Is she a stone cold bitch or 🌟just Swedish🌟?
Plus: that 'arrogant dickbag' might just be the loveliest man you've ever met.
The first time I went out for a spring walk by myself in my future husband’s hometown I didn’t know if this was a place where I could live. I went along the river, which was lovely, but whenever I passed someone walking by in the other direction this unsettling thing would happen: I’d feel eyes on me, so I’d turn to look at the passing Swede, who would indeed be looking at me. They would continue looking at me, so I’d smile in a casual, friendly fashion. The Swede would not smile back. Instead, they would briefly look me up and down, with mouth firmly set and eyes stone cold, then look away.
What the hell? Look: I’m from Toronto—not exactly known as the most friendly place in the world. We have our own, well-earned, reputation for uptight coldness. So I like to have my personal space in public as much as the next prissy whitebred Torontonian, but one basic way to take that space is by, hey, just not looking at people. If I do look at strangers on the street, and they notice and look back at me, I consider it basic social decency to show them I’m not a serial killer by displaying brief, non-committal warmth—via my face, because that is what humans usually do. But not (most) Swedish humans.
When I came back from these initial unsettling solo walks—rather worked up and bursting with the type of confusing low-stakes emotional turmoil I’m pretty sure no Swede has ever experienced, let alone expressed, in the whole history of Norrland—my future husband had what seemed to him a simple, shrug-worthy, explanation:
“They just feel awkward."
Um. Okay? The thing is, they’re also all like six-foot tall beautiful blondes with impeccably styled hair, clothing, and accessories. Of course with my thinky-brain I understand that everyone and anyone can feel socially awkward and not know how to navigate other humans on the sidewalk, but it’s hard to internalize that in a moment when some Scandinavian supermodel is literally looking down on you1.
The thing is, all evidence suggests that my (yes, tall, fair, and unreasonably handsome) Swedish husband is right. I’ve never tried striking up a conversation with a stone-faced Swede-on-the-Street (I might get deported?! for going so against Swedish cultural norms, I mean), but I have noticed that almost every single Swede I speak to in other contexts is downright lovely—kind, good-humoured, attentive yet nonintrusive, and often endearingly awkward. And it seems highly unlikely that the Swedes I pass on the street and the Swedes I encounter while socializing, working, or shopping comprise mutually exclusive populations.
Really, I should have known to expect this—that is, feeling completely affronted by apparently dickish behaviour from Swedes only to discover that I have been wildly misreading what seems to be just a cultural disease of the (unfairly symmetrical and fine-cheekboned) face.
I should have known this because I had a similar—and similarly wildly off-base— misconception about the man who is now my husband. We first met as students at the same college in the UK, where he was part of a group of second-year students showing me and other first-years around. It was on one of the first evenings that the other first-years and I were being led out to a restaurant in town, but none of us knew where we were going or who was leading the way. Since this was not by design, and I am generally a bossy take-charge Hermione-type, I took it upon myself to yell ahead, towards the group of upper-years,
“Does anyone know where we’re going?!”
About two metres ahead of me I saw, about a full head above everyone else, a well-groomed, nattily dressed, very upright blonde young man. He turned his head just enough to look down his nose at me without slackening his pace as he replied,
“Yes.”
—and kept walking.
‘Ugh,’ I thought, ‘what an arrogant pretty boy.’
Later that same evening I found myself sitting across from this same fellow and realizing, with some chagrin, that he was, in fact, about as down-to-earth, kind, and good-hearted a person as one could ever hope to meet2. He was just Swedish.
Now that I’ve been living in Sweden for almost a year, I have mostly learned not to take the icy Swedish gaze personally. But every so often some beautiful tower of pale crystalline coldness catches my eye and the big-city North American in me jumps out, ready to start the world’s most ill-advised street fight, before Stina/Anna/Linnea3 continues on, leaving me fuming futilely and feeling grateful that usually, at my eye-level, there are only children.
Well, on me anyway. I’m 5ft2 (approx. 157cm).
And in case you think my judgment was skewed by some vested interest in his aforementioned handsomeness, I’ll have you know that at the time I was fully (if perhaps foolishly) committed to a boyfriend back in Canada. Future-husband and I were therefore ‘just’ friends for years after this meet-cute anachronism.
Or or Björn/Fredrik/Magnus; the stone-cold Swedish stare is gender-neutral.
Just this morning I got stared at by an old lady - it’s so normal but so unsettling