Why Swedes are strange
and blissfully unaware

The humorous insight into Swedish business culture was the first event in the series “Get to know your country” aimed at business professionals from Sweden and the United Kingdom. The seminar took place 2 March at Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes and gathered some 60 guests. Of which a majority were of Swedish descent. The premise of the seminar was that Swedish business people have a firm belief that they are quite normal, quite sensible and quite logical. As Colin Moon soon revealed the rest of the business world finds Swedes quite amusing, quite entertaining and plain quite odd. “You can say what you want about the Swedish, but revolutionary is not one of them” he began.

As a Stockholm resident Colin Moon has a good perspective on the Swedish way of conducting business. But the jabs were not only aimed at the Swedes. His example of the run of the mill international business meeting involved many nationalities. “If British people say that something is interesting you can be sure it is not” he explained and continued “I will never forgive God for inventing the French.” And after a day of gut wrenching meetings, what do the Swedes say? “Let’s arrange another meeting.” Colin Moon described the most important thing in order to be able to understand other nationalities as getting to know yourself. And when doing so you have to see how Swedes act from a different perspective. He then pointed out two of the most significant Swedish traits. Asking people what they are doing on the weekend is one of them (the Swedish answer is always “I am going to the country”), the other is our desperately democratic pretensions exemplified in the way we talk to kids. “As if they were actual human beings” he explained. 

The least favorite question a Swede can get in a meeting according to Colin Moon is “Any other questions?” Swedish people just want to leave the meeting, in order to get to another one and consequently go “Nähä? Nähä?” and quickly try and rap everything up. But even if Swedes enjoy their meetings they enjoy getting everybody on board even more. Colin Moon believe that the two favorite words a Swedish person can hear are “förankring” (there is no good translation for this word but a direct one would be anchorage) and “process.” “But especially they like the word förankringsprocess. If you ever hear a Swede saying this you know something will take a lot of time.” Although Colin Moon regards Swedes as such strange people, he has no plans of leaving the country. “I have recently taken out an insurance policy, so now I have to stay in Sweden until I am 65.”

                                                                                 By: Anton Assarsson