Swedes and alcohol - it’s an unfortunate combination
Here’s a rather lengthy clip from an unspecified but not exactly unusual altercation in Sweden (this one happens to take place in northern Sweden, but it could happen anywhere). Nice summer evening + people + alcohol = bad stuff! Swedes drink too much.
It’s a bit difficult to make out what’s going on in the clip even if you speak Swedish (and if you don’t I imagine it sounds like a convention of angry Swedish Chefs), but I think the guy in the big green tie is being accused of having “heilat,” i.e. of having done the old Nazi salute. Cops arrive at the end of the clip, turning the whole thing into “Cops” (with white people!). If they seem a bit passive, it’s probably because their backup is perhaps 30 miles away, maybe more. Sweden is severly under policed.
Oddly, while I did drink a lot as a teenager, I never got into a fight, nor did I ever witness a fight among my partying friends. I attribute this to 1) us mostly avoiding clubs and bars, 2) hanging out with fairly like-minded bourgeois-type friends, and 3) a pretty strong focus on my behalf to avoid both arrest records and trips to the ER (my dad basically laid down two rules and two rules only: Don’t ever come home with cops or an STD*). It helped that I did quite a bit of fighting before I reached my teenage years, so I had already developed a pretty good understanding of the damage that fighting can inflict (I’ll probably write more about that in a post in the near future).
*My children will grow up in a far more restrictive household and I don’t feel the least bit bad or hypocritical about it. I grew up under circumstances that probably can’t be replicated in Sweden today, and most certainly not here in America. I’m sure my children will understand.
