National identity Danish stereotypes of Norwegians and Swedes are complementary to those which I have described, and since

knowledge of each other's stereotypes is widespread in the three countries, these notions form part of a shared Scandinavian discursive field about cultural differences. Despite its absolute geographic location on the northern tip of the main body of the European continent, Denmark's relative location is that of a southern country. A survey carried out among Danish schoolchildren in the mid-1980s suggested that they regarded the Norwegians as "all right, but a bit rural and very nationalistic", while they saw the Swedes as "an arrogant bunch, but good football players". Denmark has the most liberal drug laws and the least restrictions on alcohol consumption in Scandinavia, and Copenhagen -- the northernmost truly European metropole -- looms large in the Norwegian and Swedish imaginations as a city of sin and joy. Swedes and Norwegians alike are frequent visitors to Denmark, many of them solely to enjoy the liberal Danish practices. Current Danish images of Norwegians are still contingent on the loss of Norway in 1814, which was not caused by Norwegian popular rebellion but by geopolitical events. Partly for this reason, the image of Norway is nearly unanimously that of a friend. Images of the friend, while much less studied than enemy images, can nonetheless also contribute to the definition of self. Norwegians are perceived as rustic and simple, but honest and straightforward people who live close to their beautiful and spectacular nature. The Swedes, by contrast, are seen as humourless bureaucrats who, like obedient dogs, do whatever the State tells them to, and who are obsessed with material status symbols. When they visit Denmark, therefore, the Swedes are assumed to lose control and behave disgracefully. A poster in a coastal Danish town near Sweden reads: "Keep your town clean, take a Swede to the ferry." Some Danes talk jokingly about "going in the direction of Russia" when crossing the narrow strait separating the countries. The Danish ethnologist Linde-Laursen notes, in a comparative study of Danish--Swedish stereotypes, that the

word modern has positive connotations in Swedish but negative ones in Danish. In contrast to both Swedes and Norwegians, then, the Danes tend to depict themselves as an easy-going, tolerant and urbane people, sociable and relaxed, who relish the Danish hygge -- an untranslatable word which can be represented roughly as "coziness". Danish cuisine is also represented as more elaborate than that of the barbaric Northeners.

Concluding remarks Sweden looms large in Danish and Norwegian self-identities. For the Norwegians, Sweden is clearly the most important defining Other, a relationship which has an important bearing on both personal, collective and state identities in Norway, whereas only Germany rivals Sweden as the most important Other for the Danes. The Swedish case is more complex. While it may be said that the Swedish identity is culturally defined as a system of relationships including both Norwegians, Danes and Finns, Sweden has also in the postwar period drawn much from comparisons with the USA -- that other futureoriented, progressive country. Although the representations of the other are not unambiguously positive -- indeed, DanoSwedish stereotypes may be described as classic enemy images -- they contribute to the reproduction of Scandinavia as a single cultural field. The stereotypes, as I have briefly indicated, are an important element in the delineation of the respective national identities as well as creating a shared discursive field. In the case of Scandinavia, mutual stereotypes have, it could be argued, led to a closer identification with the other and metaphoric enmity, rather than enmity proper. For when all is said and done, Scandinavians know that they are the closest of kin and, despite former wars, that the risks of violent neighbour quarrels are at present non-existent. They might not have interpreted the situation like this, and indeed the international relationships of the region might have been much less

tranquil and relaxed, had the Scandinavianists of the 19th century had their way and succeeded in creating a shared Scandinavian nation-state.