Jokes are highly subjective and more often than not, country specific and very hard to translate into another language. Especially those that translate Japanese media. While I do enjoy the nonsensical nature of their comedy at times, I am here to talk about Norwegian specific humor, which really is Scandinavia centric for the most part. Not that I know much about humor in Iceland, or Finland, but I digress.
Norway has a long a torrid history of unions, monarchs and unfavorable alliances with Sweden and Denmark, out neighboring monarchies. In essence, Norway has not been a very independent country after the invention of gunpowder. Regardless, I am fairly certain these jokes are being told on the other side of the border as well.
Let us start off with the classics. Jokes about the how inept, or dumb Sweden is.
“How do you get a one-armed Swedish person down from a flagpole?
You wave.”
“Do you know what sits in a corner and gets smaller and smaller?”
“A Swedish man licking a cheese grater.”
Yes, this variation usually takes the shape of questions and can be questionable at best. For obvious reasons I will not bring up racist jokes. Anyhow the other more inclusive kind is based around a Norwegian, someone from Denmark and a Swedish man doing something and the two other countries are the butt of the joke.
There once was a Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian person going down into a potato cellar.
First came the one from Sweden and took the lords name in vain when he failed to open the door.
Then god said. “You will not enter the gates of heaven because of your swearing.
Then came the gent from Denmark and did the exact same thing and got the same response.
Eventually the bloke from Norway gave the door a go to no success.
The almighty said yet again. “You will not enter heaven since you swore.”
The Norwegian man replied. “I am not going up to heaven, I’m trying to go down into the potato cellar.”
Historically and folklore speaking, three has always been a bit magical. Something that has made little or no sense to me, outside of it being a practical number. A type of joke that seems to be very foreign to people over in America is the all the children’s jokes, which is really just silly wordplays and jokes.
“All the children went see the flag, except Rag, he was plowing a hag.”
The structure is always the same, but the action and the names are interchangeable, and most of them are very bad.
Wares from other lands does get ragged on as well every now and then. Such as the car brand Known as a LADA, which usually is translated into jalopy elsewhere. Essentially an old, rusty, and worn out Russian automobile.
“How do you get a Lada from 1 to 100 in less than two seconds?”
“You drop it off a cliff.”
“How do you get rid of a Lada?”
“Use rust removal.”
Naturally, there is a fair selection of blonde jokes, due to a perceived notion of color coding makes people act in a certain way.
“Why are the back of a blondies head flat?”
“The toilet seat hits them every time they go to drink.”
These ones can be mildly amusing, but are usually very, very dumb and repetitive. Rude they may be, but ultimately benign and not worth fuzzing over.
A plethora of simple and silly jokes exist as well, but I’m convinced that those are very universal.
“Who’s muddy footprints are these?”
“I have no idea, they keep following me.”
Earlier example stems from the highly religious nature of Scandinavia and takes some potshots at religion.
“Where are you going my good man?” Asked the priest.
“To the toilet.” Was the reply.
“Let god be with you then.”
“No thanks, I walk alone.”
A priest found a dead hog by the wayside and called the police and got a playful response.
“I though you took care of the dead?”
“Sure, but we always call the next of kin first.”
Lastly, there is a plethora of sex jokes and raunchy ones.
The farmer caught the hired hand in bed with his daughter and knocked him out cold. Once the boy woke up he found is penis stuck in a vice, with the farmer looming over him ominously with a sharp knife.
“Have mercy, do not cut it off.”
“Do not worry son. I’ll just put the knife here and go outside and light the barn on fire.”
Coincidentally I have a video here where I pester some Americans with sketchy Norwegian humor for about 2 hours.
https://rumble.com/v1gorq3-an-hour-of-terrible-norwegian-jokes-prattling-podcast.html
Njål Signing out
