Is it possible for a country to have a color or a smell? Readers may disagree but I think it is possible.
When moving to Sweden, my expectations were modest. Sweden back then was and is still a country of quiet pragmatism, where people speak for the very reason of pragmatism – only if there is a need for that – otherwise, there is no need to communicate at all.
Except I would lie if not saying that I had but one expectation. I expected to see Swedish girls walk around with horses over their shoulders – just like my favorite childhood hero Pippi Longstocking. While that didn’t happen, seeing the women in gyms, lifting weights like Vikings, was enough consolation.
Like those weightlifting ladies were not enough, the country had another surprise for me – bakeries smelling like cinnamon buns. Every bakery seems to be steeped in the smell of cinnamon buns. Those buns are everywhere. They are your go-to pastry when grabbing coffee in the morning or when your company treats you to something yummy (still better than pizza). You cannot go a week without having one. They even have a designated day – October 4 is celebrated as Cinnamon Bun Day.
In fact, the first thing I ate in Sweden – after an 8.5-hour flight to Copenhagen and a two-hour dragging through Lund, hauling 40 kilograms of luggage in an unseasonal 20-degree heat, was a cinnamon bun. The scent pulled me in when passing by a bakery called Broder Jakobs and with that first warm, sticky bite, I realized – one smell that would define Sweden is the smell of cinnamon buns.
As mentioned before, I did not have a specific set of expectations. I mostly had factual knowledge about the country or I assumed so. Yet Sweden had another one off its sleeve – it had a color! And that color had nothing to do with blue or yellow. Sweden’s color is orange – the color the country wears tastefully during the autumn. Nowhere else has autumn seemed as beautiful to me as it is here. The way streets, parks and nature wear orange here is inspiring on a whole other level.
Inspired, I even bought myself an orange coat, hoping to capture some of that Nordic charm and see if I can compete with Sweden. Yet, this resulted in another surprise – no one wears orange quite like Sweden.
I spent three years in Sweden and consider myself a bit qualified to talk about this country. Hence, my fair description of Sweden is “an orange country smelling like cinnamon buns.”
November 14, 2024
Lund, Sweden
Leyla's Notes 