Swedo-Hibernian Parallels

It's a little-known fact that Sweden and Ireland enjoyed (if that's the right word) until quite recently, remarkably similar versions of an aspect of popular culture seminally (and that probably is the right word) involved with rural courtship rituals and, ultimately, the diversification of the national gene pool in recent modern history.

Dansbands and Showbands. These parallel phenomenons both involved the travelling of large distances by rural populations, particularly young adults of romantic and/or sexual proclivity, to attend entertainments provided by groups of musical artistes inexplicably similar in styles of dress, combination of instruments and conventions of rhythm, tempo, characteristic genre and vocal rendition (the inspirations being 60s light entertainment dancebands and Country & Western).

The venue for these events was the church or village hall, or more typically in the remote areas where the ritual had most significance, a more rudimentary structure of unique application:

in Sweden the dansbana, an outdoor wooden dancefloor and stage with a shed-like bar and snack kiosk,

in Ireland the dance hall, an adapted barn or rudimentary and hastily-constructed breeze-block and board shed, or sometimes a marquee. 

The Swedish incarnation has the edge in the stage costume department, the Irish in closeness of vocal and musical authenticity to the American sources of origin.

Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Wexford and Limerick are, of course, Viking cities, but we don't see any mobile musical genre cum rural marriage bureau phenomenon of the type of the Dans- or Showband in the former territories of the Danelaw east of the river Lea in London. 

(But, while there is no indigenous culture of peripatetic transatlantic musical schlock  and awe, this might go some way to explaining the unusual enthusiasm for Line Dancing in Essex.