2020/03/24, 12:34
On the 23rd of March, we celebrate three years since moving to Sweden. I post a photo of the luggage we flew with – four suitcases, a backpack each and a tote bag, lined up in the empty bedroom of our old South London flat – to Instagram. Later that day, I log onto the migration authority’s website and fill out an application for Swedish citizenship that will take an average of 42 months to process. Outside, spring is renewing its annual promise of warmer, brighter days. Snow is dripping away from roofs and melting into the ground like a lowering tide, revealing the sodden earth underneath. The next morning, after our daily routine of Wordle over coffee, we see our first koltrastar, or blackbirds, of the year: well-fed males perched by the feeder, freshly returned from a winter somewhere warmer. The blackbird is one of my favourite birds for reasons I can’t really explain. It is also Sweden’s national bird, though, to me, our corner of the country is much more synonymous with domherrar – bullfinches – or magpies, like so many other parts of the world.
A while before I moved here, I started to make Sweden home. I did this primarily by signing up for Swedish evening classes. One evening a week, I’d make the arduous journey from my office job in Croydon to the university campus in Oxford Circus, squeezing in just enough time for a Pret dinner. For the next two hours, I’d sit in a classroom with a handful of other adults, united by how tired we all were and by a self-deprecating urge to proclaim that the language was impossible, that we’d struggled with the homework (apart from this one guy who was as competent at Swedish grammar as he was at letting everyone know just how good he was).
Most of us were there because we had Swedish partners. Others openly admitted that they were just interested in Scandinavia, in Swedish culture. The food, the pervasive reputation of coolness – the women, I secretly, and perhaps unfairly, assumed to be one classmate’s main motivation. Lessons covered things like how to order cinnamon buns and discuss weekend plans with colleagues, as well as aspects of Swedish life like eating surströmming, or fermented herring, in August or watching Donald Duck on Christmas Eve, things I’d either done or become familiar with in one way or another after a decade of visiting the country (the surströmming, it should go without saying, not included).
It would’ve been easy to construct a pretty picture in my head of the Sweden I’d soon call home. A picture of a country resistant to hierarchical structures, with long, paid summer holidays and equitable parental leave, strong unions and, until recently, a socialist government. A green and blue land of forests and lakes, of delicious baked goods and quirks like an alcohol monopoly and a national dedication to Taco nights. Sweden is an easy place to love from an uneducated distance, as though it’s one of those cutesy make-believe Christmas countries in Netflix festive films. But I have never been thoroughly charmed by Aldovia and Montenaro (yes, I devour those films). It’s as easy, to me, to see the cracks in the gleaming facade.
In Swedish news of late: the far-right Sweden Democrats want to give non-Swedish staff in care homes a year to learn the language outside of work hours or else they’ll lose their jobs. The party have also called for a review of the mother-tongue language lessons children with parents from outside of the country currently have a right to as part of their early education, stating these classes could be bad for integration. Racist extremist groups were more active last year than the previous year, according to a recent report, which also projects that there’s a risk that such groups will increasingly commit acts of political violence if the Sweden Democrats fail to receive support in their agendas from the other coalition parties.
Reading ‘expat news’ is a jarring experience. On the news app I subscribe to, an article about institutional racism impacting immigrants’ ability to find employment might appear alongside a listicle of Swedish words with funny meanings. The country’s amusing idiosyncrasies are extolled while its dark side is obscured. The better I get at the language, the better I can follow the morning news on the public broadcasting service channel we watch at the start of each day. It’s a bittersweet relief to see the country a little closer to how it actually is. I learn about crime rates and the stupid things politicians have said. I ask S if I don’t understand.
On the second-to-last day of February, we see the Aurora Borealis. It starts as a wisp of something that probably isn’t a cloud. Ten minutes later, we pile into the car, winter coats thrown over our comfies, arcs of activity stretching across the night. I sit in the passenger seat, crying, craning my neck to get a better view. I learn that it’s true what they say: the camera adds the colour. We park just outside the village, where there aren’t any streetlights, and turn our phones to the sky. Electric green flares come to life on the screens but, later, it’s the grey warps of light that I want to remember. That I want to acknowledge were spectacular even in their divergence from what we think the Northern Lights will look like; precious because they were true.
The Aurora can be seen across the country, even in Stockholm; even, I hear, as far south as St. Albans in England. The next day, the English-language news app invites readers to send in their photos of the phenomenon. When the piece goes live, I scroll through photos of green-streaked night skies taken by immigrants in Kiruna, Kullaberg, Luleå; people who see as much wonder as I did in the Lights, and are making this place home just like I am, for better or worse.
The Bookshelf
In this section of Home Comforts, I share a reading recommendation for a book or piece of writing that touches on themes of home.
Homesickness by Colin Barrett
I finished this collection of eight short stories in the early hours of this morning during a spell of sleeplessness. They’re described as ‘character-driven’, and that they definitely are. We meet old friends, an estranged son, orphans; people brought together by death or creativity, no one quite sure of their place in the world. While I didn’t find these to be the most compelling short stories I’ve read, the act of reading them was an exercise in creating a place to stay among fictional characters leading very different lives from mine. They too have taken up residence, many (especially the youngest son in The Ways, ear pressed to the floor of his room while he pretends to hear his parents bickering downstairs) refusing to vacate, some weeks after moving in.
Do you have a recommendation I might like? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
My short story collection, Tools For Surviving A Storm, is out now.
‘In a transporting, original collection, Nadia Henderson examines the lines between nature and the human world through stories set in landscapes both brutal and beautiful.’
I’m Nadia, a London-born writer living and working in rural Sweden. I write short stories, creative non-fiction and, of course, newsletters. If you like, you can find out more about me and my work on my website. Thank you for reading Home Comforts!
Your whimsical nature of writing 'ordinary' things is a joy to read!
Nadia, I think the new structure works beautifully!