This month an eggcup of Swedish sweetmeats…
Brave New Sweden
Sweden is a kind of heaven, but I’d rather live in a kind of hell, which I do.
The general psychic tone of Sweden is a mixture of otherwordliness, bonhomie and stifling blandness, a menacing comfort. They have their social problems, and are right to complain about them, but coming from England the difference is stark. There are no shitholes in Stockholm, nothing is squalid, nobody is really poor (certainly very few locals), nobody really suffers, materially I mean, and everything functions.1 Everyone is nice, and normal, and polite. A kind of psychic padding, a layer of comforting ethical fat, lies over the souls of the friendly, healthy, pacifistic Swedes. There are few fiery bellies, few sharp edges, and few surprising passions. Kindness rules, the kindness of the tranquillised. But underneath it all, as with every smothered heart, something wicked broods.
I do not want to upset the good people I met in Sweden, because they were all so nice to me. I came in raining fire and they were somewhat alarmed, even a little afraid… but not as afraid as I was! And I wasn’t the first. Here’s Lou Reed; ‘I get scared in Sweden. You know, it’s kind of empty… everything works. You go to the medicine cabinet and open it up and there’ll be a little poster saying “in case of suicide call…” You turn on the teevee there’s an ear operation. These things scare me.’ The Stranglers, equally disturbed, sang of Sweden; ‘Fluctuations at a minimum… sense of humour’s gone astray somewhere. Too much time to think, too little to do.’ The Divine Comedy characterised the whole country as a sinister old people’s home (‘I am gonna live in Sweden, Please don’t ask me why, For if I were to give a reason, It would be a lie’), and Lars von Trier, who happily accepts the title of ‘antichrist’, manages, in all three series of The Kingdom, to find the soulless Swedes even more diabolic.
From whence this pale horror? I would suggest that it is because Sweden is close to being the most middle-class country on earth, which explains much of its character, or lack thereof. It’s the most atheist country in the world too, which follows, one of the most high-tech, and one of the most socialist—although their socialist structures are underwritten by vast capitalist wealth and private power, which upsets the teachers, architects, doctors and designers. It’s also ‘happy’, but as in wealth-muffled minds everywhere, there is a deep confusion between happiness and comfort. Everyone is comfortable, but nobody is happy. Poke through the cosy pudding, with a personal criticism, or even a slightly intimate question (‘how’s your love life?’) and dark forces emerge… but just for a moment, to be smiled away, as all threats to the over-socialised middle-class ego are.2
I asked everyone I met in Sweden, ‘are you proud of being Swedish’? The working class folk I spoke to, the bin-men and the repair-men, said yes. The bullishly narrow-minded among them delivered—as they would anywhere—absurd nationalist boasts, but the more fine-spirited and discerning poetically gestured towards the inimitable aura of Swedishness, the glistening, fauny wildernesses, the subtle-yet-practical character of the gnarly old country ‘gubbe’, the impressive craft traditions (dying, as everywhere, but still worth celebrating), the food (simple but superb) and the dirt, which the metropolitan machine sweeps under the röllakan rug.
Responses from members of the middle-class to the same question were almost entirely negative. Some were almost offended, as if I were asking ‘are you a fascist?’ A couple said they felt ‘international’, that they had at least as much in common with ‘all cultures’. Indeed; but such responses refer not to the brotherhood of man. They indicate a felt affinity with other members of the professional-class. The bourgeoisie have more in common with their counterparts in foreign lands than they do with the spirit and culture, and confusion and filth, of their own, which they might admire and appreciate, but which they cannot really feel, nor disassociate from crude nationalism when it surfaces in others.3
Members of the middle class everywhere are ashamed of themselves, of their wealth, of their bodies, of their lives. The shame is repressed, like the anger, and the self-pity, and the feeble-self esteem, and the hatred, and the hollowness, all muffled by the gentle tyranny of comfort and order, but seeping through the walls in muffled nightmarish cries (like the lonely old man, in the apartment next to mine, who talked loudly and desperately to himself all through the night), or in strenuous (and therefore completely uninteresting) reactive efforts to be ‘alternative’ and ‘artistic’. To the degree that Sweden is a professional concern, all these characteristics are, alas, well in evidence.
Fortunately, finer, rawer, sweeter souls provide a more interesting counterpoint; the black severity of ‘northern gothic’ (the creepy folklore, the black churches, the novels of John Ajvide Lindqvist), the unequalled polar genius of Scando-noir (from Strindberg to Bergman to Andersson), the magical homeliness of Svensk art and craft (from great illustrators like John Bauer and Carl Larsson to the soothing marvels of early modern Swedish design) and, finally, and most profoundly, the ethereal gentleness of what seems to me to be the true Swedish spirit, sparkling (far beyond Stockholm) in self-possessed, snow-powdered silence, in cool, tender glances, in mordant vinegary understatement… All speak of a truth here that still lives, just about, under the tedious social duvet of Brave New Sweden.
Swedish Physiognomy, General Observations
Agelessness, even a certain babyishness. You see twenty year olds with the heads of five year olds. This matures into a ‘wizened’, cherubic look.
Long philtrums, strong jaws, narrow, bulbous or square foreheads, puckish noses, thin lips, pale blue eyes, white eyelashes and flushed or ruddy cheeks.
Generally strong bodies, tall, robust, some like bony goats, others like hearty milkmaids. Milky-white teeth. Insanely beautiful unloved women.4
As with every modern town and city on earth, unhappiness is stretched over the passing faces, but here and there one glimpses startling, icy serenity.
How Weak the Strength of the World
How cold the sun
How dull the fun
How poor the fortune and fame
How dark the brightness
How heavy the lightness
How painful the absence of pain