First things first: I strongly dislike summer. I’ll do anything possible to avoid high temperatures and strong sunlight, I never wear shorts or flip-flops, and I’m customarily immune to the appeal of any product claiming to evoke the experience of the beach. All the same, I couldn’t resist the packaging of The Swedish Summer Soap from Victorian Scandinavian Soap. The cheerful illustration of a sailboat beneath a sunny sky, the Swedish labeling on other side of the box (“Saltsjötvål” is the soap’s true name), and the promise that the soap “floats in fresh and salt water,” not that I have plans of using it anywhere other than my own shower — somehow, this all promises an ideal vision of a summer that would leave me feeling rosy-cheeked and optimistic rather than sweaty, dehydrated, and irritable…

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