Keep track of these false friends related to driving in Sweden

A false friend is a word that looks so familiar in your new language, that you assume you know what it means, although it doesn’t. Keep track of these Swedish words to avoid confusion and embarrassment.

Fart

There’s nothing like the look on the face of an English-speaking international driver when they first discover the Swedish word for ‘speed’. This is integrated into plenty of conjoined nouns such as fartkamera, fartblind, farthinder, infart and utfart. 

The word fart may refer to ‘speed’ in words such as fartkamera (‘speed camera’) and fartblind (‘speed blind’). In other cases, fart refers to a route or journey, in words such as genomfart (‘thoroughfare’) and avfart (‘exit’).* 

Fri

Fri is a tricky word in Swedish. It may mean ‘liberated’, ‘unregulated’ or ‘available’. Most importantly, it doesn’t mean ‘free of charge’. The Swedish term for ‘free of charge’ is gratis or kostnadsfri. Remember this when you read fri parkering on a sign. There will certainly be another sign below that says avgift. 

Skyfall

We are not talking about James Bond, but extremely heavy rainfall. If smhi issues a warning for skyfall, you should count on poor visibility and other rain-induced matters such as flooding and aquaplaning. 

Bilpool

The Swedish word bilpool doesn’t mean ‘car pool’ but ‘car sharing scheme’. Such solutions are available in urban areas and may be a good option for drivers who don’t want to own a car. 

Mil

A Swedish mile, one mil, equals ten kilometres. When Swedes talk about distances, they usually use mil and not kilometres. They may, for example, say that their summer house is 25 mil away from their home or that they bike to work as it’s only one and a half mil in each direction. 

On road signs, however, distances are always communicated in kilometres, meaning the general Swede will always have to use their maths skills when reading those, exclaiming, for example, ‘Only 40 mil left to go’, as they read 400 on the sign. 

Speed limits are always in kilometres per hour. 

Most Swedes are familiar with the concept of the imperial mile but would never use it. One Swedish mil is just over six miles. If you hear a Swedish person talking about miles in English, they are probably referring to the Swedish mil and not the imperial mile. 

If you are looking for a car to buy, you may be interested in its mileage, mätarställning in Swedish. Because of the dual system with mil and kilometres, this is a complicated matter. On the actual meter in the car, the mileage is measured in kilometres, but in speech, it will be converted to the Swedishmil. Likewise, any ad will state the mileage in mil. This means that the number in question may look much lower than expected (with a factor of six) if you are used to imperial miles. 

Gas

The Swedish word gas does not mean ‘petrol’ (shout out to those from the US of A!). 

In fact, gas means ‘gas’ (a vaporous state of matter). In the context of driving, it refers to natural gas (CNG) or biogas created from burning waste. 

Drive-in

Perhaps surprisingly to our North American friends, drive-through restaurants are not a must-have for the average Swedish driver. The concept is relatively new to Sweden, and drive-through restaurants are most often found on the main motorways/highways. Some have started to pop up in larger shopping centres in the suburbs. 

The usual fast food chains can be found along key routes across the country, but most Swedes prefer to stop, get out of their car, and take their food and coffee at a rest stop or dine in. 

Curiously enough, the Swedish word for ‘drive-thru’ is drive-in.