It’s early morning in my apartment in Brooklyn. Everything is silent. The usual street noise from school kids, garbage trucks and cars swooshing over the Brooklyn Queens Express way is gone. The subway is closed and the platforms lie empty and eerie. Have I lost myself in a remake of Armageddon? No. Together with eight million other New Yorkers I’m awaiting what could be the worst hurricane since the 1938, when the Great New England Hurricane caused over 700 deaths and destroyed over 50 000 homes. We have bought a lot of food and filled up big bottles with water. We have stocked up on candles and batteries and closed all windows. Now all we can do is wait and obsessively follow the hurricane’s course towards the Mid-Atlantic Coast on TV. This is my first hurricane, and although it’s really been quite cosy so far to stay inside, wrap myself in blankets and make tea, I did have nightmares about wounded people and panic evacuations last night. But it’s all worth it, because now I can finally say to my (American) boyfriend: “Well, you can complain all you want about the Swedish weather, but at least we don’t have this”.
My boyfriend was once just a regular guy living in New York City, but when we moved to Stockholm three years ago he became obsessed with weather. “Before I never cared – I knew that the summer would be hot, the autumn would be pleasurably warm, the winter cold but short and the spring absolutely fantastic.” he says. But after the two worst Swedish winters since they started taking records – 2010 and 2011 – he started to check the weather in New York almost every day, to find out what he was missing. When we came back to live in New York again last February, he started to follow the weather in Stockholm closely to find out what he didn’t have to deal with, musing over the cold temperatures. (The recent snowfall in Stockholm in October was a highlight.) Although I find this behaviour a little peculiar, I realise that it’s only a natural part of his Swedification process. Swedes are obsessed with weather, because we can’t afford not to be. We get so little good weather that we need to cling to it like it’s our last straw. And we need to be prepared when the cold hits us, or the snow, or the hail, or the general winter gloominess where you don’t see the sun for four months in a row, if it’s up at all. It’s no coincidence that the saying “there is no bad weather, only bad clothes” rhymes in Swedish: (det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder). Our whole culture evolved around this expression because it had no other choice.
“It’s one thing to endure a long, cold winter if you know that you’re guaranteed a long, hot summer – but if you don’t even have that? That’s just unacceptable,” says my poor boyfriend. Most Swedish-American couples spend the summers in Sweden, when the likelihood of acceptable weather is the highest, and the rest of the year in the U.S. We’re leaning towards do the exact opposite – spend the summers in the U.S. and the rest of the year in Sweden, to get our yearly summer guarantee. As for myself, I’ve never minded the cold. As long as I have the above-mentioned tea, blankets, candles and high speed internet I’ll just cocoon it through. So Hurricane Sandy, please have mercy – and thanks for helping me build my case. If I survive, that is.
