When I’ve been to France I’ve seen commercials for skin care and beauty products marketed as being made by experts from Norway.
I guess a bit of a foreign touch adds some excitement and mystery. But it’s kind of funny how the same two countries are being used in opposite directions.
Meanwhile in France, every food which has (smoked) salmon on it will be called "Norwegian XXX". Pizza with salmon? It's a "pizza norvégienne". Salad with salmon? It's a "salade norvégienne". The only outlier here is the "omelette norvégienne" which is neither an omelette nor has salmon in it. It's a cake! Also known as "Baked Alaska" in the USA?
On the other hand, France has exquisite nature and basically all possible landscapes (sand dunes, sub tropical forests, wineyeards, beautiful coasts, tons of mountains all the way up to rugged glaciated peaks). Norway is nice but not as diverse.
It’s like in 90s in Russia everyone was crazy about so-called “European renovation” of their apartments. The materials and styles they used had zero resemblance to what you see in a quality Scandinavian or western-European home. Moreover, people who move from Eastern Europe get disillusioned when they see e.g. that many for-rent German apartments are crap(black mold on the walls is something very common).
So in essence, these “country X” brands have nothing to do with reality. But stereotypes are strong especially if you’re live far away.
[1] https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/what-to-do-in-paris/shopping...
[2] https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/louis-vuitton-installs-yayoi-k...