Swedish Summer Tans

As the summer continues, I've begun to notice that everyone is bronzed. Men, woman, children, the elderly, everyone has taken on a rich mahogany colour. The weather in July so far has been pretty glorious, the sun has shone and Sweden has basked in 25 - 30c temperatures. I've never seen anything like it, it seems everyone in this nation is a sun lover.

I must admit I'm not someone who actively goes out to sit in the sunshine. A combination of growing up in the middle east, where my father worked as an engineer when the oil money poured in during the early eighties, and an inability to sit still too long, means this isn't an activity I'm too bothered about doing. Even so, I have managed to get quite a tan (for me anyway) during the last month. This is however nothing to most of the people I observe out and about in town. It's also in stark contrast to the UK, where we get a few scattered days here and there of nice summer weather. During this time you normally see two colours: pale and pasty, or parboiled lobster red.

Interestingly, despite this rampant sun worshipping, the rate of skin cancer isn't that high, but it is rising. Unsurprisingly, there are more reported cases down south than in the north of the country, and Skåne has the most reported cases in the data collected from 1970 to 2005.

Sweden's holiday shutdown

One of the major things you notice about summer in Sweden is the country pretty much grinds to a halt in the month of July. This is because July is holiday month here in Sweden, and most companies and public facilities run on a skeleton staffing. The buses into town are less regular, opening times shorten, in smaller towns cinemas close. When I first started coming to Sweden I was a bit baffled by the holiday month phenomenon. This was because I was working in central London and the British corporate working culture, although not as terrible as the US, doesn't have much consideration that an employee has priorities outside of the workplace. In the UK, people take holiday from the beginning of June through to mid September but there's no real point where employees down tools and relax at the same time. It would also be unthinkable for them to take three glorious consecutive weeks of holiday in the way they do here.

In the companies I've worked for, there's always been this need to make sure that the service you provide is always available. Personally, I've always found that a strange idea. I didn't work in the high availability part of IT, building systems isn't like being responsible for server uptime or making sure John Smith can send email to his boss to pretend he's doing something productive. It was mainly project based work and as such ebbed and flowed throughout the year. As there was no common holiday period, you'd just be faced with losing someone working on a project for a week or two and you'd limp through working on the task. If you were sensible, you'd just admit that the sun is shining, motivation is zero, so why not take the time off?

So July is here, and so are holidays, sunshine and warm weather. Here in Malmö, I've enjoyed being able to cycle to a beach in 15 minutes, and having a nice cooling breeze blow in from the Öresund. The other noticeable thing is how important simply being outdoors is during the summer. Practically every apartment has a balcony. The balcony becomes the most important part of the dwelling, the sun is worshipped, bodies tanned, meals are eaten. If you have a house, it's practically a law here that you must possess a barbecue, something like this at the very least:



If you're really serious you have something monstrous lurking under a protective plastic sheeting growling for pre-marinated cuts of meat and korv.You'll also notice that everyone here has developed a deep bronzed tan. There's no sign of the British steamed lobster look here.

Right, the beach calls, where's my flip flops?