Before I begin to talk about those Nordic blondes (or non-Nordic non-blondes, as the case may be), I want to thank you for your emails. It’s really touching to see that so many of you took the time to write to see if I was OK. Some of you heard or read about the chicken with glass bits mystery and wanted to know if that was perhaps the reason for my nearly week-long silence. Thank you! I am fine and haven’t been eating any chicken.
We are actually abroad right now visiting my sambo’s family. It’s his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary – you see, this is something we simply HAD to attend. I’ll be back in Sweden in about two weeks, and I hope that by then the chicken will be safe to eat again. Still, this chicken mess is really strange. For those you haven’t heard – bits of glass were found in frozen chicken, then in fresh chicken, pretty much all over Sweden. Initially, only one producer was affected, but then glass was found in other brands too. Creepy! It kind of reminds me of the Wendy’s chili scandal back in the late 90s (or was it early 2000s?) in the US. Later it was determined that most of those reports of foreign bodies in Wendy’s chili were totally made up. I hope that this will be the case with Swedish chicken as well. In a country such as Sweden, were food safety is taken very seriously, I just simply can’t fathom that all those glass pieces reports are truly genuine.
But, enough about chicken, in today’s post we are going to deconstruct one of the most popular and enduring Swedish myths ever. And since we were discussing immigration recently, I thought it would all nicely tie in somehow.
Ask anyone in North America (just as an example, I am not singling out Americans or Canadians here) what’s their image of a Swedish person, and eight out of ten respondents will come up with something that resembles a member of the Swedish Bikini Team (which, by the way wasn’t from Sweden, but from Michigan). In other words – tall, blonde, blue-eyed. I’ll leave the other characteristics of the Bikini Team alone for now, OK? Women may add chiseled features ala Freddie Ljungberg to the list.
Even Swedes themselves (though they may vehemently denying when talking to non-Swedish-speaking foreigners) tend to see themselves as a nation of mostly good-looking, stoic, taciturn, stereotypical blondes.
But you see, nothing could be further from the truth! These days Swedes come in all shapes, colors and sizes. And surprise, surprise – that tall, dark and handsome guy named Carlos who speaks skånska like a native may actually be a native. Since Sweden so generously opened its doors to immigrants in the early 1970s, many of those who arrived in the country back then had ample time to produce Swedish-born children. Some of those children are already old enough to be having children of their own. Those kids and their parents, regardless of their exotic looks, are as native as those blonde, blue-eyed Eriks and Karins.
One doesn’t have to look very far to find non-Nordic-looking Swedes (ever heard of Zlatan Ibrahimović?), however many expats and Swedes alike frequently assume them to be foreign immigrants. Those first impressions can be so deceiving! For months I thought that my downstairs neighbors were foreigners, simply because they looked so “foreign.” And when the lady downstairs heard me speak English to my sambo, she started to use English when talking to me from that time on. I think it took us good 6 months of chatting in tvättstuga (laundry room) to finally sort it out – I was the immigrant, and she was the Swede – born and bred in Göteborg.
After that encounter, I began to notice a huge variety in the Swedish society. There were native born Swedes that looked Middle Eastern, South American, African or Asian. And they were practically everywhere! Add to that the immigrant population, and Sweden is a far cry from the blonde stereotype that most of us grew up with.
True, Sweden still has a long way to go before it becomes a truly multi-ethnic society like what can be seen in the UK or America. But it’s getting there. Just give it a couple more decades.
PS. Sambo is not a derogatory term, but a short version of “samboende”, which means something like “live-in partner.”
Last Sunday, the first episode of a brand new entertainment show aired on SVT, Sweden’s public television. It is called “Allt för Sverige” (Everything for Sweden) and the plot is pretty…well not simple but the concept is certainly recognizable: Take 10 Americans with Swedish roots to Sweden. Teach them everything they need to know about Sweden and put their knowledge to the test by the end of every episode. One by one are knocked out and the last man or woman standing will get the ultimate price: To meet his or her Swedish ancestors.
