This spring, my friend August, who lives in Sweden, was planning to meet me in Dublin for a holiday. I had recently moved away from his home city of Stockholm, and sent him a link to some flights, which were reasonably priced and took less than three hours. “Oh,” August said, “I don’t want to fly there. I want to take a boat.”
Though I couldn’t recall any conversation about international travel where I didn’t assume I would fly, such discussions are now common in Sweden, where a climate-conscious movement has been picking up steam over the last couple of years. “Flysgskam”, or “flight shame”, a neologism that describes the shame we ought to feel about flying, started to gain prominence in late 2017 when various Swedish celebrities pledged to give up air travel. Since then, flygskam has generated flight-free pressure groups, popular Instagram hashtags like #jagstannarpåmarken – meaning “I stay on the ground” – and countless uncomfortable exchanges in Swedish lunchrooms about holiday plans.
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