{"id":4319,"date":"2017-12-19T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:03:06","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:03:06","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Sweden … Featuring Katrin Berndt & Matilda Sj\u00f6holm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Norway … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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<\/span> I’m very excited about this post because I just recently discovered that I’m only a few generations back Swedish on one side. I ALWAYS KNEW I HAD VIKING BLOOD!<\/strike> So I’m super excited to learn more about one of my direct roots countries!<\/span>
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<\/span>Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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\nMy name is Katrin and I\u2019m 23 years old. I was born and raised in Sweden by a Finnish mother and American father. I also have two brothers. I currently work as a social media influencer and consultant, which I have been doing full time for the past two years. My hobbies include spending time with my French bulldog and my boyfriend Sonny. I also play the very Swedish sport \u2018floorball\u2019. Other than that I spend most my time working.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nMy name is Matilda Sj\u00f6holm and I am 100% Swedish. I live in Sk\u00e5ne which is the southernmost province of Sweden. There I live in a house in a smaller village with my parents, my sister and our dogs and cats. I am in my third and last year of upper secondary school where I am studying media. I have never really been in the north of Sweden so keep that in mind. This is written by a southerner and therefore it will focus on the southern half of Sweden.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
\nKatrin: <\/b>Some of the most popular celebrations in Sweden are Valborg on March 31st and Midsummer (fell on June 23rd this year) where adults (and teenagers) party and get extremely drunk and children, families, and old people visit a huge local bonfire or a large midsummer pole symbolizing fertility. \u201cFun\u201d and awkward games are also involved.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nWe do not have a lot of landmarks that are iconic for our country but forests and nature is one of the things we have loads of. There is also a part of Stockholm called Gamlastan (Old Town) that is pretty iconic as well.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nOther than that, blond hair, blue eyes, IKEA, and ABBA are probably the first things people think of when they think of Sweden.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nMatilda: <\/b>People hear Sweden and they immediately think about Stockholm, our capital city. Stockholm is located on the east coast halfway through Sweden. People thinking about Stockholm isn’t weird at all. This is where our royal family lives and our politicians work there. The landmarks that could be interesting there is the Royal Palace (home of our king and queen) and \u201cGamla Stan\u201d (The Old Town).<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWe have plenty of interesting places in southern Sweden as well. A place I love very much is \u201c\u00d6sterlen\u201d. This is the southeast coast of Sk\u00e5ne, and it is a wonderful place. There are nice beaches, high hills, cozy villages with old houses and cobblestone streets. A place there that I especially like is Simrishamn, a cozy seaside town with plenty of Hollyhock flowers. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nI spend a lot of time in the university city, Lund. This place is known worldwide for Lunds Universitet and Lund Cathedral. The pope himself actually visited Lund Cathedral last year and it was a huge event.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWhen speaking about Sk\u00e5ne I can\u2019t forget to mention \u00d6resundsbron, this is the bridge connecting Malm\u00f6 and Copenhagen. This bridge ends on Pepparholmen and there the road goes into a tunnel under the seafloor all the way to Danish ground.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nIn Sweden, we have some celebrations that differ from the rest of the world. Firstly we have Midsummer. This is the day in the middle of the summer when we dance around a flower-clad midsummer pole and eat herring and potatoes. Our second different celebration is Lucia. This is celebrated on December 13. To be honest I don\u2019t really understand the whole thing about this day. We celebrate Saint Lucia, a saint that lived in Italy and poked her eyes out to be with her loved one or something like that. She is known to have worn candles on her head to light her way. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
\nWhenever I get asked what the best city to visit is I always reply that if you have been to one city you have been to them all. I think most places in Sweden look more or less the same. No high buildings, nice nature and of course always prettiest in the summertime.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWith that said my favorite places are the town I live in, Motala, and the town I used to live in, Malm\u00f6. Why? They are both beautiful in the summertime (hehe) and Malm\u00f6 is just big enough to be considered a big city but it is not as busy and crowded as Gothenburg or Stockholm.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nMatlida: <\/b>As Sweden is a very long country the environment differs a lot. Here in the south, we have a lot of oak forests and fields and in the north of Sweden, we have a lot of mountains. The temperature is however quite even throughout the country. We get summers with temperatures between 18-30 degrees Celsius (64-86 degrees Fahrenheit) and during winter we have about +3 to -8 degrees Celsius (37-17 degrees Fahrenheit) in the south. In northern Sweden, it\u2019s often way colder than that.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWhen I was younger we used to get huge amounts of snow, it was fantastic! Now we don\u2019t get as much snow anymore. This winter we got our first real snow in the beginning of February and that was only about 10 cm, now it\u2019s almost gone again. I suspect that global warming is behind this\u2026<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nAs a Swede myself I don\u2019t find our environment too exciting but I have few places that I find very beautiful. One of those are the fields outside of the village where I live. They are amazing during the summer when the rapeseed is blooming. The fields turn yellow and the smell is amazing. Another place I love is Lund. It is a beautiful city with this old cozy feel in the central parts. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
\nKatrin: <\/b>Most food we eat is \u201cwatered down\u201d versions of food from all over the world. Our pizzas are sad compared to Italian or American pizzas, our tacos are sad compared to real Mexican tacos, and our Asian buffets are\u2026 can you guess? Pretty sad too. And I love it! I grew up eating this food and I do enjoy it.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nThe more \u201cSwedish cuisine\u201d is meat and potatoes, maybe some sausage or fish. We eat very basic meals that come straight from the farmer haha. We call it \u201chusmanskost\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nMatilda: <\/b>When talking Swedish food you can\u2019t avoid our \u201cFriday tacos.” It is a part of our culture in some weird way. So on the Fridays, a lot of families eat tacos. But they are quite different from the American tacos. We usually have this soft tortilla bread that we put mince, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, corn, and then we top it with either taco sauce or cr\u00e8me fraiche (sour cream). This is one of my favorite dishes. I also like IKEA meatballs and salmon.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nIn Sweden we do love our traditional home cooked food, we call this Svensk Husmanskost. This includes our famous meatballs, meatloaf, Falukorv etc.<\/span><\/div>\n
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<\/span> Tell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nKatrin: <\/b>There are a lot of different dialects in Sweden. You don\u2019t have to travel far to find someone who speaks a completely different version of Swedish. The biggest differences will be found in the mid-region around Stockholm level compared to up north and down south.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nOne of the most iconic examples of weird Swedish is that a sharp intake of breath means \u201cyes.” This is mainly used in northern Sweden but has been adopted by some Southerners as well.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nThere is also a constant battle regarding how to properly pronounce cookie, caviar, and liquorice (kex, kaviar, lakrits).<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nMatilda:<\/b> Well, Sweden isn’t an English speaking country so I really can\u2019t compare to the US. But I’ll try to tell you a bit about our languages. Swedish is our official language. We also have a few minority languages such as Sami and Finnish.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWe have many dialects. I, for example, speak \u201cSk\u00e5nska\u201d as I am fr\u00e5n Sk\u00e5ne. Someone from Stockholm usually speaks \u201cStockholmska\u201d and someone from for example \u201cDalarna\u201d (a county in the middle of Sweden\u201d speaks \u201cDalm\u00e5l. When I want to say wheelbarrow I usually say \u201crolleb\u00f6r\u201d, a person that\u2019s not from Sk\u00e5ne would use the real Swedish word for it, \u201cskottk\u00e4rra\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nSwedish grammar is very irregular, we have rules but they aren’t used as much as the rules in English.  <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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