KEY POINTS:
One reason Henning Mankell's lugubrious Wallander novels have such force is that they contain detailed descriptions of cars, furniture and buildings.
These all convey meaning, by no means all of it positive.
We know the moods of the sniffing detective through places and things: an account of a bleak, cruelly efficient and pitilessly modern business hotel in provincial Sweden immediately suggests a worrying psychological state.
Swedish design is very particular.
There are reasons for this in the climate and the demography.
Harsh winters meant Swedes were traditionally forced to enjoy the indoors: furniture, rugs, glassware and ceramics become exceptionally important when it is 30C below outside.
And those harsh winters also brought us Volvo; Latin for "I roll", the first Volvo was a copy of a rugged American car because no European prototype was thought tough enough.
And Volvos were made strong to survive collisions with the careless moose (still an everyday possibility).
Demographically, Sweden is more nearly all one social class than, say, Britain or France.
This meant that when the first design movements began in the early last century, their appeals could be addressed to the whole population, not just a special interest group.
This made Sweden modern while others were still Victorian.
A feminist-pacifist-activist called Ellen Key wrote Skonnhet in Hemmen (Beauty in the Home) in 1913, in which she argued that better designed interiors could transform life itself.
Six years later, Gregor Paulsson published his campaigning Vackrare Vardagsvara (More Beautiful Everyday Things).
Thus was social democracy given its material credentials: a century of great design followed, satirised by The Beatles as Norwegian Wood, but really it was Swedish.
The wood was pale and mated to natural canvas. Chairs and objects came in polite shapes. Crocks were colourful and fish platters were made in stainless steel. This aesthetic had a special influence in Britain: in its pomp in the 60s, the now moribund Design Council promoted Sweden as a source of "good" design, as an exemplar for imitation.
Yet, while chairs by Bruno Mathsson or glasses by Gustavsberg were often enjoyed by the liberal elite of its day (and especially by architects) they were never quite congruent with British taste.
Whether high or low caste, the Briton recoiled from the well-meaning purity of Wallander's day-bed.
But Swedish design itself never really survived the explosion of travel that came with in the 70s, broadening horizons and lowering brows everywhere.
The evidence? Ikea. No one goes there in search of more beautiful everyday things.
They go in search of something cheap. Alas.
Still, the mediocrity of Ikea is nicely suited to Wallander's eternal glums.
- Stephen Bayley is the Observer's design and architecture critic.
