False Dichotomies

Travel writing should be born in ignorance. Bill Bryson’s defence of making observations about foreign societies without knowing a word of the language rings true. Once you know a place’s language or history or culture, you become an insider, an expert. There is, of course, a place for experts. But we shouldn’t forget the voice of ignorance, the instinctive reaction of prejudices being put to the test in foreign climes.

Halfway through my brief trip to Gothenburg, then, the questions began to splurge out. Up to this point The Swede had to tolerate my derision towards the Swedish model (but of course not towards Swedish models), my shock at the lack of people on the streets, the seeming loneliness and compartmentalization of it all; people barely talking to each other, whispering in light, snow-flake tones. Sitting on the boat firmly cruising around the archipelago that surrounds Gothenburg, though, a more positive picture was taking shape. I needed some context. 

The Swede tells me about the political scene, about Sweden’s proportional representation with its skyscraper 4% threshold; about the slow rise of the Swedish Democrats and how the Right in Sweden is Left like the Left in Israel is Right, but that’s all starting to change now, what with the increase in immigration (an estimated 30% of Gothenburg’s population was born outside Sweden). Interested by the notion of immigrant Swedes, we take the predictably efficient tram to the end of the line to see the ‘ghetto’. Like everywhere else, though, quiet is the defining feature. Hastily constructed 1950s apartment buildings, built when Sweden was revving itself to cash in on post-war circumstances, now provide home to immigrants from North Africa and the wider Middle East. They look out of place here, olive skin slowly withering against the felt-tip grey sky, native tongues merging with Swedish, the cold always a shock.

In the centre of town sits a café for polyglots. You take your national flag and sit at the table, in the hope that someone speaking your tongue will sit down with you. The café organizes this on a formal basis as well: Russian, Spanish and Dutch one night, English, French and Danish another. There seemed to be no night for Arabic or Farsi speakers. This seemed symbolic. Sweden may be as liberal as it gets, but the immigrants seem no less on the margins than anywhere else, even if their material situation is reasonably good.

How long this will remain the case, though, is anyone’s guess. Whisper it quietly, but the gap between rich and poor is starting to grow. The utopian Scandinavian model has not been sufficient to immunize the country from the world’s economic problems; few of the country’s manufacturing giants remain in native hands. General Motors’ owned Saab, based in The Swede’s hometown of Trolhattan, may soon disappear. These, however, are gentle tremors. Sweden remains an almost unbelievably cozy place, apparently far removed from the grand narratives played out elsewhere. Is Sweden’s The Way?

I grew to like Gothenburg, even if the affection I felt towards it was similar to the affection I feel when looking at a doll’s house. I enjoyed an evening at apartment of The Swede’s sister and her boyfriend, a flat lined with literature and music and movies, the world’s cultural output transplanted into this well-kept home while the snow drafts lazily under the floodlights outside. We ate semla and talked Vikings and Paganism and Christianity’s relatively late arrival to Scandinavia, not to mention its  apparently imminent retraction. It was an eureka moment, the true anti-Zionist lifestyle, lived in peace and stimulation and security. I envy it, but it is not for me.

Outside, Sweden remains a right-on country. We stumbled upon some teenagers promoting a boycott of the Davis Cup match against Israel; I played the informed outsider and rather unfairly deconstructed their arguments. There was nothing malicious in anything they said – they just wanted to do something, to stop the fucking tennis as long as the slaughter continued. The city museum, appropriately free of charge, was similarly vain-glorious. An excellent Bollywood exhibit sits alongside 82 Ways to Change the World, explicating everything from DIY culture to the musings of Subcommandante Marcos. Radical material in the eyes of some; here it was all earnest and fuzzy.

Earnest and fuzzy – is that too patronizing? I hope not. Perhaps the miracle of Sweden is the ability to warm to it at all. The paradoxical reputation of its citizens as simultaneously sexually free and emotionally repressed is a cliché too far; Swedes seem Teutonically reserved, and – sadly – not even that horny. Outside of Sweden, they tell me, we all behave a bit differently. The same, I think, goes for every nationality. In Ladakh I met a Bosnian who had spent a year in Sweden. He said he went mad there, because people were too nice to him. “I want to live in a place where people shout fuck you,” he told me. I got this feeling as well. Before returning to the airport, we ran to catch the tram. I pushed at the doors, not realizing they were electronically operated. The young tram-driver shouted at me in Swedish, without pausing to notice I didn’t understand a word. That’s more like it, I thought. Soon I’ll be home.