Ah, IKEA: the place where you enter with the illusion of building a home together and leave practically signing the divorce. Its floors, despite the convenient shortcuts, are wells full of different options that will decide your life. White shelves? Or better black? Shall we spend a little more on a good TV cabinet? Don’t we need a corner unit? And worst of all: Is there any way to pronounce their names without falling into the most absolute ridicule?
So what, huh?
In exchange for the low prices, IKEA is an escape room where you can try to pronounce names like Nackanäs, Buskbo or Mosslanda without making a fool of yourself. Surely more than once, between jokes, you’ve asked yourself “But where do they get these names?“. We have the explanation, although it’s not as funny as you think.
It turns out that all of Ikea’s names are Swedish places or names of trees and flowers. For example, Toftan, a pack of wastebasket, soap dispenser and place to put toothbrushes, is actually a beautiful lake with parts that have been chosen as a UNESCO world heritage site. A bit like if we exported toilet brushes and called them Covadonga.
One of Ikea’s trendiest and most famous ceiling lamps, Höljes is actually a small village of about a hundred inhabitants in the middle of the forest where people originally stayed when they emigrated from Finland. Ektorp, one of the store’s best-known sofas? Askersund, a super-modern wooden kitchen door? A small village near Lake Vättern where Swedes spend their vacations.
But the furniture store is not only about villages: Ullvide, a fitted sheet, is the name given to a species of willow tree, the Salix Lanata. Stodja, a cutlery organizer, means “support” in Swedish. Ödmjuk, a coffee cup and, at the same time, “humility”. Knutstorp, a chair and the castle where the astronomer Tycho Brahe was born.
And is that the founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad, suffers from dyslexia and put numbers is very complicated, so he decided to call with proper names to their furniture. The result, as fun for customers (as far as it goes) as it is original. Since you’re wondering: yes, Billy is not a place in Sweden, but the marketing director of the company, who needed a shelf to put books and whose wishes were granted (along with those of half the world, why fool us, there is no middle-class home without Billys).
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