Swedes walk on the wrong side and there’s nothing wild about it. Ambulatory Swedes and their rail traffic follow antiquity in motion on the wrong side of the tracks. Not the expression but the literal wrong side of the tracks. Rail traffic and pedestrians scurrying along underground passages beneath Stockholm’s Central Station follow left-hand traffic. You know, like how they drive in Britain.
Now before all you subjects of Her Majesty get in a huff and take us back to the knights mounting steeds with long, sheathed swords to defend your stalwart determination to stick to what you know (heck, we Americans flat out refuse to let go of the Imperial system that you guys have all but abandoned by the wayside) let me point out that Swedish road traffic crossed over from left to right in 1967.
1967:The moment left-hand traffic went right in Stockholm. Most famous picture of Kungsgatan
Today, 16 years after my move to Sweden and 42 years after road traffic changed sides, the course of people heading to and from trains under Stockholm’s Central Station, the directional traffic is left-handed. I can sympathize that rail traffic infrastructure is more difficult to reroute and relatively irrelevant, but why do people still carry on the anomaly? And to date, I’ve only truly witnessed it at the Central Station, so why there?
Some habits die hard. I still follow right-hand traffic under there. Fewer people to dodge.
And the ones I do, I meet head on.
Tags: central station, left-hand traffic, right-hand traffic, stockholm
It is performance art. This behaviour exists for its own sake.
I mean, why do motorists in Boston pull out into oncoming traffic and pretend that they don’t see you coming? Why do they change lanes without eye contact?
Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Why did the chicken cross the road?
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?
It is inscrutable.
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Now Gus. Don’t get me going on driving communication comparisons between Stockholmers and Bostonians.
The birds appear because the bats are in your belfry. It’s well known why the chicken crossed the road and the reason you can’t fly beyond the rainbow is because you’re terrified of flying. If you weren’t you’d try a skydive.
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This reminds me: centralstation is the only place in Sweden, as far as I know, where one can catch a direct train to Chako Paul.
It is not well marked, naturally. I think that it just says Pippa Linjen. Look for the long line of tourist gentlemen.
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Skydiving, or driving in Boston. Which do I fear more? It’s close.
Hey, are you all morose about your lads’ quick exit from the American League playoffs? Time to get your boy Ortiz back on the roids.
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Quick refocusing effort:
Baseball, like so many things, was actually invented in Jamtland. Except in our game we wore skis and were pulled from base to base by reindeer.
And driving on the Left also originated in Jamtland, so it has been hard for us to give it up. When I was a boy, milk was still delivered by horsedrawn wagon. The driver needed to hold the reins in the right hand, which meant that he had to use the left hand to pluck up the metal milk containers from the wooden milk delivery platforms that we had along the side of the road. This worked best if the driver of the milkwagon, or milksleigh, was on the left hand side of the path.
Which then, in turn, reminds me that when we were young, we were taught to never fall asleep under the milk platforms, lest we be exchanged by jättar for a changeling child. Because that kind of sh!te went on all the time in rural Jamtland. Probably still does in some places.
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I am glad someone finally mentioned the “walking” situation in Stockholm, because I am made irrate daily by it (and no, it’s not just in the Central station). I cannot understand, for the life of me, why people cannot WALK correctly on the right side of the sidewalk. These are not just older folks who may still be confused about the changeover, but younger people who lack an awareness of anything but themselves and walk straight into you. It’s gotten to the point that literally want to scream at people, but instead I practise “offensive walking,” like offensive driving.
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@Ladyluck
I know how frustrating it can be when public behavior doesn’t match what you’re familiar with. It’s only natural. But there really are a lot of signals communicated between Swedes hurrying past one another on a crowded sidewalk, but the signals are subtle and difficult to interpret.
It took me a few years to start picking up the signals. Some stuff still drives me bonkers, since it’s not the way I would do it. But I think coming from Boston helps in Stockholm. A lot of Americans don’t understand the way we Bostonians drive, but to us, it makes total sense.
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Hej,
Why people “still carry on the anomaly?”. You also wonder why you’ve “only truly witnessed it at the Central Station, so why there?”.
Well, I had also noticed it and came up with an explanation. I am sorry but is simpler than your especulation.
The side people use to reach the tunnelbanna (coming from outside, or from the rail station) is the closest to the entrances. Getting the “right” side when you are late for work is just a detail none cares (nor I do). So people coming out from the metro have no option but side on their left -which is, by the way, also easier to get if you use the green line.
I guess the station was built and designed before 1967. I put 10,000SEK on it.
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@Jorge. I’m not sure I follow your explanation. Regardless I can only think that entrances are also exists and people’s flow of movement isn’t so predictable since the feeds in and out are are two-way.
You’d win big on your bet since yes the station and the underground passageway both predate 1967
@Gus. Were there a lot of fatal milk-delivery accidents by left-handed sleigh drivers? How did they play the original baseball?
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In the Old Days, it was known that left-handed people were either the spawn of the devil, or at the very least, changeling children left in place of human children by nasty trolls.
So they were shunned, and certainly not allowed to deliver milk. Who would want milk that was delivered by changeling satan spawn?
And our version of baseball worked as follows:
The name comes from our word “basläger”, which is what lumbermen would call their camps when they went into the forest to cut timber.
These men would come into town on Friday nights, looking to have a good time. They would, invariably, consume large amounts of alcohol and become rowdy. Sooner or later, bad behaviour would occur, often with fallen women, and conflicts would ensue. These confrontations would usually end with the lumbermen being chased out of town by angry townspeople, who would throw rocks and other objects at them, and chase them with large wooden cudgels. So the objective became for the lumbermen to make it safely back to the basläger before being knocked out by the angry mob.
At some point, the locals began keeping score of how many timbermen they caught on any given weekend, and from that point the sport developed into the game we know and love today.
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There is a very simple reason why people walk on the left, you are SUPPOSED to walk on the left.
You drive on the right
You Cycle on the right
But you walk on the left!
This is because accidents are less likely to happen when cyclists on the right are facing the people walking on the left. This is what I was taught in school (in Sweden) some 20 years ago, and I’m sure they still teach little kids to walk on the left…
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@Thomas. Thanks for your input, and something to consider. However, I think what you were taught relates to walking on a road with car traffic. The idea for safety is that you can see oncoming car traffic while walking. The place being referred to is a pedestrian-only tunnel leading between the pendeltåg to the tunnelbana at Centralen.
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