Ambassador Barzun and his wife Brooke at Kiruna Airport in northern Sweden. Photo courtesy of the American Embassy.
“We love it here,” Barzun bursts out when asked about his stay so far, adding that he had been there once before. Ten years ago, he attended a wedding in Sweden right around December 13th, when the Swede’s celebrate Saint Lucia (a Sicilian martyr whose name means light, and who is the patron saint of the blind.) “I fell in love with Stockholm a few days before the darkest time of the year,” says the young and boyish-looking native of Massachusetts, who now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. “It was full of ice-skating as it was a really cold and white winter. You don’t ice-skate were we live in the middle of the country.”
Mr. and Mrs. Barzun at the Swedish Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Sweden.
For many Americans, the Swedes’ comfortable relation to ice and water is fascinating. “We had a photo contest at the embassy, and the winning picture was of a woman pushing a baby carriage on the Baltic Sea. Of course, the ice was thick and it is safe, but it still looks funny to an American,” says Barzun, who by now is quite familiar with the country, the Swedes and who correctly pronounces Swedish expressions, names of places and food. He even masters the difficult “sj”-sound and the funny characters with little circles or dots on top of them (å, ä, ö.) In a radio interview he related how his mom visited the city of Sundsvall and on returning home told her son of eating “surströmming” and “gravlax,” which the young boy interpreted as if his mother had been eating rotten fish that had been buried deep underground. (“sour herring” is technically fermented herring, and the first part of gravlax means buried!)
The Ambassador jokes about taking cover from Stockholm’s high school graduates, who at this time of the year can be seen waiving their white student caps (looking like a sea captain’s hat, but originally a miller’s cap) from flatbed trucks dressed up with balloons and birch tree twigs, “I narrowly averted one of those big student trucks,” he says and assures us that if we hear party noise in the background, it is not from the embassy!
On June 21, Minister of Enterprise and Energy Maud Olofsson and Ambassador Barzun visited Arlanda Airport to learn more about its environmental initiatives.
The impression one gets from talking to the Ambassador, watching photos and videos of him playing soccer with the embassy staff, or visiting Sami people in Lapland, is that he is down-to-earth and light-hearted, something that goes well with the democratic Swedish attitude.
What did you expect upon arriving in Sweden as an ambassador?
“Two things. One was sustainability. Sweden has shown the world that you can grow your economy and reduce greenhouse gases at the same time. It has set such a powerful example, and not many countries can say that they have done that. The other has to do with my own background, and my knowledge of the great history of technical innovation in Sweden dating way back, and all the way up to IT and Internet companies like Skype and Spotify.”
Barzun, who is the great-grandson of the famous French-born author and historian Jacques Barzun, studied history and language at Harvard College, and made his career in the media and IT-business. He was the fourth person to be hired by CNET Networks, one of the more successful tech media companies to grow out of the Internet boom in the 1990’s. He played an important role in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as he brought in the idea of mobilizing funds by collecting many small donations rather than focusing on big donors (this strategy was pioneered by Howard Dean in the 2004 primaries.)
Explaining the Obama campaign. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Sweden.
Environmental sustainability has been at the forefront of Barzun’s work in Sweden. “We wanted to continue and expand on the alternative energy partnership between our countries, because it was bearing fruit, ” he says. Michael Wood’s “One Big Thing” was broadened and renamed S.A.G.A., an acronym that stands for the Swedish American Green Alliance. “We have expanded in scope so that it now covers all aspects of sustainability,” Barzun says. SAGA is also the name of a new website focusing on green technology and sustainable development.
“We want to encourage and share ideas between the U.S. and Sweden at all levels, whether it’s research or policy stuff or new projects from big or small companies and everything in between. That’s one key area. The name SAGA is deliberate as we think these ideas are going to be shared through good story telling. The Embassy is not going to develop the breakthroughs in alternative energy, but what we can do is help spread great ideas, catalyze partnerships and celebrate success stories,” he says.
IT and the Internet is the second field of focus for the Ambassador who excitedly tells of his visit the day before at Google’s corporate headquarters in Sweden, where he watched a demo of Skype-type video chat over a cell phone.
“There are lots of similarities in the technical infrastructure and both countries’ commitment to innovation. One thing that pops out is the use of mobile phones for things like paying for the bus, which hasn’t really caught on back home.“ He also mentions The Amazing Tribe, a Swedish company in Malmö that has worked with Google’s new Android-based mobile phone. “There is so much stuff going on,” he says.
U.S. ambassadors and trade reps to Sweden often expressed their interest in boosting U.S. exports to Sweden in order to reduce the trade deficit (it imports almost twice as much from Sweden as it exports). Ambassador Barzun refers to President Obama’s National Export Initiative, which aims to create new jobs by doubling U.S. exports over a five year period.
“The U.S. ought to be able to double our exports to Sweden too,“ he says and mentions the recent Sweden Week and Edays in Seattle as helpful events in promoting trade with Sweden. When he visited the Special Edition of Edays in Seattle in May, he spoke about SAGA and encouraged people and companies to use the website to share their stories and ideas. The National Export Initiative highlights the role of small businesses in growing U.S. exports.
“The vast majority of U.S. companies, maybe 95 percent, don’t export anything anywhere. And yet, it would be a smart way for small and medium size businesses to grow,” Barzun says, pointing to one product he thinks could do well in Sweden; a new residential hot water heater made by GE in his hometown, Louisville, KY. (GE recently decided to hire 420 more workers to build its hybrid water heater locally rather than in China.)
“It’s a super-efficient appliance, and it is relevant to every household. I’m not an expert, but it has as I understand it a big lead against the competition.”
When it comes to entrepreneurship in Sweden, Ambassador Barzun finds it alive and well, not the least among Sweden’s many immigrants (13 percent of the population.)
He was surprised when told of how easy it is to register a new company in Sweden. “One man stood up at an event we had and said that if you want to start a business, it is unbelievably efficient here in Sweden. All you need to do is to visit the interagency website verksamt.se. The man said that in 9 minutes, you have a business!”
“They help entrepreneurs get their businesses started and they are one of the finalists for an EU eGovernment Prize,” Barzun says.
How do you think American’s perceive Sweden? Is it still seen as far away and remote?
“No, that’s not at all what I am seeing and hearing. Sweden has a leadership role internationally, showing that you can grow the economy and reduce emissions. Visitors come from all over, from India, China, and the U.S. to learn about sustainable development projects like the Royal Seaport, and Hammarby Sjöstad. Sweden is a place where the world is looking for solutions. That’s half of the equation. The other is that American companies can bring their solutions over here, whether it is a residential water heater or new technologies for the smart electric grid.”
On the cultural front, the U.S. has for many decades had a surplus in its exchanges with Sweden, where American culture is everywhere and people are up-to-date with anything American in music, movies and cool trends. But even here, Sweden has a resource that Ambassador Barzun wants to tap into, which he does via the SAGA website and through his own blog. He says that he just read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and learned a few things about Sweden from it. “It’s unbelievable! It goes back to when I’m talking to Swedish audiences about sustainability. Here is the nation that invented the seat belt in this incredible practical common-sense and wonderful way. It changed the world and saved lives. Sweden has an incredible engineering legacy, and at the same time it has this great story telling legacy. Three of the top eight books at Amazon.com are by Stieg Larsson. When story telling tradition meets engineering, that’s a pretty powerful combination.“
Maybe Sweden’s story telling talent is an under-appreciated fact behind its export success.
“Precis,” the ambassador replies in a perfect pitch, using a one-word, and very Swedish way of answering in the affirmative.
Do you at this point have any idea of what you would like to take back to the U.S. from Sweden?
“Oh, there’s so much. I named my blog ‘Blog OmSweden’ alluding to the Swedish word ‘lagom.’ I love that concept of lagom, that balance which I see every day here in Sweden, to get things just right. I’ll definitively bring that back with me!”
Update July 27, 2010: Watch Ambassador Barzun making “Kentucky hamburgers” for the Swedish channel “TV4.”
