February 13, 2012
Raised in Boston, remade in Sweden
So who says Swedes are cold, unfriendly and unkind? Well, you’re wrong if you do.
I know that for those who understand they’re not, I’m preaching to the choir. But for those of you screaming, “Hell yeah, I do,” I’ll never convince you otherwise…so the following little anecdote might be just another a feel-good story for the attentive choir.
Christmas feel-good stories are always in season, so bah humbug to the rest of you 
Bengt, a friend in a remote suburb of Stockholm, was desperately looking for a Santa suit for his son. On Monday and Tuesday most schools will celebrate Lucia, a celebration of light during the dark days of December. Children dress up as little santas, gingerbread men and tiny Lucia characters.
He had tried all the usual places and everything was sold out. So he put out the call on Facebook. (He did get an offer from some American friends to lend him one but the commute was a bit of a hassle.)
In the end, by phone, Bengt found ONE suit in the right size in a shop even further away from Stockholm. So he asked the salesman if he could put the suit on hold. The man offered to help out one (maybe several) better.
He BOUGHT the suit with his own money and drove it to Bengt’s house saying that it was on his way home anyway (although in truth it was a 20-minute detour.) Bengt gratefully both rounded up very generously but also threw in a bottle of glögg (seasonal, Swedish mulled wine) all the while thanking him.
The man tried hard to refuse the wine and after reluctantly accepting it parted saying “Thank YOU for letting me do you this act of kindness.”
So many think I’m crazy when insist that Swedes are kind and generous. But they are. They really are.
Yarn anarchists will never unravel any society, but they do put a bit of cozy into urban graffiti. Popularly known as yarn bombing it’s wrapped its way around pipes, poles and limbs of Stockholm.
Here’s today’s sighting on St. Eriksgatan taken by a good friend.
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Dressing up Stockholm is far from new. The most celebrated street art influences is to dress up Järnpojken, the Iron Boy. The first time I saw him in Gamla Stan (Old Town) he had on a little scarf like in this picture.
He’s also known at “the boy who is looking at the moon” and is said to be Stockholm’s smallest statue. A work by the artist Liss Eriksson, it was erected in 1967.
Unfortunately there is still much of the traditional tag graffiti littering Stockholm, but perhaps a soft approach to street art can positively influence the taggers.
I wonder if these Swedish grannies in this story would ever yarn bomb a drainpipe. At least some penguins are going to be styling some Swedish design.
The Swedish Skycat aerobatic team are currently performing in China. They are getting a fair amount of attention. Firstly, in addition to the pilot, there are two Swedish women dressed in catsuits who wing walk while a biplane does loops and barrel rolls.
I don’t think there’s a need for a secondly (Did I mentions that they are young female Swedes dressed up in catsuits walking on the wings of an airplane? In flight. Looping and rolling?)
Chinese TV interviewed the two Swedish wingwalkers link to CCTV footage. (The interview is in English, the rest, Chinese.)
I don’t know if it’s common camera handling or the cameraman just likes the up-and-down-the-body of the Swedish purty-cats.
You can follow their blog updates here. (though I understand they have some Internet availability issues…updates certainly to come soon.)
Aftonbladet published this piece on them (in Swedish.)
Go Hella and Elin
Personally, I love mushrooms but my Swedish husband hates them.
In his own words, “You can’t find a menu in Stockholm these days that aren’t contaminated by mushrooms”. He was out to dinner with his company last night at Rolf’s Kök and 2 of the 3 dishes had mushrooms in them. He’s a good sport and gets by picking them out. (Though he’s not really impressed that for a party of 8+ you have to preorder your menu and everyone has to eat the exact same dishes –another entry, another day.)
It’s also tough for the hubby as his family are mushroom fans. I am pretty sure my mother-in-law suffers from some sort of mushroom-picking disorder. Literally, she is out every day roaming the nearby forest and gathering basket-loads of mushrooms (mostly trattkantarell or funnel chanterelles in English.) She told me that today she only stopped when she physically couldn’t carry more. Her neighbors love her as she gives most of them away (she knows mushrooms are forbidden in her son’s home –not fair really.)
My own harvest (though dutifully turned over to my MIL)
This evening at a parent-teacher meeting, our 7-year old’s teacher filled us in on the latest project the kids have been working on. Yep, you guessed it…mushrooms. They designed them, drew them, used them for counting, learned about them and read stories about them.
The look the husband gave me was of despair as if being outnumbered, outgunned and defeated.
“It’s brainwashing” he muttered.
Perhaps it is. Swedes love their mushrooms (and no, not the funny ones;-)
My list of nevers include a growing number of events which have evolved to “did that, seen that and doing it again tomorrow”.
The trampoline (or known in our home as the ‘jumpoline’, coined of childish Swenglish) was a former “never” and current “got that”. The jumpoline takes up a prime location on the front lawn. Though, I feel modest comfort knowing, we’re not alone.
Views of greater from Google Earth demonstrate that there are a great number of circular objects adorning the grass gardens of many a plot of greater Stockholm.
Which is why finding this ad up at the Karlberg station tickled me.
Loosely translated: “Garden sculpture: The most common ornament of Stockholm outside the city center of the 2000s.” “The new DN, with its eyes on Stockholm.”
I must review the remaining nevers on my list.
The American Club of Sweden just held its first of a series of Intercultural forums. This evening’s topic was “America, Sweden and Violent Extremism.”
It was a very interesting panel (the link above lists the participants) and a great number of interesting elements around how to prevent the existence, rise and spread violent extremism (right, left and Islamic) in our societies (both the US and Sweden). Without trying to summarize the panelists’ viewpoint, one common point of agreement they all shared was the importance of the open dialog.
During the Q&A follow up, an audience member opened up what became an opinion floodgate. He pointed out that open dialog requires that the speaker can say whatever is on her mind without fear of retribution. He reminded us all that in Sweden, Swedish anti-hate laws (hets mot folkgrupp) curtail the individual’s opportunity to, and he pardoned his language, “be an asshole in public.” In less colorful words, it’s against Swedish law to express hateful opinions about specific groupings of people.
It triggered a flurry of eager participation to join a collective dialog (ironically).
The event was unfortunately limited in time so the discussions perhaps didn’t satisfy many people’s interest in the contradiction of Sweden’s strong belief in opening a dialog to prevent the rise of violent extremism while simultaneously restricting the same extent of free speech extended to citizens of the US.
Many people thanked the audience member who highlighted the contradiction to which he replied “I never imagined I would ever receive so much praise for saying that people should be allowed to be more racist.”
It’s not exactly what he meant, but it is one way to boil it down.
There’s a difference between hate speech intended to incite violence and expression of hate in its ugliest form. Sweden needs very seriously to review its current laws restricting expression of opinions even when they are disgustingly racist or hateful. It is only when we are allowed a dialog can we refute and hopefully, persuade.
You can’t open a dialog if you won’t let people speak.
When I first got to Stockholm each of the kind friends who gave me “tours” of the city called the five buildings at Hötorget “skyscrapers.” They’re 19 stories and 72 meters/235ft tall. (The high rise dormitories at UMass Amherst are taller.)
In other words, there’s not much height to the Stockholm skyline.
But that’s changing. Well, a bit. There’s still nothing really scraping the Stockholm sky but a few towers have risen above its lush treeline.
With height of buildings, and more importantly, building sites and respective cranes, come BASE jumpers. (BASE stands for building, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs)).
Early this month a BASE jumper was charged for trespassing at the still erect building crane polishing off the newly completed Scandic Victoria Tower. The new hotel in Kista is 117m and 34 stories tall. 
(article in Swedish including video footage of the actual jump here)
The new tower is only the 4th of the total structures over 100m in Sweden today. (Any structure over 100m makes for BASE potential.) The tallest is Malmö’s Turning Torso 190m followed by Kaknäs Tower, 155m (Gärdet, Stockholm) and Kista Science Center 117m.
It’s still not illegal to BASE off of any structure in Sweden yet. As a fellow skydiver who is also a BASE jumper put it, “We only want to borrow altitude”.
Looking up Boston’s tallest structures out of curiosity, it seems Boston has altitude to spare. To date there are 27 structures in Boston over 400ft (120m).
It’s still a bit early to say that Stockholm has skyscrapers. But they will come and they will lend altitude.
Edit: Add on photo. Here is a picture of one of the 30-40 active BASE jumpers of Sweden (not the one charged in the above story.) He’s currently in Kuala Lumpur and has just jumped off a tall building there. He just posted this picture on Facebook. I think he’s having fun.
Nine bucks. That’s what my first pint of beer cost me during the summer of 1992.
A popular CNN article, “What’s wrong with Stockholm“, spreading fast via social media, paints a wonderful view of Stockholm. According to its author the only downside was an expensive and pathetic martini.
It’s nice to read about a first experience account of this glorious city which includes generosity and hospitality by Stockholmers (fondly nicknamed The Viking and The Joker).
My first evening in Stockholm that June of 1992 also involved kind and welcoming Stockholmers. A group of them I met in Ivar Lo Park on the heights of Söder (while watching the balloons hover over
Riddarfjärden took me under their wings and invited me along to the Black and Brown
just down the hill.
The Black and Brown is still a lovely place for a pint (still around nine bucks, a bargain if you consider inflation). The US dollar was crap that summer (only 5.5kr/USD and later during my return in August it dropped to 5.0).
I nearly choked on the $9 price tag of that beer. But I was grateful they took credit cards.
That evening transpired into the first day of the rest of my life in Stockholm. CNN is right; life in Stockholm is pretty great.
Stockholmers like playing with balls. Particularly bocce or boules balls in combination with a bar and some friends on a late summer’s eve.
A favorite combo of boules and bar drinks is Boulebar. While at the location at Rållis (aka Rålambsholvs Park) and a few bar beverages into the game I giggled at the toilet signs.
The image led to a humorous discussion. I’ll leave it to you own imaginations to interpret and discuss.
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