myself seated among a group of Swedes whose tour guide was a
Chilean who, exiled after the military coup of 1973, had lived in Sweden ever
since. Given my own Scandinavian origins – I had three Swedish grandparents and
one Norwegian – I was curious how a Latin American had adapted to the
notoriously dour Scandinavian society.
Recently, at home, we’ve been watching the Swedish police
drama Arne Dahl,
in which one of the main characters is Chilean detective Jorge Chávez, who
suspects his Swedish partner Paul Hjelm of racism. Even though Sweden has
welcomed many immigrants, that strain of xenophobia is a recurrent theme in
many Nordic noir novels,
films and TV series, such as Stieg
Larsson’s The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo and Henning
Mankell’s Wallander,
in recent years.
My Chilean acquaintance, though, said he had found it easy
to adapt to Swedish life. In fact, he said, Swedes were not so different from
Chileans, at least in their stoic public personae – both behave far differently
in private. In public, Swedes’ default behavior is lagom
– roughly translatable as “moderation” – but in private or in unusual
circumstances, they can be more animated, and far more critical of employers and
other authority figures.
In fact, in the aftermath of the 1973 coup, quite a few
Chileans took refuge in Sweden and many have remained. I have been to Sweden
only once, a day trip to Malmö
from Copenhagen some 40 years ago, but I’m planning to go for a couple weeks
next May and June, flying to Oslo and returning from Stockholm, where I’ll be
curious to learn more about the Chilean presence – and perhaps even enjoy a pastel de choclo at Sabor Latino before returning to
California.
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