'Detail, duty and good sense': Is the PM right about Swedishness?

A French or American president might have mentioned a love of culture or freedom, but "attention to detail", a "sense of duty", and "good sense", were the somewhat austere values Sweden's PM chose to foreground as 'Swedish' in her patriotic speech last week.

Noggrannhet – "attention to detail" – the first value she mentioned in her speech at the Almedalen Political Week, would have seemed strange coming out of the mouth of any world leader but Magdalena Andersson herself.

Pliktkänsla, "a sense of duty", and sunt förnuft, "good sense", are perhaps shared by other nations, but still exhibit a rather dour sensibility. 

My own experience as a foreign national born and raised in Sweden has given me a somewhat unique position to comment on Swedishness.

Growing up I often found myself feeling Swedish abroad and not Swedish at all in Sweden. That might seem strange, but it is an experience shared by an increasing number of people. I would defend Sweden when foreigners criticised the country (I still do) and criticise it myself while I was living there. 

The values listed by the Prime Minister are indeed among those many Swedes consider particularly "Swedish". And all three are reflected in the well-oiled machinery that is Swedish bureaucracy (with which I have an ongoing love story). 

They can really be seen in many things, such as plumbing, housing quality, the ever-so-classic Volvos and their safety features, that many Swedes feel it is their duty to pay taxes, how Swedes obsess about following protocol when their association has an official meeting, how you always have to pay it back (even if it is just ten kronor), in how when you try to get some official to be a bit flexible and they shut you down with some version of the phrase, ‘those are the rules’, or when a cyclist screams at you for walking in the bicycle lane or almost runs you over intentionally to make a point.

But is this the whole story, or are there other values that come to mind? What values do foreigners attribute to Swedes? Are they the same as the Prime Minister’s somewhat Lutheran list?  

My mother, who immigrated in her thirties, was no fan of Sweden, but she would no doubt have agreed with the Prime Minister’s list, perhaps even adding two: timeliness and pragmatism. Though she never went a day without talking about leaving the country, or about how much she hated it, she would always give the devil his due. 

Although she was French, which one would imagine is not that far removed from Sweden in terms of culture, hearing her speak about the country, you would have thought she had moved to the jungles of Borneo. She felt her home country was worlds apart – and now I've moved to France and communicate via email with the Kafkaesque French tax authorities, I am beginning to feel she might have been right.

(On the subject of tax and Swedishness, it is worth pointing out that the yearly estimate of Swedish tax evasion as a portion of GDP is one of the highest in Europe. Perhaps the value of ‘attention to detail’ that comes to play here?)

To me the concept of Swedishness remains elusive.

But I do believe some values are common in a Swedish context, and I would add a couple to the values the Prime Minister and my mother put forward. 

Striving for consensus – This might be why Swedes are always in meetings.

Mysighet – This is an odd one, but the Swedish 'coziness' can be seen in fika, and the love of nature, and I do believe it really completes Swedishness.

The image of Sweden abroad can vary wildly from country to country, but is overall positive. Sweden has ‘a strong brand’. But when I was younger I went abroad with other Swedes on more than one occasion, and this gave me some insights into how Swedes are perceived there in more unofficial ways.

If you ever look up articles about Swedes in Mallorca, Spain (you will find quite a few), very little positive is written about the Swedes who live there or who visit. The Mallorquins have had enough of Swedes. There are reports accusing Swedish residents of wanting the Spanish authorities to adapt to them, rather than the other way around.

But the fuss is mostly due to drunken tourists. The sense that Swedishness and alcohol are not always a charming combination is one you find both at home and abroad (as a person who is visibly not of Swedish ancestry, I have often been privy to live commentary on Swedish drinking habits from immigrants in the country). 

Could it be that for many Swedes, ‘good sense’ and the dictum of lagom e bäst (~ ‘moderation is best’) does not apply to alcohol? Certainly. You only need to look at history of Systembolaget (The Swedish alcohol monopoly) and the Swedish sobriety movement.

In her speech the Prime Minister also said that Swedes have been careful about expressing love for their country, and that perhaps there has even been a fear of appearing haughty or proud. This is a reference to the Law of Jante, a social dictum that one should not be too braggadocious.

Again my experience of Swedes is slightly different. I find Swedes are not at all afraid of bragging about their country – all you need is the right conditions. Most often that will exclude non-Swedes, but not necessarily.

When I was studying in the US, I ended up living with a small group of other Swedes, and all of us, including the ones with an immigrant background, could often be heard bragging among ourselves of how much better things worked in Sweden.

To be honest, we would even do so to Americans. Perhaps Swedes only avoid bragging to someone whose country is not that well off, and as the US does not fall into that category, we felt we could all brag away. 

Now that I have moved abroad once again, I find myself doing it again. And the bureaucracy is always the thing that comes to mind. In what is perhaps my most nationalistic expression of my Swedishness I sometimes find myself wishing that Swedish bureaucrats be put in charge of restructuring all the bureaucracies of the world.

I would say this is an expression of my Swedish ‘good sense’, but critics would immediately note that I have broken the Law of Jante. 

By Alex Rodallec