Straight-up Scandinavia: Learning the language of IKEA

by Anna Brones on

I find that either you love IKEA or you hate it; you can probably ascertain my own leanings by the fact that I am writing this article. Coming from a Scandinavian family, we have friends who used to have stuff shipped from Sweden to the US before the store made its American debut — some people are just truly committed. But seriously, the company’s basic idea was pretty cutting edge back in the 50s when it started designing furniture. “Affordable solutions for comfortable living,” as the company’s motto goes, went along with flat pack and consumer assembled pieces. How intelligent to reduce costs by reducing the volume of a piece of furniture.

IKEA is a Scandinavian institution gone global, and despite whether you love it or hate it, you are bound to end up with one of its products at some point. I mean really, who can resist sleek Scandinavian design? And when you do find yourself with that Nordic sofa, bookcase, or lamp, you might be interested to know exactly what all of the funny names mean. Pyssla, Svala, Visdalen, Gök? Although it may seem like a jumble of Viking vowels, there is some method to the madness. IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad was actually dyslexic, and he found that developing a system where products were named after places and things made it easier for him to remember them. Learning Swedish is great, but learning IKEA? Even better. A guide to deciphering the system that defines the IKEA language, thanks to a little help from the The Guardian:

Scandinavia unite:
Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs — I agree, that last one is random — are named after places in Sweden; beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway; and carpets after places in Denmark. And don’t think Finland gets left out; Finnish cities and places are the namesake for dining tables and chairs.
In the kitchen
Kitchens themselves — no, cooking in an all-Scandinavian setting does not require you to make meatballs — are normally named after Swedish grammatical terms. Going with the theme of cooking, kitchen utensils are named after spices, herbs, fish, fruit or berries. And just because Scandinavians are such believers in functional things, great words like Burken (meaning “the jar”) describe a line of spice jars.

Vad heter du? What’s your name?
Men’s names tend to go to chairs and desks while materials and curtains are women’s names. My mother has a nice set of place mats and chair pads named after her. I however, with a standard Scandinavian name like Anna, am far too common and get nothing.

Keeping the kids amused
IKEA’s great kids selection — I always get sucked in by the fun colors and random assortment of crazy stuffed animals — are named after mammals, birds and adjectives.

If you think you have all of that down, and have mastered the list of Scandinavian places and words, you can play the IKEA Game, where IKEA product names are picked at random out of a database and your job is to guess what the product is.

And if you are one of those IKEA-dreading individuals, you might want some help with IKEA survival during your next visit.

Stephen Wiltshire: genius city illustrator

by Abha Malpani on

After flying over London in a helicopter, Stephen Wiltshire could reproduce by memory a detailed aerial illustration of a four-square mile area in under three hours that included 12 historic landmarks and 200 other structures.

He has done similar illustrations of New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Frankfurt, and is currently in Madrid doing the same. On his way back to London, he will be stopping in Dubai, Jerusalem and Sydney. He was diagnosed autistic with Savant syndrome when he was 3; drawing became his way of communicating with the world.

Known as the “human camera”, he remembers what he sees by the memories that were provoked in the observation process — and he only has to see things once. At the age of 13, he was called “the best child artist in Britain” by the BBC and more recently he was named by Queen Elizabeth II as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to the art world.

Watch this video and what you see is a 34-year old, confident, artistic genius. Absolutely amazing.

Hard alcohol banned from Wenceslas Square stands. Kielbasas saved!

by Iva Skoch on

The sausage stands on Prague’s Wenceslas Square are probably familiar to anyone who stumbled its cobble-stoned streets after midnight, looking (unsuccessfully) for a more civilized place to eat. The after-dark scene around these stands is not what most people have in mind when they picture the fairy-tale city of Prague: homeless people, prostitutes, and people of various stages of drunkenness.

Prague has been trying to figure out how to clean up Wenceslas Square and some people argued that these stands should be the first to go. But Praguers don’t want to give up that easily. They signed a petition against the elimination of kielbasas from Wenceslas Square, citing “tradition.” It is peculiar because there are hundreds of legends about the ingredients of these things (urine being one of them). A lot of people call the kielbasas “cancerbasas” because of the burned oil used to fry them up. Consequently, the Czech Republic has the highest colon cancer rate in the world. Traditions, it seems, are hard to kill.

The city has decided to ignore the sausages for now. Starting this summer though, stands won’t be able to sell hard alcohol. As for cancerbasas, it is only a matter of time.

This time, a passenger struck a flight attendant

by Iva Skoch on

Just last week, we wrote about a pilot whose mental breakdown caused an emergency landing.

Now, AP reports that a flight from New York to Paris was diverted to Boston last night because a French passenger “struck a flight attendant.” Why? We don’t know. Nonetheless, the American Airlines flight landed safely after 8 p.m. Wednesday night at Logan Airport. The “attacker” was taken into custody.

Is it the cabin pressure that makes people go crazy?

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A commercial airplane with a king size bed? I wonder how much that costs…

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Open your hotel room with the blink of your eye

by Catherine Bodry on

We’ve seen hotel-lock technology move from a clunky key to a swift magnetized card. But key cards aren’t the last word in locks — USA Today reports that super-cool technologies are on the rise. Here’s a run-down of a few of them, all of which are in use in hotels.

Iris-scan: This technique, usually only seen (by me) in Dan Brown novels, is so super-secure it borders on the paranoid. Guests have a photo of their iris taken at check-in, and then flash their irises again at their hotel room door. The Nine Zero Hotel in Boston implemented this technology in 2004.

Fingerprint: Fingerprints are the iris scans of the past. Nevertheless, if you want to feel like you’ve lived dangerously without ever actually living dangerously, you can be fingerprinted at many hotels around the globe (the USA Today article cites New York’s SoHo Loft as one). With this technology, guests’ fingers are scanned right on to the lock. Unfortunately, guests also need to enter a numerical code in addition to scanning their fingerprints (why the double security, folks? Are you a hip New York hotel, or the Pentagon?).

Cellphone: Flash your cellphone or PDA in front of your door and abracadabra — it opens! No U.S. hotels are using this technology, but several European establishments have installed it.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID): Similar to the plastic key cards we’re likely familiar with, RFIDs are harder to duplicate than a regular key card. A chip in the card verifies information like room number and length of stay.