“We listen to things like that sometimes,”
shrugs 18-year-old Johanna Hellström, her
flame-red hair curled back into a wave. “But
it’s not as good as the old stuff.”
The girls are part of the new generation
of
raggare
, followers of a Swedish
subculture that celebrates the cars, music
and fashion of
Rock Around the Clock
-
era America. The place they’re from,
Falköping, is a small town roughly halfway
between Gothenburg and Stockholm, and
it’s home to local raggare club the Nasco
Yankees, formed in 1976.
A few hours before encountering
Denise and friends, I spend the afternoon
at a Nasco Yankees “meet” in a central
Falköping park with Fredrik Svensson,
an affable Swede with a leather waistcoat
and sideburns so extensive that they take
up most of his face. “Most Swedish people
used to hate raggare culture because there
was a lot of drinking and fighting,” says the
39-year-old.
“That’s true!” laughs 62-year-old Peder
Jonsson, who I meet later, and who’s been on
the scene for half a century. “We would go to
other nearby towns like Skara and Mariestad
to fight. It was pretty violent. We don’t do
Clockwise from
above
⁄
The Nasco
Yankees’ club house
in Falköping; no part
of a car is safe from
1950s American styling;
original 1970s raggar
Peder Jonsson, 62, in
his 1959 Oldsmobile 98
“When I die I’m going to
be buried in this car”
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n
