This scenario would be unthinkable in Sweden, and probably Australia too. The location of this maternity ward was Brussels, and the doctor was Belgian. My first-born was a day old when the paediatrician instructed the new mother to hit the champagne, as this would aid the production of breastmilk. Other cultures handle alcohol differently. But come the weekend, don’t stand between a Swede and his Absolut, because all that straight and proper Monday to Friday carry-on eventually needs balancing out. A pint with your Tuesday lunch before returning to your work desk? A vino with dinner on a weeknight? Expect to be labelled an alcoholic. Countryside hunters’ rifles come out of their secure locks during elk shooting season in the deep forest, but most Swedes are unlikely to ever see a rifle in use.Īlcohol also carries an element of taboo in the Swedish psyche. To this day, no person in their right mind (which ipso facto excludes a bunch of underworld criminals) would feel the need to own a gun. Unlike in other so called developed countries, guns in Sweden belonged squarely in television action dramas like Kojak and Columbo. Nudity, at least when I grew up, was not an issue really, but we had other taboos. Ok, so there’s a gender segregation whereby the men’s section is on one side of a tall fence, and the women’s section on the other.Īs a child in the 1960s and 70s, the bathroom in our humble suburban terraced house had underfloor heating, and it was not uncommon to see my entire family of four simultaneously share the various facilities found in this white-tiled room. We relish sunbaking in the nude at the beachside public bath houses, where gingerbread men and women lie side by side, reading, chatting, doing the crosswords, and soaking up the much yearned for summer warmth without letting a single fibre obstruct the rays getting to our skin. Hilarious jokes aside, nudity in Sweden is like “meh”. I’ve done it many times, and come to think of it, this might explain why I’m rather flat chested.

In Sweden, friends and families gather in saunas for a communal perspiration in the nude, followed by a roll in the snow or a plunge into freezing cold water through a hole in the ice. My Swedish friends think I’m pretty normal, at least regarding nudity if not in other ways. My Australian friends would testify that “exhibitionist” is a word that describes me more accurately. And yet, after several years of my friends celebrating winter Solstice with a bare-all session in the bay, I still haven’t joined them, and don’t expect to this year either. It might be the primordial side of me as a human being, or it could be blamed on my Swedish heritage. I love swimming without a thread clinging to my skin. It’s mid-winter in Australia, and what better way to celebrate the days getting longer from now on, than with a 1.5km pre-dawn ocean swim in the nude? A hardy section of my regular swim friends can’t think of any, and so will throw caution (and other things) to the wind this weekend yet again. And other cultural differences as observed by an expat Swede

Indigo soulstice nude