15 very Swedish words...

1)    Kl?mrisk – A word for the ‘danger of getting squeezed between unfriendly objects’ such as the ticket barrier in the Stockholm underground or by the push of passengers onto a full number 3 bus at home-time.

2)     Matgl?dje – A word for ‘enjoying anything to do with food’. Eating it is a necessity, cooking it is an art. Swedes enjoy cooking with wine, and sometimes they even put it in the food.

3)    S?ndags?ngest – A word for ‘the feeling of anxiety on a Sunday evening’ knowing that the first five days after a weekend are the hardest. There’s also fredagsmys and l?rdagsgodis – one is feeling free it's Friday and the other is something sweet on a Saturday.

4)     Nyp?stigna –One word for ten English ones: ‘Passengers who got on the train at the last stop’. Swedish is known for its long compound words, the longest, according to Svenska Akademiska ordlista, is ‘realisationsvinstbeskattning’ (28 letters) meaning capital gains tax.

5)     Kosl?pp – A word for ‘the release in spring into the open fields of cows which have been locked up all winter’. They’re locked up again in October but strangely there’s is no word for that in Swedish.

6)     S?rbo – A word for ‘a person who sleeps with his/her partner and then goes home to his/her own bed afterwards’. It’s a kind of living-together-apart arrangement.

7)     Nyhetstorka – A word for ‘the media dishing up unimportant, uninteresting stories as all the journalists seem to be on vacation at the same time’. Read all about it! Anna Book’s dishwasher has exploded (lots of tears), Jan Guillou’s rifle has back-fired (a relief) and Pernilla Wahlgren’s latest addiction to nose spray (pass the bucket). 

8)     Kaffesugen – A word for ‘feeling the acute desire to drink coffee very soon’. What goes best with a cup of coffee? A p?t?r! A word for ‘another cup of the same stuff in the same cup’.

9)     Mellandagsrea – A word for ‘a week of Black Fridays between Christmas and New Year’.

10)  Kundkloss – A word, according to a DN survey, for ‘the stick one places on the check-out conveyor belt at the supermarket to mark where one’s own shopping ends.’ I really wanted to buy one of those things but the lady at the check-out kept putting it back.

11)  Ett f?rm?te - A word for ‘people who have a meeting to prepare for another meeting with the same people.’

12)  Kl?mdag -  A word for ‘the odd day, usually a Friday, between a public holiday and the weekend’. In May and June the public holidays and extended weekends more or less combine into one long vacation with the occasional day at the office.

13)  ?siktskorridor – A word for ‘having any opinion you like as long as you don’t voice it’. If you’re asked: ‘What do you think?’ it’s always best to answer with a non-comital det beror p? (it depends).  Anybody caught having a view not in line with that of the cultural lobby, the intellectual elite and the politically correct is likely to be branded a womanising, money-grabbing, frequent-flying racist. 

14)  Snorkallt - a word for ‘it’s so cold your nose produces runny snot’. Alternatives: svinkallt ('piggy cold') and skitkallt (errr, 'shitty cold') - so basically, in spite of where they live, Swedes are not fond of the cold. In English the term is ‘It’s cold enough to freeze the b—ls off a brass monkey.’ (There you go Swedes, work that one out).

15)  Bordsgranne - a word for ‘the person sitting next to you at the dinner table’. At my very first Swedish dinner party my bordsgranne to the right took what looked like a flat wooden tool, scooped up a lump of butter, handed it to me and said with a smile ‘Vars?god!’. What was I supposed to do with it? Lick it? I just said ‘Vars?god’ and passed it on to the bordsgranne to the left.

(And there are plenty more very Swedish words. Feel free to add.)