February Blog

We had not planned it that way, but this month’s Swedish Press has turned into somewhat of a theme issue on successful immigrants in Sweden. It started with an interview with Somali-born Abbe Ibrahim who was the king of Stockholm nightlife as the head of the trendy Cafe Opera night club. An inspiring conversation with him (most of which you can read on page 20) led to an in-depth research and article about the richest or most successful immigrants in Sweden (on page 17) and what they have done to achieve that.

And then as an example we take a look at what one refugee from Lebanon has achieved at Ur&Penn (on page 23), the company that once propelled the Persson family of H&M fame to becoming one of Sweden's absolutely richest families.

My interest in the fate of immigrants was given a further boost by the Last Word in the November issue entitled "My grandfather was an economic refugee" (that you can read in English on the SweMail site http://members.shaw.ca/swemail). In the article Swedish journalist Annika Lindquist visited the house in Manhattan where her grandfather had lived as an immigrant to the United States. She went on to reflect on why so many Swedes, who were proud of the emigrants in their families, were so negative to immigrants to their country.

We have a similar phenomenom in North America, where we are all basically immigrants, but always tend to think of those that come after us as "the immigrant problem". Just like Swedes talk condescendingly about "juggar" (people from ex Yugo-slavia) and Somalis, North Americans talk about Mexicans and Muslims.

There seems to be somewhat of a discrepancy between emigration having a positive connotation but not immigration. They are just the different sides of the same coin.

At a time when most Swedish immigrants in North America are so well established that newer arrivals just think of themselves as ‘global citizens’, we also tend to forget how looked down upon our ancestors were over here when the great wave of Swedish emigration descended on the continent. We were the "dumb Swedes" then. That should perhaps make us more understanding of the struggle of those who came after us.

Have a really nice February

Anders

PS. If you are reading the electronic issue of Swedish Press the link to the LastWord article refrenced above is just a click away. That is one of the great advantages of the less expensive all-color electronic edition of Swedish Press.

January Blog

Pelle Forshed och Stefan Thungren’s skickligt tecknade Stockholmsnatt i Svenska Dagbladet har säkert höjt hip-faktorn och kanske sänkt åldern bland tidningsläsarna - så att de känner igen sig i serien om trendiga 30-åringar i huvudstaden.

Just back from a short holiday in Sweden, I can attest to the scene in the cartoon above playing out in many homes across the country. The parents are watching the Christmas television special Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul while the children couldn’t care less.

The quirky tradition, that each year sees millions of Swedes hunkering down in front of their television sets at 3 pm sharp on December 24, is unique in the world.

Where else would a Disney program from 1958, with mostly antiquated film clips of Mickey Mouse, Snowwhite, Lady and the Tramp, Mowgli and Baloo, Robin Hood, Ferdinand the Bull and of course Donald Duck, Sweden's Kalle Anka, be an integral part of a national Christmas celebration.

I hadn't celebrated Christmas in Sweden for almost thirty years, and had only seen the Kalle Anka programme once during this time when the Silicon Vikings sent me a bootleg. So settling down in front of the television with much-loved relatives in a cozy cottage in Dalarna, I was thrilled to find everything in the Disney parade to be the same, with the exception of a couple of new clips as SVT is obliged to include something from a current Disney production. Bengt Feldreich still sings the Jiminy Cricket "Wishing upon a star", but the narration of the program is done by a current Christmas host. I missed the Chip and Dale clip, but loved Kalle Anka as an ornithologist trying to photograph the demented Araucan Bird.

When I was growing up in Stockholm, going to a Disney movie program at the Sture cinema on Birger Jarlsgatan was part of the Christmas holidays. So you can imagine what a thrill it was when we got a one-hour programme of favorites on our black-and-white television set for free in 1960! This was at a time when we only had one public service channel that did not run any animation features and that had a general disdain for the kind of commercialism that Disney represented.

There has been an outcry every time SVT has tried to scrap the program. But being the most watched television programme in Sweden (except for Melodifestivalen and certain sport cliff hangers) it remains a keeper.

That is, until the next generation takes over.