Paper short abstract:

Finnish hardware store chain sped up its sales in Sweden with a television advertisement campaign, based on clichés of Finland. Swedish comedy series made fun of the original advertisement by picturing Finns as the Swedish other.

Paper long abstract:

Finnish hardware store K-rauta sped up its sales in Sweden with a television advertisement campaign in 2013 that starred Finnish male actor Jarmo Mäkinen. In the opening of the television advertisement campaign half-naked, Mäkinen starts his journey from rustic Finnish sauna in the middle of forest. He talks and walks through the rural landscape of Finland pictured bylakes, rally drivers, heavy music artists and other clichés of Finnish national identity. Finally he makes his way to the Swedish coast by swimming.

In Sweden, the K-rauta ads were popular. They led to sketches in award-winning tv-comedy series Partaj where actor Johan Petterson played the role of imaginary Jarmo, a brutal Finnish man who complains how soft and feminine Swedish men are. The character was so popular that it got later its own tv-series Bastuklubben.

The popularity of the Jarmo figure in Swedish comedy scene tells about two things. First of all it tells that there are strong prejudices of Finns in Sweden that the Jarmo character was able to evoke in Swedish watchers and make fun of. Otherwise the Swedish response would have been less strong. The popularity of the character also tells about the shared history and identity politics of the countries. Finland was part of Sweden more than 600 years and the Finns were the internal other of the Swedish kingdom. By picturing the Finnish men as half-naked, smut talking savages, the Finnish otherness was reproduced and made corporeal to the Swedish watchers in the 21st century.