Interweave Knits – July 2019

FREDAGSMYS

FREDAGSMYS

A SWEDISH LAGOM TRADITION

BY LINNEA DUNN

It was a big, early-twentieth-century

house, red with white trim, with noth-

ing but fields as far as the eye could

see on one side and two similar resi-

dential houses on the other, the far

side of a big lawn with swings and

perfect climbing trees and some land

for growing potatoes and carrots. We

were renting the self-contained first

floor from the old man who lived

downstairs, and I remember vividly

what the thick floorboards felt like as

we crawled and danced across them,

the cold air rising through their wide

gaps. The sitting room still had the

original wallpaper, a majestic-looking

pattern in forest green, and there

was a big white fireplace next to

which we had a couch—the family

chill-out couch.

Things were different then, of course: no Netflix to

browse through should the programs on the three TV

channels not take our fancy; no mobile phones or social

media to mindlessly scroll through. And yet, as we

gathered in that heart of the home every Friday evening,

the change in pace must’ve stood out somehow, because

the memory of those evenings is steeped in a different

kind of calm, almost sacred, compared with other

memories, however positive, from that time. I remem-

ber the bowls of sour-cream dips and dunking a certain amount of

cauliflower florets and carrot sticks before feeling like I had earned

the crisps. I can still feel what it was like to run my finger across the

tops of the soda bottles as I picked the flavor of that week’s treat, the

only time we were ever allowed a fizzy drink. It was never fancy or

luxurious, never complicated—but it was always special. It was what

we in Sweden call fredagsmys.

Fredagsmys—literally translating as “Friday cozy”—has grown

into quite the tradition in Sweden: a time for families to unwind after

a busy week, to spend time together without the pressures of perform-

ing specific tasks or adhering to social rules. In many ways, it sits

quite neatly within the Swedish concept of lagom. You may have

heard of it—at the start of 2017, Vogue dubbed lagom the new hygge

(the Danish word for cozy moments with candles, comfort, and good

chats), and the word has traveled far and wide since. Put simply,

lagom means “not too little, not too much, but just enough,” or “just

right,” and is all about balance and making the effort to figure out

what’s required and doing it properly, but not wasting time going over

the top for the sake of superficial impressions. Vegging on the couch

with your favorite people in front of Netflix with some simple dips

and crisps, then, is very lagom indeed: it’s not pretentious, but it’s

good for the soul.

Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living is available for purchase at

http://www.runningpress.com.