Free Europe @ 2.4 km/h by Ken Haley Page B

away.
    Keeping my rucksack close by at all times, I used it as a pillow when asleep on their sofa, and on being deposited back at Trondheim Station next day I was relieved, but — whew! — only of my fears.
    186-188 km
    To Hell and back, then, and from Trondheim back to Hell, and on to Sweden. Outsiders have spoken of the Swedes being reticent, private and humourless. The first two of these I am primed for, but the notion of a humourless people strikes me as most unlikely. At last my European quest has found an object: for the next few days I will turn sleuth, ferreting out the Swedish sense of humour wherever it may lurk.
    On my first full day in the country you might say I sniff success. Looking for a glue to put together one of my diaries which is falling apart, I ask at a supermarket in the ski resort of Åre where a helpful sales assistant recommends an iconic Swedish brand, Karlsons Universalkallister (‘stronger than Araldite’, he informs me) and then adds, mysteriously, ‘You will know it because of the red donkey’.
    Donkey. Glue. Hmm. Having located it, I see the picture of a braying red ass. Swedish is a difficult language for a foreigner so the assistant translates the writing on the tube. ‘The donkey is quoted as saying, “Everyone’s using Karlsons Kallister except for me, but that’s why I’m a donkey.”’ Does this tickle the funny bone of a wheelchair user in a Swedish supermarket? Oh no, far better than that. It leaves me rolling in the aisles.
    189 km
    A Swedish restaurateur from Åre gives me more insight this morning into how the Swedes see themselves, assuring me, ‘We Swedish people are mellow’. This must be the other side of the mirror in which Sweden’s neighbours — when they look this way — mistake ‘mellow’ for ‘withdrawn’ or ‘secretive’.
    191-196 km
    Everyone has heard of Loch Ness, where since 1933 sightings have been reported and a thriving tourist trade has grown up around a certain creature of the deep. But outside Sweden, I dare say, few have heard of Storsjöodjuret, another lacustrine monster whose existence that has been the subject of fierce debate among its human neighbours — and for far longer than Nessie, indeed all the way back to 1635. Forget the Swedish sense of humour, I tell myself: here is a far worthier quest — something of which people claim to have unmistakable evidence. And, who knows but that the monster itself may have a Swedish sense of humour?
    The town of Östersund clings to Lake Storsjön (rhyming with ‘distortion’). As I head round the lake towards my hostel, I see a park bench with a plaque attached, declaring it to be a ‘monster-spotting platform’ or, more formally, ‘an observation station funded by the European Development Fund’.
    On a bridge over the lake I meet Mats Malmqvist, 52, a municipal official and confirmed sceptic. When I ask whether he believes in the monster’s existence, he gives me an eloquent thumbs-down.
    The Swedish authorities — living up to their nation’s reputation for sobriety rather than playfulness — have quite rightly placed the monster under a protection order, and it seems to be working. To date, no reports have been received of anyone injuring or killing a monster in Lake Storsjön (or anywhere else in the country, come to that).
    In town, at the Jamtli Museum, I watch a video, Monstrum Jemtlandia , in which local residents speak of the devil within. One grizzled veteran, Tomas Gårdvall, delves into the murk of speculation, and surfaces with the observation that some folk regard the monster as a symbol of the collective unconscious (very Swedish, that). Another declares, ‘There are tears in the fabric of reality that can suddenly rip open’. How true, I tell myself, but surely someone out there knows how to drop a stitch in time?
    Finally, a commentator surmises that the beast is a visitor from the subterranean ocean into which Jules Verne’s adventurers sailed a raft after