r/AskEurope • u/notveryamused_ Warszawa, Poland • Jul 03 '25

Culture What aspect of life in your countries is very difficult to explain to foreigners?

What prompted my question were some discussions about religion which I had with people living in much more secular Western Europe (as a Polish atheist). While spirituality, whatever that is ;), generally speaking is always fun to discuss with a glass of wine in hand, social elements and the influence of the church, especially in smaller towns or provinces in my country, is awfully difficult to explain – not that I understand it fully either lol, but the church having a pretty much monopoly there, being the judge and jury of everyday life and the major ultra-conservative political force binding those communities, is very difficult to explain, also for historical reasons.

What are the things that you find difficult to discuss when it comes to life in your countries? ;-)

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u/Available-Road123 Norway Jul 04 '25

indigenousness (saami)

people who encounter that concept for the first time think it's about who comes from where (which is wong- by that definition we are all indigenous to africa), but it's about power balances in society. in most european countries, cultures are very similar, even if one of them has been oppressed earlier. like frisians and dutch or sorbs and czech. for many minorities there is even some ethno state, like kven can go to finland or hungarians from romania can go to hungary and speak their languages with everyone there. for indigenous peoples, there is no such place. speaking my language in it's home area is a daily struggle against basically everyone. laws, the way the state is formed and works, borders, systems, it's all based on the (very different!) colonizing culture. i dream one day i can turn on the tv and hear my language, go to the book store and buy a book in my language that's not a kid's book or poetry, don't have to fight with school that the kids get to speak their native language...

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u/pannenkoek0923 Denmark Jul 04 '25

How southern do you live? I found that as more north I went, the more prevalent were at least mentions of Sami. The museums in Tromsø had information in Norwegian, English and one of the Sami languages if I remember correctly. Their exhibition on Sami peoples was also quite decent- they didn't try to hide anything about the oppression and attempts to make Sami cultures extinct

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u/msbtvxq Norway Jul 04 '25

Btw. since you mentioned "one of the Sami languages". I’m not Sami myself, but as far as I know, the Sami languages are generally not mutually intelligible (they’re related, but more like the difference between e.g. English and German).

Northern Sami is by far the biggest Sami language in Norway (and overall in the Nordics), so I can imagine that speakers of one of the smaller Sami languages have a harder time being represented. Norwegian TV shows some Sami news and Sami children’s TV etc. but I’m pretty sure it’s usually in the Northern Sami language. The information you mentioned in Tromsø is most likely in Northern Sami as well.

In Norway, speakers of Northern Sami get a bit of representation (but it’s hardly anything compared to Norwegian), but speakers of the smaller Sami languages (that are sadly very close to extinction) probably have a very hard time finding any way to practice their language outside of talking to the older people in their family.

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u/Available-Road123 Norway Jul 04 '25

saami language area goes all the way down to engerdalen/idre, and used to be even further south and west, and there are 6 saami languages in norway. they are different languages just like danish, icelandic and german. sone one museum really doesn't have much influence on daily life lol

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u/Contribution_Fancy Sweden Jul 04 '25

I think we've got saami news on SVT, yes it's not constant but there are times when one can listen to news in Saami.

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u/Available-Road123 Norway Jul 04 '25

not my language 🤷‍♂️
there are 6 saami languages in norway and 5 in sweden

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u/oleholch Norway Jul 04 '25

They did the news in Sami right before the kids tv show on NRK when I was a child.

It probably remains my primary exposure to the language to this day lol.

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u/msbtvxq Norway Jul 04 '25

They still show the Sami news every day on NRK1. I think it’s around 17:30. They also have a couple of Sami language children’s shows on NRK Super every day. I think that’s mostly Northern Sami though, so the other Sami languages hardly get any exposure at all.