Connective Visions

Flying back from Sweden yesterday, I realized something. Most things the American tourist or expat finds curious while abroad become quickly subsumed in accounts of price differences, airplane flights, beautiful (or awful) weather, and scenery. So we forget them until our return, when they become fresh discoveries all over again – perplexing our international hosts no end.

Swedish foodstuff (l. to r.): Amerikansk dressing for hamburgers; Ekolögisk Mellanmjölk; päron drycka; blåbär & tranbär lättdryck and äpple & svartinbär lättdryck; Milda Culinesse; PepsiMAX

Which is what happened when I went to the Täby Kyrkby ICA supermarket on Monday. My Swedish friend Pelotard was baffled as to why I found this a worthy excursion after seeing the historic church for which the town is named. After all, food is food, right?

Well … shampoo is shampoo; and paper towels are, by and large, paper towels (though my friends in Kristiansand, who lived in the United States for quite a while, are seriously missing Bounty). But the food types and packaging in Scandinavia are, to the American, something else altogether – even if they are fast approaching the variety on offer in U.S. grocery stores.

First, there is the language difference. I don’t expect food names to be in English, but I am oddly charmed that they aren’t. Hence, päron dryck may induce me to stare lovingly at the drinks shelf for a whole 15 seconds, whereas “pear drink” would induce no such response. (It would, however, provoke considerable surprise, as I haven’t seen anything remotely like it available in Philadelphia.) It took considerable hunting through dictionaries to determine that svartinbär (or vinbär) is the same as “currant,” and I rather think I prefer the Swedish.

Then, of course, some of the foods, or at least the expected use for them, are different to my experience (as a non-habitué of McDonald’s). It is only on extremely rare occasions that I have had Thousand Island dressing on my hamburger; and in fact, I spent much of childhood trying to get the chain to remove the “special sauce,” pickles, and onions from my Big Mac, since I hated the fast-food formula of the last two and the “sauce” (dressing) tended to ensure their continuing presence on my sesame-seed bun. Their removal, however, followed the format of the Geico insurance commercial where the request for “no mayo” is met by the diner waitress wiping the bread on the edge of the table and slapping it back onto the sandwich.

Mayonnaise and caviar in a Norwegian supermarket

Hence, I’m fascinated to find that “American dressing” – as this variant of Russian dressing is known over here – is readily available as, specifically, a topping for Scandinavian hamburgers. Despite my abiding suspicion that this may be an ideological joke, having eaten at a Swedish McDonald’s I can better see the appeal. It is a wholly different experience from a Philadelphia McDonald’s: better food, more variety, real vegetables, and attentive, friendly service.

Astounding. And certainly unlike much of American experience, urban and even rural.

Finally, there is packaging of Scandinavian foodstuff. The availability of cheese, mayonnaise, caviar, and other assorted food pastes in squeezable tubes, rather than jars, startles most Americans who haven’t visited an IKEA. Toothpaste in a tube is completely comprehensible … but food?

In Norway and Sweden, where sliced bread isn’t hailed as a benchmark for enlightened progress (many Scandinavians contentedly cut their own bread), “tubular food” ties in to the hytte and stuga “cabin” traditions of getting away from encroaching civilization and routine and back to the wilderness. Metal tubes preserve food while being lighter than glass jars and easier to open than metal cans.  The availability of essentials in tubes at the local supermarket – meat and fish paste, cheese, mayonnaise – is no stranger than finding Spam or canned beef stew in ours.

Similarly, the lättdryck (easy drink) in the first picture, above, is to be diluted with four parts water. No point in bringing home a huge bottle like the PepsiMAX when you can get it, essentially, in concentrate. (I didn’t know this, and so launched into my fläderblom – elderberry flower – concentrate directly. Actually, it tasted better before it was diluted.)

A dishwasher in Kristiansand

But there is another side to this. European refrigerators are generally much smaller than American ones. On the whole, big kitchen appliances have become thinly disguised status symbols in the United States, and as with SUVs, U.S. families have come to see them as “necessary” (despite the historical fact of large American families surviving the experience of two-door sedans and no refrigeration at all). The whole concept seems tied to the myth of America as a land of indefinite space and opportunity, and to a peculiar modern assumption that human survival needs have actually changed along with the size and complexity of technology.

It would be unusual, to say the least, to see even an urban U.S. couple opting for a dishwasher the size of that of my more rurally situated friends in Kristiansand. Isn’t that the point of appliances to Americans – that they do all our work for us, so we can buy vats of ketchup at BJ’s or Produce Junction and keep them around indefinitely, or pile the whole week’s worth of dishware into the washer and ignore it (presumably reducing the need for acquiring more cabinet space)?

I can’t help but associate the tubed food issue with a diminished sense of greed among average Scandinavians – and as a lens on the almost endearingly naive view of Americans that technology and the free market will always save us. I have yet to meet a U.S. person who really, overall, saved gasoline or money by buying in bulk. The dollars “saved” are diverted to something that costs twice as much as the original bill would have cost, rendering the family confused at tax time as to why they have no savings and 40 gallons of ketchup.

It works about as well as the paperless society that computers were supposed to usher in.

I’ve talked about some of this with Pelotard especially, but he still finds my fascination with Swedish supermarkets confounding. He is, however, appropriately philosophical about it. As he should be, given his astonishment at the popularity of the bagel slicer in the United States 15 years ago. (“Do you mean to tell me you people need a guide to slice a bagel?” Yes, given that the leading ER injury was hand injuries from slicing the bagel while it was firmly gripped in one’s palm.)

And after all … we have bread in a can.