The lack of extremes in the Swedish language and culture is epitomised by the excessive use of the untranslatable word lagom.
In a country where everyone is worth the same, hierarchies are non-existent, inequalities erased, it is not good to stand out. Everything and everyone is supposed to be just lagom.
Anders Svensson was born in 1962. He was politically active as a student; left-wing, as was the norm in traditionally socialist Sweden. He is now married and has two children, a boy and a girl; a lagom size for a family. His wife Lena is a teacher. Pelle is 17, with two years of school left to decide what to do next. Anna is 14, and good at football and maths. Anders has a sales position in an IT company, a 9-to-5 routine.
Anders started to play golf only in his 30s, when the IT boom was in full swing and it was all right to display a lagom amount of success. The family has always had a Volvo, and Lena now uses a little Toyota also. They live in a Stockholm suburb, in a modest but comfortably-equipped house with a garden. It is a lagom arrangement.
Anders tends not to get very excited over anything. Lena finds his emotional equilibrium comfortable; his character is lagom. One could call the family happy though they would not use that term themselves. Not that they are unhappy, but things could of course always be better.
Lagom does not mean boring.
It means rather not too much and not too little, not good and not bad, not big not small, ok, just right though not perfect.
Lagom is a way to avoid clear answers and decisions:
How much of the cake do you want? A lagom piece.
Lagom is a way to stay transparent:
How many years have you been doing this? Lagom many.
Lagom is a way to show ability to conform; whatever you think is right, is fine with me:
Im sure it is lagom like that.
Untranslatable? Yes. Thinking to be precise and explain something very specific, the word actually means nothing. It is weak and meek, it is cowardly, it is a non-statement.
And it is cherished.
Anders Svensson lives a lagom life in a lagom country where, collectively, everyone agrees that Sweden is best.
