STOCKHOLM, Sept 13 (AFP) - Sweden's breathtaking rush into the European
lifestyle mainstream has changed the country's face beyond recognition as
Swedes shed their old image of dowdy Nordic puritans, but some fear they have
also cast away some of their most treasured traditional values.
Swedes dress better than ever, eat better food, drink more wine and less
moonshine, and the experience of having one's cappuccino in an outdoor cafe in
Stockholm is no different from similar pleasures in Paris or Berlin.
Swedish designers are hugely successful, Swedish rock stars outsell their
British colleagues, and Stockholm is now one of the hippest capitals of the
planet, where everything, from fashion and jazz to restaurants and top night
spots, is cutting-edge.
But as Swedes indulge in all the lifestyle pleasures that money can buy,
they have left something more fundamental behind, according to Anna-Lena
Waller, head of employment projects in the Swedish province of Oestergoetland.
"Sweden, which had a profound sense of security twenty years ago, has
evolved towards a sense of uncertainty," she told AFP.
"Security, which translated into job security and the state welfare system,
is about to disappear after two decades, because social thinking has been
replaced by a sense of selfishness and business," she said.
After the end of World War II, the Swedish Model created by the Social
Democrats entered its golden age, providing free public education and low-cost
health care to all Swedes funded by high taxes.
That meant an egalitarian and collective society, where Swedes vowed to
help the weakest in society and where excessive wealth and luxury was frowned
upon.
But in recent years, the importance of the individual has taken root.
The deregulation of the telecoms, electricity and broadcasting sectors,
pension, medical and school reform, as well as private medical insurances mean
that Swedes now have more control over and responsibility for their own lives.
A pension reform implemented in 2001 which gave Swedes a small percentage
of their pensions to place in funds and shares was a major trauma for many
Swedes accustomed to the secure knowledge that the state was looking out for
their best interests.
With the added importance of the individual has come a decline in the
welfare state, and Sweden, long-revered as Europe's most egalitarian society,
now has increasing class differences, Waller claims.
And with year-long waits for medical care and deteriorating education,
Swedes' national pride has begun to erode.
"The Swedes have lost their identity in the last 20 years to become more
and more European, which is in many ways a positive development, but which has
also triggered an impressive appearance of uncertainty," according to Pierre
Thullberg, a 35-year-old university professor for economics.
The still unresolved assassination in 1986 of prime minister Olof Palme,
who was gunned down as he strolled unguarded along a Stockholm street, shook
the Swedish populace to its core.
In many ways, Swedes lost their innocence with Palme's murder. The country
had been a peaceful and safe nation, unaccustomed to violence, where consensus
was preferred to confrontation.
While the Palme murder remains a mystery, a number of factors are known to
have contributed to the rise in violence and insecurity.
According to the the National Council of Crime Prevention (Braa), the rise
in violent crime can be attributed to a number of intertwining factors: the
increasing gap between rich and poor, Swedes eating and drinking out more
which leads to more public disturbances, and increased immigration.
Once a homogeneous population of blonde-haired blue-eyed Vikings, some 10
percent of today's population of nine million Swedes were born outside the
country.
With the rise in immigration has come a wave of ethnic diversity
represented in the culture, in culinary habits and travel. In the
third-largest city Malmoe, Mohammed is now one of the most popular names for
newborn boys...
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