It's all Swedish to me/Naked and Furious!

It was 1999 and Finn and I had been living and working in Sweden for a couple of years. Sweden is about as far away from our home country of New Zealand as you can get. Due to our experience working with Swedes in the company in New Zealand, we thought their culture wasn’t so different. How wrong we were! We were surprised and frustrated at how hard it was to make new friends and socialise with the locals. As world travelled Kiwis, I thought we understood about different cultures and our place in the world. 

We came to discover that Swedes were extremely open physically, sexually and intellectually. Very formal, structured and made decisions via consensus . However they were very closed emotionally, unless they felt extremely secure, which took a very long time. Kiwi's by comparison are about as open and informal as you can get! We’ve been known to pick up hitchhikers and bring them home for dinner, share our life stories and find out theirs whilst we’re at it! I thought we were intellectually, physically and sexually open too, but that was about to be thoroughly tested. 

Marcus, an expat Kiwi

acquaintance we’d met at work in Sweden, invited us to join him and his beautiful

Swedish wife, at their summer house for Midsomer celebrations. Midsomer in

Sweden is a HUGE celebration, usually outside and involves crawfish (fresh

water crayfish or Koura), vodka, schnapps and lots of singing.

There’s an expression that Sweden has 3 winters, the white, the grey and the green. Our experience in Sweden found this to be very accurate. Summer, the green winter, lasts 6 weeks maximum and doesn't always mean it's hot, but it sure is light and bright until the wee, wee hours. In fact it's never pitch black. So after months of darkness and 20 degree below zero temperatures, the locals come alive! Clothes come off, being outside at every opportunity is absolute and socialising becomes a full on frenzy of "Making hay whilst the sun shines". 

We’d had a Midsomer dinner with friends before, but this was a whole weekend away, staying at the home of these new friends, their friends and family. To be honest, we were grateful for the invite as we'd been working incredibly hard, long hours, traveling for work most of the time, and really needed the social break to fill up our up our coffers again. We'd missed the more balanced lives we'd left behind in New Zealand, where you worked hard but played hard too and had large supportive social networks. We didn't know Marcus well or for long, but Finn and I had been in sales and marketing for years, so were pretty adept at covering whatever awkwardness we had with outward relaxed confidence and interest. 

So we packed up our rented Volvo and drove miles out of Stockholm to their beautiful summer house on a river. It was surrounded by dwarf Scandinavian forest, with only one other dwelling in view far away in the distance. The property was vast, with a large two story main house that reminded me of a Swiss chalet, along with several outhouses, a boat shed and a jetty on the river. There were rolling green lawns scattered with skinny white barked birch trees, flowering bushes and all edged with ancient forest. I expected deer and rabbits to be frolicking with us at any moment, it felt like a scene out of Bambi or Pippi Longstockings. Our day couldn’t have been more beautiful, warm with not a cloud in the sky. Finn and I were excited to get to know our hosts better and make new friends. We put our bags in our assigned room in the main house and set about to join the gathering groups. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the people that came out in excited hordes during the Swedish summer. So too did millions of mosquitos and midges at dawn and dusk

Most people find a way to live with them. Not me. I'd developed a severe phobia earlier in life and couldn't be outside when they were there. This meant that I managed, barely, to share the main meal with everyone outside but as soon as we'd finished I excused myself and went inside to safety. Finn however was enjoying every minute and reassured me he'd be in an hour or so. All good, I was glad he was having fun. I helped out with the dishes and sat in the lounge conversing with the stragglers for a while. 

The evening became late and no sign of Finn. I could hear raucous laughter coming from the boat shed and curiosity (and let's face it, a bit of suspicion) got the better of me. I found my hooded jacket and covered as much of me as possible with it, as I walked briskly outside in the masses of insectoid madness. I didn't need a torch because with summer in Sweden, being so far north, there is never really a night. Just a long dusk. So I reached the outside window of the boatshed, which had its own sauna, and then my stomach started to churn. I could hear Finns laughter amongst the others, and when I got to the large window of the sauna, I could see naked bodies within. My heart started pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears. 

There he was, sat in the middle of naked statuesque, beautiful, blonde, Swedish women. He was outnumbered by them 3 to 1. There were 2 other men in the huddle and to me the energy was palpably sexual. Our host Marcus was one of them, with his wife nowhere to be seen. My insecurities took over. I felt incredibly angry and disappointed, but underneath that there was the fear I had lost him to this race of supermodel women, who had won the genetic lottery.

It was then Finn saw me out the window. I walked into the large main room of the boat shed, which was open to the river in the front. Finn walked out of the sauna, towel around his waist, and greeted me. 

"What are you doing here? I thought you were asleep?" he said sheepishly. 

I glared at him.

"What do you think you're doing?!" 

He moved his feet uncomfortably, looked down for a second and then met my eyes and said with force 

"What do you mean? I'm not doing anything wrong!" 

I could see I was not going to get anywhere with this conversation. So I turned around to storm out and he defiantly walked back into the sauna. What could I do? Let this happen? 

Not on your bloody Kiwi life I couldn't! 

So I let the anger take over, and despite feeling incredibly self-conscious and more than a little afraid, I stripped off my clothes, put a towel around my waist and opened the sauna door. All of a sudden the laughter stopped. I greeted the eyes of one of the other men and asked if there was room for me. His eyes lit up and he beckoned me to sit next to him, as he made room for me. I didn't know this guy from Adam, but I didn't care. The anger had emboldened me to action as I put on the act of my life. 

I smiled broadly, straightened my back, lifted my head and sashayed over to the spot beside him. I tried not to look over at Finn and began a conversation with… whatever his name was… trying to sound oh so causal and cavalier like the rest the room. 

It was then that I noticed that Finn was not completely naked. He still had his togs on underneath, but he hadn't removed his towel. 

“Ha!” I thought. “You're just as uncomfortable as I am!”

I met his eyes finally and I saw annoyance and bewilderment at my presence. This made my blood boil. I turned back as the guy next to me asked if I wanted to come with him to dip in the river to cool off. I didn't need any further encouragement. I was already acting so out of my comfort zone, why stop now? I followed the small group of which I was the only female, out of the sauna. I dropped my towel and jumped quickly into the river, hiding my nakedness as fast as I could. 

It was freezing! But at the same time, wonderfully refreshing. I enjoyed the swim and the company, however soon enough I realised I couldn't stay in it for much longer. I faced the awkward fact that I was going to have to climb out again, in full view of my fellow skinny-dippers. I made them go out first, as I climbed the ladder, grabbed my towel and shot straight back into the warmth of the waiting sauna. Suddenly I became aware of the appreciative looks of my river companions and realised that this petite dark haired kiwi lass was sexy after all! Maybe it was the difference that made me appealing, but I took it. Why not! I needed that shot of confidence. I turned to catch Finn looking at me with admiration… and maybe a hint of shame? We certainly had a lot to talk about the next day, when the schnapps and vodka had warn off. 

I reflected and couldn’t get rid of the feeling. Was Finn about to betray me? Had I interrupted him in that endeavour? Or was it as he claimed, simply that he was experiencing a divine moment of non sexual freedom and self expression, that he's never dared or had the chance to experience before and my presence had stifled that. Hmmmm, perhaps I'll never know for sure. But come on, human nature being as it is and men being as they are, I don't think it's far fetched to believe he thought 'Why not!' 

I may have thrown a spanner in his 'liberation', but for me the experience liberated me in way I didn’t know I needed. 

Who knew kiwis were as repressed as it turned out we were? I never, ever thought before this experience that I might have rather prudish views after all! People who knew me back in New Zealand would never in a million years think of me as a prude. But compared to the Swedes, I got the rude awakening that we were. This experience opened up a can worms I didn't expect. Travel and living amongst other cultures truly is an experience that, if you let it, will evolve you. Sure, you get to learn about the differences and are reassured by the similarities at the core of what is to be human. But it’s in discovering our differences that you are able to put the mirror up to yourself, to your own culture, and ask,

“Why do we do what we do, the way we do it? Is it the right way?”

It's obviously not the only way. You get to ask yourself, now that you recognise how we are different, does that still work for you? Or have you found a better way? Could you modify and take the best of what you've discovered and improve the way you live? The answer for me and so many who travel, is yes. Some things are worth changing, whilst others get reenforced as being the best to begin with. 

So, how did this experience change me? I've decided that, whether the betrayal had been about to happen or not, I had acted initially to save face and my relationship. And what happened instead was that I found a spirit and strength in myself, my own sense of worth, that I hadn't felt before.

I'd learnt that whilst some in that sauna may have found nakedness neither threatening nor sexual, there were others who took advantage of that cultural understanding to prey and cheat. Finn had not, but our Marcus had. Was that because our Kiwi culture sees adult nakedness as nothing other than sexual? Or was it simply opportunism? Culture is no excuse, for it always takes 'two to tango' and everyone knew who was single and who wasn't. 

Suffice to say, that was the last time we hung out with Marcus and his soon to be ex-wife, and Finn and I have been happily married for 24 years.

Yup, it was worth it!