Do people in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ask "how are you?" when greeting someon

[Argirios Argiriou]

Do people in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ask "how are you?" when greeting someone?

Martin Frøkjær, lives in Denmark

I'm from Denmark, and I can chip in with how I've experienced it here.

When greeting a stranger/acquaintance we usually say

Good morning
Good day
Good evening
Hello
Hey there
Or some variety thereof. If it's a friend or colleague and I haven't seen them for awhile I might ask how they are. But I'll ask with the full knowledge that I might be opening up for a very long conversation.

We don't use “how are you” as an informal greeting that always have the same fixed response. We use it because we're interested in knowing how you are and if we need to pay a little extra attention to you or you just need to tell about how awesome your holiday/weekend were.

If a stranger asked me how I were, it would probably elicit a fixed “I'm fine thank you”, regardless of how I felt. It would seem a bit weird and disingenuous to me, because I wouldn't feel like the stranger genuinely cared to get an honest response.

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