LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
Nearly 1000 years after the age of the vikings, the country of Sweden has had to admit that IKEA is the closest they ever get to plundering the wealth of the middle class anymore.
Not blessed with the most abundant of agricultural resources, Norsemen in the 8th to 11th centuries often partook in summer raiding trips to more fertile lands plundering produce, knowledge and treasure while accidentally teaching the English how to colonise.
After a good 300 odd years of plundering, the vikings eventually went down to the most formidable enemy of all; Christianity.
These days vikings are memorialised in the form of sports teams, factually iffy pieces of fiction and some of the worst tattoos at your local brewery.
Yet all is not lost for the vikings, as their descendents have exchanged the throwing axe for the allen key, the longship for flat cardboard boxes and navigational charts for infuriating instruction sheets.
Based in Älmhult Sweden, IKEA has invaded the shores of even those countries that are landlocked, forcing millions of middle class people each year to handover their hard earned for the furniture equivalent of a five dollar dress.
“1000 years later and these cheeky Swedes are still taking a chunk of my gold once a year,” stated middle class dad Julian Lester who doesn’t understand why he is in IKEA yet again.
“I tell ya, it was easier for Leif Erikson to find America than it is for me to find my way out of this bloody shop.”
MORE TO COME.
