Playing April Fool’s jokes on each other on the first of April is a tradition in many countries – Sweden included. In fact it is an old tradition – the oldest written reference being in 1392 in Chaucer’s ‘The Cantebury Tales’.
In Sweden, when someone is tricked, the tradition is to say ‘April, April din dumma sill!‘. This translates as ‘April, April you stupid herring!’. This is however not as weird as it might sound. In many countries, such as Italy, France and Holland, April 1st is known as “April fish”. On this day, people try to attach paper fish onto the backs of their victims.
April Fool’s pranks are common in newspapers, with classics such as:
- IKEA is getting into the airline business. Furnishing all the flights with Ikea furniture, the name of the airline is FLYKEA.
- Swedish supermarket chain ICA introduced toothpaste with the taste of chocolate. It might be brown, but it makes your teeth white.
- Burger King introduced a new burger for left-handed people where ingredients were rotated 180 degrees.
I had a look this morning to see if I could identify any April Fools tricks but I failed. The papers were just full of misery – War, Death, Politics, Covid, Murders, and Shootings. Maybe the seriousness of our current times renders silly jokes redundant. If you manage to find one, please share here!
Watching the Swedes 
In Sydsvenskan this morning it was revealed that Sweden and Denmark will “exchange” Islands. From July 1st Bornholm will belong to us and the Island of Ven, of the coast of Landskrona, will become Danish 😅
That’s a funny one!