IKEA is doing more for the image of Sweden than all governmental efforts combined. That might be a sad statement coming from a governmental official tasked with enforcing “the brand of Sweden.” But IKEA’s 285 stores in 37 countries feature the blue-and-yellow national colors, serve Swedish meatballs and sell blond-wood Swedish designs and books about Sweden. To visit IKEA is to visit Sweden.
I’m from a little town in the Chicagoland area. (An aside, ‘Chicagoland’ is my favorite metro placename and the one that speaks most directly to the unique qualities, both good and bad, of the area.) Many of our early non-indigenous settlers were of Swedish descent. The Swedes came and built the railroad through town and stayed.
Every year, we celebrated what was formerly named Swedish Days, the so-called Granddaddy of Illinois Summer Festivals. Herein we celebrated our Swedish pride. It’s recently been renamed Midsömmer Festival to connect it more with the solstice celebrations of pre-Christian Swedes and give it a vaguely upscale European sounding name — much like how IKEA’s naming system does the same for pressed fiberboard and laminate. So I’ve long been fascinated by Sweden, influenced also by fairly liberal parents and the general midwest upbringing.
No doubt my view of Sweden, taken from self-mythologizing and American interest in the supposed Swedish miracle presented through National Geographic articles (many written in the 1960s which came to be my source material for 1980s-era school reports) and now through my own IKEA shopping experience.
