Lagom: / Swedish / “enough, sufficient, adequate, just right, in moderation”

2018 ushers in a new, maturer era of Publican Enemy, as on the eve my ascent into manhood at the tender age of  34, we head to the quaint Scandi cultural melting pot of Malmö, Sweden. Malmö is a nice auld city with a history of shipbuilding now long since gone, but it’s undergone a quiet transformation of late as a destination of interest. We stay in the area of the city near Mollevanstorget where the population is about 50% under 30, and about 50% foreign-ancestry too (mostly Syrian, Iraqi and Balkan) which makes it an interesting proposition culturally. (It was about Malmö that Trump tweeted of “that thing in Sweden”, which locals met with a mix of bafflement and bemusement). This brings with it some great clubs n’ bars, the best falafel I have ever tasted and of course timid footballing-wallflower and Kung-fu kicking man Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

A Bridge, not too far:

We fly into Copenhagen on a mission: knowing Scandinavia’s notoriously high taxes, we aim to beat the system by stocking up on numerous travel bottles of rum, tequila &  whiskey (rather than the usual stocking up on those lilliputian bottles of shampoos / shower gel / lynxes that go in one decent spray). ”But why Copenhagen, Colm?” you, the reader, may rightly ask. ”You’ve lied to us in the pun-based headline and intro; you’ve lost our trust as a competent narrator with this critical continuity error!” Fear not, brave reader! Copenhagen and Malmö are forever linked by one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times, the Öresund Bridge, star of that Scandinavian bridge-based noir series ‘The Bridge” which critics hail as the best Scandinavian-based-crime-series-set-primarily-on-a-bridge of the last 10 years. The bridge is an architectural marvel, but it’s to be expected, befitting of the two nations in question. It combines the architectural nous, on the one side, of the creators of Lego; on the other side the meticulous planners of Ikea. It’s an architectural match made in heaven if you think of it. The bridge came in about 30KR million under budget and before schedule, although there were rumours that there were some spare bits left lying around after they had finished and they didn’t know where to put them. We take a train to Sweden on Friday night, across the strait of  Öresund and over the border past the islands of Saltholm (Salt islet) and Pepperholm (Pepper Islet), pushing it real good into the night. This subsequently becomes the only time in my life border patrol ask to check our passports while we are sat down in the middle of drinking delicious travel cans of Tuborg Classic. (Albeit the second time I cross a border in search of an Irish pub*). But the border guards don’t really mind our drinking as presumably it’s all water under the bridge.

Casual Cross border travel is always a novelty for citizens of the British isles – the concept of trans-national movement in order to pick up a cheap booze run a rarity. Now,  Copenhagen is on the whole more pricey than Malmö, but beer is far cheaper in the former, so in an ideal world you’d live in Malmö then leg it across the bridge to get a bag of cans in Denmark. Cost isn’t the only obstacle to buying drinks in Sweden either – you have to factor in the S Y S T E M B O L A G E T, more on which will come later. Similar practices occur in Northern Ireland I imagine, alas my only memory of crossing that particular border was a British Army checkpoint, soldiers brandishing M-16s in Belfast circa 1994, where my dad accidentally drove through an Orange March while lost. At least he said it was accidentally. Of course you also have the Channel Tunnel here in the UK, but that ultimately failed to bring the Queen’s England into ever closer union with the continent if you think about it.

The S Y S T E M B O L A G E T – known colloquially as “the system”, “the company” or “the system company“, to give it its full fantastically foreboding Orwellian title, is the only show in town when buying the hard stuff in Svenska. The thing you will hear is that this state-run booze monopoly racks up the price according to the strength of the liquor you’re after, and makes me cling to the aforementioned mini bottles from Gatwick that little bit tighter. We ask our local friend, Pooja (the Prince of Persia) for his take on the system; he explains how it makes sense, seeing as alcohol costs a society so much, it’s only fair that it is taxed accordingly. I become wracked with guilt at his uplifting socially responsible explanation. Visions of the jug of Pornstar Martini I imbibed just weeks ago in a Wetherspoons (2 for one @£7.90) assail me, and the €1.50 a pint luminous Fat Frogs*  from my university days dance about me like malevolent demons and I feel a shudder of remorse. Perhaps it’s not the worst idea in the world.

*(For the benefit of those cocktail artisans unfamiliar with the age-old ‘Fat Frog’ recipe, it contains:

1 part Vodka 

1 part Bacardi Breezer or similar, chilled 

mixed lovingly 1 part Smirnoff Ice

Stir well. The drink should turn green. Enjoy straight away. Be violently and luminously sick in the jacks.

The ‘System’ has odd u too to dissuade drinkers closing early on most days particularly weekends. In Ireland, there are a massive two days per year when alcohol can’t be sold, and these dates inspire a frenzied panic in your average Irish person (so much so that one of these dates, Good Friday has been removed from that list). I vividly remember the massive queues outside the off-licences on each Good Friday, as the masses stocked up on cans of cider like panic-stricken Bible-Belt Southerners do on sacks of rice before the latest tempest batters their God-fearin’ community. Luckily, there is another option – your regular supermarket CAN sell booze, but it can only be at 3.5% strength (known as ‘folkol’ – as in there’s ‘folk-ol’ alcohol in it!). So all your favourites are there, in child- friendly alcoholic amounts, including beers with suitably soft sounding names like the one below.
Fun fact: the Swedish for beer is öl, the Irish verb to drink is ól. Coincidence? I think not!

Although there are a number of good Irish pubs in Copenhagen, this time we decide to stick to Svenska for continuity’s sake. There are a couple that catch the eye for the wrong reasons, notably McGregors, where the clientele match the shady connotations of the eponymous name over the door.

 

 Our pub of choice is “Fagans”: a pleasingly titled boozer thankfully not containing an army of all singing, all dancing precocious street urchin pick pockets, but instead a few lads watching rugby. The pub is below street level, like most decent pubs here and in Copenhagen, which contributes to a warm, convivial atmosphere. For all the talk of hygge and lakke, there is no snug to be found – they missed a trick for sure. A good snug would do well here in -4 degrees. Apart from that, Fagans has a number of things in its favour:
1. They sponsor the Malmö Gaelic Athletic football team, which suggests either there are 15 capable Irish men in the vicinity or one incredibly influential Irish man who managed to convince 14 baffled Swedes the beauty of our national sport. (Who the hell do they play against though? The Helsingborg Pearses? The Uppsala Emmets?)

2. Although a Guinness sets you back a cool £7.90 (you’ve got to spend a packet or two boys…) it is fairly decent and is poured by a genuine Dubliner. Sometimes, while at the bar on my trips, I am want to eavesdrop on the to and fro of the publican with his patrons in thrall, the witty repartee, the local flavour or to catch a cupala focal of the legendary Wildean wit with which the Celts are renowned for. That’s the idea anyway. I transcribe the patron/barman interactions below verbatim for posterity:

Patron: “Here, did you watch that Netflix series with Sharon Stone in it?”
Barkeep: “I didn’t, no. Is she any good in it? Is she still …y’know?”
Patron: “Ah you would, yeah. Did you know, she was my first wank.”
Barkeep: “Was she? Not mine …we had Baywatch, didn’t we?”

3. Rugby Last minute Win: as we enjoy a couple of drinks out of the cold, the Rugby game reaches a crescendo as Ireland win in the last minute. The Irish in the pub cheer and whoop in victory; neutral Swedes baffled by the proceedings get swept up in the ruaile buaile and start cheering and now the place is in full flow and ready to launch. I ask a Swedish girl sitting beside us why Swedes like an Irish pub. ‘There are two reasons’, the girl offers, quite Swedishly, ‘firstly, Swedes like UK culture and want to practice their English (I decide not to correct her on the first bit) and secondly the Irish pub is an excuse for Swedes to act a little crazy”. A large group of locals behind us sing happy birthday in Swedish while standing on tables wearing party hats, poignantly adding credence to her reasoning .

There is a lot of love for Ireland here. Another girl chimes in: “Oh I love Ireland, it’s so amazing. I want to go back”. Perhaps one wonders, their preoccupation with our fair island is some atavistic stirrings of desire to pillage and plunder on hearing a soft Irish brogue. And they all have good English. Too good in fact. I’m soon introduced to a friend of a friend. She asks me where I’m from and I tell her from the South West of Ireland. She asks me whereabouts. I say Kerry. She says:

‘Ah sure I know it well, sure wasn’t I in Dingle there for a while, before I was up in UCD, like’

She’s actually Irish! I feel embarrassed that I had to explain where Kerry was. ‘How long have you been here in Malmö?’ I ask.

‘Oh, I’m back about 4 years now I’d say, sure you know yourself how time flies.’

Now I am thoroughly confused. Back? Where from? I am, at this stage, forced to ask. ‘Sorry, are you Irish or Swedish?’

‘Oh jaysus, I’m pure Swedish, y’know, but sure I was in Milstreet in Cork there for a few years, like’. The girl has a stronger Irish accent than I do. Pure Cork. She even says pure. The Girl with the Cork Accent.

After a few pints and a bit more of a chat, we leave Fagans. Fagans scores extra bonus points for having some crazy Guinness posters that I’ve never seen before and a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic shoved in there randomly on the wall as well. In the vicinity there’s another Irish pub called ‘Paddies’. Ominously, there’s a queue, quite a few bouncers, and it seems to be overflowing with people. We wisely decide that that’s enough Irish pubs for the night and head back to the Techno clubs of Mollevangen. After all, best not get greedy and push our luck. One good Irish pub is just enough.

‘Bíonn blas ar an mbeagán.‘

***
Now, this wasn’t the most exotic trip I’ve taken but since Brexit, British Geography leaves a fair bit to be desired. Twice in the airport, we were asked by staff where we were going. Copenhagen we said. ‘Oh lovely’ the staff replied on both occasions ‘Where’s that?’

***Thanks to D. De la Vega for getting me through immigration so I could recount my tale.

****Shout out to the pub with the worst/best name ever in Copenhagen the one and only ‘Spunk Bar’. ‘People love coming here‘, disappointingly not their slogan