Who the hell is <i>Bamse?</i>

There was something strange-looking about my dad’s coffee when he sat down at the breakfast table one morning during his last visit to Sweden. It was not milky, but dark—with a white blob in the middle. Dad? I asked, did you put fil in your coffee?
Oh yes, never mind, he said, cheerfully attempting to blend the ingredients with his spoon, the fil breaking apart and curdling into diffuse particles around the rim. Actually, it’s not that bad, he said, taking a sip of proof. His optimism wasn’t fooling anyone; in my pre-Swedish days I had also chosen my pride over my palate.

Swedes will be the first to tell you that, as a foreigner, you don’t need to learn Swedish to get by in Sweden. This can be a relief for English speakers (though everyone else may be saddled with two languages to learn instead). But even if it’s not strictly necessary, learning some Swedish while you’re in Sweden can enhance your experience well beyond the obvious practical matters.
For one, there are compliments to be had. In a country where, for better or for worse, anything from a new haircut to nose surgery can go by without a glimmer of public recognition, attempts to learn Swedish are greeted with great encouragement. Swedes will tell you they’ve heard Swedish is a very difficult language to learn—that’s a compliment (not a reason to give up). In the past, I’ve never contradicted this very difficult language theory, but honestly, I don’t think that Swedish is more complicated than other languages—they’re all tough to learn. Sometimes heartbreakingly difficult as an adult. And the complexity of Swedish is, of course, relative to whether you have Norwegian or Japanese as a starting point. But regardless of your speed of acquisition, in Sweden you get full marks for even trying.

Also, the language performs aspects of the culture that aren’t readily accessible through other means. You may guess that Swedes are pretty straightforward people from how they translate themselves into English (You wait here. I get coffee) but you probably won’t understand when they are being humorous. This goes for all languages, really—it’s often not what is said, but how, and in what context. Admittedly, after five years, I still don’t understand a lot of jokes based on cultural references, but while Bamse, Bolibompa and Pepe’s bodega are still shadowy concepts to me, I often get the bits based on tone and timing. And now I can derive humour from understanding Swedish in other ways too. For example, in the sloping park between Universitetshuset and the Gustavianum museum there’s an information plate by a local Rune stone that states, in English, that the stone was sent to the World Exposition in Paris in 1867. Meanwhile, the spunky Swedish version goes on— using the mock-diplomacy of the passive tense—to inform those who are ‘in the know’ that the stone was then carelessly dropped in the water in Le Havre during its return trip, and not returned to Uppsala until waiting several decades on the bottom of the sea... Touché.
So it’s a privilege to be in on the jokes, and un-translatable material. It’s stimulating to be able to follow conversations which extend beyond the weather and the weekend’s activities. It’s nice to be complimented, just for trying to join in. And then there are the thought-provoking conversations with six-year-olds—who can otherwise be quite cruel, I’m afraid to report, when they meet a big person who doesn’t know a tårta from a tupplur. But to be honest—anything’s an improvement on the fil-coffee days.

Gwendolyn Haevens, originally from Canada, is a Graduate Student studying North American Literature at the Uppsala University English Department.