Greg Poehler felt right at home when he moved to Stockholm. That’s because Sweden might be just about as North American as Europe gets…
Xander Brett
Up in Östersund, I was reminded of the few months I spent living in Canada during my gap year. Sweden has a lot in common with Canada. Well, they’re both rather American. One, I suppose, is literally North American, joined to the United States down south.
Anyway, I did a ‘vox pop’ on the streets of Stockholm last summer to ask how European the average Swede felt, and I was stuck by the response of one man in particular.
“This country is very Americanised”, he said, “but the French and German speaking countries have caught up.”
He might be right, backed up by one of the funniest series to come out of this country, which is the semi-autobiographical Welcome to Sweden, written and created by Greg Poehler (brother of Amy). It almost seems like the Swedish version of Emily in Paris, and it began airing on TV4 in Europe and NBC in the USA back in 2014.
Greg grew up on the east coast of America and has gone on record as saying he has more in common with the Swedes than Americans from, say, Alabama. He has lived in Stockholm for many years, and says it felt very familiar on arrival, certainly more so than rural America.
One of Greg’s characters is the brother-in-law Bengt, who’s obsessed with American movies. He’s not alone, though the most visible manifestation of America in Sweden are the cars. The ‘Power Big Meet’ near Lidköping is one of the largest American vintage car shows in the world: perhaps a product of Sweden’s commercial freedom after neutrality in the Second World War.
These cars are often driven by an unofficial group known as the raggare. But it’s not only the die-hard, flag waving raggare. In Sweden, many people drive large cars for long distances, they have high school graduations (touring around town in open topped vehicles) and many things look and feel, I think, rather North American.
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