina? Then she goes home to see her parents over Christmas and you find that the her texts just don’t give you the same thrill as they used to. It’s a long-distance fizzle.


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The Skateboarder

She’ll bike if she has to, but only if her skateboard can hook to the back of it. Her butch swagger is sexy and refreshing compared to the straightlaced Swedish guys you typically date, and you could sit for hours watching her do ollies with her skater friends at the park. You spend the summer with her watching the sunsets with weed and cheap beer, snuggled next to her in her Carhartt pants and Vans.

When you tell her you’re falling in love with her but that it’s scary because you’ve never had a queer relationship before, she falls silent. “I keep forgetting this is new to you,” she says, and kisses you. But then you don’t see her for a week, and her texts start to dwindle. “Sorry, work has been crazy,” she writes finally, so you show up to her place one night with a pint of ice cream to cheer her up. When her housemate opens the door, someone you recognize from her Facebook pictures is sitting in the living room. It’s her ex, the one she never really got over. Skate away, fast!


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The One Who Helps You Own Your Feminism

You meet her at the launch party for a sustainability app, where she’s debating with an Icelandic guy across the room about whether Iceland has actually solved the equal pay gap. You make a joke about Björk and she stares daggers at you, and not in a good way, so you say, “sorry, just another idiot guy over here” and she cracks a smile.

She has a Ruth Bader Ginsburg figurine on her dresser, travels extensively for her job at a nonprofit, and after two months of dating, you’re starting to use the words intersectionality and white feminism in conversation. Soon you realize, though, that it’s not her job to hold your hand while you try to understand the patriarchy. You break up, but every few months you still run into her at documentary film screenings about reproductive rights.


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The One You Just Click With

You weren’t looking for anything serious when you started your Master’s program; who knows where you’re going to be in a year? You become study buddies, and she’s generous with her time and smart as a whip. Group work no longer feels like such a chore.

Your study sessions are filled with coffee mugs and blankets and books strewn across her living room floor, and when your brain is so full of microbiology you think you’re going crazy, she’s the one who says, “let’s do something else.” You look over at her on the sofa and see that her eyes are smiling behind her tortoise-shell glasses (how did you not notice those cute glasses before?). You lie your head on her shoulder, whispering, “is this ok?” She nods, and her eyes smile wider.

That was three years ago. Her living room? It’s yours now too.


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Rather read about Scandi Boyfriends? We’ve had those, too!

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Kate Krosschell

Kate Krosschell is from Boston, MA, USA. She has an MA in Film Studies from the University of Copenhagen and lived in Copenhagen for two years. She is currently living in the US and works as a freelance writer. You can read more of her work at:  www.filmandfeelings.blogspot.dk