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It's that time of year for foreign guests at Swedish smorgasbords to exercise a certain amount of circumspection.
If the little green-brown-silver fishes come out of a swollen can, or a jar with the lid popped up, and the smell makes you check the soles of your shoes, and the Swedes say it is sour herring, please note that in this case "sour" means "rotten".
And if they offer you whitefish that they dig up from its burial place in their backyard, be forewarned it has been soaking in the same substance we once used to mix with whole dead horses to turn them into soap. The fish bones will be jelly. It doesn't have much of a smell, except of antiseptic, like something's been scrubbed in bleach.
You can start chugging the glug (warm red spiced wine with raisins and almonds), and work your way deep into the aquavit, and get through the stuff above - but any or all of the other dozen kinds of herring, and some nice meatballs, serve just as well. No, they don't, they serve better.
You know why Swedish potatoes approximate Titleist Pro V1 size? It's because they throw out the little ones - look at the growing season. A dozen boiled up with salt and soused in that outstanding Swedish butter (e.g. Bregott's, not the Urban Dictionary kind) are fine eating, though, if you can keep them from rolling off the jul plate.
Swedish pron? It's all made in LA. Swedish censors are busy editing Mickey Mouse to remove the most graphic violence. But there will be millions of Swedes gathered around the TV to watch that most traditional of Swedish Christmas characters: Donald Duck (Kalle Anka). And Bamse (and company) is a fine animated adventure for kids of all ages.
Of all things Svenska: you could have sent us your fantastic modular manufactured houses, of lasting build quality and durable materials - we need such building systems here. You could have sent us your innate ability to cheat on your taxes while feeling good about it, or those old-school sailing vessels you pot around the rocks in the archepelago in the summer with. You could have sent your cheese and coffee and green-frosted cakes, your pepparkaka and milk chocolate.
You could have kept making Volvo 240s; Americans would still be buying them today. Do you know, my dear Swedes, that during 1985-1995 between 250,000-500,000 US citizens died on our roads? And of the millions of people riding around (slowly) in Volvo 240s during that decade, do you know how many of those that died were in Volvo 240's? Zero. None. Nobody. Nada, zilch, ingenting. That's the single most amazing traffic statistic I have ever come across.
But you sent us Ikea. Yeah, OK, alright. You can manage with a few Amazon Kindle stores, I reckon.
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