The ad has caused outrage after Scandinavian Airlines claim that “there is no such thing” as anything Scandinavian.

In the video, the airline claims amongst other things that traditionally Swedish things such as meatballs are in fact not Swedish, but rather Turkish.

“What is really Scandinavian? Absolutely nothing…In a way, Scandinavia was brought here piece by piece, by everyday people we found the best of our home away from home.” the ad said.

This caused a massive outrage online, with people calling for boycotting the airline.

Not a good day for the marketing department at SAS. They pulled this video from YouTube and their Facebook comment section is flooded. Lex #gowokegobroke pic.twitter.com/PRrFI9ZSMD — Amir Sariaslan (@AmirSariaslan) February 12, 2020

Even lawmakers from the Danish People’s Party said that SAS (short for Scandinavian Airlines), had denigrated Danish culture and they have called on the Danish government to react.

Søren Espersen from the Danish People’s Party says he is in “nuclear shock” from the ad.

“I have always used SAS a lot, but I will now have a sour taste in my mouth if I use them again, because they are spitting on us in this fashion” he said.

“I think that SAS are spitting on everything that is authentic Danish, authentic Swedish and authentic Norwegian.”

Scandinavian airlines is today owned by the Swedish state (14.82%) and the Danish state (14.24%) with the rest being privately owned.

After massive online outrage, SAS made the ad private on YouTube, however others have uploaded copies of it. The original video was quickly put on private, before being made public again.

During the writing of this article, the video had 22 000 dislikes, with only 639 likes, meaning it is is on track to be “radioed”.

The video has been put on private, then been made public, then private again several times during the last 24 hours.

One commenter said “If nothing is Scandinavian, are you going to rename yourself to Nothing Airlines?”

An edited shorter version of the orginal controversial ad.

Campaign “was kidnapped”.

In a press statement SAS say that they “stand by the core message in the commercial, that travel enriches us,”

“We at SAS our proud of our Scandinavian origin and the values that

characterizes our open, equal and democratic societies” the airline said.

They also say that they suspect their ad has been the victim of an “attack” and that their campaign has been “kidnapped”.

“We do not want to risk becoming a platform for someone else’s values that we don’t stand for.”

Myth that meatballs are not Swedish.

The claim that meatballs are not Swedish, but rather Turkish, has been spread before by none other than the official Sweden Twitter account.

Swedish meatballs are actually based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early 18th century. Let's stick to the facts! pic.twitter.com/JuTDEjq9MM — Sweden.se (@swedense) April 28, 2018

But this has been debunked as fake news.

According to food historian Richard Tellström, the claim that Swedish meatball came from Turkey is false.