Scandinavia and Iceland

Icelanders Reject $5.3 Billion Icesave Deal

Alec Forss — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:38:33 +0000

Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir had branded the referendum “meaningless” urging citizens not to vote, but still Icelanders came out in their thousands yesterday to overwhelmingly — one Icelandic blogger even called it a “Soviet vote” with over 90% (of votes counted so far) saying “No” — reject a $5.3 billion repayment deal to the British and Dutch governments.

The deal would have seen every Icelandic citizen fork out $135 every month for eight years — to repay the multi-billion dollar sum demanded by Britain and the Netherlands for having compensated investors with Icesave accounts in the two countries (an online brand of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki that collapsed in October 2008). That the Icelanders don’t want to pay is not surprising: they don’t see themselves as responsible for footing the bill.

Bullied by Bullies

The referendum result is indicative of the prevailing mood of the general public in Iceland, which seems to be one of feeling bullied by larger countries. The online Iceland Review summed up public sentiment regarding the terms of the debt repayments as “an attempt by the international community to kick the nation when it is already on its knees because of the economic disasters.” Anger has been directed at Britain in particular, with relations between the two countries having plummeted to their lowest level since the Cod Wars in the 1970s. Back then, the British government sent in its battleships to take on Icelandic trawlers in the dispute over fish (a fact not forgotten among Icelanders); this time around, at the time of the bank scheme’s collapse in October 2008, it used anti-terror legislation to freeze Icesave assets in Britain fearing that the bank’s collapse would harm the British economy. It is no wonder that Icelanders are aggrieved at what they perceive as unjust treatment, with the Icelandic prime minister demanding an apology from Gordon Brown.

“Inglorious Basterds”

But while Icelanders are angry at what they see as big foreign bullies, the demonstrations (you can see a video here) surrounding the referendum also made it clear that public anger is directed at a coterie of “greedy” Icelandic bankers, politicians, and businessmen, as well as foreign investors, seen as partially responsible for the country’s economic mess. One placard depicted three well-known figures dressed in black brandishing vacuum cleaners and hoovering up money under the caption “Inglorious Basterds,” with Iceland’s prime minister and finance minister in the background looking on.

What Next?

While the referendum was triggered by the Icelandic president refusing to sign the repayment deal passed by parliament at the end of last year, it had not stopped alternative solutions being looked at, as the government knew the result would likely be a resounding “No.” Negotiations with Britain and the Netherlands on how to repay the money are set to further continue. In a statement released yesterday by the Icelandic government, it was indicated that both countries may accept a solution that entails a significantly lower cost to Iceland.

It is clear, though, that the cost to the government is mounting. Not only had the Icelandic prime minister and finance minister endorsed a deal that was seen as “selling Iceland out” in the first place, but they also downplayed the importance of the referendum, showing that they were out of tune with a large majority of the population who vented their displeasure. Indeed, the government has refused to link the result of the referendum with its own legitimacy — which has nevertheless been further undermined.

The government finds itself between a rock and a hard place, as if it is unable to come with a plan to repay the debt, it may see progress in its accession to the European Union and an IMF “rescue package” jeopardized. It’s a tricky situation for the Icelandic government, with beleaguered Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfússon asking journalists “Can you point out anybody who wants my job?” He might not have been joking.

But tonight, at least, the Icelandic people are celebrating. They have had their say.

Photo of protesters outside the Icelandic parliament by neate photos

Maritime Mayhem on the Frozen Baltic

Alec Forss — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:00:58 +0000

In the worst freeze-up since 1996, sea ice combined with strong winds is causing havoc to passenger ferries and merchant shipping in the Baltic Sea.

As the latest victims to the vagaries of this winter’s harsh weather, 51 ships, including passenger ferries and cargo ships, were stuck in the ice late last week — some having been so for several days. One of the ships — a Viking Line passenger ferry traveling between Finland and Sweden — with nearly one thousand people on board even collided with another boat as the ice pushed them together, before ice breakers manged to free them. Arriving on Friday morning in Stockholm after a twelve hour delay, there had at one point even been thought of evacuating the passengers, according to Finnish public broadcaster YLE. Whether that meant depositing everyone on the ice and asking them to walk to land was not indicated (!)

I’ve taken the ferry (the same ship as in the photo above) numerous times between Sweden and Finland and, on the bottom deck, the sound of the ice scraping against the hull of the ship is disconcerting to say the least. Visions of ice cutting a gash through the side of the ship à la Titanic cross the mind.

In much of the Gulf of Bothnia (the northern part of the Baltic Sea) the sea habitually freezes every winter to form pack ice — and where the majority of ships get stuck. In the past, whole armies have marched across, notably in 1809 when the Russian army crossed over from Finland to attack Sweden. Further south, roughly level with Stockholm, the ice is typically more spread out.

But, normally, the ice is no problem for the bigger ships to plow through: this time, it was the strong wind that was the main culprit.

“The area from Stockholm and north in the Baltic is covered in ice … the ice is 40-50 cm thick … the problem it is very windy out there now … and that means the ice is moving rapidly … that is making a problem for the ships,” said a representative to Radio Sweden from the Swedish Maritime Administration. The organization went on to blame cruise ship captains for not heeding their advice and continuing with their journeys.

It’s not only an inconvenience to passengers with delays and losses for ferry companies due to cancellations, but it is a major headache for Swedish — and other Baltic countries’ — trade.

85% of Swedish trade is conducted via the sea, and with dozens of ships — many of them carrying goods — having been trapped this time around, delays cost money. Paper for the newsprint industry, for instance, is sourced from forests in the north of Sweden which has to traverse the ice-choked waters of the Bothnian Gulf. With Sweden’s seven icebreakers — as well as Finland’s – needing to be deployed round-the-clock to free the trapped ships, this has prompted questions over whether the number of ice breakers patrolling the Baltic needs to be increased.

And with predictions that the ice is set to stay for another two months or more, there may yet be more disruptions to come.

Photo of Viking Line ferry in sea ice by wstyrder

Norway Tops (Alternative) Olympic Medals Table

Alec Forss — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:42:18 +0000

While Canada crowned its staging of the Olympic Games in Vancouver by winning a famous victory over the United States in ice hockey — dubbed the Game of the Games — Scandinavian competitors will be flying home content — well, not all.

Denmark and Iceland failed to register on the medals table at all, while to Finland’s disappointment it won only one silver and four bronze. This prompted the head of Finland’s Olympic Committee to bemoan Finland’s inferior status in winter sports compared to Sweden and Norway.

Although Sweden didn’t replicate its medal success of 2006 in Turin, Italy, where it won 14 medals including seven gold, when it also won the coveted ice hockey gold defeating Finland, it still ended the Games in Vancouver successfully with five golds and 11 medals in total, finishing in joint-seventh place with China. Highlights included the Swedish women’s curling team defeating Canada in a nail-biting (for curling aficionados perhaps) finale by coming from behind to win 7-6.

It was Norway that led the Scandinavian contingent, however, winning nine golds and 23 medals in total, putting it into fourth place overall. This was a vast improvement on Turin four years ago when it won only two golds. Golds came, among other events, in the gruelling men’s 50 km classic cross-country skiing race, biathlon, and the men’s Super-G, cementing the Norwegians’ reputation for mastery on skis.

And with Norway’s medal tally equating to one medal for every 200,000 citizens out of a population of 4.6 million, compared with the U.S.’s 37 medals at one for every 8 million, or Canada’s record haul that came at one medal for nearly every 1.3 million citizens, by my — alternative — reckoning that means Norway won the Games.

Photo by popejon2

Life in the Freezer

Alec Forss — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:04:23 +0000

Living for a few months as a nine year-old in southern Sweden nearly twenty years ago, I used to cut out the newspaper weather reports and keep a daily record of the winter temperatures of different towns in Sweden. Places like Kiruna — some 250 km above the Arctic Circle — fascinated me with their “exotic” statistics. Minus 30 degrees celcius — it seemed incredible and unimaginable to a city boy from England. Other kids dreamt of being famous footballers; I wanted to be a meteorologist.

Alas this never happened. But since having moved to the far north of Sweden from Stockholm, the dormant amateur meteorologist in me has reawakened. One of my first acts upon moving — apart from buying heaps of winter clothing — was to buy a trusty thermometer and nail it to the wall outside. I consult it almost religiously at least four or five times a day, willing the needle to drop precipitously (partly so I can boast of how bloody freezing it is to my friends down south, I admit, but also out of a primordial fascination — and fear — with cold).

As I sit down to write this in my (heated) apartment, the frozen moisture in my nostrils is starting to thaw. Fresh snow lies deep on the sidewalks on the way back from the town library from where I have just trudged. Mountains of snow some four meters high stand outside the frontages of people’s houses. My thermometer registers minus 21 degrees — a bit colder than your average domestic freezer — though with the wind chill factor it’s even chillier.

Weather here is not a subject for small talk. Everything outside of my apartment is the weather — the cold pierces the lungs every time you breathe, it is visceral making you aware that you are a physical being. Your body, aside from the obvious dangers of frostbite and hypothermia, also does funny things in extreme cold: growth of chest hair reportedly slows in extreme cold; while touching metal objects with your bare skin is likely to leave an epidermal souvenir.

“It’s not too bad,” a little girl told me earlier in the day as I shivered in the cold. And she’s right, this is meat and drink to people up here living above the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, a place further north than most of Alaska; where the snow arrived at the beginning of October last year and hasn’t budged since.

There’s still a chance that the Swedish record of minus 52.6(!), registered in 1966, might be broken this year, but that’s unlikely. Conditions of minus 40 and below used to be a fairly regular occurrence in the north I’m reliably informed, but it is rare these days that temperatures sink quite so low. Probably it is global warming at work and/or that the Gulf Stream is more active than usual in these parts. Thank God for small mercies some might say.

Many people further south in Scandinavia are put off by the cold up north — their version of Siberia or Alaska — a frigid wasteland to soft Stockholmers or other urbanites “who wouldn’t know what cold was if it bit them on the behind,” as a northern dig at the south might go.

But for the people up here, after a summer filled with the whining of mosquitoes and a landscape of impenetrable marshes, the big freeze gets them outdoors on their snowmobiles or cross-country skiing, ice fishing, even doing their daily errands around town on kick-sledges, and, for the creative-minded, fashioning ice sculptures.

As a Finnish friend of mine once said, “we like our winters. I don’t understand those people who go abroad for their holidays in the winter.”

An all-expenses paid beach holiday to Thailand? Not for me, thanks.

Photo by re-ality

Death Knell Sounds for Troubled Saab

Alec Forss — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:18:48 +0000

The clock is ticking to save Saab Automobile. There is time only until 11 o’clock this evening (Swedish time) for a buyer to come forward and save the carmaker from what is certain closure.

Production at the Saab car plant in Sweden ceased already four weeks ago, and General Motors — Saab became a subsidiary of the American giant back in 1989 — has been trying to sell the troubled carmaker for nearly a year now. But no one has put forward a suitable business plan to seal the deal according to GM’s chief executive Ed Whitacre, who added that we’re now “in wind-down mode,” with production unlikely to restart.

Saab despite being under American management is a quintessentially Swedish car, with its distinctive design having graced the roads for six decades. Saab unveiled its first prototype car in 1947, which even back then featured its trademark “aerodynamic wing-shaped profile.” Two years later, production started at its factory.

I must admit I have a whiff of nostalgia for the older models of Saab, though not the newer makes, whose shape and design for me seemed in later years to drift off into anonymity — much like any other modern car. No, the only car for me was the solidly practical classic Saab 900 — of which nearly one million were produced between 1978-1993 — and it was always my ambition to join the ranks of its proud owners. I am still waiting…

But now with the death knell ringing out for the carmaker, 3,400 workers at Saab’s Trollhättan plant in southwestern Sweden stand to lose their jobs — with 5,000 others, including Saab dealerships worldwide, also to be affected by any closure.

It’s gone steadily downhill for Sweden’s once blooming automobile industry. Volvo — the other globally well-known Swedish carmaker — changed hands from Ford to a Chinese company just a couple of weeks ago. In recession-hit times, the American car giants are trying to wash their hands of “Made in Sweden.”

In fact, GM has been criticized by Sweden for not doing enough to save the car — which is refuted by the company. It’s a sobering fact that Saab has not made any profit in nearly a decade (though it produced 93,000 cars last year, it ran at a loss of some $400 million) and is one of four brands being sold off by GM.

While there has been last minute interest with Dutch sports carmaker Spyker coming forward with a third bid for Saab — its two other bids having previously been rejected — hopes are fading fast of rescuing Saab from entering the annals of automotive history.

On a less serious note, maybe there is still a chance for Brazil to step forward with a bid. With a decision pending on whether to choose Saab Gripen fighter jets (yes, Saab also has an aeronautics division) or French jets for its air force — the deal is reported to be worth $4.4 billion, with the bookies’ money being on France to win – perhaps the Brazilian government could do Sweden a good turn and launch a new “Saab Brasilia” (like it did with the Volkswagen Brasilia), and in so doing, bring some Latin American flair to, and breathe new life into, a solidly Swedish car. And for all those Swedish workers set to lose their jobs, a hefty pay-cut but the chance to relocate to a place in the sun may not be too bad after all.

And pigs will fly…

Photo of Saab 900 by totally pixelated

The Sillier Side of Copenhagen 2009

Alec Forss — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:59:07 +0000

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you can’t have helped but notice that all eyes are on Copenhagen where world leaders and officials are gathered over the next week or two to see if they can hammer out a deal on climate change — or not, as the case may be.

So far, things don’t look too rosy. Just yesterday, on day two of the conference, developing countries were up in arms at a leaked draft agreement, allegedly prepared by Denmark as host of the conference, which reveals that the world’s rich nations have apparently outlined, without negotiation with the G-77, what they are prepared to do on climate change — which pretty much sidelines the UN and hands greater powers to themselves in climate negotiations .

Denmark’s prime minister went on the defensive saying that Denmark had put forward no such document. He had better be convincing. First the Muhammad cartoons enraging the Muslim world, now carving up a secret deal on climate change infuriating the whole of the developing world — it seems like Denmark might be as popular as North Korea right now.

Almost as much as news on the climate proceedings themselves, there’s predictably plenty of juicy, non-environment-related stuff that the press has been getting its teeth stuck into.

Bob Dylan’s song “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” was adopted as the unofficial anthem to the conference, although, unfortunately, Bob himself wasn’t wheeled in to perform. Let’s hope that its meaning hasn’t been lost in translation to the 192 delegates. Now, it’s not that I want to gripe too much, but do all conferences really have to be “sexed up” by having their own theme song? Perhaps they should start also handing out medals to accompany the soundtrack in a closing ceremony. “And the gold medal this year in combating climate change goes to … Libya.”

On the seedier side, prostitutes have been targeted in a campaign by Copenhagen city officials encouraging conference participants to “be sustainable, don’t buy sex,” while a group of prostitutes responded by offering free sex to those conference delegates with a legitimate pass. Now, I do hope that was not lost in translation to some of the excited guests.

In another episode of silliness, Christmas trees have been banned from the conference venue; apparently the venue turns into neutral UN territory, so overt cultural or religious symbols have no place. Well, can’t they at least have something greenish in there, a cactus or a palm tree perhaps!? Otherwise the place will be about as sterile as a hospital isolation room.

Perhaps more pertinent is the fact that, according to the British Daily Telegraph, the 1,200 limousines and 140 private planes, plus caviar wedges, descending on Denmark’s capital city will produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as a medium-sized city. At least it seems, though, that the 200-odd bicycles provided to participants by the conference organizers have been put to good use despite the December cold and gloom that afflicts the whole of Scandinavia. But, then again, perhaps some people are using them to sneak over to the low-key climate change skeptics’ conference also taking place in Copenhagen this week.

On a more serious note, the conference represents a chance for Copenhagen not only to make the history books — where were you on December 18 when the world was saved? (or lost for that matter) — but also to strut its credentials as one of the greenest cities in the world.

But why not hold the next conference somewhere where climate change is actually being acutely felt? In Greenland (Danish territory by the way), for instance, where the world’s leaders could then rough it together and learn from those already losing out to climate change, instead of staying in swanky European hotels with all the mod cons consuming caviar wedges. Picture Obama bunking up with Hu Jintao of China along with a few other leaders in an igloo with an Inuit — now that might go a long way in enhancing their understanding of the environment and our place in it.

Deal or no deal, the world’s going to end in 2012 anyway, or at least that’s what Roland Emmerich would have us believe. Given that Denmark’s highest land point is just 170 meters above sea-level, it might just need a giant ark or two…

Photo by americaspower

Why Denmark Fears American Terrorists

Alec Forss — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:55:44 +0000

If you’re American and traveling to Denmark, you may be subject to tighter checks at Danish passport control in the future – and may potentially even need a visa to enter the country.

Danish politicians have expressed their concern – after warnings from U.S. intelligence reports – at terrorists possessing, or attempting to acquire, U.S. passports, which they can then use to gain easier entry into the European Union, including Denmark, in order to commit terrorist attacks. In line with other European countries party to the Schengen agreement, Denmark currently places no conditions (tourists and business travelers can stay 90 days without a visa) on American nationals traveling to Denmark.

This could be about to change.

In a dig at the U.S. War on Terror, a Danish politician said that it was obvious U.S. counter-terrorism efforts had “not been as effective … as we thought,” while the Danish Security and Intelligence Service in a terror assessment report has deemed that: “there is a general terrorist threat against Denmark intensified by the increased focus from militant extremist groups on Denmark.”

At first glance, it might seem strange that Denmark ranks high up on the terror target list, but with Danish troops in Afghanistan (there about 700 stationed there), and after the furor surrounding the publishing, in 2005, of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper – one cartoon even depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban – Denmark has become increasingly wary in recent years of the prospect of terrorist attacks; the cartoons were further reprinted in leading Danish newspapers in February 2008 to the ire of Islamic extremists. The Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was targeted in a terrorist attack in June last year, in which six people were killed - but no Danish citizens.

While the Danish press and politicians alike have raised on high the banner of press freedom, saying that they should not bow to intimidation, it could also be argued that the disrespectful cartoons are not only an unnecessarily provocative act of journalism, but that they also place lives at risk.

The Chicago Conspiracy

Just last month, two men, one of them a U.S. citizen, the other a Pakistani Canadian, were convicted in Chicago of plotting to blow up the newspaper offices of Jyllands-Posten – the same newspaper responsible for publishing the Muhammad cartoons in the first place.

One of the men, who were linked to a Pakistan-based terrorist group, had traveled from Chicago to Denmark twice this year for reconnaissance purposes and had visited the offices of the newspaper in question. Before being caught, he had an airline reservation to fly to Copenhagen for the third, and possibly lethal, time on October 29, 2009.

It is against this backdrop that there are suggestions in Denmark that especially U.S. passport-holders of a “non-ethnic Western” background who had traveled to the Middle East, in particular Pakistan and Afghanistan, come in for tighter scrutiny. It would seem, then, that if the tighter restrictions are imposed, this raises the prospect of two different queues for Americans at Danish immigration control depending on skin color.

With something like half a million Americans visiting Denmark each year, they may in the future be required at the very least to fill out a pre-arrival form; in much the same way as Danish nationals are required to do before arrival in the U.S. At the moment, it’s up to a preliminary police evaluation of the risks and benefits before, and if, any further steps are taken.

But for the general American tourist, even if tighter restrictions are imposed, it would seem that the trip to Legoland you and your kids had so been looking forward to will probably just entail a little bit more paperwork.

Photo of Copenhagen airport by Terry Wha

Norway: Living in Utopia, Almost…

Alec Forss — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:28:27 +0000

While the Nordic countries seldom feature in the premier league of Olympic medal winners (though they fare better in the Winter Games), they can take pride from another kind of table published by the United Nations Development Programme.

Norway topped this year’s Human Development Index (for the seventh time since 2001), recording the world’s highest level of human development, which takes into account life expectancy, literacy, enrolment in education, and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, or, in other words, a decent standard of living.

The other Nordics also performed well with last year’s “winner” Iceland coming 3^rd, Sweden 7^th, Finland 12^th, and Denmark 16^th; incidentally, the U.S. comes 13^thout of a total of 182 countries surveyed.

Norway does not, however, come first on the list of all the UNDP’s development indicators. The tiny state of Liechtenstein eclipses Norway by quite some margin in terms of GDP per capita. Norway also only comes 12^th in the index in terms of life expectancy; Japan with 82.7 years leads in the longevity stakes. Sweden also pips Norway to first place when it comes to the measurement of women’s empowerment — a criterion not included in the index.

With the media busily claiming Norway as the world’s best country to live in, those living in less fortunate countries can perhaps take solace from the fact that as the dark winter months advance, many people in Europe’s far north will succumb to seasonal depression. Perhaps the number of winter sunlight hours should also be incorporated in the next index, if a broader definition of well-being is aspired to.

Icelanders meanwhile will also probably be questioning their relatively good showing at 3^rd place in the index. With the statistics for this year’s report deriving from 2007, they fail to take into account the impact of the financial crisis on the island.

Photo by specialkrb

If You Go Down to the Woods Today, You’re Sure of a Big Surprise…

Alec Forss — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:15:16 +0000

I have to admit that I’ve been scared to go down to the woods in recent weeks. I can hear repeated gun shots from my bedroom window, which sound disconcertingly close.

But no, there is no insurgency being waged in my back garden, but rather the moose hunting season is underway in much of Scandinavia. In my neck of the woods in northern Sweden, it started already at the beginning of this month, but in Norway proceedings got underway today with, according to the Norway Post, some 50,000 Norwegian hunters heading out to the woods this weekend. The Finns also pack up their rifles tomorrow in pursuit of moose with the season lasting until mid-December.

This fall will see an estimated 100,000 moose (or älg as they’re called in Swedish) killed at the hands of hunters in Sweden, some 60,000-odd in Finland, and 35,000 in Norway. This may sound like a mass moose genocide is being perpetrated, but, in fact, hunting is strictly controlled in order to maintain a sustainable population of the animal. With one of the densest concentrations of moose worldwide, harvesting of the population is required — which in Sweden means culling approximately one third of the population annually. More on the benefits later.

Nevertheless, I’ve always had my reservations about hunting when I see glossy hunting magazines with a large trophy bear or another magnificent felled beast displayed on the front cover. My stomach churns. But while hunters in Scandinavia also want to bag a big moose, or whatever game is in season, the emphasis is more on the recreation and meat than the trophy as such.

It’s a valuable industry. In Sweden alone it is estimated that the industry is worth over $200 million annually in the moose meat produced and the hunting fees accrued.

For many of Sweden’s 300,000 hunters, it’s also a traditional way of life that puts supplementary meat on the table. Many men (and there are an increasing number of women too) around where I live hunt in their spare time. “An average moose gives about 130 kg of meat — that supplies my whole family with meat for one year,” one local hunter told me. “If I wasn’t allowed time off to hunt each year, I would quit my job,” he added; Swedish hunters spend an average of nine days per year moose hunting.

In order to hunt, it is necessary to have a hunting license (it is almost as common as getting a driving license in rural areas) and there is a quota on the number of moose that each hunting team can kill, and then only during a certain period of the year.

License or no license, given the fact that there are so many guns out in the woods at this time of year, there’s always a fair crop of hunting stories that pop up in the Scandinavian media, ranging from the bizarre to the tragic.

In 2002, for instance, an 80 year-old Swedish hunter accidentally mistook a Lithuanian berry picker (how on earth you can make such a mistake I don’t know, but then again I’m not a hunter) for a moose and shot him dead. He was fined the princely sum of around $400.

Less of a comi-tragic tale is the fact that there were over 5,000 traffic accidents last year in Sweden involving moose — and that number has been increasing. Over 40 people have been killed in the last five years in collisions with the massive animal. Bear in mind that they can weigh in at well over half a ton.

Therefore, the regulated culling of the animals is directed, in conjunction with maintaining a sustainable population, not only at reducing the number of accidents on the roads, but it is also of importance to the wood industry as moose do quite a bit of damage to trees; it’s also a boon for the forestry industry as hunters pay good money for the right to hunt on land owned by forestry agencies.

While moose hunting is not really a controversy in Scandinavia, it has nonetheless been argued by its advocates that the moose meat industry leaves less of a carbon footprint than that for beef, and it is accounting for a growing proportion of meat consumption in the region. And this is not to mention the health benefits for people out chasing moose in the woods; it’s forbidden to hunt from a car or any vehicle with an engine.

It might not be much fun to be a moose in Scandinavia, but at least we non-hunters can take solace from the fact that moose hunting is — and this may seem a paradox — “eco-friendly.”

Photo by Alec Forss

Swedish Hollywood Wife: American Men are Romantic, Swedish Men are Tragic

Alec Forss — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:06:47 +0000

Sweden is renowned for its equality between the sexes. To give a quick snapshot: Nearly half of all seats in the Swedish parliament are occupied by women (second in the world after Rwanda); the U.S. incidentally languishes in 68th place (together with Turkmenistan) with only 16.8 percent of seats in the House of Representatives belonging to women. Furthermore, men in Sweden enjoy one of the longest paternity leave policies in the world, where the proportion of men who stay at home as “housemen” while their partners go out to work has been on the increase.

This, however, does not suit Los Angeles resident Anna Anka, the 38 year-old Swedish wife of Canadian-born singer Paul Anka, who in a recent article published on the Swedish website Newsmill attacked the equality-driven culture of Swedish society.

Calling Swedish Dads “tragic” for their nappy-changing and for being too preoccupied with equality, she added that: “American men know how to look after their women, they are very romantic and buy expensive presents.”

In a further comparison, she says: “A real American man panics if he’s alone with a child for more than 20 minutes. American Dads don’t prepare the dinner or do the ironing, they work and provide for their families.”

She also singled out Swedish women, saying she felt sorry for Swedish men who “get married to attractive women who quickly become unattractive, start dressing sloppily, and neglect the needs of their man.” Adding that that she would like to become a role model for Swedish women, she lauded America for being a country where men are men, and women are women.

In a broader critique, she also said that Swedes need to learn from Americans to be more service-oriented, and that when ordering a drink at a bar in Sweden one typically encounters a bad attitude.

On another note, she admitted that she would have to bring a helmet with her the next time she visited Sweden, having made herself unpopular among some in her home country.

And while a minor celebrity’s provocative comments could easily be dismissed as having nothing more than entertainment value, they have been one of the most debated topics in the Swedish media.

Politicians have even weighed into the debate, with the Christian Democratic Party (a part of the coalition government) saying that the view of Swedish women as “accessories for men” was not compatible with the values of the party — this after Anna Anka had expressed an interest in getting involved with the party.

She has not only provoked negative reactions, however. The cultural editor of Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter newspaper said that she had posed some ”interesting questions,” albeit in a vulgar way. A female columnist for another paper accused Swedish feminists of having a problem with the concept of being a “housewife.”

Meanwhile, it seems that Swedish households will just have to get used to her. She appears in a new series on Swedish TV called “Swedish Hollywood Wives,” which premiered last week. You can see a clip of Mrs Anka in action here.