WHEN WORLDS COLLIDEconsultant. I asked John about his experience doing business in
various European countries and the different subtexts he found
there.
In describing Scandinavia, he noted that the Danes are very
much like the North Americans. "They have a good sense of
humor, but they know when to be serious. As for subtext, what
you say is what they perceive. There are very few subliminal
messages."
By contrast, he pointed out, the Swedes are very aloof. "They
are not about to accept you on your own terms, and it takes a
great deal of time for you to establish a relationship with them.
They don't engage in prolonged conversations. If you ask, 'How's
the weather?' a Swede will answer, 'It's fine.' Nothing beyond
that.
"With the Danes, when you ask about the weather, they'll settle
back and start with, 'What part of Denmark are you interested
in?' and it goes on from there."
I was most intrigued when he talked about the Finns. Finland
is a bilingual country with Finnish and Swedish as its two languages.
Unfortunately, though John could speak Swedish, few Finns were
willing to use it in business meetings. They all spoke Finnish, a
difficult language related to almost no other in Europe. In business
negotiations, John found the Finns very tough, very specific, and
very demanding. The subtexts they sent out to him were "We
are a closed society. We do not trust any outsider."
"I was there on business," John explained, "at Rosennew, the
biggest foundry in Finland, I was trying to get them to make a
line of enamel-on-steel cookware. Most of their products were
castings for heavy farm equipment, but they did have some con-
sumer products, and I knew they could turn out what I wanted.
"The trouble was, I was getting nowhere. We just couldn't negoti-