Helly Hansen is from…

When the weather turned cold, everyone seemed to break out their Helly Hansen wear. I said to Niklas, “Helly Hansen sure has cornered the market here. Are they Norwegian?” I knew it wasn’t Swedish because Hansen ends in ‘en’ and not ‘on’. The Swedes have “son” while the Danes and Norwegians have “sen”.

“No, they’re Danish,” He responded assuredly. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Scandinavians know their Scandinavian brands.

Niklas was heading off to the US so I was thinking of having him get me a Helly Hansen jacket at the Bellevue store while he was there. I checked out their website to see if I could find any of the jackets that I’d seen here, especially on this woman who showed up at the bus stop with the most beautiful HH jackets. I couldn’t and they didn’t have prices online either. I wondered if the prices would even be that much less expensive in the US since they were from neighboring, Denmark, and maybe it would just be easier for me to get one here that I knew would fit, etc.  Some things like rubber rain boots are just slightly more costly here than the usual two-four times more expensive for most other things.

So the next day I said to the woman at the bus stop, “I tried to find your beautiful Helly Hansen jackets on their website, but couldn’t.”

She chuckled. I had probably embarrassed her with my apparent stalking of her jackets. “The US market is different than Europe so they have different products,” she told me.

“Oh.” I continued undaunted, “So, do you think HH jackets are that much less expensive in the United States or are they around the same price here since they are Danish? I know they are Danish and not Swedish because, you know, the S-O-N.” (I thought I would impress her with my knowledge of this subtlety.)

“Actually, Helly Hansen is not Danish, it’s Norwegian,” she responded.

“No, they’re Danish,” I assured her. “I, too, thought they were Norwegian, but I asked my husband and he told me they’re Danish. It’s funny, he just knows these kinds of things.”

“Actually, they are Norwegian,” she countered. “My husband is the CEO, so, I should probably know,” she sheepishly chuckled.

“Oh.”

I still cringe and laugh every time I think about this exchange…:)

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