Sweden and Denmark

The Swedes dress in black.  To relieve this monotony, they accent it with a colorful dark gray. You can see twenty versions of black pants and black skirts in Sweden. For flashy trim, there are white blouses and shirts - but not many, and only on those who are clearly moving about the town on business. For those out at restaurants or shopping, one might see drapey knitted scarves on women that are maroon, dark teal, or a dull tan.  For the commuters, it is just unrelieved black. Admittedly, it's winter and it's parkas, but it is still just black parkas. This is all generations.  There is no teenage rebellion on this, at least in winter. 

This was the coat rack at a museum in Kobnhavn (I am loving the six different acceptable spellings and haven't settled on one yet). And I assure you Copenhagen is more colorful than Gothenburg (which also has several spellings).

 

This has been true for at least thirty years and is cross-generational, and at some point one has to consider it a cultural, not merely temporarily fashionable phenomenon. It might be wanting to blend into the shadows, not wanting to stand out, because that is the standard explanation for why they speak quietly in public. But for that latter, I noticed that they allowed themselves to speak more loudly when they could tell I didn't speak Swedish/Danish, and so conclude that privacy rather than unobtrusiveness is the driver.  those are admittedly not unrelated. The was very occasionally a fun moment when they assumed that the three of us could not speak Scandinavian because I couldn't and my wife couldn't, and the third of us was my son who is originally Romanian and looks even less Scandi.  Except he has lived in Norway for twelve years and could understand them easily. There would be a slight uncertainty and second look at him. 

I went to the ancestral villages, hoping to find homes, gravesites, or other buildings which would have been known to my ancestors when they left in the 1870's. They looked at me blankly about old cloth mills in Ulricehamn (Anders Frederick was recruited directly to work in the velvet mill in warwick RI), and the impoverished fishing village of Fiskebackskil my great-grandfather left is now a sailing resort town, almost empty in winter. Liared and Knatte, further inland likewise did not have older buildings, except for the churches in all four. What was curious to me was that there were no very old graves in the adjoining churchyards.  Everything was family plot and less than a century old. It may be a very American thing to have a gravesite that is just yours in perpetuity, and that does fit with the idea of American individuality. There were a few broken stones piled against all the churches. The Lindquist burials here in America are a central family obelisk surrounded by stones set flat reading Fader, Moder, Hilma, August, etc, which is rather a hybrid method. Those who know about other cultures, please comment. 

I found them quite chatty despite their reputation, but I may be the Irresistible Force in that. They do have a great deal of herring, salmon, and smoked meats on the menu, but I was surprised how how much non-lactose, vegan, and vegetarian offerings otherwise dominated. Glutenfri is understood but one has to look for it harder. Breads and pastries look very attractive, and broke our hearts to have to stay off. They do not have compensating GF items yet.

Glögg remains popular at Jul, and is even stronger (in flavor, not alcohol) than I remembered from decades ago here. I brought home six bottles of glögg mix. Chris and I had a lot late in the evening at markets while shopping.  It is wonderful stuff in the cold. 

With the exception of a song by Evie (who was a popular Norwegian singer in the 1970s) that snuck in, the Christmas music in the background was entirely American, and mostly secular. You would think you were at Home Depot of something, and this was largely true at Heathrow as well. It says something disquieting about all of us, I think. No Lennon or McCartney, though, and no novelty songs. Lots of "White Christmas," "Just Hear Those Sleigh Bells Ringing," and "Jingle Bells."

The Little Mermaid statue is disappointingly small, the Anglican Church disappointingly PC, and the public transport its usual incomprehensible self until you have navigated a few times.