Lagom!

Swedes are known for being a bit dull and not too clever. The Swedish chef in the Muppet show was a good indication of how many think of us regarding the latter. We are also known for being, generally speaking, modest and careful with words. If an American find something to be “fabulous, marvellous, outstanding” we would say that it is “OK”. When my mother had prepared a really superb dinner my father’s comments would be: “not too bad”.

We even have a word that you cannot directly translate into any other language and that is “lagom” which means “not too much and not too little” or “just right”. A margarine that you can find all over Europe is called “Lätt och Lagom” which means “easy (when talking about weight) and not too much and not too little”. Since it is so difficult to translate the name, it actually keeps it Swedish name in many other countries, adding a bit to it’s exotic, foreign touch.

Along the same lines, we also have a kind of milk that is called “mellan mjölk” which directly translated means “in between milk” since it has more fat that than skim milk but less than full milk. “Lagom” in other words! A good friend even has “news from the country of the “mellan mjölk” in the subject line of her mails.

There are, however, areas in which we more or less always go to the extremes and one such area is the weather.

First of all, it is, like in many or even most other countries a favourite topic of conversation and you will always hear incredible stories about how much or little rain a place has had during the last day, week or month, how hard the wind was, how severe the storm was, and so on and so forth. Just the other day my neighbour and I discussed how much it had rained and had serious problems agreeing on the number of mm we had received.

We also tend to exaggerate when we talk about the berries or mushrooms we find in the forests. The blue berries are either “enormously big or incredible sweet” and the mushrooms “cover the ground where ever you look”.

Conclusion; we in Svångemåla as well as all other Swedes, are just as complicated and full of contradictions as you might think when you watch an Ingemar Bergman movie!