Posted by Anna Ikeda
Sweden is a very organized country. Everything has its place and there are rules and regulations for just about anything. Some rules don’t even need to be officially written down, they technically don’t exist, yet people here follow them anyway. That of course makes life a lot easier in many different situations – when boarding a local bus, for example. Everyone lines up neatly to get on and waits their turn. Even when it’s raining.
When entering a store, library, clinic, even ER, everyone lines up nicely to get a “nummerlapp” (= queue number, which you get from a special machine that dispenses them, normally somewhere near the entrance) and then patiently waits their turn. Nummerlapp is not a strictly Swedish invention, I have seen it utilized in such far-flung locales as India and Cape Verde, but Sweden, without a doubt, is the country that has turned it into an art form.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
Everywhere you go in Sweden, people “hej” at you. If you don’t know that “hej” means “hello” in Swedish, you might be slightly confused as to why everybody is trying to get your attention. Because that’s what we use “hey” for in English, among many other things, right?
“Hej!” in Swedish doesn’t have any of the negative English “hey!” connotations. Instead, it’s a multi-purpose greeting used by practically everyone in the country. It sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? Like the kind of word you’d only say to those with whom you have a personal relationship. Yet in Sweden that word managed to cross from being just an interjection in casual speech to a national greeting.
And how did that happen?
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
There are some words in the Swedish language that just make English speakers giggle. Sometimes even more than giggle. You know which words I’m talking about. You too had a goofy smirk on your face when you saw them for the very first time. Especially when you didn’t expect them. And then, when nobody was watching, you tried to see how these words would roll off your tongue.
The easiest one of the bunch was definitely “bra”. You repeated it out loud – bra. And then a bit louder – BRA! People just looked at you with smiles on their faces. “What a happy guy,” they thought.
And then, there was this time when you were driving and almost hit a lamppost after meeting your first “farthinder”. After a while you stopped giggling, and after a little while longer, you stopped paying attention altogether. And when the day came that you used bra and fart all in the same sentence without giggling, you realized you’ve been in Sweden for a lot longer than you thought.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
It’s time for a little bit of grammar today, don’t you agree? And this particular bit of grammar is always confusing for English speakers.
People, Swedish people naturally, will tell you that Swedish nouns are classed according to gender. And it’s all good, except when you try to find out exactly what gender those Swedish nouns have. In most languages, when talking about gender, you come up with the usual of masculine, feminine, and neuter. But not so in Swedish. Here, there are only two choices, and they are defined by these two indefinite articles: en and ett.
Every noun is either an “en” or an “ett” noun, and which is which you have to learn the hard way by memorizing the appropriate article together with the noun. Why? That pesky indefinite article will show you how make the correct form of the definite article. It also comes up in other grammatical issues, involving adjectives, for example.
But for now, let’s stick to nouns. Why this is called “gender” I’m not really sure, because while some Swedish nouns do have both masculine and feminine forms, the article in front of such nouns is the same in both cases.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
It’s that time of the year again when the entire Sweden goes outside to sing, dance, drink and celebrate the arrival of summer. Yep, it’s Midsommarafton (Midsummer’s Eve) today. Regardless of the actual day of the summer solstice, the holiday is always scheduled for Friday-Saturday between June 19th and 25th.
On Midsummer’s Eve businesses close early and people rush home. It’s time to raise the maypole! The big celebrations, which in my town are organized in an open-air museum, are taken very seriously. After all, Midsommar is the most important holiday of the Swedish calendar.
As an outsider, I find it a curious holiday to observe. Seeing people decked out in their folk costumes, with flowers garlands in their hair, hopping around the maypole doing the “Frog dance” (Små grodorna dans) makes me giggle. The maypole itself with its pagan phallic symbolism makes me giggle.
“Yeah, we have maypoles in England,” you may say. True, but you simply can’t compare the puny little British stick with its proper Swedish equivalent. See what I mean? Ahem, ahem…
And because you can’t have Midsommar without traditional food, it’s also the perfect time to load up on fresh potatoes (with dill, naturally), pickled herring (not as bad as it sounds), sour cream, and strawberries. And don’t forget snaps. It wouldn’t be Midsommar without snaps. That of course means lots of song singing, with every song demanding a round of snaps.
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