IKEA

IKEA is a recurring presence in the novel, where its stores and branded stationery become part of ordinary routines, intimate memories, and the improvised management of the hostage crisis. For Anna-Lena and Roger, it is a place they have visited together repeatedly; for Roger, its pad and pencil also become tools for calculating apartment prices and organizing a pizza order.

Stores and Shared Rituals

Anna-Lena tells Jack that she and Roger have visited all twenty IKEA locations under discussion. Their visits follow a familiar pattern: they have lunch there, but do not usually have cake. At their most recent visit, Roger suggested they each have a piece. Anna-Lena understands this small break in routine as evidence that he had been counting their visits, and as a romantic gesture from a man who does not always appear romantic. The stores also provide the setting for a recurring disagreement about children and property. Roger objects when real estate agents mark a children’s room on apartment plans, because he believes that including one pushes up the price. Anna-Lena insists that his anger is not hatred of children: he loves them, and she distracts him when they walk through IKEA’s children’s section.

A Brand in Roger’s Calculations

During the apartment viewing, Roger takes out a pad and pencil stamped with IKEA’s name and uses them to calculate prices per square foot. His lists include factors he thinks might raise the price, such as childbirth, a murder if it received television coverage, and the presence of Stockholm residents. Damp, mold, and the need for renovations go on the list of factors that ought to lower it. The branded stationery carries a familiar domestic association into a scene where the participants are assessing a home as property.

Stationery Put to Use in the Hostage Crisis

Later, frustrated after leaving the balcony during a confused exchange between police officers, Roger returns inside the Hostage apartment waving the same IKEA pad and pencil. He proposes writing down the hostages’ pizza orders and throwing the list down, then begins by asking Bank robber what kind of pizza she wants. The ordinary stationery thus serves a practical purpose in the crisis: Roger turns it into a way to gather and relay the group’s requests.