What makes Sweden Sweden?

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What makes Sweden Sweden?

Hacon (and a bit of Steve) reflects on those quirky traits we discovered…

 

o   Really rubbish mini golf almost everywhere

o   Swedes love their lawns. Perfectly mowed, trimmed, and raked of any clippings.

o   Golf courses are loved (possibly linked to the immaculate lawns) so much they’re in nature reserves (eg Nacka nature reserve – which permits trucks to drive in nearly every day to deliver food and packages and often fills the reserve with the sound of lawn mowing)

o   Herring!  In a household one person will love it and the other hate it

o   Conflict avoidance: a Swede will still be nice to you if they don’t like you

§  Passive aggressive? Maybe this is why they are neutral for almost 300 years

§  "Tiga ut nagon" This roughly translates as "giving the silent treatment."

o   If a Swede really doesn’t want to speak to you, they will say:

 “My sincerest apologies, but I do not speak a word of English”

o   Flies crawling on your food is usually fine, but wasps are the devil incarnate and must be feared to the most extreme extent capable of expressing

o   Swedes love a special form of queuing called nummerlap (take a ticket with a number on and wait)

o   Drinking on a weekday makes you an alcoholic

o   Swedes love “the nature”

o   Sweden is no longer the homogenous society I thought they were

o   Some women don’t like me to hold doors for them

o   Swedes usually carry alcohol in little purple bags

o   Swedes either don’t know how good they’ve got it (why are you studying us?!) or are secretly devilishly proud of what they’ve got and don’t want to share it.

“Trust starts with ourselves”- Kaj Torok, Interview 9

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Kaj works at The Natural Step for social sustainability.  His expertise is in the area of social trust.  The trust between individuals and the trust between the individual and the state are common themes when talking about societies which value equality.  We were fascinated by Kaj and his ideas on what is required in trusting societies.  He suggests some specific measures that unequal societies without the culture of “Jantelagen” can take to gain trust.  Kaj also makes it clear that trust is not something that we can demand, it is something that you have to be worthy of: in order to create trust, you must behave in a way that allows others to trust you.

Stay tuned for the final interview with the author of “Is the Swede Human?”

Can you be an individual?

“On my way I have struggled to find/a way of life that is common to all.” Midlake.

We’ve had people admitting to us some of the downsides of living in Sweden recently, and about time too. Young people have told us that it’s a bit boring here, a bit safe, that the stereotype is true: people don’t really talk to each other in the street. What’s more, they say, did we know that 46% of households are single-person, living alone? [And of course, there’s that curiously high suicide rate... ] Ed: See comments below for clarification.

We’ve been introduced to the concept of “Jantelagen”. Created by the author Aksel Sandemose in his novel “A fugitive crosses his tracks” (1933) it describes a Scandinavian collective behaviour which discourages people from standing out, from boasting about being different. For a basic explanation, see here.

Young people don’t like it, and people from across the political spectrum have told us they don’t think it is a positive thing. The key question really is if it’s possible to have a society in which the people support policies to promote equality, without having a culture similar to Jantelagen. I don’t think Jantelagen is something we want in the UK! We need to find our own cultural way of rewarding talent without aggressively promoting individualism where it harms people themselves or others around them.

We’ve also had some interesting insights into ‘freedom’. I’ve realised that the UK’s definition of freedom is quite narrow. Essentially we are free if we can, as Professor Tragardh told us, “maximise our disposable income”, and enjoy the freedoms of living in a democracy and all that entails. And yet, we constrain women through the traditional gender roles we’ve inherited from the church and the institution of marriage, we owe a lot to our families and many see this as a restriction on their freedom, we have more CCTV cameras watching us than China (and Sweden)!

Swedes concept of freedom is potentially a bit different. Back in the 1950’s, Sweden was the country of the housewife, just like in the UK. But changes to the tax system in the 1960’s/1970’s taxed people individually, not by household. This combined with other measures to promote gender equality, emancipated women significantly from traditional gender inequalities often cemented in marriage. Co-habiting couples in Sweden enjoy pretty much the same rights as married ones, as do gay couples- again more freedom for people. And of course, university is free, which frees choices at a young age.

Most importantly: in the UK we have some of the lowest social mobility in Europe: i.e. if you’re born poor you are more likely to stay poor. Surely, the shackles of unfreedom ring out here more than in any other walk of life. And yet the stereotype is of free Britain, and unfree Sweden.

So one person’s freedom is not necessarily the same as another’s: Swedes are not free to get rich quick, or to brag about success. But they are freed from many of the unequal structures and traditions that hold back many people in the UK. And at a macro level, this doesn’t appear to harm economic performance: they’ve just overtaken the USA to become the 2nd most competitive economy in the World.

Steve

A Day in the Life of Camp Equality

As we look out on a new countries skyline- we’re in Copenhagen- we bring you A Day in the Life. Filmed over one day, it’s your very own unique insight into life in Camp Equality; where everyone shares the chores, food is distributed 50-50, and it doesn’t matter if you are a girl or or a boy.

Don’t forget, we’ll be blogging three more interviews, and our final thoughts and highlights of the trip, until Thursday 24th September. After that, we’ll be giving periodic updates on the progress of editing our documentary film, plus some really really interesting news stories about inequality in the UK.

It will be low volume, but your sure fire way to make sure you know when “Camp Equality: the movie” comes out (it won’t be called that, don’t worry). So sign up and get your friends to as well.

Steve

“Paternity rights make a better society”- Interview 8- Cecilia

Cecilia works for the Swedish Scout and Guide Council, volunteers with
the Liberal Party, and has an active interest in gender equality
issues. 

As Cecilia makes clear, Sweden is further ahead than many countries in
terms of allowing women equal rights to men, not through some
long-term cultural tradition but through specific political decisions
made in recent times. Foremost for Cecilia is paternity rights for
fathers- allowing men to share looking after the children at a young
age. 

In the UK, where is the movement for fathers to have equal rights to
raising the child? All we seem to have is fathers for justice, who are
sidelined because of their stunts and antics. There is no mainstream
voice calling for father’s rights, and if men do want the opportunity
more, they are not saying it out loud. 

In terms of a lesson we can learn from Sweden, this is a bit of a
no-brainer for me. Extend paternity rights, and see both women and men
benefit.

Is it too late for us?

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Our investigation has taken a turn towards trust.

 

Trust is a critical issue when creating more equal societies.  For example, high trust means low crime (or maybe low crime means high trust).  Having spoken to experts on social trust and its roots, it became clear that trust came from the culture of a society: the way people treat each other, and the environment they grow in.

 

It seems impossible and to be honest undesirable to copy another culture, so we are all doomed.

 

Or are we?  The question arises, what can one do to generate a trusting culture?  I was perplexed at the idea of changing a culture, seemingly so closely linked to the organic development of culture through history and tradition.  Without changing history it seems improbable that the way we treat each other could be rapidly altered.

 

Creating legislation can be an option to instantaneously force a society to act differently.  For example, the one child policy in China reversed the culture of large families.  However, this was enforced through undesirable methods.  In Sweden, the laws on paternity are moving the country towards equal rights for fathers over the next 10-15 years.

 

Perhaps we are beyond hope but the future is not?  We can plant the ideas for the next generation through politics and education.  In a democratic society, the people are free to choose what kind of society they would like to live in.  I mentioned before that to change things from a base level, we must look to education.  But before we educate the young, we must first agree what it is we want to teach them.

 

Since the writing of this blog, we have interviewed a history professor called Lars Trägårdh, who has lived the past 40 years both in Sweden and the US.  As a result my perspective is changing.  Look out for his interview soon!

Hacon

“The first time I saw poverty” Interview 7: Katherina

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Erik and Katherina emailed us out of the blue.  They had spotted the article in Svenska Dag Bladet on us and Erik said he thought what we were doing would have been something he could have seen himself doing at our age!
Living in a modern development in Karlstad, they were generous beyond words, helping us out in every way to continue our journey and filming.
Here’s Katherina, a local school teacher.  She tells about her first experience of poverty and how she sees the young people she teaches.