Safe in Sweden

I Left Fear Behind in the U.S but I Hung on to my Vigilance

Gavin de Becker’s classic book, The Gift of Fear, argues that intuition is not woo woo, but an absolutely trustworthy threat-detection system honed over the millennia. What we call intuition is actually a highly developed system of scanning and identifying patterns of human behavior that can process information much faster than the conscious mind. It’s a powerful personal defense system and it speaks through its many messengers: The nagging feeling, the persistent thought, the hunch and the knowing gut. There is also doubt, hesitation, suspicion and apprehension. Strongest of all is fear. When fear comes over you, de Becker says, you should act.

I like the book because you can tell that de Becker is a GOAT, like Maria Callas or Jonas Salk or Elvis or Robert Oppenheimer or the old Tiger Woods. You may remember his name from the 2019 Jeff Bezos dick pic extortion scheme. Because he’s in his element with this material, he has a natural authority. Whenever I come across that, I study it. 

The book reminded me that when I lived in New York, if I was out on the street, I was continually assessing everyone and everything for danger. Most women do, especially in the city. I grew up in Brooklyn Heights in the ‘70s, when it was in the process of gentrifying. The neighborhood was bordered by some pretty rough areas and everyone got mugged all the time. Once one of my family’s guests was mugged after leaving our house after Thanksgiving dinner, not even half a block away. She lost several teeth in the attack. Those were grim days.

In Sweden, I don’t think about my safety. In fact, over the course of my five years here in Stockholm, I’ve never even thought about it. I go pretty much everywhere at any hour and so do my children, in outfits that would have gotten me expelled. At home, we have a big, scary-looking dog that I suppose would deter someone with sinister intent, but I don’t believe there are many such. The social services are pretty robust here. People don’t fall through the cracks. The only security-minded thing I do is lock the steel gate at our front door when we are going out of town.

I have been scared here exactly twice. The first time was that terrible day in March of 2020 when the world began to shut down for the pandemic. I realized I had put my children at the mercy of a country I didn’t know very well and that all I could do was hope its public health policy would be intelligent. The second time was when Russia, our neighbor to the north, invaded Ukraine. It was my first experience of war and I had no idea what to expect. Should I take out a bunch of cash? Would Putin shoot down planes or attack the electrical grid or other critical infrastructure? Should I start hoarding salt? And most urgently of all: Would the war expand? 

The Russian invasion seemed to support the American conception of Europe as that place where the wars happen. Home of the “ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries,” as James Madison put it. So far, what the war has created is a bad bout of inflation for Swedes that tanked the economy somewhat, and a lot of refugees, some of whom came here. It was very bad for Ukraine but it hasn’t been bad for Sweden.

It’s safe here. It’s so orderly that when I saw a dandelion growing in a crack outside an apartment building in the fancy neighborhood of Östermalm, I was genuinely shocked. I couldn’t believe that some appalled Swede hadn’t rushed out to intervene, to pluck the offending plant out from the roots, to restore order. People park their sleeping babies in their carriages outside restaurants, which in New York would land you in custody. Five-year olds walk around by themselves. The only homeless guy I’ve ever seen here had an iPhone.

Blood-soaked Stockholm in all its terrifying glory

Still, sometimes Americans ask me how safe it is to live in Stockholm. What’s it like living in the alleged rape capital of Europe, they ask breathlessly. I laugh. Stockholm is not the rape capital of Europe. The statistics are skewed because of a quirk in the reporting methodology. Sometimes people ask about the violent gangland that Sweden has supposedly become. There is gang violence and it’s shocking, in part because it’s relatively new. But it’s mostly contained to  known areas and it’s mostly gang-on-gang. It’s terrible but it isn’t experienced as a direct threat to most Swedes. 

Overall, I think I’d be far less safe in Chicago, for instance, than I am in Stockholm. The gun violence in the U.S. is among the reasons I left. I feel safe here but I teach my kids to pay attention anyway and to always keep alert. De Becker says a woman wearing a headset on the street is telegraphing to every local rapist that she has deactivated one of her threat-detection systems. Some say that you can’t teach intuition, but I think you can. I teach my kids to listen to that little voice that whispers to turn around, go the other way, stay home, back off. De Becker says more women are comfortable relying on intuition because they do it all the time. Men, on the other hand, prefer logic, which is too slow and often wrong.