Drunken Danish
Sweden was awoken from his sleep in the middle of the night by an incessant stream of knocking on his door. Groggily, he stumbled out of bed, and, still in his nightclothes despite the cold, made his way to the front door, which was still banging rhythmically.
"Com'ng!" he called out, though the pounding didn't stop until he opened the door.
Once he did open it, he found a blond-haired man that Sweden had had to deal with quite a lot over the last few centuries. The man tried to knock on the door again, but with the door now open, his fist just swung through the empty air, the momentum making him stumble forward awkwardly. Sweden managed to catch him before he hit the floor.
"Denmark," Sweden said, steadying the other Scandinavian country, "is s'mething wrong? It's the middle of the night."
"Wrong? Wrong? Everything is wrong!" Denmark said, staring unfocusedly at the air behind Sweden. "It's all my fault!"
Sweden frowned a moment before smelling Denmark's breath. "You're drunk."
"Jaaaaa, I was drinking all of the alcohol, and then… and then it was my fault and you're going to hate me and it's all wrong!" He punctuated the statement by slamming his fist angrily into the door that was now halfway open. The door, however, swung away at the strike, causing him to topple over completely to the ground.
"Denmark!" Sweden yelled out, immediately reaching down to help him up.
"Noooo, I'm fine, Sve…" But despite his protests, Sweden hauled him to his feet and (after closing the door; it was still a Scandinavian Winter outside) the two of them tottered over to a sofa, onto which Denmark immediately collapsed.
"I'll get you s'me water. Don't move."
Denmark just groaned incoherently in response, so Sweden went to the kitchen.
When he came back a moment later, Denmark hadn't moved, still staring blankly at the coffee table in front of him, until Sweden set a glass of water down in his line of vision.
"Oh, Sve…" he said. "You're always so nice to me nowadays. And yet—and yet… I'm such a terrible person!"
"D'nmark, calm down. You're fine, you just need to get some rest."
"Nej, jeg… jaaaaaag var…" Denmark started to stutter out before his speech devolved into a completely incoherent string of phonemes.
Sweden tried to decipher what he was saying for a minute, before finally saying, "D'nmark, I can't understand Danish that well, and on top of that, you're slurring your words."
"Men jaaaag… talaaaaar sv… sveeeeeeen! Innnnnnnnnkke dansssssssssss…"
Sweden just stared, stone-faced, at the struggling country on his couch. Finally, he said, "D'nmark, I'll call up Norway. N'rwegians are s'pposed to understand Danish better 'n Swedes."
"Uhh… buh? No Sve, don't bother Nor-Nor. It's the dead of the night and it's all dark out..."
But Sweden had already reached for his phone and sent a quick text message to the third Scandinavian country: Norway. Denmark's at my house, drunk, and I can't understand him. Come help me.
Norway's reply came almost immediately. Of course he's drunk. What else would he be doing on a Friday night/Saturday morning? I'll be right over, Sve. Sorry for any trouble he's causing you.
Sweden looked back up at Denmark, who was gleefully counting the number of threads that were on one of the pillows on the couch. Sweden sighed, but continued to just watch Denmark in silence.
A quick, firm knock on the door came a few minutes later. Norway invited himself inside before Sweden could answer the door. "Hello, Sverige."
"Hej, Norge."
"Where's that stupid brother of ours?"
"On the couch. 'Sbeen grumbling incoherent Danish at me."
The two of them made their way back to the couch. Upon seeing Norway, Denmark immediately leapt up and stumbled over, though he ultimately collapsed in a heap at Norway's feet.
"Nooooorge!" he shouted out.
"Get up." Norway said, nudging him in the side with his foot.
Instead of getting up, however, Denmark clasped onto Norway's ankles. "Sve isn't understaaaaanding me! What can I doooo? I just wanted to… make sure Sve doesn't hate me…"
"Why w'ld I hate you?" Sweden asked. When he didn't respond, Sweden gently picked him up off the floor and placed him gently on the couch. Once Denmark was sufficiently comfortable, Sweden repeated his question. "Why d'you think I'd hate you?"
"Because… Because…" Denmark took a deep breath and said, "I told Finland that Swedish was a terrible language and that you're a terrible person and and and… Jeg er så ledsen! Du er inte fruktansvärda! Kan vi være vänner?"
Sweden looked towards Norway. "He's been spouting Danish l'ke this the whole time. Know wh't he's saying?"
Norway, meanwhile, had put his hand up to his temple in frustration. "He's not speaking Danish, exactly. He's trying to speak Swedish, but he's not saying anything correctly at all and mixing it half up with Danish pronunciations and words."
"Neeeeeej!" Denmark burst tearfully. "Du… Jeg—jag… Din…" He took a quick breath before abandoning his attempt at Swedish altogether. "I STILL WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND, SVERIGE!"
With that outburst, he curled up into an undignified sobbing pile on the sofa, but Sweden rushed forward and embraced him in a hug. "Denmark, 'f course we're still friends! …Tak fordi du er min ven."
"Sveeeeee!" Denmark said, trying to focus his gaze on the other country right in front of him. "Really? You mean it? But you're so… You're so nice! And I'm so mean! I really don't deserve such a good friend. …And one who can speak Danish understandably to me, at that."
"R'lax, Denmark, you're doing just fine. Get some rest and y'll be fine by mornin'. I'll still be here, an' I'll still be your friend, don't worry."
Denmark only responding by crying some more, so Sweden and Norway repositioned Denmark's body on the couch into a more comfortable lying position. Eventually, Denmark's sobbing turned into a steady rhythmic breathing instead.
Once they were sure he was asleep, Norway sighed. "Well, Sve, I'll look after him for the night," Norway said, grabbing a blanket and covering Denmark's body. "He's caused you enough trouble as is."
"H'nestly, it's no trouble at all. …'M a bit embarrassed I couldn't und'rstand his Swedish, though. I really thought he was speak'ng drunken Danish this whole time."
"I mean, he kind of was. Anyway, don't worry about him anymore; sorry for interrupting your sleep. God natt, Sverge."
"Godnatt, Norge."
Author's Note: This was inspired by an incident that happened last year in June (June 2016), where in a drunk man in Trollhättan, Sweden crashed his car into the snow. When the police arrived, they couldn't understand him, and eventually concluded he was speaking Danish. Turns out, though, he was just speaking Swedish through a drunken slur. (I found out about this article from the "Danish-Swedish Twitter War" that happened a month later in July; the official Denmark and Sweden Twitter pages had a silly verbal smackdown over tweets, bringing up incidents like this one to poke fun at each other. It was very reminiscent of Hetalia; if you haven't seen it yet, you really ought to Google it.)
Anyway, the second part of this is the fact that the Scandinavian languages are very similar, to the point of mutual intelligibility or at least partial mutual intelligibility. (They're closer to each other than the Chinese dialects are to each other, even though the Scandinavian languages are considered separate languages and Chinese dialects are not.) Danish is often joked as "Swedish with a potato in your mouth." Anyway, according to Wikipedia (the North Germanic languages page), Norwegians' understanding of Swedish and Danish is definitively better than Swedes' and Danes' understanding of each other, which is why Sweden called Norway in here. Side note: Norwegian has two standard written forms (Bokmål and Nynorsk), so there are, in some sense, four Scandinavian languages. (Finnish and Greenlandic are completely unrelated languages - indeed, the country/territory themselves are generally not considered Scandinavian though they're considered part of the Nordic Region - and Icelandic and Faroese are historically related but not very mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages.)
I should say here that I don't speak any of the Scandinavian languages; all the attempts I've made at them in this fic are derived from Google Translate and various Swedish-English/Danish-English dictionaries from online. They're mostly a nonsensical mishmash of Danish and Swedish anyway so they don't have to be 100% correct, but either way, I hope nothing's egregiously wrong. The phrases used are below, with the Swedish version of the sentence first and the Danish version of the sentence second.
Glossary (Swedish/Danish: English)
Nej, jag var…/ Nej, jag var…: No, I was…
Men jag talar svenska/Men jeg taler svensk: But I'm speaking Swedish
Inte danska/Ikke dansk: Not Danish
Jag är så ledsen/Jeg er så ked af det: I'm so sorry
Du är inte fruktansvärda/Du er ikke forfærdeligt: You're not terrible
Kan vi vara vänner?/Kan vi være venner?: Can we be friends?
Tack för att du är min vän/Tak fordi du er min ven: Thank you for being my friend
Godnatt/Godnat: Goodnight (God natt is the Norwegian spelling)
Published January 26, 2017