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SWEDISH HABITS

Five suggestions for the next hyped Swedish lifestyle trend

Foreign media have a habit of picking up any seemingly obscure Scandinavian tradition and proclaiming it a new lifestyle trend. Now that friluftsliv, lagom and fika have all been covered, here are The Local's tips for the next strange Swedish concept to promote abroad.

Published: 25 May 2023 05:28 CEST

Five suggestions for the next hyped Swedish lifestyle trend

A student in Lund at Valborg celebrations embodying the spirit of 'supa'. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

We’ve all read them.

Articles in international media introducing people outside of Scandinavia to new “lifestyle trends”. It started with us being told to buy candles and fluffy slippers so we could practice hygge, then guides to decorate our homes in the supposed “style of lagom“.

Then we were told that taking a coffee break or a fika is somehow the route of Swedish happiness (to be fair, I am often happier after eating cake), given a checklist for Swedish death cleaning to get rid of clutter for future generations, and told to stand up for ourselves by practising Finnish sisu.

Now, the next big Scandinavian trend appears to be… the gökotta?

A gökotta, if you weren’t aware, is an old Swedish tradition of waking up early on Ascension Day to go and sit in a forest and try and hear a cuckoo.

I’ve lived in Sweden for a few years now and have never actually heard of anyone doing this – I think it’s only really practised by birdwatchers and churchgoers, if at all – but this hasn’t stopped various international media claiming that Swedes practise this lifestyle trend from Ascension Day to Midsummer.

With Scandinavian lifestyle trends becoming increasingly more obscure, we thought we’d provide our own examples for marketing executives and publishers everywhere to help push the Scandinavian brand abroad.

Extra points if they use letters that don’t exist in English, aren’t actually practised by anyone in Scandinavia, are not directly translatable, or are especially difficult for non-Scandinavians to pronounce.

1. The Swedish art of supa

This Swedish tradition is commonly practised by Swedes from their teenage years onwards, especially around big public holidays such as Midsummer, Easter and Christmas.

You’ll need to commit to this lifestyle trend, testing your body to its limits as you consume large amounts of alcohol – brännvin or akvavit are the most authentic choices, although any kind of alcohol will do – while you activate your brain by trying to remember the lyrics of drinking songs with increasingly incomprehensible subject matter.

The sign that you’ve encompassed the true spirit of the supa is when you find yourself in a trancelike state dancing around a maypole pretending to be a small frog with your friends and obscure relatives of your Swedish partner, who you only met a few hours previously.

You may recognise some elements of supa from your home country – there is no direct English equivalent, but a few translations could be “to drink yourself paralytic”, “to get smashed” or the more formal term “to binge drink”.

Of course, supa is not for everyone – it does result in the somewhat less aspirational states of illamående (nausea) and bakfylla (hangover) – so we won’t judge you if you’d rather give this lifestyle trend a miss.

Swedes practicing patience and zen in the queue for Systembolaget before the Easter holidays. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

2. Experience patience, zen and part-time teetotalism with the Systembolaget lifestyle trend

Closely related to the art of supa mentioned above, you can practise Swedish patience and restraint with the Systembolaget lifestyle trend.

By willingly subjecting yourself to the structure of opening hours, carefully crafted through years of Swedish teetotalism, you will learn discipline, patience and the stress that only those rushing to pick up a bottle of wine on their way to a party before Systembolaget closes have known.

This can be a bit difficult in other countries which do not have a state-owned alcohol monopoly, but to get into the Systembolaget spirit if you live abroad, you just need to not buy alcohol between the hours of 10am and 7pm on weekdays or 10pm and 3pm on Saturdays.

What about Sundays, you may be wondering? Well, true observers of the Systembolaget lifestyle abstain completely from buying alcohol on Sundays and public holidays.

You can even brush up on your anger management skills as you attempt to buy a few beers or a bottle of wine on an obscure public holiday like Epiphany, Ascension Day or All Saints’ Day, or when you forget your ID ten minutes before closing and the cashier refuses to serve you, despite the fact you’re well into your 30s.

Finally, relish the opportunity to develop your skills of innovation and ingenuity as you find yourself in the kitchen on a Sunday making a recipe which calls for a glass of wine, only to discover that you forgot to pick some up at Systembolaget before it closed the day before.

A passive-aggressive note in its natural habitat, the laundry room. (“Whoever washed their clothes last night: clean up after yourself!”) Photo: Mats Andersson/Scanpix/TT

3. Tap in to the Swedish tradition of konflikträdsla

Another Swedish tradition ready for export is the lifestyle trend of konflikträdsla, or “fear of conflict”.

To get into the konflikträdsla spirit yourself, wait until your neighbour does something annoying. Are they holding a loud party and haven’t turned their music down one minute past curfew? Do they smoke on their balcony? Your first instinct may be to address the issue with them directly, but this is not the Swedish way.

Use this instead as an opportunity to tap into your most primal emotions such as anger, irritation and exasperation, then, instead of releasing this buildup of emotion in an angry outburst, use the ancient art of letter-writing to channel your feelings into arga lappar (angry notes) directed at the object of your fury instead.

The best way of experiencing arga lappar in the wild is to visit your closest laundry room or tvättstuga, use the tumble drier and neglect to remove the dryer lint. You may need to do this a few times, but after a few weeks you’ll soon find a note framed as a friendly reminder (which is probably not all that friendly) by an exasperated neighbour who you have driven to quiet but maddening rage with your actions.

A word of warning, though. Your neighbours will hold a grudge if you do this and they are unlikely to ever forgive you, so this should not be attempted if you ever want to be in their good books again.

A Swedish apartment stairwell as it should be… empty. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

4. Hone your sense of perception in your Swedish apartment stairwell

If you have managed to irritate your neighbours to the point of them putting up arga lappar directed at you, this next Swedish lifestyle skill could be a good one to learn.

This lifestyle trend is the skill of avoidance, undvikandet, the Swedish art of doing everything possible to avoid having to greet your neighbours in the stairwell or, indeed, acknowledging their existence in any way.

Use undvikandet as a chance to heighten your senses of sound and sight to near-superhuman levels, as you become an expert at identifying movement in your building’s stairwell before you leave your apartment.

Before you learned the skill of undvikandet, you may have just left the apartment whenever you felt like it, regularly alarming your Swedish neighbours by acknowledging their existence with a hej hej as you passed by.

Now you carefully look out of your door’s peephole before venturing into the unknown, listening out for footsteps on the stairs before opening your door so you time your departure to avoid any unexpected ambushes.

Happy Friday! Time to eat so much sugar you feel sick, then avoid the stuff for another week. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

5. Indulge yourself with the Swedish art of fredagsmys

Our final Swedish lifestyle trend will help you gain control over your instincts and desires, improving your willpower as you practise restraint for five days a week by avoiding sweets or unhealthy snacks, only to give in to your primal urges and eat a week’s worth of unhealthy food in one sitting come Friday.

Akin to intermittent fasting, you can eat virtuously from Sunday to Thursday, then buy the largest bags of snacks or pick and mix you can find on a Friday evening and feast (frossa) on them until you go to bed on Saturday.

Sure, any dietary benefits throughout the week may be outweighed by giving into your hedonic urges when the weekend rolls around, but don’t let that stop you.

Member comments

Andrea - 26 May 2023 at 16:35 CEST

Lovely article Becky! 😀
I hope the compoundwordthing will not be the next scandiswedishlifestyletrend

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Twelve things about Sweden that make me smile

Pontoons or bryggor

Any pond or lake in Sweden bigger than a football pitch will have its own pontoon and whenever I see one, its wooden platform leading my eye out invitingly towards the deeper water, it always brings an involuntary smile to my face.

Swimming in fresh water is one of life’s simple pleasures, and Sweden’s bryggor do celebrate that, but they also demonstrate how Swedes work collectively. Bryggor are almost always well-maintained, but are rarely owned by anyone. Despite this, they’re always free to use. This is not how things work back in my home country of the UK, and it’s a fantastic thing.

The pontoon at Richard Orange’s local lake. Photo: Mia Orange

Overloaded box bikes

I suspect some in Sweden would dismiss lådcyklar or box bikes, as a marker of the country’s smug, left-of-centre middle class. But even after owning my own battered and ancient example for nigh on a decade, seeing one can still make me break out into a smile.

To amuse me, they need to be overloaded. It could be a gaggle of kids of different ages without a seatbelt in sight, a towering piece of furniture, a joyful-looking 20-something, or an enormous dog.

To me, there’s something wonderfully free about box bikes. A life with fewer cars, slightly chaotic, a little bit hippy but still very sensible.

A cargo bike, although not quite overloaded enough to qualify. Photo: Sofia Sabel/imagebank.sweden.se

A well-tooled utility belt

Sweden is a country of engineers and practical people and nothing exemplifies this more than the utility belts, often incorporated into work trousers, worn by the legions of prosperous-looking electricians, carpenters, builders and other workmen or entreprenörer – down where I live in Skåne anyway.

They will have, at the very least, a screwdriver, a hammer, a Mora knife, an extendable ruler, and a carpenter’s pencil, all neatly organised and at the ready.

For me, it’s evidence of the fact that even after years of growing inequality, Sweden’s blue collar workers still enjoy comparatively higher wages than their counterparts in many other countries in Europe, or in the US or Australia. It’s a sign of the dignity and professionalism of the country’s manual workers, and that can only be a good thing.

Sun worshippers

They start to appear at some point in March or April. People standing absolutely still on the pavement or sitting with their back against a wall, eyes closed, just enjoying the sensation of warm sun on their faces.

Even for someone from cloudy, overcast Britain, this is quite strange behaviour, so it must seem wildly foreign to someone from a sunny country like Italy or Spain.

While Sweden’s winters can be cold, grey and depressing, it can seem worth it, almost anyway, when everything and everyone springs back into life in the spring. For me, it’s the sunworshippers, rather than the first spring flowers, that mark the moment this quickening has begun.

Valstugor or “election cabins”

The highlight of every election year for me is visiting the makeshift villages of valstugor, or election cabins, that spring up in town and city squares across the country.

Anyone can just wander up and just start chatting to the political activists about whatever political issue they want to talk about, local, regional or national, and very often the parties’ most senior local politicians will be there.

I’ve witnessed the local head of the far-right Sweden Democrats passionately debating an overexcited crowd of youths with immigrant backgrounds, the head of the local Moderates brutally disown his party’s leader and prime ministerial candidate, and Social Democrats discuss how pessimistic they feel ahead of the coming vote.

For me, it’s a sign of the openness of Swedish society and of how impressively healthy and alive the country’s democracy is at a local level. I always walk away from spending my lunch break touring the cabins beaming.

Valstugor or ‘election cabins’ for the Sweden Democrats and Christian Democrats ahead of Sweden’s 2022 election. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Raggarbilar

There’s nothing like witnessing a gleaming 1965 Pontiac Bonneville convertible cruising along a Swedish country road to put a smile on your face. I’m not a car enthusiast, but I appreciate passion when I see it, and the sheer incongruity of seeing American cars from the 1950s and 1960s cars on the roads of Sweden always amuses me.

Sweden’s raggare subculture, which is based around an obsession with 1950s American culture and cars, is fascinating. It’s almost entirely based in the countryside, so you only really encounter it when you leave the big cities.

I like to try and get a look at who the person is who has devoted so much of their spare time to renovating and maintaining their beautiful vehicle.

Power Big Meet in Västerås, the world’s largest meet for vintage American cars. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

The mayor on a bike

Since foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death 2003 while shopping in upmarket NK department store, Sweden’s leading national politicians have tended to travel with security.

But the same is not the case at a regional and local level, and here in Malmö you’ll often see the mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh going from place to place completely unsupervised on her bicycle.

As with valstugor, for me it’s a sign of the openness of Swedish democracy.

Toddlers in winter overalls

Det finns inget dåligt väder – bara dåliga kläder. “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” If you’ve spent a winter in Sweden as a foreigner, you’ve almost certainly heard this Swedish saying over and over again.

It’s true, and particularly true of the gangs of toddlers you’ll see out in the snow in parks and preschool playgrounds across the country, wearing the winter overalls that look almost like little space suits.

You may be spending the dark Swedish winter largely cooped up in well-heated apartments, but it’s heartening to see that they, at least, are not. And that always makes me smile.

Coffee mornings (or afternoons for that matter)

The local village café near where we are building our summer house has a little sign on the wall informing the clientele of its frukostklubben, or “breakfast club”, explaining who were the first locals to attend and which table they sit at.

If you get there for its 8am opening, you’ll soon see the guy who runs the local plumbing firm, an electrician, and perhaps the odd farmer, take their place at the table and begin gabbling on about local matters, discussing politics, all in the distinctive mellow rural accent of southeastern Skåne.

These sorts of gatherings happen across the country. You’ll see a bunch of old ladies in their 80s and 90s meeting over cakes and coffee in the more traditional types of konditori, and it gladdens the heart.

Killjoy festive news stories

Whenever it’s time for a Swedish celebration, such as Christmas, Easter, Valborg, New Year, I’m always on the look out for the killjoy festive news stories that are a grand, if little recognised, Swedish media tradition.

“Why Christmas is a dangerous time for your pets”, “The particle pollution caused by Valborg bonfires”, “How Sweden’s Christmas herring are dying out”. Whether they come up with a totally new angle or refresh an old classic, no festive period ever passes without a little injection of misery from Sweden’s newspapers and broadcasters.

For me, it says something about the Swedish reluctance to ever really enjoy anything absolutely and without reserve, a hangover perhaps from the country’s Lutheran heritage.

“Alarm on chemicals in Swedish crayfish.” A typically miserable headline for a Swedish festive story. Photo: Screenshot

Rapeseed

This might perhaps be something limited to people who live in Skåne, but the wide fields of bright yellow rapeseed flowers you come across when driving around Sweden in the early summer always blow me away. You come over the crest of a hill and there it is. If you throw in a whitewashed medieval church, and a few wind turbines rotating majestically on the horizon, it can be a breathtaking sight.

A field of rapeseed in Skåne, southern Sweden. Photo: Jerker Andersson/imagebank.sweden.se

The kulturtant, or “culture lady”

Once you develop an eye for them, Sweden’s kulturtantar, or “culture ladies”, are instantly recognisable and everywhere, with their baggy patterned clothes in rough cotton or home-knitted wool, brightly coloured arty looking glasses, and chunky jewellery.

They are gently ridiculed in Sweden as another manifestation of the smug, liberal middle classes, but they are also celebrated as the core audience that keeps Sweden’s cultural world alive. It’s the kulturtantar who buy the theatre tickets, go to the literature readings, and visit the art galleries in Sweden’s cities and towns.

In a country that I sometimes find a bit too practically minded, I’m glad they exist, and a lot of my friends, though still in their 40s, are well on the way to kulturtant status.

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