Before I ever set foot in Sweden I knew for sure that Swedes were socialists, that they drank themselves to death and that they had sex anywhere at any time. Now that I’ve been here for a few years I know that only one of these is true. In Sweden in the early 80s all the good things in life were either immoral, illegal or heavily taxed.

I came to a land where supermarkets covered over weak beer with a blanket at 8pm, where the highlight of Saturday evening’s TV entertainment was Anslagstavlan and where it was illegal to shower after 10pm at night.

In the early 90s Sweden was still a land where it cost as much to fly from Stockholm to Göteborg as it did over the Atlantic, a land where Swedes spoke quietly on the telephone and where people wore gloves as early as October. It is now the 2000s.

Swedes are still convinced they are nothing special, rather dull and simply quite ordinary. Do not let them fool you. They are just as weird and wonderful as they have always been. They just need a little help to show it. Welcome to the garden, the beautiful, blossoming garden of SwEden.