DENMARK is fed up being treated like a doormat by the Swedish furniture giant Ikea: Academics in Copenhagen claim to have discovered a pattern at Ikea whereby high-end items — chairs, beds and home furnishings — are named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns whereas doormats, draught excluders and runners are named after Danish towns.
"Swedish Imperialism," claims Danish academic Klaus Kjller of the University of Copenhagen. Together with his colleague Professor Trls Mylenberg of the University of Southern Denmark, he conducted a thorough analysis of the names in the Ikea catalogue. They concluded that the Swedish names are reserved for the "better" products, and that even Norwegian names manage to make it into the bed department. But the "lesser" products bear Danish names such as "Roskilde" and "Kge".
"Doormats and runners, as well as inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting are third-class, if not seventh-class, items when it comes to home furnishings," Professor Kjller said. "The stuff that goes on the floor is about as low as it gets."
A large number of Danes believe that the professors were right to point out what they perceived as Ikea insults. One reader wrote to a newspaper to complain that "despite the fact that no one has noticed, until now, the brazen insult to the Danish nation, it couldn't be anything but intentional for a gigantic, well-organised company like Ikea to have used Danish names for its doormats.
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