The IKEA phenomenon

If you thought Sweden´s IKEA was popular in the States, where its big box stores are popping up around major metropolitan areas, imagine what things are like here in Scandinavia. The Bergen IKEA is a little out of town, so it runs its own free bus service from the city center out to the store and back (with a stop at the university dorms, of course). The release of the year´s new catalog is a cultural event. The country´s major newspapers review each year´s issue as if it were a new Ingmar Bergman film. This year´s reviews were generally very positive; the tabloid Dagbladet´s panel of experts were particularly impressed.
The day the catalog arrived Ingvild and Signe were visiting for coffee when Inki asked if there had been any mail. I said no, nothing for us, just some ad circulars and the IKEA catalog. All the women demanded the catalog, which I produced before withdrawing to the kitchen. I was neither missed nor mentioned the rest of the night.
We´re headed out there tomorrow pretty early (in the hopes of getting a parking space). The plan is to find a bookshelf for our oversize books that complements the giant one we´re building (cf. the future, slightly pretentious post "Venimus, vidimus, librariam magnam fecimus") and a matching bench with space for our board games to put under the built-in aquarium. IKEA is the perfect place, of course, though it´s not as if the family that owns it needs the money. A recent issue of the Economist pried into the question of just how much the concern was worth but eventually had to concede defeat. The owners have set up such an opaque set of shell companies and Swiss trusts that it´s impossible to tell. They could surely give the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame a run for their money, though.