My two favourite Swedish idioms are “that’s better than a snail on the eye” for “better than a poke with a sharp stick”, and when someone looks sad “you look like you sold your butter and lost the money” which is a story I just immediately empathise with
THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS FOR IDIOMS: Germany vs Denmark
🇩🇪 A German way of saying OMG, from the 1980s, is Ich glaub mein Hamster bohnert! It means “I think my hamster is waxing the floor!”
vs
🇩🇰 My favourite Danish equivalent translates to “take a whole vacation!”
Two of mine are allt löser sig med våld o vaselin (“you can solve everything with violence and Vaseline”) and att glida in på en räkmacka ("to slide in on a shrimp sandwich”), for privilege. But my no. 1 will always be "the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead" (hence the title of my last book)
