Hundreds of Morrissey fans travelled from across Sweden, and the world, on Thursday for the rare chance to meet their idol at a book signing in Gothenburg.

Some queued for more than 30 hours outside a bookshop in the city's Nordstan shopping centre, billed as the singer's one and only appearance to launch his autobiography in Europe.

"It was a dream come true. He has been the soundtrack to my life," said David Lewin, 35, through tears after Morrissey signed three copies of his book – and his arm.

He and his partner Michelle, who had dropped everything to travel from Liverpool, headed straight to a tattoo parlour to have the treasured autographs on their arms turned into permanent mementos of the occasion. Each had slept for just three hours since they joined the head of the queue on Wednesday morning.

The crowd, which swelled to more than 500 by Thursday evening, was full of young Swedes, alerted at the weekend to the event on their doorstep though the Morrissey fansite True-To-You.

"He's my god. He changed my life," said Jasmin, 22, a worker at the city's Liseberg amusement park. She had seen Morrissey in concert 15 times, including seven in Sweden.

"I found him in my teenage years and he made me who I am," said Emil, 26, a history student from Lund, who clutched his copy of the autobiography with some trepidation. "I want to find out something new about him in the book, but not too much – I want to keep the mystery, the enigma," he said.

The venue was not perhaps ideal for Manchester's renowned lyricist and animal rights campaigner. Snatches of an all-too-familiar scent wafted into the bookshop from the McDonald's restaurant opposite. Morrissey's opinions on meat in general, and McDonald's in particular, led in March to the wholesale closure of McDonald's vendors at a Los Angeles venue where he played.

But rather than the choice of bookshop, the question exercising fans was the choice of the city itself. What brought this international megastar to a quiet, industrial town on the continent's northern edge?

"To be honest we weren't best pleased when we found out he was launching the book here," said Lyndsey Wilson, who with her daughter Jordan had driven from Manchester to catch a flight at Stansted. Lyndsey met Jordan's father at a Smiths gig; Jordan went to her first concert in the womb.

"But if he had launched the book in Manchester it would have been even more difficult to see him, and cost us more money," she said. "There would have been thousands of people. We would have had to have taken several days off work."

Hugo, 24, a train conductor from Gothenburg, said Morrissey's visit to the city was to do with its lively indie music scene and its working-class, industrial culture – rather like Manchester's. "And it's all doom and gloom here too, and rain," he said.

Other Swedes speculated that perhaps Morrissey was atoning for a concert in Helsingborgs in 2011 that was cancelled at the last minute because of the weather, though fans had waited all day in driving rain. Others believed the singer had a special connection with the country – they recall a concert in Karlstad in 2006, when Morrissey made a point of introducing himself as "Sweden Patrick", rather than use his real name, Stephen Patrick.

A few pointed to the 2011 song Scandinavia, yet to be released, which suggests a dark love affair with the region: "But then you came along/And you held out your hand/And I fell in love with you and Scandinavia/I kiss the soil/I hug the soil/I eat the soil/And I praise the God who made you …/Un-protesting I'll die in Scandinavia." Maria Hamrefors, the managing director of the Akademibokhandeln book chain that hosted the signing, said she understood that Gothenburg had been Morrissey's personal request. The publisher Penguin turned down repeated requests for comment.

For many of the young people waiting to meet him, Morrissey entered their lives through their parents. At the front of the queue to buy the book on Thursday morning was Sigrid, 15, from Karlskrona in the south-west, who said her mother had listened to Morrissey for 26 years.

"My teachers think I'm weird," she said, clutching a bunch of lilies for the singer. "But they love him too."

The debate in the British media over the decision by Penguin, the book's publisher, to issue the autobiography as part of its Classics series – which includes Plato, Dostoevsky and Dickens, among others – had left some of Morrissey's Swedish followers disgruntled.

"The only media that is giving him shit is in his own country," said one young woman who refused to speak further to the Guardian as a matter of principle.

But there was universal agreement that the book would be an instant hit. Said David Lewin: "It is bound to be a classic, so why wait to declare it one?"