Why some Swedes think that there's not much to offer in Sweden?

Question

Why some Swedes think that there's not much to offer in Sweden? I ask this question because I've been to Sweden and I find that the Country is peaceful and delighting. However, before going there, a few of my swedish friends keep telling me not to come since they think that there's not much to offer in Sweden. This kind of thought is also echoed by some articles I found on the net. So, I just want to know why Swedes don't think highly of their country.

Answer 1

Ah, there you nail one of the most exotic aspects of the Swedish national character!

There is some very funny writing about this in an article at http://www.nnn.se/n-model/disinfo/rotten2.htm. The article is political (about SAF), and one may agree or disagree with the political intent of the website, but it's spot on when it comes to the Swedish "Climate of self-criticism".

"This journalistic syndrome is reinforced by a curious aspect of the Swedish national character-- an apparent compulsion to criticise one's own country. The Swedes may well be the most consistent anti-patriots on earth, and are always on the lookout for some reassuring evidence that they are just as wicked as anyone else, preferably worse. One of their favourite self-accusatory epigrams-- presuming a national habit of stifling all individual pride and initiative-- originated with a writer who spent most of his life in Norway and coined the epigram with specific reference to his home town in Denmark. In combination with the news media's desperate quest for excitingly bad news to report, the national habit of self-criticism provides a perfect climate for SAF's ideological campaign, whose constant theme is that just about everything is rotten in the state of Sweden. It is fairly easy for journalists and other interested parties to find a Swede who is willing to state that the sky is falling; but it is generally considered very bad form to praise one's own country"

I think that the "World War II's survivor guilt" ("Sweden's cowardly neglect to be occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II" as the author puts it, tongue in cheek) has something to do with it. Denmark and Norway, that WERE occupied during the war, don't suffer at all from lack of national pride. It also fits in with the hard post-war lessons learnt that patriotism, "our country über alles, right or wrong", is one of the most dangerous and destructive powers on earth in the hands of ruthless politicians. Internationalism and global cooperation got to be such important values that all tendencies to national separatism grew suspect, even such a simple and fundamentally natural thing as unashamed love for the place where you were born and think of as "home". But I suspect that there were tendencies of national self-criticism long before that. And not only national, but personal self-criticism too. "Self-praise stinks" is (or was) a proverb here. Sweden is a large country areal-wise, but with few inhabitants. Before urbanization, most people lived very isolated, scattered out in the woods or other very sparsely populated areas. One had to be wary with the few strangers one met. The centuries of endless wars, suffering and poverty did not invite happy trust in strangers either, nor did it self-confidence. And when you are insecure, you don't challenge people by showing off to them. The Swedish "lying low" tendency could have started as a wise or at least natural caution in a habitat that invited such caution, and then lived on parading as virtue - with an aftertaste of shame - long after the habitat that bred it had changed and rendered it needless. But that is just my guess.