Month: July 2020

Sweden’s 7th city at the meeting of 7 roads

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Sweden is rich with history and historical places. One such place is the city of Örebro. This city is built on the Black River that flows into the Lake Hjälmaren, in the southern third of this long, narrow country. From Stockholm, it takes about 2 hours in a car.

Örebro became an official town in the 1200’s but a settlement pre-dates this by a few hundred years. The name Örebro means ’bridge over a gravel bank’. ’Öre’ is a deviation of ‘eyrr’ which is a old Norse word for gravel bank. At this point, the Black river was shallow and it made sense to build a bridge, so that passers-by didn’t have to wade through the water to cross it.

The position of Örebro in time became very strategic and was a junction between 7 different ancient roadways. These roadways are still preserved today. Because of the usefulness of this geographic position, King Magnus Eriksson built a fortress in 1350 in an attempt to defend the site. Over time, this site has been involved in a great many conflicts and wars. In 1573, the fortress was then transformed into a magnificent Renaissance castle, similar to the one that we see today. The Castle of Örebro is one of the city’s most famous and recognisable landmarks and it certainly is a proud building towering up in the middle of the city. For more information about the castle, go to http://www.orebroslott.se

Today, the Örebro area has about 160,000 residents, making it Sweden’s 7th largest city.

If you, like me, are on a road trip in this area of the country, it is well worth a stop over.

Fun with flags – Sweden

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Anyone who’s watched ‘Big Bang Theory’ has seen character Sheldon Cooper’s banal video series ‘Fun with Flags’. Nerdy it might be, but it inspired me to do a Swedish version. So here goes…

The Swedish flag is a well-known yellow cross on a blue background. It is modelled on the Danish flag – the Dannebrogen – which is thought to be the oldest official flag in the world. The cross represents Christianity and forms the basis of all the Nordic flags. The Swedish flag was initiated in the early 1500’s and the yellow is said to represent gold and blue represent the sea. Sweden depicted itself as a wealthy sea-faring realm.

Within Sweden, there are 25 counties and each county has its official flag, some even have an unofficial but well-used flag. An example of this is the southern-most county of Skåne. The unofficial flag is the most commonly used. It depicts a yellow cross on a red background, a combination of Sweden and Denmark. The official flag has actually a red background and a coronated griffin.

Sweden’s islands of Gotland and Öland have their own flags. Gotland’s flag depicts a sheep and Öland’s flag depicts a deer. Öland also has a flag that is a yellow cross on a green background.

There are so many flags in Sweden. Counties, regions, cities, towns all have their own flag, it’s impossible to describe them all. So, as my final flag, I will reference one of my favourites. The Sami population of Arctic Sweden have their own flag. Firmly embedded in Sami mythology it is colourful and beautiful.

If you are interested in reading more about all the Swedish flags that exist, go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flags_of_Sweden for more information.

The Swedish sweet tooth

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Many Swedes have a sweet tooth and the average Swede consumes around 40kg of sugar per year. This is, however, far less than the average American who consumes around 70kg per year. In the UK, the figure is surprisingly lower at 32kg.

The Swedish sweet tooth is reflected in the supermarket shelves stacked with candy and cakes and the freezers bulging with ice cream. A very popular type of sweet in Sweden is something called ‘lösgodis’. These are individual unwrapped sweets that you can pick and mix with a small shovel into a paper bag.

The popularity of these types of pick and mix sweets is huge. In 2019, Swedes purchased candy from the leading brand Cloetta, for 1.6 billion crowns in the months of April-May alone.

However, corona has had its impact, as in most areas of life. The idea of eating exposed, individual, potentially-fingered and spat on candy has reduced in popularity. In the month of April this year, consumption dropped by 70%. In June, the drop was 40% compared to the year before.

So does this mean Swedes have stopped eating sweet stuff? Probably not. Individually-wrapped candy has increased in consumption, after an initial drop. Ice cream remains very popular. In fact, Sweden is the country in Europe that eats the most ice cream after Finland. In a normal year, Swedes consume 12 litres of ice cream per person. And baked goods also remain popular. During the early days of the pandemic, sweet yeast was totally sold out everywhere, suggesting that Swedes were at home hungrily baking cinnamon buns and other sweet delights.

So it seems that the Swedes are still getting their sugar fix even if the ‘lösgodis’ counter remains intact for a while longer.

A question to my Swedish readers. What is your favourite ‘lösgodis’? I have to admit mine is the fudge cube.

12 ways to describe Swedish money

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

I’ll never forget how I learned the Swedish word for money. New in Sweden, I went to see a performance of Cabaret at the National Theatre. The musical was in Swedish but I figured it would be ok as I knew the story line. It was fairly entertaining but, to be honest, a bit boring. Until the song ‘Money makes the world go round’ came on. In this song, there’s a line that goes ‘money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money’. The singers pranced around the stage and sang ‘pengar, pengar, pengar, pengar, pengar, pengar, pengar, pengar’. It was repeated so often that I never forgot the word ‘pengar’ ever again.

However ‘pengar’ is just the formal word for money in Swedish. Like the US has its ‘buck’ and the UK has its ‘quid’, Swedish also has a lot of colloquial words for the Swedish krona (crown). Here are some examples:

Deg – dough – possibly related to putting food on the table in olden days

Lax – literally a salmon – meaning a thousand crowns. In the early 1900’s, the 1000 crown bill was pink.

Röding – literally a char – meaning 500 crowns

Selma – an old word for 20 crowns. The name is taken from the portrait of author Selma Lagerlöf on the 20 crown note.

Pix – meaning crowns

Kosing – cash

Stålar – cash – refers to steel/metal that coins are made of

Kova – cash. The expression ‘kova raha’ was on 1700’s money. This is Finnish for ‘hard money’.

Pluring – cash. Possibly related to the Latin ‘plures’ meaning many. The word ‘pluring’ was originally used to refer to large amounts of money.

Bagis – a crown. From an older word ‘bagare’ which means baker. Referring probably to the original silver coins that were as white as flour.

Spänn – a crown. Probably borrowed from German ‘späne’ which is slang for money, or English ‘spend’.

Flis – money. Flis also means small wood chips, so it may have originated in Swedish to mean small values of money.

I’m sure there are a lot more words! Please feel free to add them here!

Sweden! Knull is coming!

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Marvel Comics recently released an advert for an upcoming event with the slogan ‘Knull is coming!’ The headline has caused raised eyebrows, and curiosity, in Sweden.

Knull is apparently a super villain in the Marvel universe. Knull is an all-powerful creature that kills other gods. He is immortal and self-healing. His name should imbue fear and dread. The problem is in Sweden, it is more likely to inspire ridicule.

The thing is that the word ‘Knull’ in Swedish means ‘fuck’.

So, ‘Knull is coming’ has a whole different meaning to the Swedes than the rest of the world.

I wonder who’s going to tell Marvel? Or maybe they already know – and don’t give a knull.

A surprising Swedish statistic

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

In Sweden, there is a population of ten million, with two million residing in the greater Stockholm region. Of the overall population, around half of the citizens live in flats.

In a recent survey of flat dwellers in Stockholm, 80% said that they don’t know the name of any of their neighbours. That figure is surprisingly high. I have lived in my flat since October and I can rattle off the first names of at least five of the neighbours. 80% surprises me. And I wonder if this is typically Swedish? If you asked the same question in London or New York or Madrid would you get the same result?

One aspect that might affect this lack of neighbourly knowledge is the type of flat that people live in.

In Sweden, flats are typically either rental flats or resident-owned flats.

Resident-owned flats. When you buy a flat in Sweden, you also buy a percentage of the building which you own together with your neighbours. In these resident-owned flats, the building is run as a private cooperative, governed by an elected tenant board. This means that you are forced to work together with your neighbours to operate and maintain the building. For example, once a year there is a ‘shareholder annual meeting’ and twice a year there might be clean-up parties for the communal spaces. This means you meet and interact with your neighbours. In Sweden, resident-owned flats make up about 21% of the total housing stock.

Rental flats. In rental accommodation, a private company owns the building and takes care of all the communal areas such as gardens, laundry room and stairwells. This means tenants in theory have to never interact with their neighbours. Rental accommodation is about 28% of the total housing stock.

Finding a flat is extremely difficult in Sweden’s cities. To buy is expensive and waiting lists for rentals can be over 10 years. This creates another market for ‘second hand’ rental, where people sub-let their apartments out to others. This creates even further anonymity as the renter is often only there for short periods. In this case, there is probably no necessity to get to know the neighbours. In research from Sweden’s Ministry of Housing, an estimated 200,000 people live in this form of housing in Stockholm.

So, on reflection, maybe it isn’t so unexpected that 80% say they do not know the name of a neighbour in their building.

Statistics aside, one can wonder what impact this has on local communities and Swedish society as a whole. While this encourages the Swedish qualities of privacy, respect and integrity, it surely also contributes to loneliness, unfriendliness and alienation?

Sources: HSB, The Local, SCB, Boverket