Passionately-held opinions do not match my definition of small talk, but there are sufficient remaining counterfactuals that there is still humor in this remark, and the /s should stand.

To some extent, 'what do you want' at the coffee shop without any small talk around is essentially being very blunt.

This would match Linus, no?

And extremely professional. So maybe Linus...

Linus is a Swedish-Finn. Don’t know if that explains anything.

He is still a Finnish native who was born/lives in Finland but speaks Swedish as their native language. So he did grew up in the Finnish cultural environment

Most Scandinavian folk I know are quite direct, Finns are direct++ :)

Finns are not Scandinavians though. I think you mean Nordic people.

That's not what I said, but I could have spelled it out. Maybe I should have said...

Most Scandinavians I know are direct, and out of all the Nordic people, the Finns are direct ++.

But I still stand by what I said.

You probably thought I was poor at geography, which is a fair assumption since this is quite the US-centric site. ;-)

Isn't it the opposite?

"as all I’ve heard is that he’s very reserved."

Just ask his opinion on C++ and the ice will not just be broken - it will turn into a volcano.