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Andreas Skoj:
What is a Swede?
A Swede is tall, blond, blue-eyed and wears a woolly hat in the winter. By nature he is shy, reserved, serious, industrious and finds it hard to laugh at himself. He is also a creature of habit; every morning he gets up at 5.30 to give him enough time to read the morning paper before going to work. Since work does not usually start until 8 o�clock, this also implies that Swedes are very slow readers.
Apart from himself, his chief interests are money, his job, his home, icehockey and his family (in the order you see here). He also loves animals - especially dogs - and spends hours cycling through the town, draging a huge and ferocious German shepherd on a leash.
A Swede is usually punctual, honest, reliable, clean, has his own teeth and is law-abiding. Evidence of the latter is particularly noticeable at pedestrian crossings. No matter what the weather is like, a Swede would rather get soaked to the skin than crossing an empty street when a red light is showing. Similarly, he always wears a seatbelt, never drinks and drives, always has a licence for television, usually hands in his taxreturn on time, invariably has a plastic bag in his pocket when he walks his dog and never has a bath after 10 o�clock.
A Swede is also very cautious and rarely does anything on impulse (except perhaps sneeze): to him, all decisions are a matter of life and death. Take a simple matter like buying cheese for example. A Swede may try at least ten different sorts of cheese before he finally decides to buy twenty grams of Brie. It is the same sense of caution that prevents him from plunging into marriage straight away. Instead, he lives with a woman first, has one or two children, then - if it seems ok - asks her to marry him.
With reference to marriage, a Swede is quite unlike most European men. Anything a housewife can do, he can do better - from cooking to sewing on buttons. In fact, everything in the home (apart from breast-feeding) is shared.
A Swede also likes to think he is well informed and spends hours finding out all he can about such things as nuclear power, the Third World, pollution, South Africa and the sexual habits of the centipede. He also takes an interest in such trivial things as the name and occupation of his neighbour and whether certain types of beer should be banned or not.
Most Swedes are fanatic when it comes to keeping fit. They regularly spend their weekends running through the nearest forest or cycling for hours in the basement on a bicycle fixed to the floor. With his health in mind, he has given up smoking, sugar, drinking coffee in the evenings, going to bed after 10 o�clock and mixing with strangers.
But perhaps the greatest thing about a Swede is his sense of equality. Everybody has to be and do the same as everybody else. To help this, most Swedes have the same surnames - Svensson, Nilsson or Persson. (Most Swedish women are called Inga) They also earn the same amount of money after tax. They have the same taste in furniture, they dress alike, think alike, drive a Volvo and go to Majorca in the summer.
A Swede also refuses to admit that he is prejudiced in any way. To him, all foreigners are just the same as Swedes and although he does not have any Yugoslavian, Greek, Turkish, Polish, Italian, Finnish or Czechoslovakian friends, he is certain there is very little difference between them and Swedes - apart from their names, their customs, the way they grow vegetables in the kitchen, the fact that they carry knives, rob banks, live on social security, pinch their jobs, breed like rabbits, beat their wives and speak Swedish like someone with a gobstopper in his mouth.
Finally a Swede loves the sun and the countryside, hates queuing, gets a kick out of being first on the bus, detests winter, enjoys sex, can�t stand Gypsies, believes what the National Social Board of Health and Welfare tells him, doesn�t believe in God, worships Ingemar Stenmark, is patriotic (wears Swedish flag underpants), visits the off-licence twice a week, visits his parents at Christmas, goes to English classes and, inevitably, is deeply offended by an article such as this.
Wrong: A Swede is an inferior
root vegetable fed to sheep in
Ireland and people in Scotland!
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