The Almost Nearly Perfect People

by Michael Booth

  One Swede I spoke to recounted this anecdote, which could so well describe me on several occasions in my Scandinavian life: ‘I was at a café and there was an Englishman sitting at one table. A Swede passing on his way to the toilet knocked over the Englishman’s briefcase but continued without apologising or putting the case upright again. The Englishman said nothing, but when the Swede came out of the toilet, he screamed across the café: “THE WORD IS SORRY.”’

  ‘I understand it is unpleasant for you,’ Daun said, simply, after I had finished venting on this subject for longer than was probably polite. ‘But for us it is normality.’ Clearly, though, the rudeness and isolationist tendencies of his countrymen had troubled him too. For years Daun had passed the same few people on the streets of his neighbourhood without acknowledgement, but recently he had decided to run an impromptu sociological experiment.

  ‘There was an elderly gentleman, very elegantly dressed, and I would meet him every day, and we’d pass each other without looking up. Finally, one day I went up to him and said, “Well, we have been walking here for years looking at one another, shouldn’t we be able perhaps at least to say hello?” And he was so happy.’ The two men ended up becoming friends and inviting each other to dinner and, thus encouraged, Daun approached other neighbours, who were equally surprised, but similarly receptive. ‘It’s so great. People love it!’ he said, clapping his hands together.

  Daun’s missionary work on the streets of Stockholm was a heartening sign of hope that, deep down, there might exist some traces of humanity within the Swedish psyche and, as I Ieft his apartment and elbowed my way on to my silent bus back into town, I came up with an idea for a social experiment of my own, which I planned to carry out among the unsuspecting people of Stockholm that very afternoon.

  * * *

  1 I have a theory – possibly one of my more far-fetched ones, but it is a favourite – that lagom and Jante Law lie behind one of the more curious, yet abiding, Scandinavian cultural imports: Donald Duck. Every time I use the bathroom in someone’s home in Denmark or Sweden and see the inevitable pile of well-thumbed Donald Duck comics – Anders And in Denmark, Kalle Anka in Sweden – beside the toilet; or when I switch on DR1, the flagship Danish TV channel, at primetime on a Friday night and see their hour-long Disney Fun show featuring sixty-year-old Donald Duck cartoons; not to mention when I heard that, traditionally, the most-watched 24 December TV show in Sweden every year is a Donald Duck Christmas special from 1958, I have pondered on this strange affection for the ill-starred, trouserless fowl. Donald Duck’s approach to life seems to go so wholly against the Scandinavian grain; he is greedy, selfish, quick-tempered and behaves rashly but, crucially of course, he always pays the price for his frailties with his inevitable defeat, loss, humiliation, and small yellow birds circling his head. In the same way that audiences gain a vicarious thrill from a comedian joking about taboo subjects, I am convinced that Donald Duck performs a similar kind of safety-valve function for the modest, even-tempered, law-abiding Scandinavians. They would never dream of making such a scene about, say, three cheeky nephews eating their cake, or allow themselves to be so goaded by a pair of chipmunks that they smash up their own home in a squawking fury, but they find peace, a displaced catharsis, watching such episodes unfold in cartoon form.

  Chapter 3

  Stockholm syndrome

  MY PLAN WAS to spend the rest of the day – perhaps longer, should I survive – going about Stockholm behaving as un-Swedishly as possible, the theory being that, by acting in diametric opposition to Swedish social norms, I would be better able to identify and observe said norms. By provoking the Swedes I encountered with behaviour entirely antithetical to theirs, I would be able to measure the extremes of their mentality; by pushing them to the edge of their tolerance, I would gauge, definitively, just how shy, reticent, rule-abiding, stiff or square they were, and thus locate the Swedes’ precise position on the Scandinavian social-autistic spectrum. Hopefully, by understanding them better, I might come to view them more sympathetically. I would be a guinea pig for the world, an anthropological budgerigar being carried down into the coal mine of the Swedish psyche. Anything could happen in the next five hours: awkward silences, avoided gazes, assault, arrest, deportation . . .

  My first stop was the Nobel Museum on the almost painfully picturesque historic city-centre island of Gamla stan. Frankly, the whole Nobel hullabaloo has always irritated me. As you know, Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite, initially for the mining industry, but later for the munitions used to slaughter thousands in the Crimean War, and countless millions thereafter. And yet, somehow, one idle day while drawing up his will in his retirement home on the Italian Riviera, Nobel felt his life’s bloodstained legacy warranted, of all things, a peace prize in his name – it is akin to King Herod sponsoring a beautiful-baby competition, or a demolition man handing out architecture prizes.

  Over the years, the various Nobel juries have certainly picked some real humdingers. Henry Kissinger, for example, the man who, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, betrayed the Iraqi Kurds, supported apartheid, and gave the go-ahead for ‘the deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina’. He got the peace prize in 1973. Obama’s win in 2009, though less controversial, was a trifle absurd too, not least when you discover that Gandhi never got one (but Al Gore did). The peace prize is awarded by a committee chosen by the Norwegian parliament; the other prizes – for literature, chemistry, physics, medicine and economics – are give out by a Swedish committee. No one really knows why Nobel felt they should be split in this way, but at the time of his death Norway was ruled by Sweden, and perhaps he judged it to be the least warlike nation of the two.

  As you would expect of an institution in which is assembled the glittering sum of all human endeavour, the Nobel Museum was hushed and reverential. The perfect place, then, to take out a bag of crisps and crunch them loudly, and slurp a can of coke while standing beside a ‘no eating or drinking’ sign. Here was a true test for Swedish tolerance if ever there was one. I rustled, crunched and gulped for all I was worth in full sight of two members of staff and numerous other visitors, but there was no response from any of them. This was frustrating, not least because I had to continue eating the entire bag of crisps for far longer than I would otherwise have wished – Swedish crisps are really awful – and, combined with the fizzy drink, this generated substantial and unpleasant frothy burps. But from this early probing of Swedish social norms, I could conclusively deduce that the Swedes were even more conflict-shy than they were rule-abiding.

  I left the Nobel Museum shortly afterwards and came to a pedestrian crossing. A handful of people had gathered at the kerb, waiting for the light to change to green so that they would be permitted to cross, even though there were no cars nearby, or in sight for that matter. The Danes behave similarly when faced with the terrible quandary of a clear road and a red man, and for years I mocked their sheep-like behaviour. ‘I don’t need a light to tell me how to cross the road,’ I used to scoff loudly, stepping boldly from the pavement as my wife grabbed my elbow in desperation, casting nervous glances while the waiting pedestrians murmured their disapproval. Over time, I am ashamed to admit, I have come to observe the red light more and more. My rebellious streak has been tamed by the sheer weight of Scandinavian social collectivism, but on this occasion, looking briefly both ways, my head held high, I crossed while the light remained red. An aggressive act in Denmark, I imagined this would be even more provocative in Sweden.

  A woman to one side of me, who obviously wasn’t concentrating, took my action as a subliminal prompt, and began to cross the road too, but at the last second she looked up, saw the red light, and hurried back sheepishly on to the pavement. I believe I heard a ‘tut’ from one of the others in the group, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, I made it safely to the other side of the road, turned to the group, and raised my palms in a ‘See, I survived!’ gesture, but they were all still looking up towards t
he red light in expectant obedience.

  Next stop was a park bench close to the theatre, where I sidled up to a woman who was eating a packet of gummy bears. I looked at the packet of jellied sweets, hoping she might offer me one. Sensing the intensity of my gaze, the woman shifted buttocks awkwardly, but carried on eating. I continued to stare. Nothing. Eventually the woman glanced up. I made a face which was intended to communicate my desire for one of her sweets but, clearly deeply alarmed, without speaking, the woman rose and walked briskly off. Oh dear.

  I didn’t talk to anyone at all at one of the world’s greatest history museums. I was too busy staring up in wonder at the great warship Vasa, King Gustav II Adolf’s ill-starred flagship, which was launched on 10 August 1628 and promptly sank in Stockholm harbour a few moments later. Most countries would prefer to leave such a conspicuous national embarrassment out of sight on the harbour bed, but not the self-flagellating Swedes, who raised the Vasa in the early sixties and put what is clearly an absurdly top-heavy (even I could see that) galleon on display in a purpose-built museum.

  I am glad they did. A staggering sight awaits as you enter the exhibition hall and are confronted with the 53-metre-high stern of this mighty ship, its oak timbers heavily carved and darkly stained like some great cathedral. The Vasa took two years to build, sunk in not many more minutes, and now stands as a striking testimony to kingly hubris. How must he have felt as he stood in all his royal pomp beside the dock and watched the Vasa slowly keel over and disappear beneath the gentle waves? (‘And how many hits would that have on YouTube today?’ I wondered.)

  Stockholm is exceptionally beautiful, Scandinavia’s most impressive capital – like Edinburgh crossed with Venice. At least, that’s how it looks on the waterfront, but behind the granite grandeur lies a grim concrete zone not unlike Croydon. As Andrew Brown writes, central Stockholm ‘was almost entirely rebuilt and dehumanized in the Sixties’. It is soulless and brutalist. Why this should be the case is slightly mysterious: Sweden emerged from the Second World War entirely unscathed. There was no bombing here. As I sat on a bench outside the Kulturhuset, I wondered to myself, ‘Why did they choose to rebuild Stockholm in Soviet-style concrete blocks?’ What did this say about how the Swedes – or their city planners – saw themselves?

  A man with a Kindle sat down next to me. ‘Is that one of those electronic books?’ I asked cheerily.

  The man nodded.

  ‘So, like, wow, that’s real Star Trek stuff, isn’t it? Do you like it? Would you recommend one?’

  ‘It is good if you are travelling,’ said the man without making eye contact, and went back to his reading. A few moments later, some deeply dormant notion of humanity apparently roused, he stopped reading, and turned to me. ‘I like it because you can take lots of books with you,’ he said and, satisfied that he had performed his duty as a good citizen, returned to his reading.

  It was a promising sign that the Swedes were capable of human interaction given a little prompting and, thus encouraged, back in my hotel I loitered for a while around the lift until I was sure a Swede was about to use it. The first target was a woman in her fifties with a large vertical suitcase that she was pushing on wheels. I waited until she was about to enter, then swiftly moved in front of her to take up position in the lift. She backed off immediately and made a slight nod to indicate that I should continue in the lift alone. It was a small lift, but there was room for two if I backed into the corner, which I did. ‘Don’t worry, we can both fit in!’ I chirruped. But she had suddenly found something much more interesting to look at in the lobby (oddly, my hotel, the Berns, was offering dildos for sale in a glass cabinet – perhaps it was these she was drawn to), and moved away.

  As Åke Daun had suggested, lifts seemed to be ripe environments for exploring the Swedish psyche so, on several more occasions over the next few days, I attempted to share one with locals. Learning from my first experience, I made sure my victims were properly ensconced in the lift before I slipped in and attempted to engage them in human dialogue. The responses to my opening salvo, ‘Hi, how are you? Lovely hotel, isn’t it?’ were almost uniformly monosyllabic. One bulky, late-middle-aged man in a suit simply ignored me while looking straight ahead; a younger woman smiled nervously and backed away looking at her shoes; only a couple in their late twenties went further, answering in the affirmative that yes, it was a nice hotel, before returning to their hushed conversation, at which point I realised they were from one of the Baltic states.

  My next Swede-taunting arena was public transport. One of Stockholm’s major tourist attractions is a glass viewing pod which is hauled up and over the top of a spherical sports arena, the Stockholm Globe, affording its occupants a nice view of the city. It was a short metro ride out of town and, as I went to board the train, there was the usual two-way rugby scrum between the passengers who were disembarking and those who were intent on boarding. In most other countries it would have been considered a disgraceful display of counter-productive selfishness, but here in Stockholm no one batted an eye.

  I grabbed the arm of one man, a businessman in a suit with a record bag slung over his shoulder who was attempting to force himself on to the carriage before it had emptied.

  ‘So sorry to trouble you,’ I said. ‘But I wonder if you could help me with something.’

  Anger, bewilderment and impatience scudded in quick succession across his face, culminating in an irritated, quizzical look.

  ‘I am doing some research into Swedish behaviour and I noticed that you were pushing on to the train before the other passengers had got off. I was wondering why you were doing this, when it’s kind of obvious that everything would work better if the passengers on the platform stood aside?’

  By now we were the last passengers on the platform and the man was looking anxiously over my shoulder into the carriage of the soon-to-depart train.

  ‘I . . . I, what do you mean? I have to go.’ Head down, he barged past me into the carriage, bristling. ‘You can dress yourself in the morning, presumably, so why can’t you behave reasonably towards other people?’ I felt like shouting after him. But didn’t. Even I know it’s wrong to shout at other people when you are a guest in their country.

  The train stopped at the next station. It wasn’t my station, but I decided to continue the experiment. Sure enough, the small group of people waiting on the platform began to steam on to the train before I managed to disembark. I spread my arms wide, to push some of them back in a Jesus-like gesture of compassionate instruction.

  ‘Hello! Shall we let people get off first?’ I said in a raised voice (not shouting), pushing two of them back off the train’s steps. Two others barged past regardless, but a couple of the crowd did seem genuinely embarrassed and backed off. My achievement here was admittedly of a more pyrrhic order as, having made such a song and dance about getting off the train, I could hardly then get back on, so had to wait twelve minutes for the next one. Still, I felt I had struck a blow for common commuter decency.

  On the next train, a Romanian man passed through the carriage and placed cards on the empty seats next to the passengers. On the cards was written:

  I am a poor man with two children.

  They have leukaemia and I need money for their treatment.

  Several people left coins on the cards for the man to collect on his return sweep through the carriage, including the woman sitting opposite me. In my new Daunian spirit of social interaction, I asked her why she had done this, considering that Sweden had an excellent, free health service.

  Once she had digested the extraordinary fact of a stranger talking to her unbidden, the woman replied that if the man didn’t have papers to live in Sweden then he would not be eligible for the treatments.

  ‘But you don’t really think he is saving for his children, do you?’ I said.

  ‘No, but for me just the idea of him begging is beneath human dignity. That’s why I gave.’

  Now it was my turn to feel chastened and embarrassed
by such very modern, very Swedish compassion. Time perhaps to quit bugging the locals. I was losing enthusiasm for my ground-breaking anthropological research anyway. Trying to get the Swedes to be more polite was like picking on Italian men for being vain, or Japanese women for being shy. The poor creatures could not help themselves and besides, what had the Swedes ever done to me?

  I did, though, attempt to strike up the odd conversation in cafés and restaurants over the next few days, in a desperate attempt to disprove the stereotype. Most Swedes responded to my opening gambits, answering my questions but making no effort to keep the conversational plate spinning. Of course, we cannot entirely discount the idea that it was me, personally, from whom an entire nation was recoiling, but I was trying my utmost not to be creepy.

  In the meantime, I was also on the constant lookout for any chink in the Swedes’ goody-goody armour, for any hint of vice. There were precious few, save for their inexplicable addiction to chewing tobacco, which is sold in small round pots (like boiled sweets) at every 7-Eleven. (I once interviewed the country’s leading chef, but was distracted the entire time by the bulge in his lower lip as he rested his snus.)

  Oh, I nearly forgot, there were also the people masturbating at the National Museum. One afternoon I accidentally found myself visiting a special exhibition there entitled ‘Lust and Vice’, billed as an exposé of the Swedes’ ‘predilictions and perversions from past to present’. Though I was there for the Strindberg seascapes, I reluctantly decided that I should take just a quick peek in order to plumb the sordid depths of my hosts’ sexual psyche. For research.

  The exhibition ranged freely and frankly through the history of Swedish mucky pictures from the last few centuries. There was a vast, 9-foot painting by Julius Kronberg which apparently caused quite a kerfuffle when it was unveiled in 1876, depicting two men leering at a nude ginger-haired woman; there were various blurry art-masturbation videos; an entire wall of naked women pleasuring themselves; more photos of blurry-handed men; a few bare-bottomed nuns, and so on.