Sunshine and Vikings

Saturday in between breakfast and my unusual trip to the theatre was somewhat messed up by the unexpected and startling appearance of the sun. Having lost a couple of toes and grown mildew in unmentionable places tramping around stalking fictional characters the day before, I’d decided to spend Saturday coming over all cultured in museums. I’d picked out the museums I was going to go to, and had even worked out a route to avoid further frostbite to extremities, so was entirely discombobulated to wake up on Saturday morning to find the city blinking in bright sunshine.

It’s an unwritten rule of being Scottish that one must never, under any circumstances, waste an instant of sunshine indoors. While people from warmer climates can blithely carry on their day safe in the knowledge that it will likely be sunny the next day or the day after, in Scotland summer generally lasts a matter of hours, so the instant that unfamiliar light stuff peeks through thick grey clouds we all drop what we’re doing, coat ourselves in olive oil and fling ourselves on the pavement. So clearly, my museum plan needed to be re-thought.

I decided to walk up to something labelled on my map as “Viking Terminal” which sounded suitably exciting and mysterious – the place where the Vikings came to an end? I marched up a slushy and cracked pavement that ran between a dual carriage way and the Baltic Sea – from which a biting wind ignored the sun and howled, apparently just round my head (honestly, I could see people in t shirts and flip flips barely meters from where I walked in my own private North Pole expedition). No matter, I thought to myself, it will all be worth it to see whatever this Viking… thing is that I will reach any moment. It must be behind that bloody great ferry I can see up ahead.

Ah. Or, it IS the bloody great ferry I can see up ahead. The Viking Terminal turned out to be the ferry Terminal for the Viking line that goes to Finland. So basically I’d walked along a slushy and cracked pavement in my own private North Pole expedition, to look at a mini version of Dover. It was all worth it though, when I saw the sign reading “Viking Check-in” which conjured fabulous mental images of a queue of giant hairy dreadlocked blokes with horned helmets and possibly the head of an Anglo-Saxon tucked under their arm, queuing up with their passport and hoping for a window seat.

I idled what remained of the afternoon away wandering through neighbourhoods consisting of endless coffee shops, a video shop where I tried and failed to find DVDs of Swedish films not released in Britain (every DVD I found turned out to be an American film, sadly), a supermarket where I bought some salty liquorice for my friend Maja (after first polling everyone shopping there to ensure that someone in their right mind would actually want salty liquorice and I hadn’t mistranslated her request), and possibly a park or possibly someone’s front garden (less said on that the better).

Just as the sun was sinking, I made my way back to Slussen and decided I had time for one more mini-exploration before it was time to forage for some dinner (and, as it would turn out, a school play). I managed to translate a sign by a passenger boat that read “next departure 5 minutes” so to celebrate I bought a ticket and got on the boat hoping vaguely that it wasn’t going to Finland.

It was in fact going to an absolutely brilliant place called Djurgården (bashing some icebergs on the way which was excellent) – though it ended up proving the only disappointment of the trip as I got there too late to explore it as I would have wanted to. Not only was it starting to get dark, but the last trip back to Slussen was leaving about 20 minutes after I’d arrived and I wasn’t sure enough of where I was to attempt to get back any other way. So I zoomed around what looked like beautiful gardens with intriguing statues and beautiful museums and even a funfair (though that was closed) and then collapsed back on the return boat slightly out of breath.

I did manage to fit in a quick return trip to Djurgården and the Nordic Museum the following day, where I discovered a swing band playing and mostly elderly people lindy hopping, which cemented my impression of Djurgården as a fabulous place I definitely want to return to.

So that was it. Nearly three decades of Swedophelia and my first trip there did nothing to dampen my ardour. There is definitely a predictable (though far from unpleasant) efficiency and cleanliness; but anywhere with porn in mainstream shop windows, teenage Goths demanding opinions on Afghanistan and the eloquent homeless man deeply put out by the gentrification of Södermalm is far from bland. They’re not effusively welcoming in the way that Americans and Canadians can be, where, if you stand on a street corner holding a map and looking confused hoards of people will all but trample you in their eagerness to give you directions and introduce you to all their family; I stood on many, many street corners in Stockholm holding a map and looking confused and the people cheerfully left me to it. But if I made the effort to approach them, they couldn’t have been lovelier, and their dry humour and quirky friendliness put me in mind, oddly enough, of Glaswegians (albeit taller and infinitely more gorgeous). I’m making plans for a train trip this summer through Northern Europe that will take in Stockholm – though this time will study a map in advance and be sure to watch out for statues of August Strinberg.

Förstår Du?

After an inadvertent pub crawl from Kvarnen back to my hotel (don’t ask), I decided that a bit of Swedish telly (and a very large glass of water) was in order before turning in. It was then that I discovered possibly the best television programme ever invented. It seems to consist of teams of people who sing at one another (presumably competing in some way, though I could never decipher how) in turns, cheesy British and American pop, and what appears to be Swedish folk songs. What’s even better, is that the studio audience joins in, with quite a bit of enthusiasm and clapping along. What’s even better than that, is that the lyrics play along the bottom of the screen so that the audience at home can also join in, presumably with quite a bit of enthusiasm and clapping along, though I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I’m not sure when I have passed a Friday evening post-pub more pleasantly.

Saturday morning was then passed rather quietly and with no sudden movements, in a coffee shop with a large cup of tea and a book, though I spent most of the time with my book in my lap, watching the world go by and listening to conversations I didn’t understand. It hit me that, while I’ve travelled alone in North America, Australia and France, and visited plenty of other countries with friends or family, this was the first time I’d been alone in a country where I didn’t speak the language. It’s an odd feeling, variously exhilarating and disconcerting. Of course there are about seven people in all of Scandinavia that don’t speak better English than I do, but there is a difference between someone specifically speaking English for me and being able to pick up what is generally going on around me.

The night before, people remembering to speak English for me had been inversely proportional to the amount of beer consumed, but the more I drank the more I was convinced I could speak Swedish anyway, so it all worked out. I was quite happily flinging around ‘hej’s and ‘tack’s by this point, and even the odd ‘varsågod’ (you’re welcome/there you go), but sadly ‘hej’ and ‘tack’ and even the odd ‘varsågod’ does not fluent in Swedish make, as I discovered when I tried to express… well anything else really.

Pronunciation is the biggest stumbling block. Swedish grammar isn’t desperately complicated (and as someone who starts to sweat when possessive apostrophes are misused, a language which lacks possessive apostrophes altogether is frankly heaven), and their vocabulary, in comparison with English, isn’t huge. I’d noticed that when watching Swedish films: the subtitles might read “good”, “great”, “enough”, “fine”, but the characters would say ‘bra’ for each. So getting the basics in hand in my head wasn’t a giant challenge, but actually making myself understood to a Swedish person is another matter altogether.

When I’d left my new friends the night before I’d said “Trevligt att träffas” (nice to meet you) and they’d all looked at me blankly. I think we all remember what happened when I’d attempted a “vilken vacker utsikt” so there’s no need to repeat it. In three and a bit days I did not once manage to communicate effectively “talar du engelska” (do you speak English), and every time had to repeat myself in English. When you make more sense to Swedish people in English than you do in Swedish, you’re definitely doing something wrong.

That evening, I took a notion to see some theatre (I wasn’t up for another night of drinking and everything at the cinema was subtitled American movies which seemed a bit pointless), so decided on a whim to head for Södra Teatern and buy a ticket for whatever was on that evening. Determined to make myself understood, just once, in Swedish, I rehearsed “en biljett för ikväll, tack” all the way and was thrilled beyond words when the Box Office lady didn’t look at me blankly but nodded… and then said a lot of words I didn’t understand.

I could, of course, have swallowed my pride and asked her to repeat what she’d said in English but I was loathe to bring my moment in the speaking Swedish sun to an and, so I just nodded enthusiastically in a “yes yes I understood all that perfectly thanks” sort of way and proffered some money. She shrugged and handed me my ticket, and so chuffed was I at my minor triumph that it took me a minute to notice that everyone in the auditorium was roughly around the same age. And they all seemed to know one another. Which is somewhat unusual for a theatre audience.

Shrugging and putting it down to some engaging Swedish quirk, I settled down in my seat to watch a production of…

Well it was a school play.

That will have been those words I didn’t understand then. Saturday night in Stockholm and I watched teenagers singing and dancing with a load of Swedish mums and dads. It was fabulous. Unquestionably the most entertaining night at the theatre I've spent in a while, and thanks to the brilliant overacting of schoolkids, I probably followed it better than I would have had it been the subtle wordplay of some Pinter-esque kitchen sink drama. There were even opportunites to clap along, and I think we've established that there can never be too many opportunities to clap along in my opinion.