The Confusion of The Swede

Tip #3: A complex moment. No sudden movements.

The Swede sets out everyday at sunbreak, dressed in blue, in his turtleneck diamond pattern sweater. Nobody ever says "good morning" or "nice axe" or "your postmodern haircut." No, The Swede departs in a silence so Swedish it is Appalachian. To be Swedish is to be sugary-like, to be Sweetish. The Swede takes a nip from his Ass Pocket of Stockholm Glögg and commences to chop. The Swede chops This and The Swede chops That. To be a Swede is to chop, afterall, the wind does he chop and the water, too, in Sweden is a hard, heavy water, in need of regular chopping to effect a kind of order, oh, the chop of the Briny. At times, every Swede faces a band of marrauding foresters who attempt to yank his blue underoos out from beneath his blue trousers, and those Swedes caught in that kind of malevolent horseplay must then live in The Northern Land of the Wedgie, in that, they become Norwegian. That doesn't really happen so much anymore as most Norwegians are a stoic group. At the end of the day, The Swede mutters a time-tested, focus group-tested, market-tested joke that he calls his Nordic joke: "I am Finnished," he says, followed by, "heh heh heh." He has, by then, axed himself and his clan a varmint that he places, each day, in a fresh paper sack, folks, a fresh paper sack. He then walks the sad, isolated, chilly road that leads to the traditional Swedish ski lodge betwixt a spray of spruce pines. It is amazing, thus, in those sub-Arctic moments, with snow weighing down the land, that the woman, in blue top and mini-skirt, comes out of doors, leading the traditional eight Swedish children. We can never see The Swede in that instant, for every such Swede is turned away from the Swedish folk artist who accompanies him home each evening, but that Swede does wield "a searching pride" as he does wield his paper sack: "This life," he thinks. "This varmint. This axe. This Sweden!"