Back in the days when Riche was my second home most nights of the week, I never felt that I had much use for an office. But now, being a mother with a more limited social life, I have realised the benefit of socialising during preschool hours. So since September, I have an office to go to every morning. It’s awfully nice: me and three other freelance workers share a room in Vasastan close to Stadsbiblioket. It’s quite a bike ride every morning for me, living in Södermalm, but I do enjoy coming out of my Sofo comfort zone and see the rest of Stockholm. Well-maintained career women with expensive handbags click-clacking down Birger Jarlsgatan, manual labourers moving stuff out of big trucks, young business professionals in dark coats and high hair milling about Stureplan, the typical university student with big backpacks and rustling sports jackets; impeccably dressed Östermalm ladies in the prime of their retirement.

I often think of my friends and myself as typical Stockholmers. We’re all working media jobs, we’re all fairly conscious in terms of equality and gender issues, we’re living in Södermalm and we’re trying to maintain an early adopter identity, whether it’s technology, music, fashion or food. This description of the typical Stockholmer also corresponds well with the image I think many people have of Swedes: tech-savvy, liberal and trend-conscious. But as I whizz down the city streets on my bike, I’m beginning to think that maybe this is all an arbitrary construction. Maybe all these people I’m passing see themselves as the typical Stockholmer? Maybe they feel that the description of themselves and their friends agrees with the general image people have of Swedes? Because, after all, all these different individuals are just as much part of this city as my friends and I are. They might look very different from me, dress differently and act differently, and have a completely different taste in music and films and books, but they are probably just as proud inhabitants of their city as I am.

So – do we have anything else in common than the love for our city? Or do we just live side by side, in the same city, but leading completely different lives, with different values, tastes and opinions? Most Stockholmers would probably argue that we are more open and tolerant to different views and ideas than other Swedes. However, that tolerance does not seem to include “lantisar”; people living in the countryside – everything that is not Stockholm. Some years ago, the controversial political commentator Hanne Kjöller claimed that Stockholmers were more competent than the inhabitants of Värmland, when arguing against moving state-owned institutions to Karlstad. And back in the 90’s, politician Anna Kinberg (today parliamentary group leader of Moderaterna) enraged thousands of Swedes when she claimed that Stockholmers were smarter than other Swedes. Maybe the only quality all Stockholmers share, regardless of neighbourhood, dress code or income, is sheer conceit and arrogance.

Photo by Ellinor Stigle