AliceWelch
Topic Author
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Joined: Mon 26 Oct 2020, 11:49

Spacial aspects of being a teenager in Sweden during the 80's

Mon 26 Oct 2020, 11:50

As I remember my life as a kid in a quite small town in the south of Sweden, the spacial aspects mattered a lot. For example, when you visited a friend it was important if he (in my case, not girls) lived in a villa or in an apartment (like me). The villa people – this was really how I saw it – were usually richer, had more stuff and parents who were still married. One or two cars were usually a part of the villa life. Living in apartments were totaly different: of course less space, but also quite often a single parent and more limited resources. Townhouses (radhus in Swedish) were something in between those two – in my hometown, those were being built during the 80's. I remember those three different types places as very important in my childhood. More luxurious apartments didn´t exist, as I recall.

My hometown is, like many other Swedish towns, sorrounded by big forest areas. In those areas you could hide – things or your self. You could build your own hut or cubbyhole in or connected to a tree. Personally, I didn´t like the forest very much. It was either very boring (finding birds or plants were, to me, just boring parts of biology classes in school) or threatening. Dangerous people, such as the moped gang (see another thread), might show up in the forest. The forest was also an isolated area where you could find strange stuff: abandoned cars, old porn magazines, used car tires, and vodka bottles.
 
Bengt Petter
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Joined: Sat 09 Apr 2011, 11:27

Re: Spacial aspects of being a teenager in Sweden during the 80's

Tue 27 Apr 2021, 18:02

Strangely, I have exactly the same memories from my childhood... If I should add anything, it would be the areas surrounding my hometown. There was (still is) an industrial area, maybe 20 minutes by bike from the town center. It could be quite dark and mysterious after working hours. There might even be some criminal activities there. You might get inside some of the buildings if you try hard. A bit further out, there is a lake, surrounded by small summer cabins. Those could also be interesting to explore for a group of kids, especially off season. If you have a boat, you have the possibility to visit some of the islands in the lake. These are just some of the memories that popped up when reading your post.
 
Nchsal
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed 08 Sep 2021, 18:59

Re: Spacial aspects of being a teenager in Sweden during the 80's

Thu 09 Sep 2021, 08:36

I am from Spain and one of the things I like the most about this game is the freedom of the children.

I lived in a city in the 80s and it is true that children spent more time playing with their friends than at home (basically because there was not much else to do for a child lol) and the freedom that one had in the street was relative. Normally you didn’t go too far and even if you did, it was normal to continue within the city. Perhaps in the field it could have been different.

Was the near-absolute freedom that the game inspires real in Sweden in the 80s? Not only go with your group of friends out there, but go into forests, go by boat to other islands or explore caves ... Potentially dangerous things that also require a lot of time away from home.

Maybe I am too city to understand lol.
 
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BrianG
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu 13 Jul 2023, 05:14

Re: Spacial aspects of being a teenager in Sweden during the 80's

Wed 20 Dec 2023, 15:26

Reading these descriptions of Sweden as a 80's teen has inspired me to think of a home grown variant based on where I grew up as a teen in the 80's. I was on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona as a teen. We were a mix of white and native kids living in a huge area we could explore. I remember being warned by Diné children to be careful of the Yenaldlooshi (Skinwalkers) who were witches that roamed the night. Everyone had seen UFO's. In winter after a blizzard, homesteads would be snowed in then they might get supplies from military helicopters that flew overhead. In our small town, a community named after an old military fort that was built during dark times, there was a cold war era General Dynamics defense plant that churned out the Standard Missile where within you could see middle aged native women working soldering guns on circuit boards. Not far away was another old military fort in another town that held stock piles of war ammunition and tested rockets. All of this in a region of the United States well known for its beautiful and other worldly landscapes of red sandstone buttes and cliffs full of tradition and lore about such tales at the Hero Twins and how the red rocks were the remnants of the blood of monsters whom the Twins slayed in a time before time. A forest of felled trees from that same time petrified into agate stone and then down the road a bit a massive crater caused by a meteor that held the power of thousands of Hiroshima bombs and inside that crater, a small single engine plane that one day flew in, and was never able to fly back out.
It's an odd place full of mysteries and contradictions. There in my basement, in a building in an old mission did me and my friends play D&D and Traveller. The world was so much bigger then for us. Little did we knew that we had little Swedish brothers and sisters across the planet, living similar wonders and mysteries in their imaginations.

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