March Blog

Among the old unread magazines that tend to pile up in our home, I found an issue of the women’s magazine Amelia from 1996. Leafing through it, I came upon a most unusual ode to the Swedish man by Miss Sweden 1993 Johanna Lind.

“Boring, emancipated and honest Swedish men are clearly the best in the world.” Ms Lind has a particular fondness for the middle-aged Swedish man who, she feels, has been unfairly singled out by society as the butt of jokes and even bullying.

“He is constantly being told that he is plump, boring and totally unable to give compliments” while in reality he is quite unique with his “square honesty and lack of pretense”. She even feels that there should be a Swedish Man’s Day (like Father’s Day) that should be celebrated each year with gifts in the form of underwear, cake in bed and free entrance to dances.

According to Johanna Lind, “Swedish men don’t brag about their riches. Instead they pretend to be poorer than they are and let members of the opposite sex pay for their own drinks. They want to be appreciated for their inner qualities and not for what they have in the bank.”

It was Ms Lind’s year out in the big world, after she was crowned Miss Sweden, that awoke her appreciation for the Swedish man. The men she met in New York were always flaunting their wealth, leading her on with lofty promises and smart tricks. Playboy types would invite her to go on vacations in Acapulco and elsewhere while her agent suggested that a sexual relationship with him wouldn’t be a bad thing for a rising star.

Johanna Lind is by no means suggesting that Swedish men will not, after just a few rounds on the dance floor, make a sexual proposal. “But their straightforwardness is an advantage,” she says, because then you can tell them off right away. And often they are relieved because they are actually on the lookout for “a down-to-earth girl who likes to take walks in the woods and potter in the cottage”.

Johanna Lind feels that Swedish women should plain and simply show more appreciation for their men and has put together this maintenance list for their care:

1. Don’t order your men around, ask him nicely for help.
2. Leave him alone sometimes. Let him sit and read the paper for an hour in the washroom, without knocking on the door. 3. Show him appreciation more often.
3. Don’t ever accuse him of being boring.
4. Don’t make heavy demands on him. Men do not notice that the cactus needs watering or that the bedroom floor is covered with old socks.
5. Don’t go to family counseling, listen instead to the texts of Swedish pop songs that point out what is important in life, things like we must live for each other…

She is in essence describing the middle-aged engineer type you would find on the dance floor of the central hotel in a provincial city in the 90s. Much has changed since then especially in the bigger cities and among the younger generations, and the differences between American and Swedish men may not be as significant any longer.

But there are bits and pieces in this reflection that certainly hold true to this day.

Unless she is pulling our legs.