AvangiProbably off topic, but I was wondering if there's a sort of pan-Scandanavian pride in guys like Borg and Edberg, or if in Finland they'd be looked on as adversaries. - A.
They are adversaries, Avangi. The Scandinavian countries are different, independent countries and that's why citizens from abroad are "enemies". We probably don't take sports as seriously as some other countries do, though. Danish football fans are known as "rooligans". The word is a hybrid from the Danish word rolig and the English hooligan. Rolig means "merrymaking, fun-loving, cheerful, joyful". Danish football/soccer fans never cause trouble, they just sing songs and pose for photographers even with their adversaries.
Spectators can choose where they want to sit at a football or ice hockey match in Finland. We don't reserve certain sections for the home team supporters and the away team supporters. There are normally no police at the matches. In the 90s Finland was playing a football match against Turkey to qualify for something, I forget what. The match was televised live in Turkey and some Kurds who lived in Finland knew that. They ran on to the pitch during the match waving their flags and political slogans. It was just a peaceful demonstration, nobody was injured.
Running on to the pitch was possible because there was no one to prevent these people. After that incident it was decided that we must have security staff at the stadiums the way the big football countries do. Now there are a handful of idle people keeping an eye on the crowds in case something similar happens. They have had nothing to do so far.
There was a slightly more serious incident in the early 90s when Finland played a football match against England. About 500 English hooligans had come to Helsinki, and we did have quite a lot of policemen in uniforms. Nothing serious happened at the stadium and it was said that many of the Finns who were there had gone there just to see the infamous hooligans. Some hooligans broke some shop windows on their way out of the stadium and they were arrested, fined and deported a few days later.
So, even though Finns and Swedes are actually archrivals in sports, there's a camaraderie of sorts. You may see a person waving both a Finnish flag and a Swedish flag at a match, probably because he/she is married to a citizen of the "wrong" nation.
Finns and Swedes sit next to each other and never cause any trouble at the stadium.
The Swedes beat us in tennis, table tennis and ice hockey, at least usually they do. We beat them in ski jumping, javelin throw and all motor sports. But I, for one, don't take these things very seriously.
I think Federer will beat Nadal in the Wimbledon final even though Nadal played very well against a Scot called Andy Murray. Murray won only 11 points in Nadal's service games during the entire match.
Cheers, CB