Becoming Swenglish in Umeå

Now I appreciate this might be a very odd thing to write about to it occurred to me that people coming to Sweden to live or visit may not be familiar with the Swedish use of curtains!

In the UK, in my experience, curtains are drawn to keep bedrooms dark at night, keep out nosey neighbours and make rooms all nice and snug.  Not so here in Sweden, curtains are usually to be seen and not used!  They are mere window dressings, an accessory, an interior design statement, rarely are they even long enough to be drawn over the entire window and often they are so opaque it wouldn’t make a difference if they did.

Here in Sweden curtains are used for decoration, to the point where they are even changed at Christmas to fit in with the seasonal decorations.

Of course there will be exceptions to this and I would not want to over generalise this rule to all places in Sweden but it has, so far, been my experience with drapery!

So if you find yourself staying over in Sweden, especially in a Swedish home, look first for some blinds to pull before trying to tug the tiny drapes over your window – it might save you the embarrassment of having to explain to your hosts that you have accidentally tugged their decorations off the wall!