Swedish man to prove to Norway he's not female

Swedish father-of-two Daniel Pohjantähti recently found himself in a spot of bother when Norwegian officials refused to believe he was a man, despite his hirsute face and masculine features.

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“Couldn’t they tell from the beard?” Pohjantähti said to daily Aftonbladet.

Pohjantähti, who is a baker, had travelled from southern Sweden where he lives with his wife and two children, to a small town south of Norwegian city Bergen, where he was going to work.

But in order to do that he needed a Norwegian personal ID number.

He read up on what to do on the internet and duly presented himself at the offices at the Norwegian social benefits agency Nav.

With him, he had his Swedish ID card and papers from the Swedish Tax Authority, verifying his identity.

However, the first question the female official asked him was whether he was a woman. Pohjantähti was perplexed.

“I looked like a bear when I got there, surely the beard must have given it away,” he told the paper.

But even his ID card, his driver’s licence and his tax papers weren’t enough to convince the woman that he was in fact male.

Neither did the fact that Pohjantähti is married and has fathered two children.

“I tried every way I could think of to prove that I am a man,” said Pohjantähti to the paper.

He can’t see what it was the official thought that he could win from “impersonating” a man.

There was nothing else that Pohjantähti could do but to return to Sweden to fetch his passport, the only proof of sex that the Norwegian officials were prepared to accept.

To top it all off, the hirsute Swede found out that he had applied at the wrong agency and should have approached the Norwegian Tax Authority in the first place, reports the paper.

The Local/Rebecca Martin
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