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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

Lucia with Sweden’s vaccine pass: How my daughter’s friends’ relatives got blocked

At his first event requiring a Covid-19 vaccine pass, The Local's correspondent Richard Orange was surprised at how many people, all fully vaccinated, ended up having problems (including himself).

Published: 16 December 2021 09:19 CET
Updated: 16 December 2021 12:01 CET
Lucia with Sweden's vaccine pass: How my daughter's friends' relatives got blocked
A Lucia concert in the somewhat grander Gustav Vasa Church in Stockholm. Photo: Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se

I hold up my phone expectantly as the cheery pensioner at the door of the St Pauli Church in Malmö takes aim at the QR code, only to be confronted by a big red cross and the words ej godkänd, “not valid”.

Failed in the first attempt. It transpires that my vaccine certificate, downloaded for a trip to Denmark over the summer, has expired. After a few minutes’ fumbling on the Covidbevis.se website, I’ve downloaded a fresh one and am allowed to enter.

But I’m not the only one with problems.

It’s the Lucia concert for my daughter’s choir, an event for which they’ve been practising since the summer. Perhaps two hundred parents and relatives have come to see the children’s big performance of the year.

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First comes Isaac, the Ghanaian father of one of my daughter’s best friends. He is double vaccinated but has no idea how to get a vaccine certificate, so I take his phone, ask for his personnummer, make him type in his BankID, and it’s sorted. 

It’s a similar story with Rose, the Cameroonian mother of my daughter’s other friends. She tries at first to use the vaccine record in her journal on 1177.se, Sweden’s primary care health website. Again, I take her phone and get her a certificate. 

It’s then the trouble starts.

Isaac’s 18-year-old eldest daughter arrives. She’s only been in Sweden five months, is double vaccinated, and has a Swedish social security number – personnummer, or personal number. But she has yet to open a bank account, which means she cannot get a BankID, and this means she can’t download a Covid pass online. She could get a FrejaID, but not at such short notice.

It is possible to apply for a vaccine pass by post if you have a personnummer but don’t have BankID, but the waiting times for a paper pass are currently several weeks long. Sweden introduced vaccine passes at large public events on December 1st, with two weeks’ notice.

I plead with the pensioner at the door and the two women who run the choir, but there’s no mercy.

Next Rose’s Swedish husband arrives with his 99-year-old mother. Although she lives quite happily by herself and is still relatively sharp, she was 81 at the time BankID was introduced in 2003, so she can be forgiven for never having managed to get hold of one.

She had tried to find the paper certificates she had been given when vaccinated, but to no avail. Again, there’s no mercy from the people at the door (this is Sweden). In the end, she waits in the car outside with her grandson while the rest of the family goes in without them.

Arguably, these are problems with BankID, rather than with Sweden’s vaccination pass system. No one who was turned away from Monday’s Lucia concert was among the thousands of fully vaccinated people who cannot get a vaccine pass because they only had a temporary reservnummer (reserve number) at the time they were vaccinated, or because they were vaccinated abroad.

What the vaccination pass has meant is that those without a BankID can now be barred from actual physical public events, not just online services. In the case of Rose’s 99-year-old mother-in-law, that might mean missing one of the last chances of seeing her grandchild sing Lucia. 

The concert itself was wonderful, the children’s voices reverberating around the high, open space of one of Malmö’s finest churches. It just seems a shame some people couldn’t be there.

Member comments

  1. People should not accept this overreach by the government.
    Initially measures were introduced to save the elderly – now we see that the elderly are being punished for formalities. And as we all know, the vaccine doesn’t protect from getting infected, so the introduction of these passes seems bizarre at best.

    1. The passes are fitting in my view…….their logistic totally weird however. No way elderlies should be treated like that.

  2. I don’t think it’s lack of “mercy”, I applaud that those checking follow the rules. While you can get and give Covid while vaccinated the latest studies show it is many, many times less likely. Since the elderly are still a risk group it’s fitting that they are under scrutiny, it’s better to not be admitted than to face serious illness or death.

    1. Would you please share your sources for “the latest studies show it is many, many times less likely” (to get and transmit Covid when vaccinated)? Because I can’t find them. Everyone repeats that but these are not facts. At best the vaccine moderately reduces transmission, but the exact numbers are not known or shared.
      It makes no sense to only allow vaccinated people to meet. It contributes to spreading of the virus too, including to unvaccinated people in different settings.
      And why can’t the elderly (or anyone else for that matter) decide for themselves what they can do, and what risk they are willing to take?

    2. Would you be utterly upset if I labelled your comment…..pathetic ? No apology however.
      As much as I love Sweden, this system is beyond weird.
      Here in France….I walked out of the vaccination center and my certificate was already in my social security vault as well as on my phone.
      Soooooo many things we got wrong….but at least this one right.
      No way elderlies would be left freezing their venerable rear ends is a car while the Lucia concert is going on.

    3. If the vaccine was at best pathetic at protecting you from Delta, taking the vaccine now with Omicron is like taking a flu shot from 5 years ago. Completely useless.

      Rendering the vaccine pass only useful for tracking your every movement, and creating further separation in Swedish society. Everyone in this country is so scared of being seen as a racist or sexist, but are completely ok with medical apartheid?

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Swedes, it’s time to embrace language barriers, not avoid them

In a recent article in Dagens Nyheter, journalist Alex Schulman praises the Danish coach of Sweden's football team for speaking English in press conferences. Wouldn't it be better to embrace the Danish-Swedish language barrier, instead of avoiding it, asks The Local's deputy editor Becky Waterton.

Published: 20 March 2024 11:44 CET
OPINION: Swedes, it's time to embrace language barriers, not avoid them

For most immigrants, language barriers are a fact of life. Whether that’s trying to decipher the syllables of a Swedish sentence as a new learner or being met with a blank stare when we try to order a coffee for the first time in Swedish, it’s a natural part of getting to know a new country.

Swedes, on the other hand, seem to find language barriers intensely awkward, doing whatever they can to either avoid them or pretend they don’t exist.

One example is a new learner of Swedish speaking a heavily accented or grammatically incorrect version of the language, which may be difficult to understand. Often, a Swede facing this scenario will switch to English or plough through the conversation pretending they understand the other person’s broken Swedish, either out of fear of offending or in order to save face. 

Neither of these solutions are really ideal, as they both deprive the new learner of Swedish a chance to improve, which perpetuates the language barrier itself, and can even make communication impossible if the person speaking broken Swedish doesn’t understand any English at all.

How will you ever learn that you’re saying something wrong in Swedish to the extent that it’s incomprehensible if everyone around you just pretends they understand you or never corrects you?

This also applies to pan-Scandinavian communication, where journalist and author Alex Schulman is firmly in the “switch to English” camp. 

In a recent article in Dagens Nyheter, Schulman mentions attending a book fair in Copenhagen, where he struggled to communicate with his Danish editor in the taxi from the airport. This inability to understand Danish only becomes more obvious when he gets up on stage for an interview in Danish.

“It was parodical, obviously. The interviewer asked questions, which I didn’t understand, and then I answered completely different things in Swedish, which she didn’t understand, in front of an audience who didn’t understand anything,” he writes.

He mentions this like it’s a funny anecdote – and to be fair, he might be exaggerating for comedic effect – but I can’t help but feel it would have been better for everyone if he’d just been honest about the language barrier in advance, instead of going all the way to Copenhagen to apparently waste the time of his editor, interviewer and audience by clearly not being able to communicate with them. 

Now, my issue is not that he can’t understand Danish – the two languages are considered mutually intelligible, but in reality many Scandinavians find it hard to understand each other without making any effort – but surely he knew in advance that they would be speaking Danish? 

Would it not have been better to say “hey, I’m not great at Danish, so you might need to speak a bit slower, or is it possible for you to repeat some of the questions in English?”, or to listen to a few Danish podcasts or radio shows in advance to get an ear for the language, instead of just pretending to know what everyone is saying?

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Isn’t the best response when meeting a language barrier working together to overcome it? 

I saw a great example of this in an unlikely place – the new series of Swedish gardening show Trädgårdstider.

Former host Tareq Taylor, a Swede, had to move to Stockholm last year and drop out of the show, which is filmed hours away in Skåne. His replacement is Danish chef and TV presenter Adam Aamann, who doesn’t speak Swedish. The other three hosts, Malin Persson, Pernilla Månsson Colt and John Taylor (no relation), don’t speak Danish, they speak Swedish.

The hosts of Trädgårdstider from left to right: Pernilla Månsson Colt, Malin Persson, Adam Aamann and John Taylor. Photo: Niklas Forshell/SVT

Of course, the group could have switched to English when Aamann was around, but in a preview for next week’s episode (Tuesday 8pm on SVT1 or SVTPlay), I found it refreshing how public broadcaster SVT has chosen to stand up for Scandinavian mutual intelligibility, with the Swedes speaking Swedish and the Dane speaking Danish (with Swedish subtitles for viewers at home, but it’s a start at least).

This isn’t without its issues – Taylor and Aamann have a moment of confusion when trying to figure out what different vegetables are called in each language – but instead of giving up entirely, they work together to overcome the barrier.

Sure, they use English as a helping hand in communication – Taylor, who is English, gives Aamann the English name of one vegetable when he realises Swedish isn’t working – but once they’ve figured out the issue, the pair switch back to their Scandinavian languages.

This also has an extra benefit for both of them, as not only do they get over the linguistic hurdle, but in not switching directly to English they also learn the word for the vegetable in question in each other’s languages too, meaning that they won’t come across this particular language barrier with each other or with another speaker of Danish or Swedish again.

It also takes the audience into account – instead of switching to English and alienating any viewers who don’t speak it, they stick to their Scandinavian languages and will hopefully increase the Swedish audience’s understanding of Danish, too.

In Schulman’s article, he describes his relief when the new Danish coach of the Swedish football team, Jon Dahl Tomasson, announced that he was planning to speak English, instead of Danish, in press conferences in Sweden.

“It was so refreshing, because suddenly, there he stood – a Dane who you could understand for the first time in your life.”

The new Danish coach of Sweden’s national football team, Jon Dahl Tomasson. Photo: Stefan Jerrevång/TT

“I’ve been so happy that I’m at the point of tears, because I think Tomasson’s decision could set a new standard, I think this will give Swedes confidence. We’re building a new relationship with Denmark now, and in that relationship the language we use is English. It’s a relationship where we understand each other for the first time,” he writes.

I’m glad Schulman can understand a Dane for the first time, but I think he’s missing the point somewhat.

If Swedes and Danes speaking their own languages actively tried – together – to understand each other when they come across language barriers between the two languages instead of immediately turning to English, they’d be much better at actually understanding each other’s language in the first place, and the shared work to overcome the barrier would probably bring them closer, too.

English can be a useful tool to aid comprehension, but if you just switch to it whenever you come across the smallest amount of resistance in a conversation, you’re perpetuating language barriers when you could be breaking them down together.

Language barriers are an opportunity rather than an embarrassing moment we should pretend to ignore. We’ll only learn how to speak to each other in a way that everyone understands if we’re honest with each other about the communication issues we have.

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