MarstaStaffan
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue 24 Nov 2015, 00:35

Re: Sweden in the 80's

Mon 09 Jan 2017, 18:40

So I grew up in the 80s but in the UK, and I was just wondering, would these things be true off teenagers in Sweden in the Loop;

1) - Me and my friends would slowly amass at the weekends or on holidays; i.e., Alex goes around to Tom's, Tom and Alex's going on to Tracy's, slowly a group gaining a critical mass, but with little of it planned, or phoned ahead,* and maybe some decision of what we were going to do would emerge.
[...]

2) - No one thought of folk being late for at least 1/2 an hour.  [...]
The practice of gathering for weekends, and sometimes also afternoons/evenings, is a pattern I certainly recognize. Jan comes around to my house, hangs around reading comics while I finish eating dinner, we walk over to Håkan who is away on soccer training, his mother provides us with cookies and lemonade while we wait, Håkan comes home, we head out and so forth... I guess it was quite common. It is for example also detailed in the book "Två nötcreme och en moviebox" by Filip & Fredrik about them growing up in the 80's. I believe both this and the "fluidity" of time were connected to a life without mobile phones and not to many scheduled things to do.

In my youth, the fluid meeting time was often connected by a "trajectory". "We'll meet at five by the church, and then we'll follow the main street through town, visit the grill and play some arcade games and the we will come up with something to do." This gave late-comers an opportunity to catch up somewhere along the road.

Five decisions on what to do after reaching "critical mass" (that I remember at the moment)
  • Building a flame thrower and "finding" the gasoline for it.
  • Re-enacting the lightsable duels from Star Wars with fluorescent tubes ( I sadly(?) missed this historical event)
  • Floating down the river on an "escaped" floating dock.
  • Scrounging local industry containers, where throwing knives (discarded knifes without handles) where the most appreciated treasure, especially after we had seen the Icelandic viking action "Korpen flyger" / "When the Raven Flies" from 1984 on VHS.
  • Setting up traps in the nearby forest, inspired by Frank Buck (Bruce Boxleitner) in "Uppdrag i Singapore" / "Bring 'em Back Alive" that started running on Swedish TV 1983.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests