Posts in October 2008

Varor Du Brukar Köpa?

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
16
2008

I’ve been down with flu for quite some time now, and needless to say, I got bored. So bored in fact, that I actually started to read the stuff that the Ica supermarket chain sends us in the mail. Yeah, I was THAT bored. But I’m glad I read it, because now I’m thinking whether or not I should actually email Ica and tell them they’re about 15 years too late to claim to be “first in the world.”

But let’s start from the beginning. Ica runs a few different kinds of supermarkets, all with the word “Ica” in their names. You have a regular Ica, Ica Maxi and Ica Kvantum.

Ica Maxi is the largest store they have. And just so that every nimwit knows it’s large, they call it “maxi,” which for me always brings sanitary pads to mind. Don’t you think Ica Maxi would be a great name for a maxi pads brand? You’d have your Always, your Libresse, and your Ica. Sadly, it isn’t so. It’s just a supermarket. And just how big is it? Think of a midget Walmart and you have your average Ica Maxi store.

They sell everything, from toilet brushes to school supplies to frozen foods. And their prices are OK. At least in our town. But you can get even better deals if you use their loyalty store card. If you spend 2500 SEK in one month, you receive a coupon for 25 SEK. Isn’t that great? No, I know, not really. But hey, I’ll take what I can get. And because to get this coupon you need to swipe your card every time you buy something, the company knows exactly what you’re buying and where.

Once a month you get your Ica Buffé magazine, along with a selection of discount coupons and your “big” coupon for 25 SEK (could be 50 SEK if you manage to spend 5 thousand a month).

And this month, this is what Ica had to say:

“Lägre pris på varor Du brukar köpa!
Vi på ICA år först i världen att testa personliga erbjudanden till alla våra stamkunder. Vi kallar det “Mina varor.”

Which means:
“Lower prices on items you regularly buy!
We at Ica are first in the world to test personal offers to all our regular customers. We call it “my products.”

Which is indeed very sweet, but totally incorrect. “First in the world”? In their dreams, maybe, yeah. Shoprite in the US (and I think A&P too) offered a similar scheme back in the mid-90s.

And why is it that they say “varor du brukar köpa”? I haven’t bought any of this stuff in the last year! My suspicion is, they look for a thing you bought maybe once, because they know you’re not likely to buy it again, and so they give you a discount on it.

I much preferred the previous coupon version, where they randomly picked sale items and they were on sale for everybody. At least that way I was open to trying new things, because a girl just can’t resist it if it’s on sale, right?

 
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Åka or Gå?

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
12
2008

Today’s topic is one that confuses many Swedish learners – those pesky verbs that are deceptively similar, have pretty much the same meaning in English, yet in Swedish are used in a completely different context. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Actually, Swedish has quite a few such verb combinations. But today we’ll start with the one that causes the most grief when you’re learning Swedish – gå and åka.

Both of those verbs can be translated as “to go” in English and that’s the beginning of confusion. My dictionary says that:

  • Gå means: to walk, to march, to go, to travel, to depart, to pass, to sail, to run, and that’s just the first few definitions.

But then again, my dictionary says that:

  • Åka means: to go, to travel, to drive.

Not very helpful, wouldn’t you say? Fortunately, the Swedish-Swedish dictionary offers some more constructive suggestions:

  • gå (går, gick, gått) - flytta sig med hjälp av fötterna på vanligt sätt, röra sig åt något håll, lämna en plats.
  • åka (åker, åkte, åkt) - röra sig med hjälp av något, resa.

While on the surface this is a bit more helpful, I think the only way to see how it works in practice is to give you some practical examples. Which may or may not confuse you further.

So, basically åka means to move from place to place with a help of something, like for example, a car, or a bus, or a pair of skis. Take a look:

  • åka bil – to go by car
  • åka cykel – to go by bike
  • åka buss – to go by bus
  • åka skidor – to ski

When you travel someplace, you åker there, for example:

  • åka till fjällen – to go to the mountains
  • åka utomlands – to go abroad

So far so good, seems simple enough. Enter gå and things get a lot more complicated.

  • Går det här tåget till Malmö? - Does this train go to Malmö?
  • Vart går den här vägen? – Where does this road go (lead) to?
  • Hoppas att resan går bra. – Hope the trip goes well.
  • gå i skolan / gå i kyrkan = to go to school / to go to church
  • gå på bio = to go to the movies
  • ha svårt (för) att gå = to have difficulty walking (to walk)
  • Ljus går mycket snabbare än ljud. – Light travels much faster than sound.

So, basically, when it comes to people, if you schlep the old-fashioned way on foot, you går. If you jump on a train, bus or bike, you åker.

I hope this was a tiny wee bit helpful. :)

 
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The 2008 Nobel Prizes

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
8
2008

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s the 2008 Nobel Prize (Nobelpriset) time right now. Today the prize in chemistry was announced. Yesterday it was physics, and the day before – medicine. Too bad these days each prize has to be split among three people – 10 million kronor per prize is not that much to begin with, and even less if you have to share it with other folks.

I was surprised to hear that many foreigners (and one of those foreigners was a history teacher in a certain English-speaking country, shame on you, lady!) didn’t know that the guy who started it all, Alfred Nobel, was a real person. Yep, the prize is named after a real guy. He’s long dead, of course, but before he died he wrote in his will that he wanted his wealth to be used to establish a prize honoring men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and for work for peace (fysik, kemi, medicin, litteratur och fredsarbete).

Because Mr. Nobel happened to be a rich guy, a very rich guy in fact (why was he so rich? - he was smart, invented dynamite and ran and bunch of successful companies), and because he died without producing an heir (legitimate or otherwise), his nephews decided to challenge the will and grab some of his cash for themselves. Mr. Nobel didn’t exactly help either – in his will he did not specify just how this whole prize business was supposed to be set up, who was going to oversee it, and how the recipients were to be selected. So, as you can imagine, it took quite some time to sort it all out. The guy died in 1896 (he wrote his will in 1895) and the first prizes were awarded in 1901.

Then in 1968, the Swedish Central Bank (Sveriges Riksbank) established and began funding the Nobel Prize in Economics. Officially called in Swedish “Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne.”

So, how does this prize business work? You watched “The Beautiful Mind,” you know there is a trip to Stockholm involved and a fancy banquet, right? The king shows up and the whole shindig is shown on TV, right?

That’s correct. Even though the winners are being announced now, on December 10th, which the anniversary of Mr. Nobel’s death, they will all put their fancy party dresses on, look all somber and dignified and shake hands with the king and the queen at the Stockholm Concert Hall, and then munch on some high-class chow during the Nobel Banquet held at the Stockholm City Hall. Nice! Too bad you have to be either super smart or super famous to attend. Sadly, that disqualifies me on both accounts.

Oh yes, what about the Peace Prize, you ask? Well, the Peace Prize is handled and handed out in Oslo. “Wait, a sec,” I hear you say, “isn’t that in Norway?” Yes it is. But back in the olden days of Mr. Nobel, Norway was a part of Sweden.

So, there you have it. Of course, come December 10th, I will give you a detailed report on the Nobel Ceremony telecast.

PS. And here’s a blurb from the Svenska Akademien website about this year’s literature prize:

Nobelpriset i litteratur 2008
Svenska Akademien har beslutat tillkännage namnet på årets Nobelpristagare i litteratur torsdagen den 9 oktober kl. 13.00 i Börssalen.

So, they will tell us tomorrow, Thursday at 1PM who the winner is.

Alfred Nobel image: wikipedia

 
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Jante Something or the Other

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
4
2008

Sooner or later when you write about Sweden you will have to address the topics of “lagom” and “Jantelagen” and I’ve been mulling over how long I can practice avoidance and not talk about them. Why? Because I don’t know what the big deal is all about. Really. Two goofy phrases that supposedly “define” the Swedish psyche, if there is such a thing as the Swedish psyche in the first place. Or was it perhaps the Scandinavian psyche? Meh, same, same.

Of the two, “Jantelagen” (Jante Laws) seems to be the more controversial one. And it’s not even a real “law”. It was devised by a long-dead writer in a fictional story written a bazillion years ago, that is sometime around 1933. And he wasn’t even Swedish, but Norwegian, or Danish-Norwegian, to be exact. His pa was Danish, and his ma Norwegian. He was born as Aksel Nielsen, but changed it later to Aksel Sandemose. The dude had some serious issues, and I mean - big time serious. He hated his hometown of Nykøbing in Denmark so much, he totally trashed it in his most famous book “En flyktning krysser sitt spor” (“A fugitive crosses his tracks”). Yeah, so that’s how Jantelagen was born.

The book was translated into English and published in the US in 1936. And it would have faded into well-deserved obscurity, if not for the persistence of foreigners living in Scandinavia, who somehow managed to elevate the fictional Jante Laws to a nearly symbolic level. Symbolic of what, I am not really sure. Maybe of their inability to assimilate in a new country.

There is nothing in the Jante Laws that makes them unique to Scandinavia. Jante (Mr. Sandemose had enough good sense to change the name of the town from Nykøbing to Jante) is the epitome of a small, podunk town, where everybody knows everybody else’s business. It has nothing to do with Sweden, Denmark, Norway, or Scandinavia in general.

Towns like that are the same the world over, be it in Iowa (Webster City springs to mind), or South Dakota (Spearfish perhaps?) or Montana (Deer Lodge?). OK, so that was the US, but you catch my drift. The small-town mentality is the same. Seriously, I’ve seen more extreme examples of Jantelagen in Poland than in Sweden.

In other countries the concept is known as the “tall poppy syndrome” – which happens when somebody’s assumption of a higher economic, social or political position is criticized as being presumptuous, attention-seeking, or without merit. So there you have it, a typical small-town attitude towards anyone who dreams big and wants to accomplish something. Hardly unique to Scandinavia.

I wanted to be nicely prepared for this rant, and so I pulled out my 1936 English edition of “A fugitive crosses his tracks” (I found one at a garage sale eons ago, the woman was selling like one shopping bag full of books for a buck, or something, and some of those were original pre-war editions. Can you believe it?) to re-read it and once again try to figure out what the fuss was all about.

I had a hair appointment yesterday. I took the book with me, because I get bored easily when I’m having my highlights done and the woman who does my hair is particularly chatty and particularly boring, so reading a book saves me from pretending I’m paying attention to her blabber. (So much for the myth of silent Swedes, huh?)

And somehow, between the washing, cutting, coloring, and washing again, and then styling, and paying, I managed to leave the book at the hair salon. I realized it when I came home and of course immediately drove back downtown. In the space of maybe 40 minutes, the book got little legs and walked out. (So much for another myth about Sweden, huh?) But of course, this being Sweden, nobody saw anything, and my stylist said she wasn’t even aware I had a book with me at all. Splendid.

So now I guess I better start watching the Swedish version of ebay (Blocket) and see if it turns up somewhere. I’ve already searched the internet to purchase another copy, but wouldn’t you know it, there is none available. I am NOT a happy camper.

And here are the famous Jante Laws for you. They were originally written in Danish (Norwegian?), but I’m giving you the English and Swedish versions, OK?

1. Don’t think you are anything. = Du skall inte tro att du är något.
2. Don’t think you are as good as us. = Du skall inte tro att du är lika god som vi.
3. Don’t think you are smarter than us. = Du skall inte tro att du är klokare än vi.
4. Don’t fancy yourself better than us. = Du skall inte inbilla dig att du är bättre än vi.
5. Don’t think you know more than us. = Du skall inte tro att du vet mer än vi.
6. Don’t think you are greater than us. = Du skall inte tro att du är förmer än vi.
7. Don’t think you are good for anything. = Du skall inte tro att du duger till något.
8. Don’t laugh at us. = Du skall inte skratta åt oss.
9. Don’t think that anyone cares about you. = Du skall inte tro att någon bryr sig om dig.
10. Don’t think you can teach us anything. = Du skall inte tro att du kan lära oss något.

 
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