A study visit to parliament

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Jennifer This term's Swedish class is going full steam ahead. At the end of this course we will be allowed to take something called TISUS, which is the Swedish equivalent of the TOEFL; passing TISUS also certifies that the holder has a high-school equivalent knowledge of civics and society. Therefore, on top of the language work, this term of class includes a once-a-week civics lesson. And last week, we took a class field trip to Sweden's parliament, which is in Stockholm and is called riksdagen. (Note that lack of capitalization; they did that on purpose so the the politicians won't get above themselves.) My assignment for Tuesday is to turn in a short summary of the visit, including what I learned or found surprising, and after that, a brief commentary. So here, for your reading pleasure: Version 1 of my assignment in its entirety.

JenniferMy translation of the local newspaper's review of the recent movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo":

Despite a slight surrealistic feeling when the actors speak English while the surroundings and everything else is in Swedish, the American version of "Men who hate women" is really good. Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig have chemistry between them and Drottninggatan in Uppsala has an important role.

Right, let's take that last part first, the part that reads "...Drottninggatan in Uppsala plays an important role." As readers of this blog may remember (here's the relevant post), we who live in Uppsala, and especially those of us who travel by bus, were inconvenienced for more than a month last year by the filming of this movie. People I met on the bus were happy to grump about it a little, but also seemed secretly pleased of course. Who isn't pleased when one's beloved hometown gets some face time in a Big Hollywood production?

Except... Drottninggatan doesn't play Drottninggatan, and for that matter Uppsala doesn't play Uppsala. The three-block stretch of Drottninggatan that appears in the movie plays the entire small town in which a parade happened in the early 1960s. (Hence a little bit of extra time was needed to remove modern road markings, street signs, etc.) The existence of the street is important to the story, sure, but the events don't take place in Uppsala, and in fact these scenes could have been filmed almost anywhere (anywhere that the architecture was right, of course). To say therefore "Drottninggatan in Uppsala plays an important role" is perhaps a wee bit of an exaggeration... if not wishful thinking...

(Don't get me wrong, I fully intend to see the movie in the theater, and to cheer, only inwardly and silently of course, when Uppsala shows up!)

(And allow me one quick "I'm showing off my Swedish" note: on the movie poster above there's a tagline at the top: "What is hidden in the snow comes forth in the thaw." In Swedish it is an aphorism and sounds better because it's shorter and rhymes: "Det som göms i snö / Kommer upp i tö."

(Oh, and two further bits of amusement: Haven't or don't want to read the book? Check out the New Yorker's parody, "The Girl who Fixed the Umlaut," which focusses on the heroine's technical genius. Haven't or don't want to see the movie? I recommend "The Girl with the Tramp-stamp Tattoo," which imagines the heroine as a ditzy Valley Girl type rather than a punk-goth type.)

Snow, Runes

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JoeIt was a crisp, sunny day in the midst of a grim, muddy winter. We celebrated by tromping through a bit of horse pasture to see our pair of local runestones. It turned out to be a good time to see U 897 (pictured, on the right): the light dusting of snow was enough to bring out its rather faded lines but not enough to make the field impassable. In the summer, the stone is covered in dense vegetation; in the spring and autumn, the pasture is treacherously muddy.

Coincidentally, just yesterday morning I wrote up a bit on the other runestone in this same field.

New Year's Booms

Joe I think we mentioned previously that New Year's is one of the big three annual fireworks days here in Sweden. New Year's is unlike either the first Sunday in Advent, when Uppsala has a large municipal fireworks show, or Walpurgis Night, when large neighborhood associations all over town have medium-sized displays. Swedes, or at least Uppsalabo, ring in the new year with a barrage of individual displays. There's generally a light peppering one or two nights beforehand, then on the day itself we'll hear increasingly frequent booms in the distance. But when midnight hits, suddenly there are fireworks going off everywhere.

Living right on the edge of town as we do, it's a pretty impressive display even from our balcony. This year, though, the night was cold and clear, and there was no snow on the ground, so it seemed like a good time to check out the nearest little gathering up close (we've previously seen evidence that the local football field sees pretty heavy use as a launching pad, we've just never gone over there as it was happening).

Video of the proceedings is above. The cluster of lights in the lower left hand corner is the local neighborhood children, who marched up to the field bearing torches just five minutes before the stroke of twelve. The foreground is the (semi-official?) neighborhood display at first, with some random locals joining in as it progresses. In the background there were at least half a dozen other displays going at the same time (you can see bigger stuff from at least two other locales in Norby in the video, plus a few small items from the farmhouse down the road). The best part is the unintentional ground display that starts at about 20 seconds in — don't worry, no one was injured!

The Works

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JenniferRural Sweden has its surprises, and one of them is a fantastic art gallery in the small town of Avesta. Verket ("The Works") is a 100+ year old iron smelting factory, a remnant of Sweden's heavily industrialized late 19th century. The metal-working industry became so large and important that it outgrew these old structures, and the factory was abandoned around the middle of the last century, with buildings left intact and large equipment left in place. What do you do with an old smelting factory? You turn it into an art gallery, of course.

Language notes part 6: procrastination

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Jennifer"De satt och jämförde sina händer: hans var större men hennes var vackrare."

The object of the lesson was the use of comparative words. T., the eldest of my teachers, read this sentence out loud from a textbook, surely for the umpteenth time in her life. T. is very Swedish (despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that she's part Finnish). T. likes to use the chalkboard and thinks grammar is neat-o. T. gives the impression that she has worked at the University all her life. T. is not above cracking a simple joke now and then for us poor foreigners, but usually she plays it pretty straight.

This time, though, this time she almost snapped. She read the sentence again out loud: "De satt och jämförde sina händer: hans var större men hennes var vackrare" (which translates to 'They sat and compared their hands; his were bigger but hers were more beautiful').

There were a few seconds of silence, during which T. pursed her lips and she appeared to be thinking. And then she said, out loud to the whole class, slowly, her voice dripping with sarcasm (in translation now):

Yes. So. How interesting Sweden is. How nice. "They sat, and compared their hands." Oh, yes, how very interesting. "His hands were bigger but her hands were more beautiful." Oh, can it be true? Well, you know it is winter now, in Sweden, and we have nothing at all to do but to sit inside and compare our hands.

She sighed. "But the author of the book is from Gothenburg, so what can you expect?"

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Right, so I had Part 1 of 3 of my final exam today. Part 1 was reading comprehension; Part 2, which I take tomorrow, is writing. Thus, I am reviewing notes about words used for making comparisons. I guess I had better get back. It's been years since I've procrastinated like this for a test. Thanks for your enabling! (that's not a word in English, is it?)

At least he went quickly

Branns på födelsedagen!

Joe …and we woke Friday morning to the news that the goat burned down. On the night of his 45th birthday, no less.

Christmas is officially cancelled. At least that should make the cat happy.

Midwinter Sacrifice

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Clockwise, from top:
(a) Santa beard;
(b) head with one eye, single leg dangling;
(c) other leg; (d) assorted innards.

Joe Sunday was Första Advent, marking the opening of the official Swedish Christmas season. How has it been going so far? The advent fireworks planned for Sunday afternoon were cancelled due to wind. Norwegian weather reports that November, 2011 was the warmest November in 111 years (only because they've only been keeping track for 111 years, mind you). I'm nursing a sprained wrist, because I fell off my bicycle on the single icy morning in November. Oh yes, and the cat hates Christmas.

Trick-or-treaters unclear on the concept

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JenniferLast week was our fourth Halloween in Sweden, if you can believe it. As discussed previously, Halloween is not really a holiday here, but it is making small inroads. And every previous year, we have had candy on hand 'just in case.' (Translation: it's a good excuse to eat candy.) This year, however, I forgot to have some out on the actual evening of Halloween. Guess what happened?

Language notes part 5: a little more detail

JenniferJust to give you a feel for it, I'll describe my class a little more. On the first meeting there were only twelve students, so it looked to be quite cozy. Since it's a class in Swedish, we are all international students of course, and our citizenship/ethnic breakdown went like this: one Japanese, one Chinese, one Somali, one Turk, one Iraqi Kurd, one Colombian, two Palestinians, two Iranians (brother and sister), and two Americans. A Swedish language class that's at least half Middle Easterners is something that seems entirely normal by now.

For the last two years (on and off), I've been taking SFI classes, which met in the evening so that we immigrants with full-time jobs could attend, and to be honest, these classes were sometimes a little trying. It seemed sometimes as though most students in any given SFI class fell into one of two types: 1. People who would rather have been elsewhere, and 2. Germans.