Manners: A picnic in the graveyard

"Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."

-Anthony Blanche, Brideshead Revisited

Harsh words on the English crafted by Evelyn Waugh. I will leave it for others to determine whether this might be accurate or not, but I will say this: The Swedes do not suffer from excessive charm. Listen to this sentence and how wrong it rings: "Oh, the Swedes! They are famous around the world for their flair and charming manners!"

Let it be understood that the Swedes do not intend to be rude. Quite on the contrary, they are quite a sensitive bunch who generally are very anxious to be morally perfect.

Having said this, the lack of social protocol and politeness can sometimes be quite staggering when one comes to Sweden from the UK.

When I arrived at the central station in Malmoe, Sweden, I decided to queue up for some fast food. The person in front of me, a well-dressed grown man, stepped up to the counter and stated "One cheeseburger". The waitress, without uttering a word, popped around the back and brought him one. "Forty-five crowns", she replied. He handed over the cash. No further words were uttered. There was no "Hello", no "I would like", no "Thank you" and certainly no "Please". In Sweden, none if this is required in day-to-day transactions, although a sole "Thank you" will often be used if the service has been adequate.

Sweden is a fiercely egalitarian and aggressively secularized country, and the current state of affairs is generally considered a freedom from structural oppression. The politeness of olden days were linked to social status and class and were thus abolished during the construction of "The People's Home" - the grand-scale social-engineering project undertaken during the early 20th century. The purpose of the People's home was to create and maintain equality throughout society - a concept which in Sweden gradually also came to mean sameness: A marginal tax which peaked at 83% ensured a redistributive economy where few were wealthy, and in a somewhat Orwellian newspeak-move, titles like "Herr" (Mr), "Fru" (Mrs.) and professional titles with social status were officially abolished in favour of the all-encompassing "Du" (You).

When I went to grade-school in the early 1980's, it had been decided that writing in script should no longer be taught. Instead, a new form of print-style letters, loosely tied together with bridges was to be taught. But a person who is not taught to write script will also have a hard time reading script, and many people in my generation still struggle with reading hand-written material that is older than the 1960's.

I believe politeness follows a similar pattern: once you dismantle the social protocol - even with the best of intentions - you inadvertently will also make people blind to social protocol everywhere.

I have many times been embarrassed by fellow Swedes who fail to distinguish the polite request "A glass of dry white wine, please" with the rude order "A glass of dry white wine" when at a restaurant in the English speaking world. The former adheres to social protocol, with the please being the key that indicates respectfulness towards the waiter whereas the latter is crude and commanding.

What really took the cake though, and what prompted this blog post, was a visit to the Malmoe-Festival. This is a generally harmless but much derided affair focused on serving subpar take-away food in a public square, and it enjoys a fair bit of popularity among the villagers in the Scania country-side who make it an exciting excursion into the city.

Adjacent to the square in which paper plates with woked elkmeat and langos are handed out lies the old cemetery. The cemetery is still in use, and it is the property of the church. As I was crossing the churchyard from the park to the square I noticed several large groups of people parked on and around graves, happily drinking lager on spread-out blankets, children playing and the distinct smell of kebabs in the air. Indeed, it would seem it is generally considered acceptable to have a picnic in a graveyard in modern day Sweden.

I have no interest in being a defender of conservative morality, and I suppose some might argue that it is a nice and progressive thing to bring life and activity to a sombre place like a graveyard - but what gets me is how bizarrely different the Swedish egalitarian secularism has made them compared to the rest of the world. Though they might construe themselves as the most advanced and modern of societies, it is my firm belief that continental Europe would consider this kind of behavior nothing less than extraordinarily vulgar hedonistic barbarism of the worst kind - religious or not.

It might be relevant for Swedes to consider that the moral high-ground they like to think they occupy might not be how they and their ideologies are perceived by their European peers. The Swedes might to some extent also be perceived as that bachelor cousin who's spent too much time alone in his cabin - who although still clever and well read has come out slightly... odd: "Yeah! Come on over for a BBQ, we are equals here! ..what? Yeah, it's in the graveyard like the last time, why?"

Murderous charm or not, in the UK, people are in general very respectful and polite. Even the teenage boys who work in high street retail-stores and look too stoned to direct you towards the exit will end every sentence directed at a customer with "Sir". Even in low-end restaurants like the "Cafe Rouge" franchise we went to at Gatwick airport still presented an all-smiling cast of french waiters and waitresses.

In the UK, generally, the better educated, the better the command of social protocol and appropriate politeness. What got me as a swede was how the english politeness also can be used as a weapon.

If you are making a complaint, no matter how abysmal the error you have encountered, if you use any colourful expletive to describe the situation: you lose. They will pounce on that "crap" or "bloody" you accidentally let slip in a heated moment, and make the discussion about your behavior rather than their mistake. There is no backtracking from this - you missed a beat in the polite rephrasing of the circumstances and have now lost face and credibility - and who can take a complaint seriously when the very credibility of the complainee is in question? Next please!

In dealing with professionals it has also become clear to me that English politeness in this context is nothing more than a veneer, a social lubricant devoid of any real emotion. Everything might be love and roses when you met your landlord and agreed to move out by the 12th, only to have them stab you in the back next week with the words "Although I do not remember the 12th in particular, I wanted to let you stay out of the goodness of my heart, but now I have grown tired of your fussing" - as you had not insisted on written contracts.

Always insist on written contracts. Legalese begins where politeness ends.

Sweden:

- The normative crudeness that slowly poisons the well of refinement

+ In Swedish politeness there often tends to be some real emotion involved

UK:

+ Good service, generally very sophisticated command of social protocol

- Politeness as a weapon, backstabbing and skullduggery

Winner:

I guess it is a tie, with some extra bonus points for the UK for finesse.