Simple Swedish Podcast - #287 - Jantelagen ("Du ska inte tro att du är något")

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Nivå: A2/B1 Hallå där! Nu ska vi prata om jantelagen. Den skandinaviska "lagen" som säger: Du ska inte tro att du är något. Är det en riktig lag? Varifrån kommer den? Hur används den? Vad säger den om skandinavisk kultur? Stöd podden för 5€ i månaden och få transkript till alla avsnitt :) Klicka här Transkript Du ska inte tro att du är något! Du ska inte tro att du är bättre än någon annan! Ja, så lyder jantelagen och det är jantelagen som vi ska prata om idag. Så. Välkommen till Simple Swedish Podcast! Jag heter Fredrik och jag sitter som vanligt här i Valencia. Det är väldigt varmt dessa dagar. Jag har börjat använda AC:n för att det är helt enkelt jobbigt att sova när det är 30 grader. Så jag hoppas att elräkningen inte blir för hög! Jag vet fortfarande inte hur mycket det kostar att ha AC:n på varje dag. Jag hoppas att jag kanske inte behöver ha den på varje dag men just nu så. Känns det som att jag behöver det för att fungera. Och jag har också börjat stiga upp klockan halv sju på morgonen. Så ja, det är för att min flickvän har börjat jobba tidiga morgnar, så hon började stiga upp klockan halv sju och då tänkte jag, okej, jag ska ta det här tillfället i akt och börja stiga upp tidigt jag också. Att ta tillfället i akt betyder att man liksom, ehm, att man passar på att göra någonting. Man, eh, en situation uppstår och man liksom tar.. man utnyttjar den situationen man, man, ja vad ska man säga? Ja, ni förstår säkert. Så. För att det känns som att man blir lite mer produktiv när man startar dagen tidigt. Och det känns väldigt bra, måste jag säga, att komma upp lite tidigare. Ibland blir man lite trött också såklart. Men i alla fall, idag ska vi prata om jantelagen som är en intressant aspekt av svensk och skandinavisk kultur. Först ska jag tacka tre nya patrons. Det är Marcus, Laura och Martijn. Jag tror jag uttalade det rätt. Så, jantelagen. ...för att få hela transkriptet - klicka här

You should not think that you are something. You should not think that you are better than someone else. The Jantelag And it is the Jantelag that we are going to talk about today So, welcome to Simple Swedish Podcast My name is Fredrik And, yes, I am sitting as usual here in Valencia It is very hot these days. I have started using the AC because it's just hard to sleep when it's 30 degrees. So I hope that the electricity bill will not be too high I still don't know how much it costs to have AC on every day I hope I don't need it every day

But right now it feels like I need it to work. I have also started to get up has started working early in the morning So she started getting up at half past seven and then I thought, okay, I'm going to take this opportunity in time And start getting up early as well To take the opportunity in time means that you take the opportunity to do something. A situation arises and you take advantage of the situation. What can I say? You probably understand Because it feels like you become more productive when you start the day early And it feels very good to get up a little earlier But sometimes you get a little tired too of course But anyway, today we will talk about the Jantelag

Which is an interesting aspect of Swedish and Scandinavian culture. First I will thank three new patrons, Marcus, Laura and Martin. I think I pronounced that right. So, the Jantelag. Is it a law that is written in our constitution? And is it something that... Is it a law that says that we Swedes... We can't think that we are better than someone else. We can't think that we are something special we can't argue, we can't go out

and if we do that, if we break against this law will the police then arrest us and put us in prison No, of course not The Jantelag is not a law A law is a kind of rule and if you break the it, the police will come. Because you have broken the law. But yes, the Jantelag is not a law.

It is more a of a cultural observation And it has gotten this name, or an aspect of Scandinavian culture, we could say And it has gotten this name, Jantelagen And... And what does Jantantelag say? The most common thing that the Jantelag says is You should not think that you are so special. Don't think that you are better than other people. You are not more special than someone else. You are not better than someone else. This is just a cultural norm, or an aspect of Scandinavian culture.

It's not like someone wrote the Jantelag and then people started following it, no. We have certain cultural aspects in Scandinavia and it has only got the name Jantelagen. But then you can ask yourself where does the name Jantelagen come from? The word itself. So, it was a Danish author. An author is a person who writes books. An author. So, this Danish author, his name is Axel Sandemoese. And he wrote a novel called En flykting korsar sitt spår

I don't know what it's called in Danish or Norwegian Because I think he wrote it in Norwegian actually But in Swedish it's called En flykting korsar sitt spår And he wrote it in 1933 So almost 100 years ago And this book, this novel A novel is a little longer story

So it's about an unhappy man A man who is not so happy and unhappy, but an unhappy man a man who is not so happy and unhappy but an unhappy man and his life in a small town and this small town is called Jante so that's the name of this small town and the inhabitants of Jante The people who live in Jante

The inhabitants The inhabitants are people who live in a town or a country or so They are perhaps not the most positive And his life there is quite miserable and in this city there are ten layers not one, but ten layers and the first of these layers is you should not believe that you are anything you should not believe that you are anything.

You shall not believe that you are anything. So, that is the one who has become the Jante-Lag in Scandinavian culture. But in this book there are ten laws. The first one is that you shall not believe that you are something. The second one is you should not believe that you are as good as we. Number three, you should not believe that you are smarter than we. Smart, wise or intelligent. Four. You should not imagine that you are better than us. To imagine is to be able to imagine something that you believe in. To imagine.

Number five. and you put together something that you believe in to imagine yourself number 5 you should not believe that you know more than we do number 6 you should not believe that you are more than we do to be more than someone else is to be a little nicer a little better a little nicer, a little better, a little nicer. To be more than someone else.

Number seven. You should not think that you are good at something. That you are good enough to be good enough for something. So you should not think that you are good enough for something. You should not think that you are good enough for something. You should not think that you are good at something. You should not laugh at us. That was number 8. Number 9. You should not think that someone cares about you. And number 10. You should not think that you can teach us something

So these are perhaps not the most positive and encouraging laws But I think that most Swedes only know the first one, because it's only the first one to describe the cultural aspects of Scandinavian culture. from that book and spread in society and now everyone knows what the Jantelag is and most of them, I don't think, know this book at all so I think most Swedes don't know where the word Jantelagen comes from. Everyone knows Jantelagen, but I don't think people know that it comes from this book from 100 years ago by Axel Sandemoose. If you don't know that, then it's okay, because the Swedes don't know that either. But I think that people who read this book thought that this first law describes the Scandinavian culture quite well

or at least some aspects of it so people who read this book thought that this law describes our culture, so that they maybe started talking about it and people talked about it. I don't know. I don't know how the name became so well known, the Jante law. It is actually very useful to describe certain aspects of Scandinavian culture So I thought we should talk about what in Swedish culture Jantelagen describes Or, well, not really Swedish culture, but Scandinavian culture. So of course, the Scandinavian countries are a bit different, but this Jantelagen is in all three Scandinavian countries. And for those who don't know, the Scandinavian countries are Sweden, Norway, Denmark.

If we talk about the Nordic countries, then it's Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. But the Scandinavian countries are Sweden, Norway, Denmark. So... Yeah. We're going to talk about this. What it actually describes. What cultural norms, what cultural aspects. More concretely.

For example, one thing you can see in Scandinavian culture is that there is some kind of feeling of that or opinion or yes that all people have equal values and all people should have equal rights so for example that we have free school, free education, university is free, it is even illegal take paid for school, for university and so on in Sweden. So it must be free.

And in any case for Swedes, so if you are a Swedish citizen, then all education is free. And also, of course, health care. If you need to be cared for at a hospital. If you need health care, health care is what you get at a hospital. You get both what you get at the hospital and what you get in the hospital. So it's also free. So things like that, regardless of whether you're rich or not, you should have equal rights and equal values. And it's also that I know that I thought about it several times actually, that it's not okay that people work for a standard that is lower than the standard. I don't know if I explained that well, but anyway. There are rules for salaries and so on. And that we don't accept that people work for a very low salary. And another thing...

And that has to do with that everyone should be the same and that you shouldn't think that you are better and so on. We don't like the hierarchical structure that exists in other countries. For example, in a company you have the boss, the big boss, workers are not worth much. We like what we call a flat organization. A flat organization means that there is not so much hierarchy. So, okay, you have a boss, but the boss is not higher than you socially. But socially everyone is on the same level, you can be around and joke and... And we don't say like Mr. Andersson, Mr. Andersson We don't say people's last names We just use the last name

So when you talk to your boss or your teacher You just say the person's first name. So we don't use a lot of afternames, not so many titles. Saying like, Mr. Andersson, that sounds very old-fashioned. And we don't use any formal pronouns In many countries you say new to older people, people older than you, people you don't know But we say you to everyone You to all To all Except for kings

So if you talk to the king You have to say The king What does the king think about this? Or what does the princess think about this? It's a bit strange But Generally we use

Only you And The first name Generally we only use you and last names So this is a part of that everyone is the same No one is better than someone else, no one is higher up than someone else We are all the same people We are all the same people. We are very good at standing in line. queue, they are waiting for their turn, everyone is waiting for their turn. I am not more important than anyone else, so I wait until it is my turn, basically. So we are very good in Sweden at standing in line.

And... and you... you... and for example when you talk, you have a conversation, you wait until the other person has finished speaking I mean, I don't start speaking when someone else is speaking, for example and we also have in school in school, I know that in some countries there are classes perform your task well, to perform well. So, you talk about high performing students.

And in many countries I think there are special programs for high performance students. But in Sweden we don't have that much of that. We want everyone to be able to do the same things. And there are advantages and cons to that. The con is that the whole society feels, and not that we have different styles. So we have social classes in Sweden as well. We have the elite, and we have people who are poor. But I think that culturally we don't like being elite.

Being elite is not that good in Scandinavian culture. So we don't try to dominate other people. We want to work in a team. I think that Scandinavians are pretty good at working in a team. Working in a team. And it's also about getting to know people who have a lot of power and money It's important to be a little reserved Not to show that you are too rich or that you have too much power.

Swedish politicians for example, they try to show that they are ordinary people. They show on their Instagram, our Prime Minister. I remember that he went to Taylor Swift's concert with his kids. They try to show that they do the same things that normal people do. They are just normal people. So that's important in Sweden that if you have a lot of power and money, you should still be a normal person, like everyone else. So you should be like everyone else. It's an important part of the jantel-team You shouldn't stick out

To stick out means that you are very visible You are unlike everyone else Then you stick out. And you shouldn't stick out too much. You should have a regular home, a regular car, a regular style. What should be lawful, simply. So lawful is a word that is strongly associated with Swedish culture and it goes hand in hand with the concept of the Jante law

not too much, not too little so we have an expression in Sweden about our country. We call Sweden the little country of the law. So the little country of the law is a reference to that we don't want to go out too much. We like to have it law, not too much, not too little. And that's pretty much the concept of the Jante law. And the absolute worst thing you can do is to scream. To scream. What does skryta mean?

Skryta is when you tell people how good you are How successful you are How much money you have How cool things you have How well you are doing You try to show that you are a little better than other people That is to screw, and that should absolutely not be done in Sweden Because that is seen as very bad, so...

Don't screw Not to screw. People rather try to diminish their success and their wealth. It's common for people to do the opposite. And instead of the opposite of screwing, it's to diminish yourself and your success and so on. I personally think that this concept with the Jantellag is quite positive. Because it creates a kind of fragility. People don't think that... I think it creates a kind of fragility and a community with each other. It creates a kind of community, I think.

It can also be an obstacle. Because if you are a person who wants to stand out, who wants to be extraordinary, or who just wants to walk a different way and be a little strange Then this can become an obstacle You can feel that other people are preventing you from being who you want to be and be the person you want to be So there are both positive and negative aspects of this So if you want to be a little weird or if you want to be extravagant

and things like that then you might be you can meet some resistance And how do Swedes use this word, the Jantelag? And I think that maybe not very often, everyone knows exactly what it is, but I think that it's mostly if you're joking and you want to be extraordinary and you might want to stick out and you get problems because someone doesn't like it and then you might say, damn that fucking Jantelagen, in Sweden there should be so much Jantelag in Sweden, damn it. So maybe you... maybe you're going to fuck up the Jantelag a little bit. But otherwise it's nothing that people talk about a lot. And there is a trend in society that the Jantelag gets a little weaker, maybe, not as strong as before. We have a more and more international society, so money, the difference increases, i.e. it becomes bigger. So that might also be a reason why the Jantel-Lag might become less strong as a kind of trend in society.

So, that was what I was going to say about the Jante law. So my question to you, have you noticed the Jante law? Do you have any experience with Jantelagen? What do you think about Jantelagen? Is there something similar in your country? Or is it completely different in your country? So comment and tell us what you think about if I'm not wrong, what experiences you have and if it is the same or different in your home country. So, see you again next week.

Take care!