What’s wrong with Minnesota?

I’ve often wondered what’s wrong with the Minnesota sports fan, but I think it’s worth digging into a little bit more. To outsiders, I suspect that the upper Midwest looks like a homogeneous land of interchangeable white people. Of course, they couldn’t be more wrong. Minnesota and Wisconsin, although neighbors, are almost complete cultural opposites.

Why is that? I suspect it has something to do with immigration patterns. I wanted to take a look at where modern day Minnesotans came from compared to the cultural heritage of Wisconsinites. I put together a couple of charts for a visual comparison:





At first glance, they’re not that different. But on closer examination, what jumps out at you is just how much less Scandinavian and more Polish Wisconsin is. In fact, while Poles make up just over 5% of Minnesota’s population, they’re nearly 10% of Wisconsin. And, Polish pockets like Milwaukee and Central Wisconsin can be over 30% Polish. Could it be that somewhere between 5 and 9% is the Polish “tipping point” – the point where the mass of Poles is enough to greatly influence the rest of the culture towards polka, kielbasa, hard drinking and uncommon loyalty to sports teams?

Selfishly, I’d like to think so, but in reality I think that’s only part of the story. Just like outsiders assume Upper Midwesterners are all alike, we assume that Scandinavians are all alike. Of course, Swedes, Danes & Norwegians disagree:

As a matter of fact, jokes featuring “the Swede, the Dane and the Norwegian” are ubiquitous among children in the three countries: the Swede is always depicted as a rich and arrogant child of the Enlightenment, the Dane as a slightly decadent hedonist, and the Norwegian as an uneducated, often stupid country bumpkin. These jokes illustrate how mutual stereotypes not only contribute to the definition of the other, but also function recursively in the definition of the self. The following example is in many ways typical:

A Swede, a Dane and a Norwegian are shipwrecked on the proverbial desert island. A genie appears out of thin air, informing them that they can each have a wish granted. The Swede immediately says, “I want to go home to my large and comfortable bungalow with the Volvo, video and slick IKEA furniture.” So he vanishes. The Dane then says, “I want to go back to my cozy little flat in Copenhagen, to sit in my soft sofa, feet on the table, next to my sexy girlfriend and with a sixpack of lagers.” Off he flies. The Norwegian, after giving the problem a bit of thought, then tells the genie, “Cor, I suddenly feel so terribly lonely here, so I guess I wish for my two friends to come back.”

Reading that was definitely an “A ha!” moment for me. Maybe it’s not that Minnesota was settled by more Scandinavians and fewer Poles, maybe it’s more specific than that. Sure enough, a quick look does reveal that Minnesota is the most Swedish of all the States while the Dakotas and Wisconsin are more Norwegian and Wisconsin, in particular, has more Danes (as if you couldn’t guess that).

It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Minnesota was settled by people who had, for generations, looked down their Nordic noses at their “dumb” or hard-partying neighbors. These people may have crossed the Atlantic, but they didn’t really change their ways. This is exactly the kind of attitude Minnesota has towards Wisconsin. One of the local free papers even has a running item about “weird Wisconsin” that usually has something to do with drunks and/or cows.

Much like the Poles in Wisconsin, Minnesota’s Swedes had the critical mass to make the State their own, for better or worse.

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