(Stockholm) In Luleå, a Swedish town of 80,000 people located 150 km south of the Arctic Circle, a municipal campaign encourages residents who are known to be introverts to greet each other.
In a video posted on social media, Luleå residents with closed faces suddenly look radiant when they pass a passerby who greets them. A caption accompanies it: “Saying hello to your neighbors is a small thing, but contributes to social bonds.”
This campaign has been broadcast since October 31 on buses and buildings in the city, for four weeks, explains Åsa Koski, at the origin of this initiative in the municipality of Luleå, to AFP.
“We are not in Spain where people sit on benches to chat and where it is much more common to live in a community outdoors,” she notes.
“Swedes sometimes tend to be more inward-looking […] You have to find ways to interact.”
High schools in the area also organize screenings of this video. “The latest studies show that the 16-29 age group is particularly prone to loneliness,” underlines Ms. Koski. “We think that people will say hello more and more and see the positive effect” of this municipal initiative, she wants to believe.
In a region where there is 3 hours of sunshine in the depths of winter and where the average temperature hovers around -10° in December, residents have little opportunity to meet each other on a daily basis.
But Åsa Koski also blames the urban lifestyle for the loss of codes of courtesy: “The bigger the city, the more alone you feel. At the time when we still lived in villages, we were better able to say these simple things to each other.”
