Danes accuse Ikea of "Swedish Imperialism"

[Rambuchan]

Ikea's Danish doormats... stop naming your rubbish products after us, Danes tell Swedish retailer
By ALLAN HALL

Denmark is fed up with being treated like a doormat by the Swedish furniture giant Ikea - and being named for them too.

Academics in Copenhagen claim to have discovered a pattern at Ikea whereby high-end items - chairs, beds, home furnishings - get named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns whereas the doormats, draught excluders and runners are named after Danish towns.

"Swedish Imperialism," claims Danish academic, Klaus Kjöller of the University of Copenhagen. Together with his colleague, professor Tröls Mylenberg of the University of Southern Denmark, he conducted a thorough analysis of the names used in the Ikea catalogue.

They concluded that the Swedish names are reserved for the "better" products, and that even Norwegian names manage to make it into the bed department.

But the "lesser" products bear Danish names like "Roskilde" and "Köge".

"Doormats and runners, as well as inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting are third-class, if not seventh-class, items when it comes to home furnishings," Kjöller said. "The stuff that goes on the floor is about as low as it gets."

A large number of Danes believe that Kjöller and Mylenberg were absolutely right to point out what they perceived as Ikea insults. One reader wrote to a newspaper to complain that "despite the fact that no one has noticed, until now, the brazen insult to the Danish nation, it couldn't be anything but intentional for a gigantic, well-organised company like Ikea to have used Danish names for its doormats.

"After all, the company has full-time employees whose job is to find names for its products, and these employees analyse all new product names to search for potential negative effects on sales worldwide."

Kjöller says the issue should not be played down. He argues that Ikea's denigrating naming convention "symbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat of neighboring Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population".

Sweden and Denmark have not been the best of friends through history: Norway was once Danish until Sweden annexed it before granting it independence a century ago. Many Danes smart at the sign at Stockholm Airport welcoming visitors to the "Capital of Scandinavia". Copenhageners like to claim that title.

Officials at Ikea headquarters in the Swedish district of Scania - ironically, it once belonged to Denmark - reject the criticism.

"It's nonsense to say that we did this on purpose. It was a pure coincidence, and it happened many decades ago," said Ikea spokesperson Charlotte Lindgren. The employee who chose Danish names for floor coverings retired long ago.

"Besides," she adds, "these critics appear to greatly underestimate the importance of floor coverings. They are fundamental elements of furnishing. We draw worldwide attention to Danish place names with our products. That has to be a positive thing."

Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reported that Denmark is considering retaliating by naming one of its low-alcohol beers brewed by Carlsberg after a Swedish town - because the Swedes traditionally loathe "lite" beer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=527862&in_page_id=1770

Reminds me of the meatball tariff wars:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/143665.stm

~ Is Ikea alone getting too big for its boots?
~ Or is this a reflection of an insidious and widely held Swedish desire towards Scandinavian hegemony?
~ How should Denmark and Sweden's other neighbours respond to this revelation?
~ What should Ikea name their doormats instead?

 

[holy king]

ikea is more evil than microsoft!!!

 

[warpus]

Only Scandinavians know that these things are named after Danes.

Half the fun of going to IKEA is checking out "those silly Swedish names".

 

[holy king]

Only Scandinavians know that these things are named after Danes.

Half the fun of going to IKEA is checking out "those silly Swedish names".

my favourite is pals, the dog bowl. (insert circle over the "a")
if my search was correct, the cheapest item at ikea.

 

[sysyphus]

The Danes just simply refuse to admit the fact that they were in fact assembled by the Swedes using only a single allen key.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Haha, Ikea sells toilet brush named "Viren".

Lasse Virén

I'm soo offended .

 

[Love]

I love how the danes are coming with accuses to us.

 

[Rambuchan]

More info on the IKEA product naming scheme from Wiki...

Product names

IKEA products are identified by single word names. Most of the names are Swedish in origin. Although there are some notable exceptions, most product names are based on a special naming system developed by IKEA.[3]

* Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
* Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
* Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
* Bookcase ranges: Occupations
* Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
* Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
* Chairs, desks: men's names
* Materials, curtains: women's names
* Garden furniture: Swedish islands
* Carpets: Danish place names
* Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms
* Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling
* Children's items: mammals, birds, adjectives
* Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
* Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
* Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

For example, DUKTIG (meaning: good, well-behaved) is a line of children's toys, OSLO is a name of a bed, JERKER (a Swedish masculine name) is a popular desk, DINERA (meaning: dine) for tableware, KASSETT (meaning: cassette) for media storage. One range of office furniture is named EFFEKTIV (meaning: efficient), SKÄRPT (meaning: sharp or clever) is a line of kitchen knives.

A notable exception is the IVAR shelving system, which dates back to the early 1970s. This item is named after the item's designer.

---

Because IKEA is a world-wide company working in several countries with several different languages, sometimes the Nordic naming leads to problems where the word means something completely different to the product. While exotic-sounding names draw an attention, e.g., in anglophone countries, a number of them call for a snicker. Notable examples are "Jerker" desk, "Fartfull" workbench, or "Lessebo" sofa. [4] The products are withdrawn, probably after someone pointed at blunders, but not before generating some news. Similar blunders happen with other companies as well.[5]

---

Company founder Ingvar Kamprad, who is dyslexic, found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a product code, made the names easier to remember[citation needed].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikea#Product_names

 

[luiz]

Shouldn't this be on the Humor and Jokes section?

 

[Yoda Power]

Is this for real?

It didn't make it to the Danish news.

 

[crabapple]

The swedes will invade and recreate "Stormaktstiden", beware!

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Shouldn't this be on the Humor and Jokes section?

No, this a serious matter.

 

[QuoVadisNation]

Should we tell that them that in New Jersey, everyone thinks it's the same language anyway?


Although there certainly seems to be a pattern..

"Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names"

= (?)
" "symbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat of neighboring Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population"."

Unless there's something I'm missing, this seems to be a case of oversensitivity by a few crazy nationalist Dane(s).

 

[Leonel]

Ikea named a bunkbed after me. "Lennart"

 

[Ecofarm]

"The stuff that goes on the floor is about as low as it gets."

He's got a point there.

---

My biggest gripe with IKEA (aside from bland particle-board products in general) is their use of China.

IKEA = Walmart

 

[Swedishguy]

~ Or is this a reflection of an insidious and widely held Swedish desire towards Scandinavian hegemony?

Yeah. But don't tell anyone, OK?

 

[Masquerouge]

But... Denmark IS Sweden's doorstep!

 

[skadistic]

More ikea catalogs have been published then bibles.

That may or may not be true I heard it in a song but if it is then its a threat too christianity and most be destroyed.

 

[warpus]

my favourite is pals, the dog bowl. (insert circle over the "a")
if my search was correct, the cheapest item at ikea.

My fav. is the JERKER desk.

 

[storealex]

~ Is Ikea alone getting too big for its boots?
~ Or is this a reflection of an insidious and widely held Swedish desire towards Scandinavian hegemony?
~ How should Denmark and Sweden's other neighbours respond to this revelation?
~ What should Ikea name their doormats instead?

This is mainly an example with journalists with too much time on their hands...

It's obvious that it was written with a foreigner, with little knowledge of Scandinavia other than a history book. I mean, who cares about things that happened hundreds of years ago? When Scandinavians meet it's usually in cosy manner, even though "Sweden and Denmark have not been the best of friends through history"

Why should we be envious of Sweden, probably the country in the world, we have the most in common with? Our societies are so similar that it's hard to tell the difference when you go shopping across the border. We are both rich, no need to be jealous. (Besides, Denmark is actually richer than Sweden, so it's rather odd how the article hints we should envy their economy)

As Yoda Power pointed out, this didn't even make it to the Danish news. Even though "A large number of Danes believe that Kjöller and Mylenberg were absolutely right to point out what they perceived as Ikea insults