From 1990-92 my wife Elisabeth and I lived in Sweden. We moved from the UK and ‘the idea’ was to be settled for a while in my wife’s homeland. By living in the country I would hopefully improve on my Swedish and get to know her family and background. With over 30 years of hindsight ‘the idea’ looks to us like something that fitted into place. A part of some pre-planned progressive journey through life. In reality at the time we didn’t know where this was leading. We had no idea that it would be for 2 years, we didn’t know that this would subsequently lead on to us going to Japan for 2 years.

Maybe it is an illusion to look back and think we can see life fitting together like some sort of jigsaw. It is a comfort to me to know that Abraham, a man of faith, when called from the familiar “went without knowing where he was going”. Hebrews 11 vs 8.

My wife’s family had a business that was in its 3rd generation of making shirts. Her grandmother had started the business in her kitchen. I was amazed to discover how family chats with Elisabeth’s siblings could go on for hours where they would passionately discuss the finer points of shirt collars, cuffs and various types of fabric. Cotton and linen most definitely in and nylon or polyester totally out of the picture.

The family took great care and pride in the quality of its product. A company motto was ‘The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten’. It challenged my more pragmatic and pseudo utilitarian approach to things. Their approach bore fruit and the firm had an international distribution network selling to the most prestigious retailers. 

To pay the bills I got a job in the shirt factory as a warehouseman. It certainly was a steep learning curve learning the many variations of shirt. This was in the days of not so much automation. Every order hand picked from shelves and packed in boxes. To avoid time and effort roaming around the aisles of shirts you needed to remember where things were. The latest seasonal collection, the various collar types, sizes and colour ranges. Short arm, long arm, business, recreational etc. I was helped by two long term staff who had decades of experience.

None of the staff spoke English so I was immersed in Swedish. To add to the linguistic intensity Swedish national radio was played factory wide all day. All good you might say. One of my work colleagues however had a very strong local dialect and she was given to using slang words. I was duly corrected by Elisabeth if too much influenced. I also needed to be careful when a certain delivery driver would call to pick up consignments. Every second word it seemed was a swear word. He wasn’t the best tutor.

There was a very stable workforce and a few had even worked there 50 years. Living in the surrounding villages most also knew one another outside of work. Whether it was in church, community or sports clubs people’s lives seemed integrated with one another. I now live in a large city where anonymity is prevalent. There is an attraction to the idea of community that village or small town life appear to engender. Perhaps that is another illusion!

The factory work routine was similar most days. Occasionally though there was a need for an urgent delivery of shirts. The job would involve driving a car or van load of shirts north to somewhere in central Sweden.

It was an adventure to take off into what for me were unexplored parts of this large and scarcely populated country. Especially in the cold of winter it was special to traverse great swathes of forest. The stark, still beauty of a winter wonderland. The wonderful pallet of deepening blue as the weak sun sets through the trees. And yes the solitude. Stopping for coffee in a remote countryside café and practicing my fledgling Swedish was the ‘icing on the cake’. No pun intended but coffee usually goes with cake in Sweden and is called ‘fika’. 

These journeys were not all serene as also needed to keep an eye out for elk (moose) crossing the road. There was the danger of maiming or killing the animals. Their large weight and size could also do serious damage to a vehicle.

Swedish employment laws were generous so as a foreigner I had the right to some paid time off each week to study Swedish formally. My learning included attending an adult education centre in the town. The people in my class of about 20 consisted mainly of political refugees from lands that most other western countries did not give asylum to. A second category were people of Finnish descent whose families had migrated after the 2nd World War. Despite many years in Sweden or even being born there some spoke poor Swedish and wanted to improve. And then there was me, an outlier. I seemed to be the only one who hadn’t experienced political oppression or family migration through war. 

What struck me most about the class was how small the world can seem to be at times. One lady remembered me visiting her town in the southern Philippines several years earlier. Another Sudanese woman knew a family I knew when I stayed in Khartoum in 1982. Two connections in a random class of 20! It is said that if we could trace through all our relationships we would only be 5 or 7 people away from anyone in the world.