American and European dentists must really loathe each other’s work. In the US, my dentist was agape at the coarseness of the European works in my mouth, and proceeded to finesse all manner of things in there. Today, I visited a Swedish dentist, and she was equally aghast, this time at the hurried look of American efforts.
So I need a recent American-made filling replaced. But first, a medical questionnaire. In Swedish. Rather than accidentally admitting to having sold off a kidney, I leave most of that blank“Snussar du?” is one question. Do you use snuss, a teabag of tobacco you stuff between your gums and your upper lip, making you look like an out-of-whack Don Corleone? It doesn’t get more Swedish than this. I’ve tried it, and as the buzz builds up, you begin oozing brown drool whenever you smile. Apparently, it takes practice. Whoever makes it should really expand into New York City bars, though..
My Swedish dental vocabulary is about as good as my dentist’s English dental vocabulary. As I lie there, open mouthed, with an 800,000 rpm diamond drill in my mouth an inch from my brain, she proceeds to rattle off all manner of Important Dentistry Observations in Swedish, to which I nod earnestly, incapable really of asking for vocabulary clarifications. I get an irrepressible flashback of that Gary Larson cartoon where a dog owner tells off his pet but all the dog understands is “blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah.” Yeah, I’m the dog.
I’ll find out next week if I agreed to having all my teeth pulled and getting dentures. I hope not.
Snus, not snuss.
Presumably, that’s the Swedish version of chew, chaw, Copenhagen, and so on. A fairly universal American habit, too, which again raises the question of exactly which parallel universe you inhabited during your years in New York. Last time, I think it was when you tried to argue that most New Yorkers don’t have strong feelings about the Boston Red Sox.
Snus is bizarre! Stick some up beside the gum, and wait for the inevitable buzz/nausea from a massive dose of nicotine.
I’ve only ever had chewing tobacco/snus courtesy of (a) a swedish guy and (b) the international airport in Boston, where I accidentally bought a tin, assuming it was nicotine gum for a long flight. Cue 5 hours of dribbling brown drool into a tissue. I was the *best* seat companion on that flight…
Matthew, apparently snus is much more sophisticated than chewing tobacco. Snus is to tobacco what teabags are to loose tea. You don’t have any of the loose bits floating around in your mouth, just pure brown effusion.
Stefan: not quite, there really are several kinds of snus (isn’t it called snuff in English?). One is a kind of wet powder, the other one is the same thing in small pillowformed packages, just like teabags. It is called “portionssnus”. Look on the streets of Stockholm and you will see these grey stamp-sized bags, besides the cigarrettes, chewing gums, miscellaneous body fluids and other things spit out on the sidewalk. You can imagine what kind of snus Real Men use.
Snus also played an important part in the campaigning against the Swedish membership of the European Union in the mid-90’s. Snus was seen as one of those things in Swedish culture that would be threatened by the EU and the No-campaign used slogans like “Don’t touch my snus”.
I’m beginning to notice a cultural disctintion on your blog, Stefan, between the Swedish and English commenters. Both have clearly come to the same conclusion that you typically have no idea what you’re talking about. The Swedes, though, are very polite about it and gently correct your little misconceptions: “Stefan, not quite,” Gustav writes above. The English aren’t so kind: “Stefan, you doofus,” or, “You spakka idiot.”
years ago in the States, Skoal had those Bandits things that sound just like those little packets described above. come to think of it, with a name like skoal, maybe they were scandinavia’s give to proud North Carolinian’s with gum cancer.
I moved to California from Finland – and eventually had to look for an American dentist. He told me my mouth looked like an old countryside road, where the potholes had been filled with asphalt here and there. In other words, the American dentist(s) (I ended up going to many of them – constantly in search of one that I would like better than the previous one) didn’t have much appreciation for the Finnish dentists’ work. Hmm – so perhaps there is a difference in paying a (Finnish) dentist $10/filling vs. $100/filling for an American. (Funny though how fast they accomplish the work – and without an assistant! Noone there to hand the dentist the necessary tools or to check if my mucus is flowing over the lips of my mouth.) Not to mention the fact that my teeth aren’t nearly as white and straight as my American friends’ – even if I wore braces on and off from age 10-18…
The medical questionnaires are just as tedious to fill out here in CA – I used to get very nervous having to fill them out, but now I know most of it is just to cover the doctor’s ass in case of an unexpected problem…
Ah, the cultural differences!
Snus, you lose?
Snus, Sweden’s upmarket answer to chewing tobacco, gives you the nicotine buzz but not the smoke, nor do you bother others once you’ve mastered the art of not drooling. While it’s not really good for you, it’s certainly not all…
I am a retired Swedish dentist. I practiced in Sweden from 1965 to 1975. I am also a retired American dentist – I got my training at UPenn in Philadelphia and I taught at U Gothenburg in 1974 and 1975.
It is pointless to generalize about the quality of dentistry in Sweden vs dentistry in the US. During 42 years of practice I saw excellent and terrible dentistry in both countries.
Filling out information sheets can be tedious, but we need to know if you have health problems that dental treatment might aggravate, such as having an artificial heart valve or arthritis in the jaw joints.