There are countries in the world that are so quietly remote and untouched by the pervasive, insidious influences of the World Wide Web, Twitter, Big Brother, Rupert Murdoch and other such modern cancers, that they have managed to maintain a unique and protected national image as yet untouched by those two great heritage levellers, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Australia was once Australian I am sure, not that I ever saw it. Today due in part to our shared Anglophonic heritage, the Great Southern Land is more of a hotter, arachnid infested version of the US and most of South East Asia is more enthusiastic about football and specifically Beckham than anyone anywhere even remotely near Manchester. In the New World, being eponymously new to the whole Known and Identifiable Country thing has led to a kind of blended culture that has left us generally undifferentiated the one from the other.
Other places, places perched upon the far far away reaches of the globe, places where they speak crazy languages and places that are too bloody cold to bother spending lots of time in have been lucky enough to keep their National Identity alive and well.
Places like Sweden.
Carl's House
I’ve been lucky enough to visit the great Viking Territory belonging to the sexy, senior, Seanconnery-ish King Carl several times and even luckier to be accompanied by locals who know where all the good bits are. Even so, I have come to the conclusion that Sweden is simply an ancient Viking word that translates today into something along the lines of “keeping stuff organised”.
It starts at the airport.
Reflect on the most recent time you were obliged to wait beside the conveyor belt for your baggage. If you’ve been blessed enough to have that experience at Paris CDG you would know that it is sheer unadulterated chaos. Small, sweaty, snotty children climb along the baggage train like stray cats spreading their germs across your matching luggage. A little old woman frailer and older than your great-grandmother is behind you doing her very best to jam her trolley into your rectum. Businessmen feign spontaneous deafness as you plead for them to move out of the way; they shouting into their Blackberries and swinging the world’s most oversized genital-substitute briefcases from their shoulders, you watching your little wheelie-case sail sadly just beyond the reaches of your outstretched arms. Basically, baggage collection anywhere is something like Orwell’s Animal Farm and in Paris-CDG is just a notch above Planet of the Apes.
In Arlanda, baggage collection looks like this.
Walk the line...
Only in Sweden could you draw a yellow line in front of the luggage belts, a yellow line to keep little fingers away from moving luggage, a yellow line behind which every single person stands, patiently waiting for the appearance of their Bjorn Borg Bag at which point they will step forward, collect their bag and wheel it away along the space left conveniently between the yellow line and the belt.
Baggage Collection Organised. Check
My experience of the Swedes is that they are proud of their Social/Capital economy that keeps everyone in excellent health, excellent education and unparalleled wealth. I understand that they are required to pay significant income tax. I pay tax in France too. I’ve actually paid income tax in about 10 different countries but none of them have a public transport system like Stockholm. None of them have the same quality of free public university education that Sweden has. None of them are so effing good looking either. Irrelevant you say? Surely we all look so bloody haggard by comparison to the bucolic beauties of the berg because we are all so angry and annoyed that the Metro is not air-conditioned, overcrowded and late, again.
Welfare Economy Organised. Check.
Stockholm Harbour and the Ivory Tower from whence they give out their Nobels
Unless you live in a remote igloo on the other side of the Scandes in the comparatively rustic ghetto of a place that is Norway, you know that IKEA is from Sweden. IKEA, make more money than King Carl because they haven’t settled for selling boring old pedestrian furniture like chairs, tables, beds and couches. They sell objects that you screw into a wall that keep all of your other objects organised and arranged in Swedish serenity. Objects like a Buutte to hold your shoes, a Bookke to hold your magazines and a Plugge to roll up your power cords.
The question has to be asked, where on earth did we put our stuff in those chaotic dark ages before a 17-year-old Swedish youth invented IKEA in 1943? Where did you put your ties before you had a dedicated hanger-y thing that grouped them neatly in the cupboard? Where did children store their toys before they had a springy basket with teddy bear hands and a tail to throw them in? Where the hell did anyone go on a Sunday before we could pack everyone into the Volvo (which is essentially a steel frame that keeps your family organised while you move from point A to point B) and drop the kids into the ball filled playroom and eat meatballs to relax your nerves before you part with 75% of your annual salary for a shelving system that folds out to become your bed, your wardrobe, your kitchen table and an emergency bomb shelter?
Answer, the world was quite simply bloody unorganised.
Everyone’s Stuff Organised. Check.
Very Organised - viking graves all in a row
If you are a music fan, you perhaps tap your feet to the random beats and syncopated bop of jazz. It could be that you air guitar your way through the passionate shouting and screaming of rock or metal. You might just like to wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care. Not in Sweden. They even got their music organised.
ABBA, the pop group so well organised they managed to find to blokes whose names started with B (Benny and Bjorn) and two chicks whose names started with A (Anni-Frid and Agnetha) who were themselves all so organised they were even married to each other. They had matching sequinned spandex jumpsuits, and wrote basically one song. They took that one song and gave it 100 different lyrics and released it as over 20 different albums, taking the post-Vietnam the world by storm and leaving gay men a soundtrack for their martini parties forever after.
When the marriages broke down and the jumpsuits did not match anymore, their tight little organisation fell apart and the band broke up. Their legacy, Swedish Pop Music, has hurtled such successes up the charts as the matching haircut duo Roxette, the matching two-brown-boys-two-blonde-girls group Ace of Bass and the oh so organised that all of her albums have the same name Body Talk, Robyn.
Pop Music Organised. Check.
Swedish Grave of Swedish Count who was the Undoing of Marie Antoinette
So there is one exception; Stieg Larsson’s posthumous Millennium Series.
Three novels and subsequently three films in Swedish, soon to be followed by a further three movies in English for those that are too lazy to read subtitles, are indeed a far cry from the Flickke and Pikkture organisation associated with most other famous Swedish artistic identities. Maybe that is why Steig’s death and the subsequent tabloid festival of disorganisation surrounding his personal affairs have become more famous than little Lisbeth and her Dragon Tattoo.
I’ll keep you posted after my next adventure, Kkrisssmaas in Sweden.
God Jul.
* Unlike the songs that I usually choose as titles, the title for this one is completely irrelevant, it just so happens to be my favourite ABBA song.
Thoroughly enjoy reading your musings. Makes it bearable having to listen to Play School in the background. They are currently singing "Turn the Beat Around". I'm serious.
Posted by: Jo | 10/17/2011 at 12:57 AM
Great blog Marisa ! I can empathise with waiting at the line as I have suggested such a system for decades.
Please visit more countries !
Posted by: Tony Bryan | 10/17/2011 at 02:07 AM