Episodes We Love: Swedengate

When a Redditor said that he was expected to stay in his Swedish friend's bedroom while the friend ate dinner with his family, the internet exploded with hot takes. Is Sweden the most inhospitable country in the world? We talk to the individuals at the center of the Swedengate saga, including the OP himself. We also delve into how questioning cultural norms can shed light on Sweden's reckoning with nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Amory Siverston. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the co-hosts. This episode originally aired on July 15, 2022.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:20Speaker 01

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• 0:35Speaker 02

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• 1:05Amory Sivertson?

  God neat uur.

• 1:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  That was pretty good.

• 1:11Amory Sivertson?

  I'm trying.

• 1:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  The only reason I know this is that you just did it in front of me, which is play yourself how to say Happy New Year in Swedish.

• 1:23Amory Sivertson?

  Ja, I almost said see. But no, ja.

• 1:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ja.

• 1:28Amory Sivertson?

  God neat uur.

• 1:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  God neat uur.

• 1:32Amory Sivertson?

  Swedish people, I'm sorry. I know my accent is wop wop.

• 1:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's fine. It's fine. There are many things that we hope for you in this new year. What do we hope for our listeners, Amory? Calm?

• 1:47Amory Sivertson?

  Sweet.

• 1:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Peaceful.

• 1:53Amory Sivertson?

  Vegetable.

• 1:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Swedish fish, you know?

• 1:59Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 1:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't know.

• 2:00Amory Sivertson?

  Whatever, whatever your, your food mood or your sweet treat is, I hope that you get to, um, share it with others around a communal table.

• 2:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Of friendship and family.

• 2:13Amory Sivertson?

  Correct.

• 2:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  And everyone is invited to that table.

• 2:18Amory Sivertson?

  Which brings us to an episode that we made two summers ago.

• 2:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 2:25Amory Sivertson?

  Wild.

• 2:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sweden Gate. Y'all remember Sweden Gate? If you don't, keep listening because two summers ago, we made this episode and it's a pretty good one. We like it.

• 2:37Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. If you do remember it, still keep listening because this was a fun, stroll down auditory memory lane for us and we hope it will be that for you.

• 2:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  And if you haven't already figured this out, we are off.

• 2:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  But we're going to be right back with some new episodes. So keep the feed toasty.

• 3:00Amory Sivertson?

  And got neat.

• 3:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ooh.

• 3:03Amory Sivertson?

  I think you're supposed to say it that slowly, too. I think that's part of it. Not because you're self-conscious.

• 3:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  But you're supposed to like scream it while drunk?

• 3:11Amory Sivertson?

  Why not?

• 3:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Aren't you?

• 3:12Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. That's the equivalent of happy new year.

• 3:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Happy new year. Happy freaking new year. You know what I mean?

• 3:20Amory Sivertson?

  And with that, here's the episode.

• 3:31Amory Sivertson?

  WBUR Podcast, Boston.

• 3:39Amory Sivertson?

  David, take me back. When did this happen? How old were you? What was going on in your life?

• 3:47Speaker 05

  Well, I was about 12 years old. Um, after school, me and my friend decided to go to his place and hang out.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  And, uh, you know, we did like 12 year old kids do a sit in front of his computer, play games, read magazines.

• 4:04Amory Sivertson?

  Reading any, um, maybe teenage boy magazines, perhaps?

• 4:10Speaker 05

  No, no. Me and him, we were a big nerd. So.

• 4:14Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  Mostly nerd stuff.

• 4:18Amory Sivertson?

  Speaking of nerd stuff.

• 4:21Amory Sivertson?

  Hey, Ben.

• 4:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right. All right.

• 4:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  What are you trying to say?

• 4:28Amory Sivertson?

  Nothing you don't already know.

• 4:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I don't know.

• 4:35Amory Sivertson?

  That's fair. Anyway, welcome to a conversation I recently had with a Redditor named David Anderson, who was recounting an incident from about 15 years ago that he's never forgotten, and millions of people all over the world now cannot let go. Was he a close friend?

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was, absolutely.

• 4:57Amory Sivertson?

  And had you been over to his house before?

• 5:00Speaker 05

  No, that was the first time.

• 5:02Amory Sivertson?

  So Ben, there may be a couple hours into this after-school hang sesh.

• 5:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm, that's my favorite thing, after-school hang seshes. I love that.

• 5:11Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, but, you know, David's stomach's starting to rumble a little bit.

• 5:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm, snack time?

• 5:18Amory Sivertson?

  Snack time. And fortunately...

• 5:20Speaker 05

  His mom was making dinner.

• 5:23Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  And I heard his mother call for him. So he went, and then I sat in front of his computer, and he came back a minute later and said, "David, could you sit here and wait for 15 minutes?" I was like, "Yeah, sure. What's up?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna go eat dinner with my family."

• 5:48Speaker 05

  So yeah, I was like, "All right, sure, I can wait. You go eat."

• 5:56Amory Sivertson?

  Did he say anything else about it, or was it just kind of assumed that you would understand, "I'm gonna go eat dinner and you're gonna stay here"?

• 6:06Speaker 05

  I think it was very much assumed. He was born with that kind of thing. As for me, I wasn't, so, you know, it was very strange.

• 6:16Amory Sivertson?

  Now, when David says his friend was born with that kind of thing, he means he thinks this is just how his friend was raised. Dinner time was family-only time in his friend's house. Or maybe in his friend's culture or country, David's friend is Swedish.

• 6:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah, Sweden. The land, the land of meatballs and affordable furniture with confusing names.

• 6:43Amory Sivertson?

  That you have to assemble yourself, yeah. And midsummer parties and smorgasbords.

• 6:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, God, midsummer. Oh, God. Abba, Abba? And Greta Thunberg?

• 6:55Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Greta Thunberg represent. All right, I'm down.

• 6:58Amory Sivertson?

  They got that nature, the forest, the lakes, great recycling over there.

• 7:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, free college tuition, universal health care. Don't hate it.

• 7:07Amory Sivertson?

  But also, apparently,

• 7:11Amory Sivertson?

  getting left in your friend's bedroom while he and his family have dinner without you.

• 7:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not cool.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  I was mostly taken aback by it. You know, what could you say? Is this just something his family do? Is it normal? Is it a one-time thing?

• 7:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Listener, it was not a one-time thing. Not for David and not for countless other people, as David would soon learn.

• 7:37Amory Sivertson?

  Because although David didn't say anything to his friend in the moment, he did say something online 15 years later, when about a month ago, a post in the AskReddit community wondered, "What's the weirdest thing you had to do at someone else's house because of their culture or religion?" David commented with the story of the dinner that wasn't at his Swedish friend's house.

• 8:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  That comment got tens of thousands of upvotes on Reddit before getting screenshotted and posted on Twitter, where it got hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets, and people sharing their own stories about getting the cold shoulder, the empty plate, or some other manifestation of Swedish inhospitality that many had experienced.

• 8:21Amory Sivertson?

  But not many had talked about, at least not on this large of a stage. And much to David's surprise, his Reddit comment would kick off an international social media metaphorical meatball-slinging campaign against a country that frankly is far more familiar with heaping helpings of praise. A campaign known as...

• 8:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sweden Gate.

• 8:48Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 8:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 8:52Amory Sivertson?

  We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. And today, we're hearing from the people at the center of Sweden Gate about why this might not just be another social media storm that'll blow over.

• 9:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  But also, why the Sweden Gate debate is giving them hope.

• 9:13Amory Sivertson?

  The virality of David's story, at least initially, can probably be attributed to confusion mixed with humor. The very first tweet about it read, "How are you gonna eat without inviting your friend?"

• 9:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then came the memes, like a stock photo of a group of children sitting in a circle labeled "Swedish family eating dinner", and then one kid off to the side labeled "their guest".

• 9:35Amory Sivertson?

  There was even a weird Spotify playlist made in honor of young David. Do you remember those weird jokey Spotify playlists, Ben?

• 9:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, there's this great podcast called Endless Thread that didn't have to say that about it. You should check it out, Amory, if you haven't checked it out.

• 9:51Amory Sivertson?

  Noted. Okay, well, here's this one. Track one: "Oh, my god." Track two: "I am." Three: "So hungry." Four: "So very." Five: "Hungry." Six: "Why." Seven: "Won't." Eight: "These people." Nine: "Feed me."

• 10:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Feed me!

• 10:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Some Swedes were laughing right along with the rest of the world. The Swedish pop star Zara Larsson, quote, tweeted the screenshot of David's Reddit comment and captioned it, "Peak Swedish culture."

• 10:23Amory Sivertson?

  Other Swedes, not so much. A woman named Mila tweeted, "Literally, everyone is hospitable here. Did you unironically see a single picture on Reddit and base your view of an entire country on it?"

• 10:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't know, everyone is hospitable in the entire country? That seems a little suspect.

• 10:42Amory Sivertson?

  False of any country, yeah.

• 10:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, but Zara Larsson took to TikTok to support her claim.

• 10:48Speaker 06

  Growing up, as a child, it would be really common to go and play at your friend's house. And then they would be like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go and have dinner. I'll be back in 30." And they would just leave you in their room. And you just had to play for like 30 minutes until they came back after they had food with their family. What the [bleep]. Uh, my family would never do that.

• 11:09Amory Sivertson?

  What does the pop star think about people blaming her for validating negative views of Swedish culture?

• 11:20Amory Sivertson?

  Soon, David's story had spread from social media to mainstream media. The New York Times.

• 11:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  The Wapo.

• 11:30Amory Sivertson?

  Do people call it that outside of media?

• 11:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't know. That's what I call it. The Wapo.

• 11:35Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, The Wapo. Washington Post. NPR.

• 11:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Think pieces in Slate, Salon, and on and on.

• 11:43Amory Sivertson?

  When did you become aware that this had crossed platforms?

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Uh, when I saw it on the news.

• 11:51Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, my god.

• 11:54Amory Sivertson?

  David had no idea his story had even left Reddit until one day, he's reading a national Swedish newspaper.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  And I saw Sweden gay trending and something about Reddit. And it got me curious. And huh, strange article to write about. Clicked it open and, you know, a picture there with my comment on it. I was like, what the?

• 12:19Amory Sivertson?

  I, too, was like, what the? Worldwide Sweden shade was not a social media trend I would have ever expected, living in a place that largely puts Sweden on a pedestal.

• 12:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  On a pedestal made out of Swedish meatballs.

• 12:34Amory Sivertson?

  That's gross. So, Ben, one of the things I first did when I heard about this was I texted a Swedish friend of mine. And I was like, you know, hey, what do you think about this Swedes don't feed their guests business? And she said she hadn't personally witnessed or experienced it, but that I should ask her cousins, who were born and raised in Sweden. One of those cousins is Patrick Vesta.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Let's start with the fact, is this true, right? Is this, there's some, is some truth to that? And I would say probably yes.

• 13:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Patrick's in his mid-30s. He lives in Stockholm. He looks the part of a stereotypical Swede, white, blonde, which maybe seems a little weird to say, but it'll become relevant, we promise.

• 13:16Amory Sivertson?

  And he told us he's not sure how widespread the practice of not including your guests at dinner is, but he knows it happens. And he offered at least one explanation.

• 13:25Speaker 07

  So Swedish culture is very respecting to other people, right? And it's very much non-intuitive, right? So you want to make sure that you don't sort of mess with anybody else. Like you don't impose yourself on anybody else. And the way this might have worked is say this kid.

• 13:42Amory Sivertson?

  Patrick suggested maybe the Swedish family assumed that David's family would be making dinner for him. So they wouldn't want to impose by spoiling his actual dinner, nor would they expect the imposition of an unexpected dinner guest. And this sort of thing would just be kind of understood.

• 13:58Speaker 07

  Exactly, but most of Swedish culture is understood. We don't spell things out. It's a small country. You know, we've all lived here in the same place for a thousand years.

• 14:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sweden is a small place. It's a nation of only about 10 million people, roughly the size of New York City or London. And when your whole country's population is the size of a large city, it makes sense that the culture might be a little more insular and less subject to the influences and norms of other countries.

• 14:27Speaker 07

  So people are very much connected. People know each other. And because everything is not written, you just know it. It's kind of hard for outsiders to figure out what to do, right?

• 14:39Amory Sivertson?

  Patrick did give us a few tips for if you are invited over to a Swedish person's house, maybe even for dinner, things like shoes off in the house, which I fully support. Wearing outside shoes inside should be straight up illegal on all seven continents.

• 14:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  OK, here's another one. Bring a dish with you to share in the food prep and cost. Don't overstay your welcome.

• 15:01Amory Sivertson?

  Insert the please leave by nine meme.

• 15:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  And be sure to reciprocate the invitation in a timely manner. Oh, and if you're staying the night at someone's house?

• 15:11Speaker 07

  And then we would bring our own sheets because otherwise you're assuming that the host not only has to host people, but also clean all the sheets and do all the work.

• 15:20Amory Sivertson?

  Well, these practices may seem puzzling or inhospitable to some.

• 15:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not taking sheets to your house. I'm sorry.

• 15:29Amory Sivertson?

  Well, then you're not invited. But still, these things are, they're low stakes. You know, they're easy to poke fun at on social media. But Patrick says there have been some more serious conversations in recent years about what it means to be Swedish and about how to protect the country's distinct cultural identity.

• 15:48Speaker 07

  Swedish people now and a lot of political parties are taking a much stronger defense of Swedishness. Whereas 15 years ago, you wouldn't have this conversation, like people wouldn't openly be defending it because it was considered a bit tacky, maybe a bit nationalistic.

• 16:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Patrick attributes some of this to higher rates of immigration, crime, and a growing right-wing political movement over the last two decades in Sweden. These things do seem to be happening there.

• 16:17Amory Sivertson?

  But I was curious what he thinks of this kind of existential national identity conversation.

• 16:23Speaker 07

  Personally, I think it's very positive, right? Because there's a lot of good stuff about our society, right? It's very, it used to be at least, very safe. It used to be very, you know, very independent, like people could do what they wanted. It used to be very respectful and still is mostly for women, right? For women's rights. And I think those are, those are unique things in the world and that we should be proud about. And I think what happened was that it went from all those things, we know them and we live like that, to a state where, okay, not everybody knows and agrees with these things, so we have to spell it out. This is Sweden, this is what we do here, this is what we believe in. And if you don't like that, then, then that's fine, right? But we're not going to change.

• 17:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  This reminded us of a comment someone left in our subreddit suggesting that the Sweden Gate uproar demonstrates, quote, "the inability of others to understand that different places have a different way of life."

• 17:20Amory Sivertson?

  Another Redditor referred to the collective teasing of Sweden on social media as an example of, quote, "the dangers of the online hive mind mentality."

• 17:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Woo, we know about those. Yeah.

• 17:31Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and so does Patrick. He didn't seem too concerned about this. He works for a big tech company, so he sees these kinds of viral pylons almost just as a fact of life.

• 17:41Speaker 07

  I mean, what you're describing is the internet. These things are always going on and they will always go on, right? But I think you have, you're always going to have these stories pop in and out.

• 17:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  And Patrick thinks the Sweden Gate story is gonna pop out any day now.

• 17:55Speaker 07

  Give it another week and people would have forgotten about this.

• 17:58Amory Sivertson?

  One month later and counting, the Sweden Gate hashtag is still going strong on Twitter. And there are some people, including Swedes, who are really hoping it will not only stay alive, but that Sweden Gate will be the start of a national cultural reckoning.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  A lot of people are opening their eyes that no country is perfect. No country is above criticism. Sweden is used every day against America. But how much better are we really?

• 18:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Great question. A definitive answer on whether America or Sweden is better in a minute.

• 18:37Amory Sivertson?

  Finally.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Is sustainability in fashion a selling point for consumers? I think the sustainability gets advertised as being a big driver of fashion, when in fact I think it's way down on the list of purchase criteria for consumers. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on whether consumers can be both fashionable and sustainable.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 19:35Speaker 00

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bun.

• 19:45Amory Sivertson?

  Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 20:02Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, Ben, I want to go back to David.

• 20:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  The redditor whose story launched hundreds of thousands of comments, tweets, and people expressing their utter horror that he wasn't fed at his Swedish friend's house?

• 20:13Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, because you know what Reddit's like. A lot of times, unless a redditor's location is relevant to the topic at hand, or they're using British English words like trousers instead of pants, or spelling color with a U.

• 20:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  We had a row.

• 20:30Amory Sivertson?

  Right, we had a row.

• 20:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was, it was tickety-boo.

• 20:36Amory Sivertson?

  What? The point is-

• 20:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  You never did, you never had tickety-boo?

• 20:39Amory Sivertson?

  Didn't, no, never. Glad to have it in my life now, though. But the point is-

• 20:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Get some tickety-boo in your life.

• 20:45Amory Sivertson?

  All right, all right, enough with you. The point is, you usually have very little idea where a redditor is from, because it's anonymous. And when I read David's comment, and even up until the second I heard his voice when our interview started, I kind of just assumed he was American. Maybe it was the, the really casual way his comment was written. I don't know, but-

• 21:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe we just weren't really paying a very close attention to anything.

• 21:12Amory Sivertson?

  Ben, have you read the comment?

• 21:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm just teasing.

• 21:17Amory Sivertson?

  Also, you're being such a scam right now.

• 21:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm sorry, go on, please go on.

• 21:24Amory Sivertson?

  All right, well, I allowed myself to keep on thinking this, because despite consuming a lot of the Sweden Gate coverage before talking to him, you never hear from David in any of that coverage, any of it, anywhere. And so, all of a sudden, I thought, wait a minute. Am I the first person to reach out to you?

• 21:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, you are the first person.

• 21:47Amory Sivertson?

  What?

• 21:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Incredible.

• 21:50Amory Sivertson?

  Right? And instantly, I hear that he has an accent, of course. He's told me he's in the Central European time zone.

• 21:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mmm, I smell lingonberry jam.

• 22:02Amory Sivertson?

  You're smelling what his friend's mom is cooking.

• 22:07Amory Sivertson?

  Are you in Sweden?

• 22:08Speaker 05

  Yep, exactly.

• 22:09Amory Sivertson?

  Are you Swedish?

• 22:11Speaker 05

  Um, I'm half Swedish.

• 22:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  So confirmed, the guy who went viral for calling out his Swedish friend and accidentally kicked off this summer of Sweden Gate is himself Swedish. Plot twist.

• 22:27Amory Sivertson?

  I mean, for people like me who'd only seen his Reddit comment on paper and assumed he was making fun of like, the weird new Swedish family who just moved in down the street. Yeah, it was. But it turns out he's lived in Sweden most of his life. His dad's Swedish, his mom's from Indonesia, which is where David was actually born and spent his early years. And then his family moved to Mozambique for a little bit, and then to Sweden. And it's because David has experienced other ways of life that the incident at his friend's house was so befuddling.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  Of all the things I've seen in every different countries and cultures, that was the biggest culture shock to me. To most cultures, eating is more than just food. It's a social gathering. Like, you want to bring as many people as possible.

• 23:18Amory Sivertson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  It's fun. In China, a common greeting is, "Have you eaten yet?" They say that instead of "Hi."

• 23:27Amory Sivertson?

  Ben, have you eaten yet?

• 23:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, but this is making me hungry. Will your family feed me?

• 23:33Amory Sivertson?

  No, but you might want to get yourself invited over to David's house, or really to David's mom's house kitchen, because according to him, things would have gone very differently if he and his friend had gone to his house after school.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Every friend I ever had over was forced to eat, regardless if they wanted it or not. So, you know, and some people might not want to try stuff, which my mom unfortunately do get offended by.

• 24:04Amory Sivertson?

  What's a delicacy that your mom makes that you think might, someone might look a little skeptically at, if they're not familiar with it?

• 24:13Speaker 05

  Absolutely, chicken feet.

• 24:15Amory Sivertson?

  Chicken feet?

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, chicken feet.

• 24:17Amory Sivertson?

  But David told me there are some stereotypically Swedish things about him.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  Oh, 100%.

• 24:24Amory Sivertson?

  Like what?

• 24:26Speaker 05

  Swedish people are very distant, maybe even cold, some might say.

• 24:34Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  For example, if you're, you enter a bus and...

• 24:40Speaker 05

  The only seats that's empty are next to someone. We're not gonna take that. We're gonna stand up.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  What shocked me was the cold stoic culture of Sweden in that it was just like, you say hello and you're like, hello, hey.

• 24:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'd be like, oh, God, everyone hates me. I'm running to the ocean.

• 25:03Amory Sivertson?

  This is June Findley, and we don't think she hates us, even though Ben started our conversation with her like this.

• 25:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're talking to June in June.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, you are.

• 25:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm just saying.

• 25:16Amory Sivertson?

  June is from Canada, which of course is on the opposite side of the stereotypical friendliness spectrum from Sweden. So it was jarring when she moved there for grad school back in 2010, especially because June is black.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yes, even just some of the history of some of the foods in Sweden. Like I mentioned, there is a dessert called Negraball. That was what it was called before. It's now called Hoklad Ball, which is chocolate balls. But still, mm, what the hell is this?

• 25:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  So when a post about not feeling welcome in a Swedish home went viral, June shared her own experience in a piece for the online publication Refinery 29.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Like, for the most part, it is warm and friendly if you're Swedish. If you're not, then there's, again, that cold. It's not necessarily a direct hostile. It's the, it's the death of a thousand cuts, which if you dare to be anything other than what they want to conform to, then it's an issue.

• 26:11Amory Sivertson?

  June said she was never asked to wait in another room while others ate. But she did notice something about Swedes and their food.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  When I was at gatherings that were hosted by Swedes, it was exact amounts of food. It was just enough that they're like, we are providing this for you and we don't have to give any extra because no one wants to feel indebted to anyone else. It's so interesting to me that we do exactly what we do. We need for like who we are and who and who we know. But any strangers, we don't want to do that because God forbid we'll have to. We owe you something and then that's a relationship we don't want. And I'm like, that is the antithesis to nearly every culture in the world.

• 26:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  And June shared some Swedish history and theories around how some of these cultural attitudes and practices potentially came to be.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  You know, going from an agrarian society, like all farmers, you know, from a very feudal war-filled past, which is partially why the whole connection thing to today's cultural thing.

• 27:07Amory Sivertson?

  Throw in the Black Death, famines, Sweden's long, harsh winters. And yeah, it's at least conceivable you'd end up with a population that's a little more socially wary, imposition averse, resource protective.

• 27:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  But we also put the point to June that someone made in our subreddit that maybe the internet is demonizing something just because it's different from what we think of as, quote, "normal."

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that's the problem sometimes with social media discussions, very binary in that it's black or white, right or wrong. I say it's more of like, it's, it's me holding up a mirror to the culture and saying, are you sure this is, you know, look outside yourself for once? And this is for everybody in the conversation. Like, people are not othering Swedes just as much as Swedes are othering others in their own country. Do you know what I'm saying? It's just like, they're doing it too. They just don't want to admit it.

• 27:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  This gets back to what it means to be Swedish and who is, quote, "not Swedish enough." Maybe one or both of your parents were born outside of the country. Maybe Swedish isn't your first language. Maybe you're from the so-called Bible Belt in southern Sweden, which June says is a thing.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  In that part, which is called Skåne, which is kind of made fun of a lot by Swedes because they're not seen as real Swedes. They were part of Denmark at one point in history.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  That whole movement of like, you know, you are not Swedish, you don't belong here, or Sweden is for Swedish people, kind of came out of that.

• 28:31Amory Sivertson?

  The modern conversation about what it means to be Swedish and who gets to decide, that likely isn't going away anytime soon. But June thinks Sweden Gate has forced some Swedes to consider a different question. What could or should it mean to be Swedish?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And so I think it's been a good learning experience for a lot of people, but especially Swedes in particular, because they can kind of use that mirror to look up at themselves and be like, how can, if we want to change, which, hey, some of them, you'll always have people who know.

• 29:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Never want to change and that's always the case. And there are people who are like, oh my God, that's terrible. I have to do better. And I can go back to not making people bring in bed sheets when they come to sleep over. June told us that one of the most interesting conversations she saw online in the wake of David's Reddit post was initiated by the first person to use the hashtag Sweden Gate in connection with it.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  It's not lost on me that every major media that has written or spoken about it did not identify me as the originator. They just think it came out of thin air.

• 29:32Amory Sivertson?

  Every media outlet until we got to talk to her. This is Lavette Jallow and it's not lost on her that she hasn't been credited until now because, as she explains it.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  That is the issue of being a black woman. If I was a white Swede that had used the hashtag Sweden Gate first, there would be acknowledgement for that.

• 29:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lavette thinks a lot about hypotheticals such as this. She's a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant who's worked with companies like Spotify and Facebook.

• 30:00Amory Sivertson?

  An activist and author of two books about what it means to be black in Sweden.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  And on my spare time, apparently I start viral threads on social media without knowing about it.

• 30:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lavette may be the reason Sweden Gate is trending now, but this technically isn't the hashtag's debut.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  I did not know that the hashtag had been used last year by alt-right Swedish people to talk about Sweden Gate immigrants are ruining Sweden.

• 30:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh my God.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  So suddenly the hashtag was filled with people's opinions about Swedish hospitality.

• 30:41Amory Sivertson?

  Co-opting a hashtag from xenophobes, you love to see it. The Twitter thread Lavette used it in started out like this. Quote, laughing at Twitter, finding out that Swedish people will not feed their guests. Two crying laughing emojis. As a kid growing up here, we knew to just go home around dinnertime.

• 30:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Levette was born in the Gambia, but she moved to Sweden when she was 11 years old.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  And I came here dressed in a jeans jacket. Nobody told me that it snow was coming.

• 31:11Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, no.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  So I arrived at the airport, literally dressed summertime. And I realized that Sweden's very cold.

• 31:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  And Sweden seemed especially cold to Levette. Cruel even, at times, once she went to school.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  It wasn't unusual for kids to call me a monkey or to ask me if my skin is brown because I smeared myself with poop. You know, things like that.

• 31:36Amory Sivertson?

  Even today, when Levette tells people she's from Sweden.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Everybody's jaws drop like, you're not blond and blue, are you? And I'm like, yeah, I have a mirror. I know. But also, more than 33% of Sweden's 10 million population have one or both parents born outside of Sweden. On top of that, over 25% of us are non-white, we're people of color.

• 31:59Amory Sivertson?

  And yet, she still gets the all-too-common follow-up question, but where are you really from?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Generally, I just tell people who ask that question, my mother's uterus. And that ends the conversation.

• 32:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  There's a great answer.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Because nobody wants to ask my mom about her uterus. That's it.

• 32:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Levette doesn't pull any punches, clearly. The next tweet in her thread said that in Sweden, quote, "A lot of foul things are just accepted as normal." And she wasn't just talking about Swedish inhospitality, but about how that mindset manifests as racism and discrimination against the country's minority populations, starting with its indigenous populations.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  They've been marginalized. They've been sterilized. They have had their way of living. They've had their children taken from them and put into Schooling systems. Then you look at race biology, which literally was born here before it was exported to America. That literally put white people at the top of the hierarchy and black people at the bottom. We're still seeing ramifications of that in healthcare. We're still seeing ramifications in how black children are being treated here in Sweden. Then you move on to, well, let's say Second World War. Sweden maintains the image that we were neutral. No, in fact, we had internment camps for anti Nazis. In fact, we did allow enemy lines to be crossed within our country whilst we did nothing.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Sweden is used every day against America.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  But how much better are we really? Just because we don't have guns, we still have racism. We still have people who are disabled, who are being disenfranchised. We still have houselessness. So it's not a utopia really to beat America over the head with. Because we have our own things to take care of here.

• 33:52Amory Sivertson?

  The response to Levett's Twitter thread was swift and overwhelming. She says it started with men passive aggressively inviting her to their houses for dinner.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  And then it started getting scary because people were actually very angry asking me why I hate my own country, Sweden.

• 34:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Levett says she had people calling her racial slurs and telling her to go back to Africa.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  So I decided that I have to address this because this happened before and I I know how far it can escalate for a black woman here. So I decided to host a room to discuss Sweden Gate.

• 34:27Amory Sivertson?

  Levett used Twitter Spaces to host this conversation. It was six hours long and nearly 300,000 people attended. Swedish people, non Swedish people, white people, people of color. They shared stories of growing up in Sweden, of immigrating, of leaving. People affirming David's experience, people defending David's friend, and really everything in between.

• 34:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  We asked Levett if this felt like a conversation long overdue. She said, no. The overdue part, particularly for Sweden's minority communities, is being heard.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Every time we start having these conversations, we deepen these conversations, we give it nuance. We get silenced by either someone gaslighting us and telling us it's not real. We misunderstood things. Or we get threatened, our lives get threatened, mine included. So silence here is always people talking about immigration and people with immigrant backgrounds. But you never get to hear our voices because the Swedish international PR is that strong.

• 35:32Amory Sivertson?

  And PR isn't typically that big on nuance. We heard June Finley talk about this too, with regards to social media. It's hard to have a both and kind of conversation in an either or kind of space.

• 35:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  But Levett is trying to build that space. Take her Instagram page, for example, where you'll find pictures of her on Sweden's national holiday last month, wearing the traditional Swedish garb and proudly waving a Swedish flag, immediately following a screenshot of a tweet she made calling out Sweden's, quote, "fragile sense of image when it comes to our country and customs."

• 36:07Speaker 00

  When I speak well of Sweden, and there's so many great things to speak about Sweden, nobody has a problem with that. Nobody comes into my comments or my emails or my Instagram to tell me, "Go back to Africa, you monkey," or "you N-word." But when I dare say that Sweden has a problem with racism in healthcare, in the police force, in housing, then people are more like, "Well, you should be grateful you're here," is the assumption of, "Go back to your mud hut." You have to love Sweden to even be able to criticize. We can, we do not criticize people we do not love. And we know when a loved one criticizes us or gives us constructive criticism. It's out of love and for us to change.

• 36:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you think good things can come from Sweden Gate?

• 36:57Speaker 00

  I have to believe. I cannot live a life where I just give up on the same place that I have given so much to. So yes, I have hope and I know good things will come out of this. Number one, a lot of people are opening their eyes that no country is perfect. No country is above criticism. And nationalism, when it's blinded, can be very harmful. Because you'll be attacking the same people that want to better the country.

• 37:28Amory Sivertson?

  You know what, Ben? I have another source of hope to offer up from this whole Sweden Gate saga. A pretty surprising one, actually.

• 37:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, yeah?

• 37:37Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. I mean, it's hope more so for humanity than for Sweden specifically, I'd say.

• 37:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 37:43Amory Sivertson?

  But it comes from our OP, David, and the friend that left him hungry in his bedroom 15 years ago. Was this kind of the beginning and the end of the friendship? Or did you, did you stay, did you stay friends and just not, just not talk about it again?

• 38:01Speaker 05

  Uh, we're still friends, actually. I did send him a picture. Yeah, I did send him a picture of the comment. And I said, well, you have 50% of the responsibility of this.

• 38:13Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, my God. Would your, I mean, no pressure, but if your friend would be willing to talk to us.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, I could absolutely ask him.

• 38:23Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, please do. Oh, and he did.

• 38:29Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, my name is Martin. Martin Sal, AKA the friend without whom David's post and thus Sweden Gate 2022 would not exist. I'm finishing up my thesis to become a civilian.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's pretty much what I do.

• 38:44Amory Sivertson?

  And then that's pretty much all Martin does. He's been so wrapped up in his thesis lately that he hasn't been paying attention to social media at all, or so he claims. He claims he had no idea that David had made a post that accidentally turned Sweden's global reputation from this meatball-making, nature-loving, practical furniture paradise into a child-starving, BYO-bedsheets, nationalistic hellscape. Hyperbolically speaking, of course. And even if he had, he wouldn't have known David's post was about him, because he says he has zero memory of this particular incident.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  No, not at all, actually.

• 39:23Amory Sivertson?

  But he also doesn't deny it for a second.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  It feels like a pretty common thing in Sweden to do that kind of thing, you know? Ask someone to wait in your room whilst you go and eat.

• 39:35Amory Sivertson?

  So were you ever told to wait in a friend's room while your friend?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, multiple times.

• 39:41Amory Sivertson?

  Really?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  So not only was this a thing, but it was such a thing that it isn't a thing?

• 39:49Amory Sivertson?

  Something like that, yeah. But for anyone who was up in arms about an unfed guest, rest assured, it's not a thing Martin does anymore, nor does he excuse or defend it as just being part of Swedish culture.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  No, no, absolutely not. And I mean, not my mother either, actually. She is really embarrassed about this. When I told her that like this post was about him being at our place, she got really embarrassed and stuff like that, so.

• 40:15Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, no. Had she heard of this? Had she heard about Sweden gay social media?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she had. She had no idea about the, like, where it came from and all that stuff. Because like, she's a very generous and thoughtful person, so she...

• 40:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because really bad about it now, you know? Was Martin pissed at all that David posted about this on a public platform? Like, when David joked to him that he was 50% responsible for this whole Sweden Gate tsunami? I mean, did, does he feel that? Does he resent that?

• 40:52Amory Sivertson?

  You know, what he told me was that he thought this was really funny, really. And that the only thing that made him angry, or I guess sad would be a better word, is when he did finally wade into the posts and the tweets and all that this generated. And he saw some of that nationalistic and racist comments left that, that June and Levett referred to. And he also said something that echoed what we heard them say. He too hopes that the larger Sweden Gate conversation is here to stay. And that it leads to less unquestioned acceptance and defense of cultural practices just for national identity's sake. And more acceptance of others just as human beings.

• 41:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  And maybe more giving each other a, a seat at the table? And a nibble of the Swedish fish, you know, a taste of the cinnamon bun? Um, something, something, a sip of the salmon soup?

• 41:47Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, boy. Well, if David and Martin are any indication, it's never too late.

• 41:55Amory Sivertson?

  I feel like the fact that you two are still friends, it's like a little, um, microcosm of what we might all be able to take from this. That you got past it. We worked past the cultural differences and you remain friends to this day. Yeah, that's, uh, that's quite a beautiful way to look at it, actually. Well, um, might I suggest that when your thesis is done and your head is above water, I just think maybe you should have David over for dinner. Yeah, I think so too, actually.

• 42:36Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 42:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, and invitation to my midsummer party? Amory's Swedish pancake recipe? Join our email list. You can find it at wbur.org/endlessthread.

• 42:52Amory Sivertson?

  This episode was written and produced by me, Amory Sivertson, and co-hosted by me and...

• 42:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed, editing help from Jeb Sharp. Our web producer is Megan Cattell. The rest of our team is Nora Sacks, Dean Russell, Quincy Walters, Grace Tatter, Paul Vikas, and Emily Jankowski.

• 43:11Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and an extremely jiggly, sticky, delicious pile of lingonberry jam. That's right, that's just true. If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email [email protected].

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring fashion and culture journalist and author Dana Thomas on the origin of fast fashion.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  In the 1990s, during the early days of globalization, a small brand out of Spain called Zara was deciding to spread its wings beyond Spain and move throughout Europe and roll out its stores of not expensive, kind of fashionable clothes, middle-market, accessible fashion. And what they did for their business model was they would go to fashion shows and see what was the hip thing, and then reinterpret it in less expensive fabrics, just like Gap was doing. But at the time, Zara was embracing this business model called...

• 44:43Amory Sivertson?

  QR, quick response, which was in fact invented by the US apparel industry. Basically, you'd put in a few items of a collection in the store. And if it did really well, then you put more into production and you've put them in the store. And if they didn't do so well, then you stopped it and you moved on to the next thing. It was like, almost like doing a focus group drop of clothes in the store and seeing what works, what doesn't, and what does, you play. So they started moving into this area of quick response and turning out more collections more quickly and getting them onto their store floor faster. And they saw that by doing this, by upping the number of times they did drops in the store

• 45:27Amory Sivertson?

  to every two weeks as opposed to four times a year, that their numbers of visits from consumers went up dramatically.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 45:59Speaker 02

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