Welcome back, blog followers! The past few days have been a madhouse, due to the kickoff of my winter job with St. Charles Christmas Traditions. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, and every weekend up until Christmas Eve, I disappear for a while and my good friend, Mikko the Scandinavian Christmas Elf, frolics out onto St. Charles’s Main Street to spread Christmas cheer, hand out collector cards, and celebrate traditions from all over the world. She did this for about 25 hours over the weekend, so I had little time for much else.
Since Mikko is Scandinavian, she loves to teach people about her homeland. The only problem is, nobody seems to know where Scandinavia is. Mikko’s solution is to have people guess as she drops more and more obvious hints. In the process of this, Mikko realized that almost everyone is terrible at geography. (“I was never good at history,” one person remarked. “I mean, geometery.” The person paused. “I mean, geography.”)
So, as a public service to the geography-challenged out there, I will give you 10 facts about geography that you might want to know!
One. There are seven continents in the world. Yes, I’m sure.
Two. The continent directly west of Asia is Europe. (Asia is also apparently the only continent that anyone can remember.)
Three. Switzerland and Sweden are two completely different countries.
Four. The question “Where do Danish people come from?”, while tricky, is not correctly answered by “the Netherlands,” “Dutchland,” “Deutschland,” or “Daneland.”
Five. “Dutchland” and “Daneland” are not real countries. They only exist in your head. Also, “Deutschland” is the same thing as Germany.
Six. Antartica is on the bottom of the globe, not the top.
Seven. Europe is a continent, not a country.
Eight. Canada is a country, not a continent.
Nine. The Alps are neither a country nor a continent. They are mountains.
Ten. The five-and-sometimes-six countries of Scandinavia are Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Greenland.
Gle∂ileg jól, everyone!
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