If you want to understand more about Swedish culture you can continue reading. At a late night I randomly watched a series on Swedish TV, which translates to “The worlds’ most modern country (with the worlds’ most insecure people?)”. Phenomenons that never really have been anything that captivated my thoughts came to surface. I will start exploring in this post and continue discussion further.
Basic knowledge. Swedish people are experts in cueing, also conflict avoiding doers (rather than just being, we do stuff), that have a strong if not the strongest trust of all, in: the state, new technologies, standardization (and with that, a non-ending improvement; urge for efficiency) and rationality.
The opportunity cost of conflict is high on the list. At the most extreme, we rather buy a sweater to please the staff in the store than to risk the emotional cost of causing them to be unhappy. The cost of the sweater is less than the risk of causing harm.
I wondered what they meant in this tv show with “the most modern” when I thought about my parents. However, they pointed out that only in a continuously modernizing state can anyone become out of fashion. Everything grows out of fashion and it goes fast.
Sweden’s greatest exports are IKEA and H&M amongst others. These are both examples of early business growing out of the “tear and scrap- culture”. During the 70’s, Sweden tore down many old cities and rebuilt them in a practical style. Practical is a keyword, or rather functionality, as the style was to be called “funkis”. Suddenly, people could afford not to use same interior for the rest if their lives which lead to the creation of this IKEA frenzy that continued and spread.
There are more than 10 million active mobile phones in Sweden, but only 9 million citizens. New technology is a way to make life easier and more efficient, why we are open to it. Sweden is a thankful test market due to this together with the fact that the word normally only spreads within Sweden. So a brand will not risk reputation if testing in Sweden (however, this may change by the increases use of new social media).
The standardization institute was first in the world. I didn’t know we had an institution that measured how to best build a kitchen to not having to walk more steps than necessary. When I heard that at one point they got out of hand and tried to standardize humans, I recalled this in context with the Nazi era. Some good came out of it and some less good.
When it comes to psychological experiments, one reason that Sweden is an interesting test market, is that we are bound to rules and authority even though it is in a somewhat special way. Many other states have caused peoples’ mistrust and the state has thus weakened. In Sweden the farmers and the state had a strong connection, and the trust has stayed intact which is rare. On one hand we trust authorities, on the other hand we have an urge of independency. We don’t have a very strong bond to neighbors. We rather buy our own BBQ grill than using the neighbors, even if we use it twice a year. We are not strongly rooted. We move around a lot.
We like numbers. When a baby is born, we give them a number. When we look at a wine bottle, we review the % of alcohol for the price paid.
It’s difficult for us to find a reason to socialize with people if we don’t have a particular activity to perform (we can’t socialize without a reason as it makes us uncomfortable. We are doers. We socialize around the activity).
There are more to be said, I will continue in a later post. All foreign friends, and Swedes for that matter, please comment what you find is typically Swedish that is not mentioned in this post?
