In which an entire nation temporarily abandons its dignity

There are certain things about Sweden that foreigners find difficult to understand.

I live in the suburbs of Stockholm, the beautiful capital of Sweden. That’s Sweden, not Switzerland, a distinction which apparently needs to be made rather more frequently than one might imagine.

I am sure Switzerland is a perfectly lovely country, but I have no particular desire to live there.

Now, we Swedes are immensely proud of our national traditions.

We leap about like frogs around the Midsummer maypole, wear ridiculous paper hats while singing drinking songs at crayfish parties, and regard our tax-funded welfare system with a mixture of affection, pride and occasional murderous frustration.

But none of these things, in my opinion, captures the true Swedish spirit quite like the booze cruise.

For the uninitiated, a booze cruise involves boarding an enormous ferry, ostensibly for the purpose of travelling somewhere, but in reality to purchase vast quantities of alcohol and cigarettes at prices sufficiently attractive to justify the journey.

Those of us living on the east coast generally head towards Finland, or, more importantly, Åland, that convenient little archipelago between Sweden and Finland where tax arrangements have long made duty-free shopping a national pastime.

The destination is almost incidental.

The important thing is the journey.

And the bar.

And the duty-free shop.

Preferably in that order.

What fascinates me most about these cruises is the extraordinary transformation they appear to produce in otherwise respectable people.

A perfectly ordinary Swedish citizen, who on dry land would never dream of speaking above a polite conversational volume, steps aboard a ferry and promptly begins behaving as though released from a particularly strict boarding school.

The inhibitions disappear.

The voices rise.

The singing begins.

By midnight, people who probably spend their working lives discussing pension contributions and recycling regulations are staggering about the corridors, declaring undying friendship to complete strangers and attempting to remember which cabin belongs to them.

It is quite a spectacle.

The Swedish national character is generally said to be reserved, orderly and respectful of personal space.

On a booze cruise, personal space becomes a rather theoretical concept.

So does dignity.

One begins to wonder whether the ferry is equipped with some mysterious device that switches off the passengers’ better judgement the moment it leaves port.

Perhaps it is included in the ticket price.

Naturally, the whole affair attracts its share of spectacularly uncouth individuals.

People who, under normal circumstances, might pass for perfectly respectable members of society suddenly behave like contestants in a competition to determine who can make the greatest fool of themselves before breakfast.

And I find myself watching them with a mixture of horror and fascination.

Are these really my fellow countrymen?

Do these people have jobs?

Mortgages?

Children?

Do they behave like this at home?

And then, inevitably, comes the uncomfortable realisation.

I have been on these cruises myself.

More than once.

And I cannot honestly claim to have conducted myself with impeccable restraint on every occasion.

There may have been singing.

There may have been dancing.

There may even have been an incident or two which is best left unrecorded for the sake of public decency.

But naturally, I made a fool of myself in a considerably more stylish and respectable manner.

There is, after all, a difference between making a spectacle of oneself and doing so with breeding.

At least, that is what I prefer to believe.

And if anybody happens to possess photographic evidence to the contrary, I would be most grateful if they kept it to themselves.

Some things are better left at sea.