2020-07 First Month in Sweden

June was our first month in Sweden and summer was in full swing. Our first day in Sweden was also the day we got to see the property for the first time in person. We stayed overnight at the airport hotel and picked up the hire car. I was worried about making any mistakes whilst driving on the opposite side, but it went fine. Although we had to drive a long way north to get to the property, there was hardly any traffic compared to the UK. In the UK long drives can be exhausting because of all the constant interactions with other drivers.

Seeing our New House for the First Time

On arrival, the previous owner gave us a tour of the property to explain some aspects. After being in lockdown in a flat for 3 months, having a view of fields, hills and forest was amazing. We had no furniture with us. We’d had to decline the offer of purchasing the previous owners furniture. As the house had been more than our original budget we didn’t have money for fittings and furnishings. We slept the first night in sleeping bags on the wooden floor. Later on, we moved to sleeping on an airbed which was hard to get comfy on it. The plastic was so noisy, I woke up my girlfriend whenever I moved. It would be six weeks before a bed arrived.

The boxes arrived in the delivery van about two days after we arrived. We were permitted up to 600kg, and I think we used 585kg in case our scales were inaccurate, but the driver wasn’t so strict. Although it was hot and sunny outdoors, I remember all the box contents felt deathly cold inside. The driver said he had driven up through northern Norway for another customer, and then down to ourselves. He did not seem as impressed with the view as we were. I think he had seen enough trees already.

There were small deer in the garden the first week. I think the house had been empty for a while and so the wildlife had got used to coming into the garden. There were also lots of spiders in every nook of the house, such as under skirting boards. They became quite rare once the vacuum was working.

Initial Paperwork

Emigration involves a lot of paperwork. That includes paperwork for both the country you are leaving and the one you are joining. There were a couple of weeks before we had to be online to remotely work with our respective employers so we used the time to get necessities done. This included registering with the emigration and tax agencies and setting up the house bills. The house existed before the nearby road was constructed. As a result, it did not have a house number like nearly all Swedish homes do. I think the house wasn’t immediately findable on Google Maps so I added an entry for it and submitted it.

It was important to perform the first visit to the migration agency immediately. I had a massive amount of supporting evidence, but when I tried to offer it all, the assistant looked at me like I was crazy. He had a long queue of people and didn’t want to take a copy of so many documents. Our address wouldn’t come up on the system so the assistant checked Google Maps to verify it existed. My update had probably saved us from being dismissed as crazy people. He manually entered the address and we left to wait for the response.

In the end, it only took about three weeks, to be accepted and so receive the resulting personnummer. Because almost everything in Sweden is tied to the personnummer, they were quite difficult weeks.

First Month of Housework

We painted the interior of the house which seemed never ending at the time. It did mean we got well recognised by the local paint shop owner.

I painted the garage floor so it could be a clean staging area for tools and storage to work on the house. All through lockdown I had been watching videos of Americans painting and improving their homes and garages. I put all six hours of the garage floor painting on youtube which my brother-in-law then made clear that no sane person would watch. I decided he had a point and quietly took it down and made a speeded-up version.

Mail Order Survival

With no car and not wanting to be the foreigner that accidentally gave everyone Covid, we kept a low profile. I wasn’t aware at the time of some of the normal Swedish online shops like jula.se , inet.se , and others. Also when using Swedish sites, a lot of them need the personnummer in order to look up the persons address to deliver to. As a result, we got a lot of things we needed via mail order from amazon.co.uk or amazon.de. Getting anything delivered, especially during COVID, was a nightmare.

The Swedish postal system took a bit of getting used to. Online tracking would say your parcel had arrived, although nothing had come. Three days later a letter might arrive saying your parcel was at the depo 45km away, and would you like it delivered or were you coming to pick it up? Sometimes post would go to the other nearby town, meaning a bus or cycle trip along the coast. Once, our post went to the other side of Sweden. Other times it would go to the local petrol station or supermarket. We would know because parcels would be missing. The postal apps would say the recipient had been notified but no contact would be received. The Postnord app would only allow nordic country codes to be associated with the account for notifications.

Deliveries got easier when our applications for Swedish residency were processed and shops can then find you automatically. Later on, a Swedish mobile number helped a lot as well.

First Furniture and Tools

Having no seats or table to sit at to type emails and similar got tiring pretty quickly. Working on your laptop sat on the floor gets tiring after an hour. I initially got some simple fold-up aluminium camping desks from amazon.de. I also got a tiny lawn mower from Amazon because I could get it delivered. It took ages to mow half an acre with it.

We didn’t have many tools, so fixing anything was harder as we slowly geared up. We did not bring tools with us as some lists showed tools as restricted for import. I did not want to risk a problem so sold them before migrating. I think in hindsight it would have been fine and helped us to get going. It also took us a surprisingly long time to sort curtains and window lights – the Swedish system is to have a hanging light in the middle of each window.

For office furniture, because there were no items home-deliverable but they were in stock at the physical locations, we decided to go pick them up. We hired a car, drove to the IKEA two hours away, loaded up on the basic office equipment furniture we needed and then drove back. I was worried about the hire car cost. I made the first months finances worse by missing the only bus back from the car hire centre 40km away. The taxi ended up costing the equivalent of almost £70.

Summary

Generally, our first month was a stressful month. There was a lot of uncertainty in our heads about if we would be allowed to stay long-term, or hit some unresolvable problem. We were also on a financial budget and had few tools or supplies. We did have some fun though. There was a local swimming lake with warm water, within walking distance. My girlfriend made the most of it and swam quite often in the evenings although I took more convincing. I visited the local lake and swam in the water, we also explored the town a bit.

I think the local hardware shop probably thought we were shoplifters at first. We were unknown and probably looked really nervous and I was walking around staring at everything to see what they sold. Our first trips around the local Coop were great, there were hardly any people and I was so happy to be in Sweden.

In hindsight, I would have got a Swedish phone SIM earlier, and maybe slowed down a bit to avoid stress. But a lot got done and we pushed all the paperwork through that needed doing.