Category Archives: Sweden

La Bohème

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I went to La Bohème at the Kungliga Operan on Thursday. Curiously, they’ve decided to set the Opera in a Södermalm-ish present day,

Södermalm is the East Village of Stockholm. with protagonists wearing hoods and jeans and leather jackets.

Sound familiar? The musical Rent borrowed La Bohème’s plot outline.Here is a slightly meatier synopsis of La Bohème. Now the compliment has been returned, with a traditional production of La Bohème adopting a contemporary sheen.

But not all too convincingly. Rent took liberties with the storyI never saw Rent, of course. One lives in New York for the choice, not to actually choose. Choosing is only necessary when you entertain tourist friends. that a faithful production of La Bohème can’t. Dying of consumption in a Swedish nanny state? I don’t think so.

AIDS worked in Rent. Perhaps we should just pretend Mimi has SARS? And while no heat or light for starving artists during an East Village rent strike might make sense, in Stockholm they’d be in state-subsidized apartments and on to their second child.

There are some fateful set design choices too. The loft with which the opera opens—in fact a float that is wheeled on to the stage—is a tricky affair. At the close of the first scene, the incipient lovers are meant to be basking in moonlight as the stage drifts off slowly, not holding on for dear life atop an Abrams tank making for Baghdad. It’s hard to profess eternal love when you’re about to take a running dive through a perspex window.

But these are just quibbles. When Rodolphe launched into Che gelida manina [mp3]. I got the shivers down the spine, which is a rare enough occurrence for me to declare the evening a stunning succcess then and there. Last time that happened was during the opening sequence of Fellowship of the Ring, in particular the bit where the orcs fall off the ledge during the battle.

Swedish cultural extremes, part II

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On Saturday, Helena (Gustavsson, from SAIS Bologna days) and her sambo Christer sambo: person you live with but are not married to.hosted an important event in the yearly calendar of Swedish rituals: Communal watching on TV of the selection of the official Swedish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), to be held in Riga on May 24, 2003.

If you have never been subjected to the Eurovision Song Contest, count yourself blessed. I suspect ESC is responsible for fully 20% of New York immigrants from Europe. But try as they might, nobody really ever escapes its insidious influence. Case in point: it launched the career of Celine Dion, who won in 1988.

But you only really begin to appreciate the brilliant depravity of ESC when it dawns on you that she won because she was better than the rest. Brilliant marketing idea: a double CD-set with all the worst songs over the years.My own youth was scarred by a single accidental exposure to ESC in Belgium. Not only was the Belgian entry atrocious, we then had to sit through hours of “Belgique, nul points” as we were officially shamed for being even worse than tolerable.

If there is one silver lining to the whole ordeal, it is that it helps the young learn early how European politics really operates. All the French speaking countries vote for each other, all the English speaking countries team up with the Scandinavians, and the rest engages in balance-of-power politicking. Also, Turkey always loses.

If you live in Europe, then, you have to develop a coping mechanism. And the best way to cope is not to cower, but to stare the beast in the eyes, and then give it a big wet sloppy kiss on the mouth. This is what we were doing Saturday night, addled by fine wines, which made it easier to leave one’s ironic detachment at the door (there were children there, after all).

Sweden’s 12 candidate songs fall into two classes. Those sung in Swedish by people wearing elk fur which have no hope of winning, and those sung in “English.” The scare quotes are justified this year. Here are some of the “lyrics:”

Alcazar: Not a Sinner, Nor a Saint

…

I’m not a sinner nor a saint,

Not that I will lose my head and faint.

…

Am I a bad boy? Maybe. Am I a sad boy? Let see…

Nul points! Sad enough?

Barbados: Bye Bye

You make me feel like a UFO,

This time I’ve had it, I will take no more,

I’m better off alone out of this war zone.

…

Who’s going to turn you on when I’m gone?

Nul Points! Bye bye.

Fame: Give Me Your Love

I can be the one you love forever,

I can be the dream of your heart.

…

You can turn the winter into summer, oh yeah

You can be me my wonder every day.

Everytime I see you I just want to hold you,

I wish you felt the same way that I do.

These guys won. Yes, Sweden’s official entry is a song about… stalking.

Swedish cultural extremes, part I

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And it pains me to say it, but he is barely three months older than me. You may know him from Tillsammans (Together), which was playing at Angelica NYC in the months after 9/11, and which was the first movie to get me laughing out loud again.
 
Friday night, I finally got to see Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-ever — a movie that leaves no doubt he is one of the best directors working today.

Lilja 4-ever joins only two other movies that are so compelling in their trajectory towards despair that I dread watching them again: Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. Interestingly, all three depict resourceful women who come undone by a trust in others that borders on the naive.

In Lilja 4-ever, we watch how a 16-year old Russian girl (Lilja, played brilliantly by Oksana Akinshina) is forced into prostitution in Sweden. Most of the film takes place in Russia and is in Russian, but the scenes in Sweden are what have caused the most impact here. For Lilja’s clients are affluent Swedes, and Moodysson leaves no doubt that they are abettors to the crime.

Stylewise, we see some dogme influence, with abrupt cuts and shaky camera work. But Moodysson veers away from that esthetic when it suits him: Rammstein, Germany’s answer to hard rock, plays at crucial moments.There is a soundtrack, for example, though it exists to express Lilja’s inner turmoil, not to tug at the audience’s heartstrings.

When you see the movie, you will be struck by echoes of the imagery in Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire). But unlike that movie, and Breaking the Waves, where the last scene annoyingly insists on the reality of a miracle, Lilja 4-ever never passes into spiritual la-la land. Moodysson is a socially committed filmmaker, and he is not going to let a facile religious redemption make everything alright. In his movies, the only angels are the ones you make yourself.

Continued travails in Swedish: Social Realism

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Three days in a row it’s been 10ºC and sunny in Stockholm. Three days in a row all the Swedes I know have tittered in unison about the coming of daylight savings time. March 30 this year.But they reserve their widest smiles for when they tap me on the elbow and tell me, again, how wonderful those outdoor cafés will be… in May.

To better understand such ebullience at a mere turn in the weather, it helps to read a Swedish grammar exercise book. Exercise books in other languages deal with such innocuous topics as the color of one’s pencil. My exercise book has taken it upon itself Första övningsboken i svensk grammatik, by Gunnar Hellström © 1994. I heartily recommend it. By far the best of its kind.to prepare us immigrants for the Lutheran take on life:

Jag får inte börja jobba. Jag har inget arbetstillstånd.

~ I am not allowed to work. I don’t have a work permit.

Ta det lugnt, mormor! Doktorn kommer snart här.

~ Shut up, grandma! The doctor will soon be here.

När tänker du betala tillbaka pengarna som du lånat?

~ When are you thinking of paying me back the money you borrowed?

Min mamma har cancer och tror att hon kommer att dö.

~ My mother has cancer and she thinks she’s about to die.

Those last two sentences are meant to illustrate that Swedes have 3 lexemes for the verb to think,

Not to be confused with morphemes.much like eskimos have 15 lexemes to describe their wealth of experience with snow. If you think you might die (belief), you tror. If you’re thinking of suicide (intent), you tänker, and if you think dying would be nice (opinion), you tycker. Choose the wrong verb, and your fear of death turns into a deathwish. Who said Swedish was easy?

Dead heat

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I just found out tonight that my apartment’s central heating is provided in part by a local crematorium. Surprisingly, this little nugget of weird news, first reported in Dagens Nyheter last month, has so far flown below the radar screens of the internet’s weird news industry.

Perhaps its because it all makes eminent sense if you look at the details. Basically, it’s an environmentally friendly gesture: The smoke produced by the crematorium’s ovens needs to be cooled, from over 1,100 degrees celsius to around 150 degrees, for filters to efficiently remove mercury. Using electric fans costs a lot of money, but piping water through the smoke cools it while heating the water. So for the past 5 years the crematorium has offered to let itself be connected to the city’s central heating grid, an offer Stockholm Energi, the local energy company, refused, fearing public queasiness.

Until now. Several local bishops have said they see no ethical problems with such a setup; on the contrary, both sides see environmental benefits: Stockholm Energi needs less fuel to heat Stockholm, and the crematorium spends less energy cooling its furnaces, saving 50-75% on its energy bill in the process.

But the crematorium insists it’s about saving energy, not money. Furthermore, the technical director of the local church administration assures us that the heat generated by the ovens does not come from bodies—bodies are not good fuel, he says, because they are mainly just bags of water. The heat is generated in part from the coffins, but mainly from the gas that is burned to cremate the bodies.

He also assures us that the steam from the cremated bodies does not end up flowing through my heater here; the processes are kept separate. In that case I’m all for it. In fact, wouldn’t it be even more efficient to have Stockholm Energi burn the bodies in their own powerplants, obviating the need for crematoria altogether? And also, I would feel a bit better if the local old people’s homes get a deep discount on their next heating bill.

(Matthew, what do you think, could you pitch this as an A-head and get a free trip to Stockholm out of it?)

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Continued travails in Swedish…

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There are two kinds of Swedes in the winter. One kind is moody, depressed, melancholic, alcoholic, and as a result not too productive. But most people here are the opposite—aggressively positive—and it amounts to a victory over adversity, in any case over adverse weather.

[Insert jibe here about how if you really want a taste of winter you should move to New York, which is observing arctic temperatures this week while Sweden coasts along in solid positive single digit temperatures.]

But back to these Swedes and their mood-altering society. Aggressive optimism is the state religion here. Every single FM station has a playlist that rotates the same 30 impossibly boppy songs—the Ketchup song is still number one, a whole six months after taxing everybody’s sanity by being anointed Europe’s summer song; and the Russian lesbian teen duo Tatu has a popular ditty that everybody no doubt listens to for its complex rhythmic qualities.

And there are gobs of holidays. Besides Christmas and New Years, there is Santa Lucia, where a lucky child gets to put candles in her hair and light them. I’ve only recently heard the story behind it: Apparently, Saint Lucia used to bring food to fellow Christians hiding underground in Roman times. She had her hands full so she wore candles on her head to light the way in the dark catacombs. Eventually, she was caught so they tried to drown her, but couldn’t, so they tried to burn her at the stake but she wouldn’t, and this was the miracle that made her a saint. Eventually they just killed her with a sword. Some miracle.

Swedish—the language—also betrays a different approach to sexual mores (maw-rez). Whereas the sentence “Magnus loved his wife” is not normally considered ambiguous in English, a Swede knows better and will demand more information. If you say “Magnus älskade sin fru” you are indeed saying he loves his own wife; but if you say “Magnus älskade hans fru” you are talking about somebody else’s wife, perhaps his best friend’s, Petter.

But back to why anybody lives here at all. One reason I found out all by myself. Another I read about. First, I’d like to say what a wonderful world a world without rot is. Things here don’t rot, they don’t fall apart, they don’t get eaten by bugs or maggots or taken over by the jungle or disappear into a swamp or dissolve into rust. It does wonders to one’s quality of life. (The one notable exception is their fish, but that’s done on purpose. It must be a fetish—yearning for something you don’t have).

Second, it turns out that in the days before modern transportation, Swedes enjoyed a 6-month competitive advantage versus the rest of Europe in that their transportation was much, much more efficient during winter. Whereas the rest of us had to wade through muddy roads on uncomfortable carts, the Swedes simply sledded everywhere, getting to places with much less friction and effort.

Woops, it just got dark again.

Krugman, continued.

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The Krugman article I blogged just below has elicited this response, from an anonymous economist, on Andrew Sullivan’s letters page. Because this page is not static, here is the salient part:

The importance of incentives to innovate comes up in evaluating Krugman’s comparions between the U.S. and countries like Canada and Sweden. Comparing the bottom decile in America to the bottom decile in Sweden is interesting, but fundamentally it cannot tell us what would happen if public policy in America took a hint from the Scandinavians. That’s because America–more accurately, the existence of an enormous, relatively free marketplace for new products–has been responsible for much of the innovation that has made living standards elsewhere so high. The median Swede might lose some of her wealth and longevity if it weren’t for America’s big-winner system producing new computers, software, pharmeceuticals, and other technology that make an hour of work buy a lot more stuff today than it did, say, in 1970. Even if some of those gains come from the minds of non-Americans, we have to ask how many of them we would have seen if it hadn’t been possible to sell beneficial new products in such a great big market.

I assume what she is trying to say is that if it weren’t for low US taxes the US market wouldn’t be as big as it is today and hence not as big a consumer of Volvos? The corollary of that argument is that Sweden is holding back US growth by taxing its citizens out of being able to afford Cadillacs. And indeed, a US foreign policy objective implies this. From The National Security Strategy of the United States of America comes this tidbit:

We will use our economic engagement with other countries to underscore the benefits of policies that generate higher productivity and sustained economic growth, including:

* pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity;

* tax policies—particularly lower marginal tax rates—that improve incentives for work and investment;

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg dismisses this as “your doctor’s names for tax cuts for the rich and environmental laxity”. (Thanks Felix for those FedExed back issues).

So who is being the parasite, then? Sweden, benefitting from American demand created by a huge market wrought through low taxation and income inequality? Or the US, exploiting an underclass for cheap labor while polluting the environment with impunity?

I believe it’s neither. The anonymous economist’s argument is bunk: Yes, the US has been responsible for much of the innovation that has raised global living standards. But so has Sweden. If there were such as thing as a statistic for innovation per capita, I reckon the 8 million swedes would be well ahead of the US–they are punching way above their weight.

Furthermore, it’s one thing to suggest that economies (and their markets) grow faster if tax rates are low. But she mistakes growth for absolute size. The US market is huge through historic accident–because the US states came together in a federation. The EU is huge for the same reason–and is about to leapfrog the US when it welcomes 10 new members in 2004. This did not happen because the EU lowered its taxes.

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Money Money Money

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Economic laissez faire apologists seethe whenever Paul Krugman engages them with facts. He must be on to something, because the conservative blogosphere feels the need to counter his every utterance. His latest piece in the New York Times Magazine, about income inequality, has a long but interesting take on the differences in wealth distribution between the US and Sweden:

A few months ago the conservative cyberpundit Glenn Reynolds made a splash when he pointed out that Sweden’s G.D.P. per capita is roughly comparable with that of Mississippi — see, those foolish believers in the welfare state have impoverished themselves! Presumably he assumed that this means that the typical Swede is as poor as the typical resident of Mississippi, and therefore much worse off than the typical American.

But life expectancy in Sweden is about three years higher than that of the U.S. Infant mortality is half the U.S. level, and less than a third the rate in Mississippi. Functional illiteracy is much less common than in the U.S.

How is this possible? One answer is that G.D.P. per capita is in some ways a misleading measure. Swedes take longer vacations than Americans, so they work fewer hours per year. That’s a choice, not a failure of economic performance. Real G.D.P. per hour worked is 16 percent lower than in the United States, which makes Swedish productivity about the same as Canada’s.

But the main point is that though Sweden may have lower average income than the United States, that’s mainly because our rich are so much richer. The median Swedish family has a standard of living roughly comparable with that of the median U.S. family: wages are if anything higher in Sweden, and a higher tax burden is offset by public provision of health care and generally better public services. And as you move further down the income distribution, Swedish living standards are way ahead of those in the U.S. Swedish families with children that are at the 10th percentile — poorer than 90 percent of the population — have incomes 60 percent higher than their U.S. counterparts. And very few people in Sweden experience the deep poverty that is all too common in the United States. One measure: in 1994 only 6 percent of Swedes lived on less than $11 per day, compared with 14 percent in the U.S.

The moral of this comparison is that even if you think that America’s high levels of inequality are the price of our high level of national income, it’s not at all clear that this price is worth paying. The reason conservatives engage in bouts of Sweden-bashing is that they want to convince us that there is no tradeoff between economic efficiency and equity — that if you try to take from the rich and give to the poor, you actually make everyone worse off.

And yet, I have already heard here in Sweden about one person’s 38-year old roommate, a “teacher”, who hasn’t had a real job his entire life because he hasn’t found exactly what he is looking for, career-wise. Meanwhile, he gets unemployment benefits. It is clear to me that what this guy needs is a good dose of New York style ‘work-fare’, where he gets a uniform and a brush and a street to sweep in return for his check. My guess is he’d be teaching by next week.

So Krugman’s last paragraph puzzles me. Surely, liberals can concede that a society with higher income redistribution does suffer from a less efficient engine for economic growth. Such a society will also have a more equitable distribution of wealth, however. What liberals and conservatives can disagree on is the value of this equity to society. Both extremes are discredited: In a society that values equity above all else, everybody will be equally dirt poor–witness communism. And a society with unbridled capitalism is in danger of succumbing to crime and unrest–witness post-communism. Anybody who’s ever played Civilization knows this in their bones.

So the ideal society lies somewhere in the middle. And it clear to me that different societies can legitimately differ as to where that middle is, depending on how much they value equity. So perhaps the Swedish model and the American model are both uniquely adapted to their respective national dispostions.

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Swedish lessons, continued

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Some Swedes’ mastery of the English language is a bit frayed at the edges. I’ve been apartment hunting, and today I found a lovely place. But the owner–a pleasant if somewhat Teutonic dot commer moving to Hamburg to try his luck there–is going to show it to a few more people and then decide whom he likes most. He wanted to find out more about me–through an interview of sorts–so he asked me on my way out, “Are you pedantic?”

I had to think fast, as the place is newly renovated with brushed aluminium kitchen things like in the magazines and with hardwood floors, and I now had so say convincingly whatever he wanted to hear in order for me to get it.

“Me, no, I’m laid back, and easy-going about things.”

He looked crest-fallen. “Oh. because I am pedantic about my apartment.”

Shit. The word for ‘pedantic‘ in Swedish must have positive connotations, or maybe he means ‘meticulous‘ or ‘scrupulous‘. Better make it obvious to him that of course I am pedantic, but in a good way.

“No, no, I mean I am very fastiduous about keeping things clean, but I don’t get stressed about it. I live, how shall we say, ecologically, with a small footprint.” (Where the hell did that come from?) “But it’s not like I’m anal about it or anything.”

“Oh, because I am kind of anal about my apartment, I suppose.”

As I did not want to go into a discussion about all the possible connotations of being anal, I guess I’ll just keep my hopes in check about this apartment.

But, dotcom owner, if you googled my name and you find this blog, as I suspect you will, please let me have the apartment? As this post shows, I can be very pedantic if needed.