Flygskam: Grounded by Conscience

Flygskam. The word lands with the same kind of chill as an email from your boss at 6 p.m. on a Friday. If you haven’t stumbled upon this charming little term yet, let me ruin your carefree travel dreams. It’s Swedish. It means flight shame. And once you’ve heard it, you can’t un-hear it. Every time you refresh Skyscanner for that cheap escape to Lisbon, it will whisper to you like a ghost in economy class.

The concept didn’t just appear out of thin (carbon-polluted) air. Around 2018, Sweden started asking some awkward questions. Like: why are we flying so much when the planet’s melting like a discarded Cornetto in July? Cue a national reckoning, which, given the Swedish love of forests, silence, and exquisite moral clarity, quickly got a name. Flygskam. It spread, as ideas do now, faster than you can say “direct flight to Rome, please.” Suddenly, air travel wasn’t just a convenient mode of transportation; it was a confessional booth with extra legroom.

The celebrity endorsement didn’t hurt. Opera singer Malena Ernman was one of the early adopters, but her daughter—perhaps you’ve heard of her—Greta Thunberg, became the movement’s jet-fuel-free poster child. When Greta opted to sail across the Atlantic on a solar-powered yacht instead of flying, it wasn’t just a grand gesture. It was a cannonball into the pool of public conscience. And, like all things involving guilt and Scandinavians, the ripples reached far and wide.

Soon, middle-class brunch tables from Malmö to Manchester were alive with debate. Do we really need to fly to Kraków for a weekend of pierogi and questionable vodka? Could we, maybe, just stay in and read a book instead? Or, for the brave few, consider the train. Yes, the train. That majestic iron snail. You’ve not really experienced self-righteousness until you’ve sat through a 14-hour regional rail journey with organic almonds in your rucksack and a smug smile on your face.

Flygskam wasn’t just a word. It became a vibe. A social shift. Airlines were rattled. Budget carriers scrambled to appear greener, launching carbon offset programmes and quieter engines. Some even started offering vegan meals that didn’t taste like airline pillows. There were hashtags, movements, think pieces, podcasts, and even a new term: tågskryt—train bragging. Yes, we didn’t just stop flying, we bragged about not flying. Humanity, truly, has no chill.

Of course, not everyone was on board the shame train. Business travel is still a thing, and try telling a digital nomad in Bali that they should’ve taken the Trans-Siberian to get there. The movement, noble as it was, rubbed up awkwardly against the messy realities of modern life. Like: families spread across continents. Weddings in Tuscany. Conferences in Dubai. Or the fact that not all of us have the time—or budget—to take three trains, two buses, and a scooter to get to a work meeting in Lyon.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and for a brief, strange moment, the world actually did stop flying. Flygskam wasn’t just a philosophy anymore. It was law. Borders closed. Planes grounded. Zoom meetings became our new window seats. And for a while, we lived in a kind of enforced environmental utopia, where emissions plummeted and dolphins (possibly imaginary) returned to the canals of Venice. The planet sighed with relief, and some of us secretly liked the pause.

But guilt is a slippery creature. As soon as travel bans eased, the urge to escape came roaring back. Revenge travel, they called it. People booked flights like it was a competitive sport. Did flygskam survive the pandemic? Kind of. It mutated, like a viral strain of middle-class morality. Now it’s more complicated. We still feel bad about flying—but maybe not bad enough to actually stop.

Carbon offsetting became the go-to balm. A small checkbox on a booking form that says, essentially, “don’t worry, we planted a tree for your sins.” It’s a bit like buying a salad to go with your triple cheeseburger. Looks virtuous, feels hollow. The science, too, is murky. Some offsetting schemes work. Many don’t. But it gives us just enough moral wiggle room to keep going. Because, let’s face it, we love flying. We love the thrill of take-off, the views, the weird little plastic meals. We love waking up in one country and having lunch in another. We love it even when we pretend not to.

And so flygskam has become a ghost at the boarding gate. It doesn’t scream. It sighs. It reminds you, subtly, that this convenience comes at a cost. Not just the environmental one, but the psychological one too. Because every flight now carries a whisper of contradiction. We want to be good. We want to be green. But we also want to visit Tokyo, see our friends in Berlin, and sip overpriced wine in Bordeaux.

The irony, of course, is that the people most likely to feel flygskam are the ones already doing the least damage overall. Wealthier nations fly more. Individuals with multiple holidays a year pollute disproportionately. But the burden of guilt often falls on the thoughtful few—while the mega-rich continue to hop between continents in private jets like carbon doesn’t apply to them. There’s no word in Swedish for “billionaire shame,” but perhaps there should be.

And yet, all is not despair. Flygskam may have started as a whisper of shame, but it sparked real change. Rail travel has seen a renaissance in parts of Europe. Night trains are back. People are talking, rethinking, recalculating. Travel influencers are swapping jet-setting for slow travel. Governments are debating carbon taxes and short-haul flight bans. It’s not a revolution. But it’s not nothing, either.

Maybe flygskam isn’t about guilt at all. Maybe it’s about awareness. About recognising that our choices have ripples. That every little jaunt to Ibiza, however fun, has a footprint. And maybe, just maybe, it’s about balance. Taking fewer flights, not no flights. Choosing better when we can. Talking about it, even when it’s awkward.

So next time you book a trip, don’t ignore the whisper. Say hello to flygskam. Acknowledge it. Maybe even thank it. Because shame, in small doses, can be oddly productive. Especially when it speaks Swedish and carries a reusable water bottle.