I had expected to find all sorts of information online about how wonderful Sweden was, and I did for a while. The stuff I found talked about ABBA, cool furniture and architecture, hip clothes, nice safe cities and hockey (or ice hockey, as they called it, which would really make my Canadian cousins barf), and how there were so few poor people and how the government paid for all your medical bills, and the fact that they had a king. The whole place was very liberal too, which would upset lots of Americans, since if you call yourself a liberal in my country, many of us (not my parents though) seem to think you’re a two-headed monster or something. A few sites said Sweden was something like Canada in terms of its weather and landscape, which was fine with me since I’d often visited my cousins and Grandpa in the Great White North and almost felt at home there. I’d also been to his cottage, way, way north, and I just loved it, hanging with the guys, swimming and going on hikes. Though I’d never tell them this, I think Canada is a really neat place, really safe and friendly, though Canadians are a little laid-back and kind of secretive in some ways…which leads me back to Sweden.
The last thing I read online was an article called “The Land of Secrets—The Sweden You Never Thought Existed.” It was a long story from a newspaper or magazine, something from some famous publication in New York, and I was just going to give it a pass—I hate reading long things. But man, after I read the first paragraph, I couldn’t stop.
It was that article that got me started worrying about where we were going.
What this writer was trying to say was that Sweden was a much more ominous place than its reputation indicated, that its people were like icebergs—different on the outside than on the inside, with darker lives and ideas than the rest of us even imagined. They were also really open about sex (inappropriate!) and violence and not always very pleasant. During World War II they had sort of been on both sides, supplying arms to the Nazis and to the good guys, making money off them killing each other by the millions. And man, they could really make weapons. They had this wicked thing called the Bofors gun that did some serious damage throughout the war. Even the Swede who has the Nobel Prizes named after him, a dude named Alfred Nobel, was into weapons. He invented dynamite! The Peace Prize guy! And he was the head of a huge armaments company too. The only reason he came up with the prizes was that a journalist once called him “The Merchant of Death” (which was true), so out of pure guilt he created the award. Talk about deceptive, about not being what you say you are!
And the Swedes were well hooked up to the secret service and espionage world too. I suppose they were perfect for it—nice, calm people but full of hidden schemes. Even one of their greatest heroes, this guy called Raoul Wallenberg, who risked his life to help Jewish people escape the Nazis in Hungary during the war and is revered around the world, apparently was a spy. Rumor has it he was working for the CIA! The bad guys from the Soviet Union picked him up as the war wound down, and he ended up in a prison in Siberia, kept there forever, until he rotted or died or whatever. They weren’t about to let him out. Not a Swede with the abilities he had.
And I couldn’t believe this—one of their prime ministers, perhaps their most famous one, a really liberal guy named Olof Palme, who looked kind of boring, like a principal or something, was assassinated in the streets of their capital, Stockholm (where we were going!), right in broad daylight on one of their safe and perfect streets just after he’d gone to a movie with his wife! This wasn’t in the Dark Ages—it was in 1986! And on top of that, they never really caught the guy who did it, though there are all sorts of rumors about who it was and who he was working for and what Palme was up to behind the scenes. It was amazing! Like something you’d see in a documentary with scary music, lots of bass and drums. And to top it all off, I also read that the guy who may have shot him is, in some ways, considered kind of cool in Sweden. Wow!
Another one of their great people was this guy with a completely unpronounceable name—Dag Hammarskjöld! (Dag? Really?), who was the second secretary-general of the United Nations. He died in mysterious circumstances, going down in a plane crash in Africa—just falling out of the sky for no reason. He was one of the most powerful people in the world at the very moment of his death and had his hand on all sorts of secret information.
What sort of a place were we really going to? Was it simply full of lovely people with cheerful, hip ways who sat drinking lattes in cool cafés on cobblestone streets surrounded by amazing buildings? A place of good clean “ice hockey” and ABBA (“You are the dancing queen…oh yeah!”)? Or was it this “land of secrets” where you had to be very careful? As I said, I started worrying, and then I worried even more. Not that I’m sensitive.
Grandpa had never really made it clear what he was going to do in Stockholm. He would have been a good Swede. He kept giving me those smiles—sly ones, really. He was excellent at them. I noticed the title of that book he held in his hand, though he kept subtly trying to pull it out of my line of vision. I could see that it was about murder. And I noticed the word secret on the back of it in a long blurb about the plot. That was another thing I’d read about the Swedes. They didn’t just write the odd dark crime novel; they wrote piles of them, and they were really good at it. It made me think there must be way more crime in Sweden than anyone was letting on.
I kind of like gruesome murder stories too, though my parents don’t know it. I sneak a look every now and then at some of the crime shows they watch. Funny how they say they are “inappropriate” for me and yet they are so into them, even talking about them when they are making dinner. There’s one called Wallander, which they’ve just started watching and seem to absolutely adore. It is particularly gross, as far as I can tell, with lots of blood and horrible crimes and has really creepy music. I remember sneaking a look at the description on the DVD case. It is set in Sweden.
Somehow I didn’t unload my guts onto Grandpa’s lap all the way across the ocean. I’m not sure how I did it. We Americans aren’t like Swedes or Canadians—we show our feelings. But, being a guy, I thought it important to hold on—to the death if necessary.
Then the plane started its descent into Stockholm.
It looked all right down there…at first.