In the height of summer, you won’t find many people lighting candles (it’s too warm and so light outside that you can barely see the flame anyway), but the return of dark evenings and bad weather means that all your Swedish friends will have put out their designer candlesticks again (those ones they were given by their grandma when they graduated high school) next time you visit. Anyone who has tried to work during the summer in Sweden knows how irritating it can be having to effectively put everything on hold while your colleagues are off on a sandy beach (or in a red wooden summer house) somewhere, with every email you send answered with an out-of-office reply.