Swedes’ love of silence has saved us from the plague of talking unmanned supermarket checkouts — but its city centres need to turn up the volume, says James Savage. The noise of the car and the music really just served to accentuate the otherwise perfect silence of the place. Swedish silence is blissful when contrasted with the tinny, artificial noise that plagues the common spaces of my home country. Supermarket checkouts communicate through gentle blips rather than imperious commands. Apart from disembodied voices at supermarket checkouts.