In the year 1955, the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault decided to leave Paris and move to Sweden. He was gay and he’d had enough of French homophobia and was under the impression that Sweden was a sexually liberated country. He thought he could meet and enjoy men in the open and in peace. He got an easy job at the French Institute at Uppsala. He bought a fast car. He was ready to rock and roll. But to his horror, he found the Swedes to be rather stoic and stiff and just no fun. His fast car stood out.
It was only a matter of time before he began longing to return to Paris (being in the closet there was better than being in the cold in Uppsala). Years after he left the Scandinavian country and its long winter nights, he was still bitter about the experience. He stated in Swedish literary magazine Bonniers Litterära Magasin: “It is perhaps the mutism of the Swedes, their silence and their habit of talking with elliptical sobriety, which prompted me to start speaking and develop this endless chatter that I believe can only irritate a Swede.”
