You may think Annie is as American as apple pie and drive-in burger joints, but in fact her last name is Olsson, and she comes from a place with multiple umlauts where they eat herring for breakfast and make their sandwiches with only one slice of bread.
OK, of course I know that she’s Swedish, not Norwegian, and the Swedes have less enthusiasm for open-faced sandwiches. I have an anecdote about that. The first day that Shell Norway lent me to Shell Sweden, the Swedish marketing manager took me to lunch and proudly declared, “In Sweden we eat proper continental lunches, not those smørbrød (Norwegian open-faced sandwiches).” His attitude throughout my stay showed that he considered Norway to be Sweden’s unrefined, rural little brother. When I got back to Norway, I asked my Norwegian friends about this rivalry, and one of them summed it up as follows: “Norwegian boys dream that when they grow up they will be Norwegian men. Swedish boys dream that when they grow up they will be French.”
That’s a stereotype of course, but there was a lot of truth to it. The Swedes have long been members of the EU and are proud to consider themselves Europeans. The Norwegians were proud that they did NOT join the EU. To this day, the Norwegians, like the Swiss, have remained outside the EU, although they have a tiny population and the EU has a massive economy and more than 400 million people.
Oh – back to the subject of Ann-Margret …
She has to be one of the most beloved film stars of all time. I can’t remember anyone ever saying a bad word about her.