Question 8b: How settled do you feel in your city/town?

"Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in, The City of Angels, lonely as I am together we cry" - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Under the Bridge

I've never felt as settled as I did in Brighton & Hove. After just a few weeks there as a 19-year-old, it felt as if the city was my friend - just like the Red Hot Chili Peppers song - and one of the people I stayed with during Swenglish said: Brighton treats me well, as if it was truly a character.

Most of the people I stayed with in England lived in the Brighton area and a majority said they felt very settled there and couldn't imagine living anywhere else in Britain. Funnily enough no one was born in Brighton and only two had lived their as kids. The rest had moved there to study - or in many cases just ended up there because Brighton had a good vibe. Open-minded and friendly were words that turned up time and time again.

Of the Swedes, 8 of 15 felt very settled in their current cities or towns. Especially the ones who lived in Umeå (both of them from Småland) seemed to be in love with their city, but also 3 out of 4 people in Stockholm (none of them native) felt very settled. So you don't have to be born and bred in a certain place to feel settled. Only 7 out of 30 people lived in or near their hometown.

My dilemma is that I feel more settled in Brighton than in Sweden, but I feel more settled in Sweden than in England ...

This study is by no means scientific, the answers are based on interviewing 15 people in England and 15 people in Sweden, aged 22-59. Look out for the next question: How settled do you feel in your neighbourhood?

PÅ SVENSKA

Week23: Community Life

This week I’m staying in the first and only community during my Swenglish journey. Four adults (five with me), two kids, one cat and one horse are part of the household. The house is from the 1850s and is located in the countryside outside Umeå. The forest is everywhere and it’s quite close to the sea. Every day vegan food is served. Some days they eat together, sometimes they don't. There’s a ”cleaning spinner” to share the chores, but it’s not in use anymore. Despite that it’s as tidy as it can be with small children in the house. It’s not at all as chaotic as in Lukas Moodyson’s film ”Together” ...

In England I stayed in some households with four or five people, but that didn't make it into a community. Just because you live with more than one other person who is not family or close friend it doesn't automatically become a community. In England, at least in Brighton and other bigger cities, people live together because they have to. Not only when they are students but also when they get to their 40s or 50s. It’s common that people who don’t know each other at all put their names on a contract and move in together.

In Sweden it’s much more common that people live on their own and if you live together with someone you often choose to do so, and then it’s not for economical reasons as was my experience in England. There are communities in England as well of course, and like in Sweden they are often based around  political or spiritual beliefs. But what I’m trying to say is that in Sweden it’s not as common to live with several other people if it’s not a community and people here readily call a household with more than two people a community even if it’s not. (In Sweden we don't even have any words for "housemate" or "flatmate".)

So what makes a community into a community? Why isn't it enough just to live with several other people? I haven’t yet got a good answer, but the thing about having the same ideology and values seems to be a criteria. My host who is a "leftie" could not imagine living with people who are right-wing even if she has good discussions with them when meeting them out. She wouldn't be able to live with people who eat meat at home either. Why is it that it’s almost always left-wing people and very often vegetarians that live in communities then? Why have conservatives and meet eaters not discovered community living?

I’m now well into my twenty-third Swenglish-week and have lived with so many different people in so many different places that I think I need to live completely on my own for six months just to find out what my own life-style and my own habits are. All my life I've adjusted myself so much to the people I've lived with that I don’t know if I’m tidy or messy, if I’m an owl or a lark. Although after I've tried living on my own I’m not against the idea of a community. If only I've got a room where I can lock the door and write, things usually work out. It’s quite nice having people around, being able to choose if you want to have company or be on your own. And if people have kids there are extra baby-sitters. (In Sweden the word for baby-sitter is "child guard" ... to guard someone doesn't sound quite right!)

This week I don’t have a room of my own. But I've got a partition wall so I can have some privacy as people pass my sleeping space to go to the toilet. All in all it has been a very varied week. Yesterday I was up on the horseback and the other day I first went to an ”open nursery school” and then watched my hosts when they rehearsed with their punk band. Tomorrow I’m going to a design market and I've also discovered that they sell very good vegan sausages at the Pressbyrån newsagent

PÅ SVENSKA

Week22: Up North

If someone had told me a year ago, when I had not yet come up with the Swenglish idea, that in a years time I would be in Umeå following an archaeologist for a week, I would have laughed.

I was stupid enough to go to the City of Birches without a winter coat and with boots that leek, so the first thing I did was to go shopping for welly boots with fleece soles. The seasons are more distinct in Sweden compared to England, maybe because there are more trees. I've never been so fascinated by autumn before; I can’t stop looking at the leaves that shimmer in yellow, orange and red. The seasons is something many of the people I have stayed with would miss if they lived abroad, but last week’s host said it would be enough to have winter every other year ...

 

If it wasn't for this project I would probably never have ended up so far North. Already when I changed trains in Sundsvall the air on the platform was like a curtain of ice. A bit like travelling from the South of England to Scotland. And it feels like I’m as far from my hometown as when I’m in England. In fact it takes the same amount of time to travel from Nässjö to Umeå as it takes travelling from Nässjö to Brighton.

The pace is more peaceful here. People speak more slowly and says ”fara” (”journey”) instead of ”åka” (go). Every time they’re going to visit a friend it sounds as if they were going travelling. Probably because of the distances up here. I've also learnt a new word: ”he” that does’t mean ”he” as in English: it’s a word for ”put” – a word that doesn't exist in the South.

What is it like following an archaeologist then? Well, a bit like hanging out with a living history book. I've followed my host to places where she’s been digging and they've found cooking spots from the iron age. But next week, when the frost comes it will be hard to dig. Now we’re going to journey out in the swamplands to pick cranberries!

PS. I'm up North for a bit longer, next week I'll be staying in a community a bit outside Umeå.

PÅ SVENSKA