Respect the cheese form!
I have a painting studio at the artists residency, but share an office on Stora Badhusgatan where I do my design work with seven people, most of whom are called Lena.
All Swedish women are named Lena, and all Swedish men are named Stefan.
One day I was using the osthyvel (slotted cheese slicer) on a hunk of grevé cheese, and Lena, Lina, Helena, and Lene started yelling at me.
“We always know when you’ve been in the cheese, Laurie! It looks like a ski-slope!”
For these scrupulously dispassionate Scandinavians it is of vital importance that with every slice one attempt to even out the cheese surface. Every true Swede is brought up with this dazzlingly moderate habit. I’m surprised they don’t keep a spirit level in the kitchen. Or perhaps they do!
Some observations: lagom means, “not too Much, not too Little. Just Right.” The Middle Road. Social Democracy. Fairness. Even-ness. The three bears!
The classic metaphor for lagom is the stalk of egomaniacal wheat: If it grows taller than the others, it’s mowed down with swift Scandinavian efficiency. Show-offs are not to be tolerated. So it comes as no surprise that lagom should be expressed in … cheese.
Although Swedish is a word-poor language, they have a few gems sadly lacking in Shakespeare’s proverbial tongue. There’s a word for the crime of washing dishes deceptively – in a sloppy, superficial way:
Fuskdiska! Fakedisher! J’accuse!
Just what it sounds like, hjärnsläpp, or “brain drop,” describes the blank spot in memory where we might complain of early Alzheimer’s, or a “senior moment.”
There’s an onomatopoeic word for a person who is “dreamy, rootless, undecided,” with a soupçon of the hippie-dippy: flummig.
You can even call someone a dust bunny, or torrboll. But only if they’re really boring.
Back in the day, there was an expression for a cell phone: juppinalle, or “Yuppie Teddy Bear.”
This has fallen from use, because Sweden is the most wireless nation on earth, and has been online since early days. I just made that up but it’s true. Not only yuppies but every sentient being with an opposable thumb is cuddling a phone.
Swedish invective is adorably tame. You can tell someone off by saying, Dra dit pepparn växer – i sydamerika!
Translation: “Go where the peppers grow, like – South America!” What this really means is “Go fuck yourself. And do it as far away from here as possible!”
Sadly, The Square (2017), a Swedish film about the art world, features a lunatic suffering from Tourette’s syndrome shouting “camel toe!” in English – why? If you want to say “camel toe,” it’s mummelbyxa.
Mumble pants!
To round out our Swedish lesson, let me correct a misconception. Contrary to a cruel myth founded on corporate envy, the word IKEA does not mean “wobbly” in Swedish.
Wobbly is ostadig. Or vinglig.
IKEA is in fact an acronym for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
Aren’t you glad you asked? Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea’s billionaire founder, says in his 1999 book, Leading By Design: The IKEA Story that his youthful affiliation with the Nazi Movement in Sweden was “the greatest mistake of my life,” but in my opinion that honor should go to the ineluctably hideous Byholma Marieberg Armchair.
See?
—laurie rosenwald
Flommist Laurie Rosenwald is an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer. Copyright © 2020 Laurie Rosenwald.
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