What have we been up to??

Vacation!

Being a "woman of leisure" for the time being, I went home in early December for a nice long holiday vacation in lovely St. Joe, Michigan. The weather was cold and snowy, with an unexpected thaw just before the New Year, so... just like home. Joe, who had classes and employment and pesky things like that, joined us a few days before Christmas.

One of the few disappointments with the trip was that we did not manage to visit Ann Arbor. I-94, as many of you know, can be a right nuisance in blizzard season, and this year was no exception. We are very sorry to have missed seeing people, but next time we visit the US, Ann Arbor is a priority. (And we probably won't try it in the winter again.)

Details... will follow. All is well here, and we hope that all is well for you, wherever you are. Happy 2011, and may we all have a safe, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Rabbit.

Knut's Day

Yesterday was St. Knut's Day here in Sweden, named after King Knut IV of Denmark (r. 1080–1086). More popularly known in English circles as Canute (but not to be confused with his great uncle, Canute the Great, who famously commanded the tides to stop), Knut is now mostly remembered for his death: he was cut down in a church, while assembling a large invasion fleet of England. The first part of that earned him sainthood; the second marked the end of the Viking Age.

For our purposes, though, Knut's legacy is this: he declared that Christmas should last for 20 days. As he was the King of Denmark, his proclamation is quite rightly upheld only in Sweden and Finland. And so, in Sweden 13 January is marked by the annual julgransplundring, in which the Christmas tree is stripped, the ornaments devoured, and all the other trappings of the Jul season are put away. Not knowing in advance that we were expected to eat our Christmas tree, we had, alas, gotten the inedible variety this year. I decided to make up for our lack of foresight, and at the same time to remember Knut, by doing the most Danish thing I know how to do: I made Danish pastry. Almond bear claws, to be precise. Neither of us could face the end of the julmust (which has been rather ominously lurking on the top shelf of the fridge for the better part of a week now—and no matter how it may seem at Easter, julmust is not actually improved by going flat), so we just sipped cocoa, ate pastry, and packed away our Christmas decorations.

Do Swedes actually all take down their decorations on the same day? Today I would have to say that most evidence points to yes. The outdoor Christmas trees at our apartment and Jennifer's office both came down, and today the vast majority of paper stars and jul lamps are gone from the apartment windows all over town. What's more, the huge stacks of unconsumed julmust in the grocery stores have vanished, no doubt all of it en route to a bottling plant to be relabeled as påskmust. Maybe I'll be able to face another glass by then, though I can't say I'm all that sanguine about the prospect just at the moment.

So long, Christmas 2008. Hello, salads.

Nerd jul party

A lot of social stuff has been happening in the last couple weeks, along with the usual frantic increase in work as everybody tries to get projects completed before the holiday break and the new year. I was as busy as everyone else, but did manage to turn two manuscripts over to two completely different sets of co-authors on the day before Christmas eve. So here's some catching-up.

For reasons that are not quite clear, there was no official holiday party in our department this year. Danish student K.-M. declared that this was silly, and that we should just make a pot-luck sort of event. She was going back to Denmark in early December, but then she was coming back, "... and for the party I will bring paper and we will make Danish paper stars," she announced at fika one morning. "Can't you get the right paper here?" someone asked. "In Sweden?" she asked, scornfully. "No, no, no!" I had no idea what "Danish paper stars" were, but I thought the party would be a good excuse for me to force my eggnog on a new set of people ("Egg... what?" people asked. "Nog? What is that? Does it have eggs in it?"), so the two of us became the de facto jul party committee.

On the evening of the 19th, I had the eggnog ready to go, K.-M. made a big pot of glögg, and somewhere near twenty people crowded into the upstairs break room. Everyone got a glass of something, then K.-M. passed around the paper, and started instructing people how to make Danish paper stars. "It will be easy, I teach children to do this every year at home," she had said earlier in the day. Perhaps so, but it's not clear if she had ever tried to teach this skill to a roomful of nerds. Nerds, if you are unfamiliar with the species, tend to be proud perfectionists, unwilling to admit that they don't understand something right away, but more than willing to work like slaves in pursuit of that understanding. Within 10 minutes, the room fell almost silent, and "Ultra-Lounge Christmas*" blaring from my iPod was the only sound to be heard, as almost everyone bent over the table, peering intently at their projects. No, I take that back, there was one other sound: that of people occasionally saying questioningly "K.-M.?" and of K.-M. hustling around to their seat, and saying "No, other way," or "No, almost, but go under that flap not over," or even the devastating "No, no, you had better rip it up and start all over."

No one was talking, no one was drinking. ("Would it help to drink more?" someone asked hopefully. "No, I don't think so," said K.-M. sadly.) Technician A.-S. finished her work and came to the party a little late; she helped herself to a glass of glögg. "This is a party? You all look like you are studying hard for an exam," she laughed. There was a smattering of self-conscious giggling that quickly faded as everyone bent back to their work.

I managed to complete one star and then start another before becoming caught up in conversation with a professor from another department; Joe made three of his own and then finished my half-star. "The first one takes an hour," he reports, "and then the second one takes an hour and a half because you think you know how to do it." Most people made at least two. Ours now hang proudly on our tree. Perhaps they're not quite as intricate as Grandma's tatted stars... but they're ours, all ours!

*By request, I had brought the very cheeziest American holiday music I could find. Believe me, it's a lot easier to take this stuff when you don't hear it all the time!

Julbord

Now that finals are over (whew!) it's time for me to start catching up on what's been going on the past couple of weeks. So, in celebration of the Jul Season, I'll jump back a couple of week's to a Sunday afternoon when we took part in a long-standing Swedish Christmas tradition: the Julbord. The Julbord is basically the Christmas version of the smörgasbord, the Swedish version of the buffet. It refers to the large meal that Swedish families normally lay out on Christmas Eve, but in more recent times it's also been popular for restaurants to have Julbord seatings around the holiday season.

Jennifer had been told by co-workers that we should really try to go to a Julbord sometime, so when she found a couple of coupons to the Julbord at Odinsborg Restaraunt it seemed like we should go. The coupons were only good for the first week in December (high Julbord season doesn't really kick off until St. Lucia on December 13, so I guess they were trying to drum up some early business), so despite being crazy busy that week we made the time to go out to Odinsborg on the weekend.

Actually, we had planned on going Saturday afternoon, but while getting ready we began to wonder about some detail or another and decided to look at their web page, which in turn led us to call them, which was a good thing: they were actually booked up for the afternoon, and what's more it isn't the sort of thing you can just wander in to any old time. There are three seatings a day on the weekend, at noon, 3 and 7. Feeling a little foolish, we booked a table for two at the mid-afternoon seating the next day.

Odinsborg has been a local favorite for decades, primarily due to its location right next to the burial mounds at Gamla Uppsala. It used to be quite a bit closer to them: before it was decided that the mounds merited preservation and a museum, the restaurant occupied the best piece of real estate in the area, with a panoramic view of all three main burials. Its location was so good that when it came time to build the museum, the restaurant got the heave, although a protest from the locals prevented its being demolished. Instead, it was shifted off to the north a couple hundred meters. Its big picture windows don't have much of a view anymore, but it's still the same cool old building, and to all appearances it's still serving exactly the same menu.

When we got there, a few minutes after three, there was a line out the door of dressed up people waiting to get to their Christmas feed. For a few minutes we felt distinctly casually dressed, but then a couple more families showed up looking even more casual than us, so we felt OK after that. Anyway, it was quite a crush at the beginning, and it took us a good half hour to get in, get our coats squared away, and be shown our table. We were kind of far removed from the food, but on the other hand we had a cozy little corner with a fireplace, and it was much quieter than the big room. Anyway, I went off to try to score us some quick food to nosh on while the line died down. I picked the shortest line I could find, and then stood in it for the next 4 hours. OK, maybe not that long, but I was hungry, and the line I was in never seemed to move despite the continuous stream of people coming out of the next room, each of them laboring to get their massively laden plate back to their table.

However long it took, I was very glad when I finally made it to the front, and even more glad when a new supply of plates showed up and I could begin. I made my way past the eel (I'm not completely averse to a little smoked eel now and again, but when confronted with a dish which appears to be nothing more than a large eel with its spine ripped out, chopped into rounds—well, I'm going to pass on that, even if I am hungry) and got down to the important stuff: Jansson's Temptation (sort of potatoes au gratin, but with herring and Christmas spices added for good measure), julskink, meatballs, and of course several kinds of potatoes. I almost got to the potatoes, anyway—just before I could reach them, a group of half a dozen well dressed older ladies walked into the room, ignoring the line completely, grabbed plates and set to the potato dish right in front of me. I decided that, in this case, eating was the better part of valor, and retreated to our table with what I'd managed so far.

By my next trip I was feeling a little more daring, not eel daring exactly, but enough to move over to the unidentifiable meats line. This whole side of the buffet was covered in dishes of sliced meats, which included some ham and salami, but also a variety of elk sausage, some smoked reindeer, and a variety of paté like things all of which, on sampling, seemed to have been made of ground herring. I suppose that somewhere in this mix there must have been the julkorv, another Julbord required item, but I must have missed it somehow.

Also worthy of mention, of course, was the dessert table, found naturally enough just past the fireplace with the stuffed badger. It (the table, that is, not the badger) boasted a selection of puddings that rivaled even the most sumptuous of Norwegian buffets, a variety of cakes and ice creams, some pomegranates (mmm…), and a selection of tiny, chocolate dipped marzipan pigs. Ahh, the sweet melancholy of the marzipan pig…

Every Swedish girl's dream

As we were driving back from Harkeberga Church a few weeks ago, the conversation turned to the approaching holiday season, and I asked about what were particularly Swedish things to do and see. "You must be sure to see the Lucia celebrations," said P., "It's very beautiful, and quite a big deal." A pause. "I was never chosen to be Lucia in school," she added morosely. "It has scarred me for life. I sometimes think my whole academic life has been an attempt to overcome this."

Every year across this great nation, on 12 december, a girl plays S:t Lucia. The duties of this girl are to wear white robes and a crown of candles, sing the S:t Lucia song, and look angelic. What girl? you ask. Mostly it's a school thing—every class chooses a Lucia, and generally every city and town does too. But Lucia's not just for little kids. There's an official, country-wide Lucia, who is the winner of a combined talent and beauty contest. This year, Sweden's Lucia is a student from the ag school just down the road, so she's an Uppsalabo, a fact that the local paper went to some pains to point out at every possible opportunity.

For most people, Lucia means music. Each department at the University has its own Lucia concert, in which the students of the local music schools dress in the traditional white robes and sing Lucia songs and Christmas carols. The concert at the EBC was performed in the stairwell of the old Zoology building, now the Evolution Museum. The wide marble halls give a lovely sound, and the echo is not bad at all because the place is crammed with the staff and students from the entire complex. They turned all the lights off to better see the candles, so the picture at right is blurry but maybe gives you a little bit of an idea of what it looked like. (There was a Lucia pageant at the computer campus, too, but Joe didn't get to see it because he had his exam at that time. Just for fun, you should ask him how he feels about having a data mining exam instead of getting to observe this most traditional Swedish custom.)

Earlier in the week, a vague email had gone out about getting the "newcomers" to "entertain us" at the afternoon fika. No one ever said anything more about it, so we "newcomers" figured everyone had forgotten about it. I had lunch with B. (a student in her mid 20s) and L. (a postdoc in her mid 30s, mother of two). "So what are you newcomers doing for the afternoon fika?" B. asked. "Well, nothing," I said. "Oh." she said. Several moments passed in silence. "But you could be Lucia," L. said. "And?" I said. They looked at me blankly, then exchanged a glance with each other. "Well, it's very important," B. said. "There are big contests and everything. I was never chosen to be Lucia." "Neither was I," L. said. The both stared at me.

Now I understood. Here I was, about to pass up the chance to achieve every little Swedish girl's dream. (I'm often a little slow, but I usually do get there, eventually.) I'm not really into these girly-girl sorts of things—when my long-suffering mother reads this post, I will know it, because I will be able to hear her laughing hysterically from across the ocean—but I was suddenly inspired to make a last-second effort. I enrolled fellow newcomer G.'s help, and he had the brilliant idea of red tape on a lab coat, mimicking the white robes and red belt. While I frantically searched the web trying to find the Lucia lyrics in English, he also found a candle motif and printed it on a couple pieces of paper, bending it 'round and taping it to make a sort of a crown. I taped the flashlight I carry in my bag to the inside of the crown, turned it on so that the crown glowed slightly, and voila! Instant Lucia.

I looked like a burger flipper at Max.

But never mind: G. was bringing Swiss chocolate to fika anyway, so that covered his "newcomer" obligation, and therefore it was my duty to make a total fool of myself in front of my co-workers. To borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, let us draw a curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.

So there it is. I've been Lucia, and lived the dream. What's left for me to accomplish now?



(Jennifer, the most ghetto Lucia in the whole history of Lucias, trying to look pious. Don't worry, there were more people there to witness my humiliation, they're just out of shot. Lab coats are not very flattering, are they?)

---

Want to learn more about Lucia, the way it's supposed to be?

The "official" Lucia for Sweden is chosen in a charity event called Bride of Sweden. Note that the title was awarded by such notables as Princess Christina, Saul Bellow, and Astrid Lindgren. If you want to see the the 2008 lineup of finalists, and I'll bet you do, here they are. Emma Johansson was this year's winner. Note that they must sing as well, and the winner and her court do have a rather busy schedule of visits to hospitals and things, and spend pretty much the entire day singing. The local newspaper interviewed Johansson, in case you want another look at her. And you can see a Lucia court sing the song on youtube, of course.

Sometimes boys want to be Lucia too! (P. and I joined an on-line group in support of their cause.)

I'll leave you with this quote from the official Sweden promotional website.

The Lucia tradition can be traced back both to St Lucia of Syracuse, a martyr who died in 304, and to the Swedish legend of Lucia as Adam's first wife. It is said that she consorted with the Devil and that her children were invisible infernals...

Please do read the whole article and note that they kindly allow that these days the Lucia need not be beautiful and blonde... although, somehow, they almost always are...

And as a footnote, I would like to add that it occurred to me right before I went onstage that I do have some Lucia in me after all, from my maternal grandmother. Thanks, Gramma Lucille!

Thanksgiving Hamkey

We had planned to have our Thanksgiving dinner sometime last weekend, but what with all the excitement of the julmarknad on Saturday, and then the trip to Gävle Sunday, we just didn't have time. So we planned to have Thanksgiving on Monday. Joe had made mashed potatoes, baked root vegetables, green bean casserole, and the turkey leg that he mentioned before. I tried to make gravy from the few pan drippings, but it was bitter and didn't work at all, which we both blamed on the fact that the veggies also dripped on the pan.

So Joe carves up the kalkonklubba and we set to. "Wow," I said a bite or two in, "This turkey is pretty good. Tastes like ham." A few moments go by. "It really tastes exactly like ham." Joe has a bite. "Yeah, it really does." A few more seconds pass. "It cuts like ham, too." A few more beats go by. "This is ham." I said. "It can't be!" said Joe defensively. "What sick jävla made turkey out of a ham?"

The packaging clearly identifies the product as kalkon, which means "turkey" på svenska. There are pictures of turkeys on the wrapping. Read more about the product itself, basturökt klubba; note that the first ingredient is kalkon. Ingelsta Kalkon AB, the company that makes the product, advertises themselves as turkey specialists. See the turkey on their logo?

Looks like ham. Tastes like ham. Feels like ham. And yet... it's turkey.

Sensory experience tells me it's ham. Authoritarian evidence tells me it's turkey. Or maybe Swedes have discovered the sorcerer's stone of the deli business: when you put a turkey in a sauna, it turns into a pig. WWLD?

Julmarknad

Yesterday was the official start to the Christmas season in Uppsala, as the downtown lights coming on for the first time. The event was also marked by a profusion of street vendors throughout downtown, as well as a more official Julmarknad in St. Erik's Torg (an old square below the cathedral), and a number of sales. Eager to see Uppsala's version of Black Friday, we headed downtown in the afternoon to catch a bit of the excitement.

The streets and shops were indeed packed with people, and the lights were all on, so it was quite festive. It was around 2:30 when we got downtown, so we still had 30 minutes until sunset. We made the best of it by sampling some of the street food, stopping for a free cup of glögg offered by the Army Women's Reserve Corp, and a couple of donuts from the "American Donuts" stand (they were… closer than anything else we've had here). Then we hit a couple of shops, mostly looking to pick up a bit of seasonal decoration for the apartment—and did we ever succeed! On our way to the market, we ran into one of Jennifer's coworkers who mentioned that Uppsala's fanciest restaurant, Domtrappkällaren, was serving his favorite dish (stekt strömming med potatismos och lingonsylt) on paper plates from it's kitchen door. As it happened to be on our way, we decided we should risk it, and indeed it was really good.

The market itself was just the sort of Christmas crafty stuff you would expect, some of it nice, some of it a little cheesy, all of it out of our price range. So we watched the litte kids taking pony rides, listened to the choir singing on the church steps, ate a hot dog purchased from the Amnesty International booth, and basically soaked up the atmosphere.

Last night was also the last night of a month long art project in Uppsala, an attempt to brighten up the dismal November evenings by putting up a series of light-themed artworks around town. As it was now a couple of hours after sunset and the vendors were all packing up, we decided to walk past a few of the light displays. The highlights were the University building, dramatically lit in shifting colors; Valvgatan, an old building with a large archway over a pedestrianized street which was glowing with blacklight; and an art gallery down by the river, which was projecting artwork onto the river wall accompanied by atmospheric music.

By then it was getting on towards 6 o'clock, and in the cold and the dark things were really winding down, so we headed home. It was a lot of fun, though.

PHED up

We're finally starting to recover from this year's bout of Post-Halloween Eating Disorder (PHED). Most years it's all the candy that really does me in, but this year there wasn't as much of that—unless you count the night of the pumpkin carving party, for which our entire dinner consisted of candy and beer. Instead, having spent way too much money on pumpkins, this year we ate Jack-O-Lantern for the better part of a week.  Oh sure, there's always the roast pumpkin seeds, but that just wasn't going to cut it this time.

Oddly, I can't seem to find winter squash in the local stores, so the pumpkins afforded us an opportunity to make a batch of pumpkin risotto with spinach and Italian sausage, a perennial favorite that we've been missing this fall. That was so good that we made a second batch when we had G. and D. over for dinner and cards that weekend. And of course, it wasn't bad just cut into chunks and baked, although that does get boring fast.

After all that, though, we still had a whole pumpkin left, so it was on to the pies. I've never made pumpkin pie before, but I've always heard that (1) you should just use canned pumpkin because actual pumpkin isn't worth the hassle, and (2) if you're going to use pumpkin, don't use carving pumpkins, because they're too watery and tasteless. A few minutes of searching turned up a website that disagreed with the first of these assertions, so I decided to give it a try.

After baking the pumpkin, I mashed it up with a fork, put it in a colander, and then let it drain in the fridge overnight. The recipe suggested adding some additional sugar if not using pie pumpkin, but it also called for evaporated milk—an ingredient which does not appear to exist in Sweden—so I figured that my substitution of 2/3 sweetened condensed milk and 1/3 regular milk would make up for the difference in sweetness. Then I made a batch of my infamous All-Butter Pie Crust*, and soon there was delicious pumpkin pie. I made some small ones for us, took a big one to the National Dish potluck, another for Jennifer to take to work on "Cake Day" (don't worry, Devon, it wasn't an actual holiday), and then a couple more little ones for us. Lacking a blender of any sort, they were all a little chunky, but I think I like them that way.

Now the pumpkin's been gone for a week. I think I may be starting to miss the little fellows…

*The trick, it turns out, is to actually add the butter to the other ingredients, instead of cutting it up into little chunks, sticking it in the freezer for a few minutes to chill it, and then finding it again the next week. Who would have guessed?

Alla helgons dag

2 novembre was Alla helgons dag, which in Sweden is dedicated not to saints, but is observed more generally as a memorial for the dead. The day is a röd dag in Sweden, which means that it is an official day off of work, but it fell on a Saturday this year. Friday was therefore technically supposed to be a half day, but somehow everyone stuck around for the whole day. I'm glad I did, because it wasn't until afternoon fika, surrounded by the jack-o-lanterns from Thursday evening, that my advisor suggested that we go to a cemetery sometime the next day, preferably in the evening, because many graves would be decorated with candles. So off we went to the large cemetery (last seen in this blog from the #2 bus) near Uppsala Cathedral.


We left Blodstenen at 16:00 to take advantage of the very last moments of light in the sky, and walking through a nice neighborhood we saw a porch with a tiny jack-o-lantern on it! (No picture of it, though, because there was already someone there taking a picture of this strange apparition.) A couple blocks later, we were standing at the southwest entrance to the sprawling Uppsala gamla kyrkogård, which is the newer portion and had some very fresh graves. I feel that I can't adequately describe the setting visually, and of course it's hard to take pictures in the dark, but please see the picture gallery to help get a feeling for the ambiance. I just kept saying to Joe "This is sooo cool!" and anyone out there with an affection for the macabre would agree with me. As the sky darkened, bright stars could be seen through the naked branches of the trees, with the north star being nearly directly overhead (and therefore less useful as a compass point). Lots of people were hustling to and fro, which feels strange when it's completely dark (it felt more like a game of "Ghost in the Graveyard" than anything else). Everyone was dressed casually as usual, and most people were in groups of threes and fours, and could be heard talking and even laughing, although plenty of people were standing silently and contemplatively. The atmospheric conditions contributed mightily to the mood: the air was crystal cold, with no wind at all, which meant that your exhalations took several second to disipate. Strange enough when it's you, but very odd looking indeed when everybody around you also has a halo of fog about their heads.


It was very dark, even in the middle of the city, and the deep twilight that we started in turned to night quickly. There were more lights in the newer portion of the cemetery, where we started our walk, than there were in the older part, both because recent graves have more relatives to attend to them, but also because the newer graves are smaller, and there are more of them and they are closer together. The new part was beautiful, with so many lights; the old part, beautiful but also downright creepy. In the area where the new was transitioning to the old, I sat to rest on a bench (which I found by nearly tripping over), while Joe wandered off in a different direction—he got a little bit lost within moments.

Did I mention it was cold? The whole tour took only about an hour, but that was enough. I at least had dressed more for a cold autumn day rather than a mild winter day, and by the time we reached the cemetery exit, I was happy to get myself to the nearest bus stop and head home for a welcome hot chocolate and leftover Halloween candy.

Pumpor natt

You know, I really can't believe that they don't do Halloween here. What do you do at Halloween? You dress up, eat candy, and, if you're an adult, perhaps you have a party at which you drink beverages that cause you to loosen your inhibitions. As far as I can tell, Swedes excel at all three of these things. Europeans, though, know it more as the day before All Saint's Day, when "... we go around to graveyards in the freezing cold and and rain and then go home and talk about dead people all day. Not so fun," explained Polish student Z. American-style Halloween has been creeping into Sweden somewhat, to the dismay of the youngish parents ("One more thing to do, and more things to buy..." groaned one of them to me) and traditionalists. Swedish student N. said that within the past couple years, there have actually been protests against stores displaying Halloween items, from people who feel that All Saint's Day is solemn and sacred and should not be associated with children running around having fun.

Well, I like Halloween a lot, and I knew I'd be grumpy if I didn't do anything to celebrate, so I decided to risk a little cultural imperialism and host a pumpkin carving party at work last night. Pumpkins are available in supermarkets (at roughly 60SEK for a big one); I had one, Joe got one, and three others (Swedish staff artist L., and student B. and her boyfriend, and new Danish student E.) showed up with squashes. German student M. was sorry that she didn't bring one, but confessed that she had mis-heard the word "pumpkins" as "pump-guns," and had been quite alarmed at my suggestion that everyone should bring their pump-guns to work, and we would drink some beers and light up the pump-guns to scare away the evil spirits.

Plenty of other Swedes stuck around after work to observe, and take the excuse to raid the departmental beer stash and help with the big bowl of godis that we brought. I had neglected to think of music, so I appointed student V. (who has the best computer speakers) as DJ for the evening. (He was able to play music all evening from his mobile phone. The nerd in me was deeply impressed.) I don't think I've ever had to actually teach anyone how to carve a jack-o-lantern. Joe and I did a tag-team demonstration of techniques, and everybody got up to their elbows in pumpkin guts pretty quickly. They all did a fine job of carving, I think, especially for first-timers. B.'s boyfriend squinted at mine. "I just now figured out that yours is Bootsy Collins," he said. We lit them all up and lined them up on the table, and everyone ooohed and aaahed at the effect. "It's like having a camp fire right in the room!" said N.

N. was also celebrating some good work-related news, and the beer was being consumed at a rapid rate. A liter of white wine was also drained. L. left to get more beer, and came back with a bottle of champagne, and then some rum that a friend had brought him from Thailand, and... well, let's just say people relaxed into the evening pretty well. It was still a Thursday, though, so we wrapped it up around 22:00, and cleaned up the bottles and pumpkin guts and candy wrappers in short order. The jack-o-lanterns were stashed in the lab cold room.

Next morning, the lanterns were retrieved for morning fika, and then again for afternoon fika, and thereby helped to cheer up an unrelentingly dark and dreary Friday. Joe put ours on the steps up to our apartment, where they still are sitting, still are sitting, hopefully keeping the evil spirits away for another year. And a welcome sight they were, when I came home an hour later, trudging through the snow... but that's another story. Happy Halloween!

Name day

Did you know that today, 6 October, is Jennifer Day?

Neither did I, but today my office mate S. wished me a happy name day. The name days in Sweden are a little different than the saint days, and the calendar includes all officially recognized names, whether they were saints or not. This way, traditional Swedish names like Linnea and Torbjörn and Malin and Magnus get their proper day, and no one need feel left out. S. said that it is traditional to get a small gift, or maybe breakfast in bed, on your name day. I didn't know about it in time to ask for breakfast, so instead we're going to split a beer with dinner. Happy Jennifer/Jenny Day, everyone!

Find your name (or the closest Swedish-government-sanctioned equivalent) here!

Kanelbullar Dag

It's 4 October already, and you know what that means: Cinnamon Roll Day! OK, so you probably didn't know that—I certainly didn't. Nevertheless, for the past ten years or so, 4 October has been National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden. It was first celebrated in 1999, when Sweden's Hembakningsrådet wanted to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and picked kanelbullar as the symbol of home baking in Sweden. The day was apparently celebrated with such gusto that it became an annual event, with bakeries across the nation produce vast swathes of cinnamon buns to sate the sweet, cinnamony cravings of the masses. After all, what better way to celebrate Sweden's tradition of home-baked goodies than with a trip to your local commercial bakery?

As good semi-Swedes, we could do naught but join in the festivities. So this morning I hopped a bus downtown to go to our favorite bakery, Forsa, to procure a few wonderful little kanelbullar. Now, your everyday cinnamon roll in Sweden is not too dissimilar from what you'd expect in the US: a simple swirl of sweet dough, with a cinnamon-sugar combo along the inside edges. The main differences are that in Sweden you never see them topped with icing (instead there's a sprinkling of nib sugar), and most Swedish buns are heavily flavored with cardamom (so much that it nearly overwhelms the cinnamon, actually, which is sort of unfortunate). Forsa's kanelbullar are a different matter altogether: each one a nest of fine strands of cinnamon-dusted dough, lovingly hand-woven into a unique pattern. Mmmm. Of course, at 12 SEK a pop, they should be good.

Cinnamon Bun Day, Waffle Day, Semla Month—I wonder what other food-holidays lie buried in the Swedish calendar? We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

May Day 2008

My goal for today was simple: find a real May Day celebration with some real communists. Signs around town advertised a variety of rallies one could attend, and I picked the one in the poster on the right, partly because of the picturesque location (Engelska parken, right behind the University library). When we got to the meeting point (10 minutes late), it looked like this:

This is a May Day rally?

We waited around for a while to see if anything would happen, but nothing did. Greatly disappointed, we got on a bus to head back down Drottninggatan into town... when a rally came to us.

This looked a little more promising! The bus driver grudgingly let us and several other people hop out. This group looked like the group featured in the poster on the left, above, as their signs called mostly for US withdrawal from this and that. Nothing particularly communist about that, but hey, at this point, any rally would do.

The organizers of this group were no dummies, as they had their very most attractive young ladies womanning the bullhorns and handing out leaflets. They led us to a large amphitheater-like area below the castle. I sat at the top of the bowl to listen to the speechifying, while Joe went off to "try to get pictures of the crowd," as seen at left. (Don't worry, he claims to have learned the lesson of Comrade Bingo.) Some introductory remarks were made in Swedish by one of the red-clad organizers, and then, for the main attraction, they had a genuine Palestinian to give a speech. He started by apologizing for speaking in English, then thanked the Swedish people for their support over the years, and then said a bunch of other stuff too. He got polite if not enthusiastic applause. The next speaker, another local, actually opened her speech by addressing us as "Kamrater," which caused some snickering in the group sitting behind me. After her came a young man with a guitar, who sang stirring songs about something. He was actually very good, but those of us near the back of the group were distracted by drums and another march going down Drottningsgatan:

Here at last, about an hour later than advertised, were the people who were meeting in the English park. Their banner proclaims (in English) "Bangin' On The System." Their message remains unclear.

And then, while watching this march, yet a third group came into our view across Drottninggatan, massing in the area behind Akademihotellet where we first stayed when we got here. This group had a oom-pah band dressed in white uniforms, playing marching music. For today's purposes, oom-pah band trumped young man with guitar, so off we scurried to see this bunch were up to. This third group had lots of signs, a variety of causes, and a fast-growing crowd. I was handed a piece of A4-sized paper with slogans to chant, and a red piece of A6 that said across the top "Rött kort åt regeringen." I saw the word "Socialdemokraterna" on the same card and had a moment of panic, but a glance at the multi-ethnic crowd with sensible shoes reassured me that I had not accidently joined some skinheads.

This group was handing out signs, and I think they had pre-made blank signs, so that you could also write your own message if you preferred. A very egalitarian "bring your own cause" sort of crowd. And I saw some signs that you probably don't see much back home, for instance "Högre skatt" and "Nej till privat sjukvård." My personal favorite was in rhyme: "Uppsala utan bussar är som kärlek utan pussar."

After we got back, we sat to sort through the various literature we had been given to figure out who was what. Here's what happened:

1. The first group (the ones who started behind the library and then marched out and interrupted the second rally) turned out to be Syndikalisterna (who knew there were still syndicalists around!).
2. The second group (the ones we saw out the bus window, who had the rally just below the castle, and a real live Palestinian and the cute bullhorn girls) was Vänsterpartiet, the actual communists, even if they don't call themselves that anymore.
3. The third group (the one that met behind the hotel, had the oom-pah band and the most people, and also interrupted the second rally) was Socialdemokraterna [volume and work warning! as of today, this site plays a loud video first], which was Sweden's ruling party for decades before losing in the 2006 elections.

Phew! What a day! I set out hoping to see just a communist or two, and I got parades of them, with Social Democrats and Syndicalists to boot. Really, I wish these revolutionary groups would get their acts together and coordinate better so that they don't overrun each other so much, and... oh. Right. Well, left-leaning groups in Sweden do have one thing in common: they all start late. Too much fun yesterday at Valborg, I suppose.

Oh, and remember the poster on the left, at the start of this post? That turned out to belong to Group #2, the communists. Here's what had happened to it by the time we walked by it again on the way back to the bus stop:

Forsränningen 2008

The weather for sista april this year was nearly ideal; warm, but not so sunny as to make it too hot. We got downtown at about 09.00, in plenty of time for the 10.00 start of Forsränningen. Plenty of time before the start, yes, but there really wasn't much time to spare. The banks of the river were already covered solidly with people, but we still managed to get a spot with a great view, in the middle of the St. Olofsgatan bridge. Around 10.00 a large rubber raft came down the river, hovered in the middle of the Fyrisån for a few minutes, then set off a large firework, and the race was on!



Well, calling this a "race" is perhaps not quite accurate. "More like a competitive parade," said Joe, and the point of it was not so much to get to the finish line in the best time, but to get to the finish line in one piece. Rafters were allowed to attack each other (and each other's rafts) with soft projectiles (water balloons and bits of baguettes were the most popular ordinance). Every raft had a theme, so they were rather more like literal floats, and several entrants had little skits prepared that they performed as they bobbed along. Furthermore, begging for food and beverages from the crowd was common, and onlookers tossed them strawberries and sandwiches and cans of beer. So progress down the river was, shall we say, somewhat leisurely. Our vantage point was only a couple hundred meters from the start line, so most rafts were still in decent shape when they got to us, although we did see a couple of them disintegrate, or flip and fling their riders into the water, which was rapidly becoming polluted with champagne corks, exploded water balloons, pieces of bread, and pieces of foam from the rafts (you can see all the stuff in the water in the photo above).

Should any particular raft survive the upstream encounters with other rafts, it then had to navigate a short falls a little further downstream (and there was yet another further on). Failure seemed to be more common than success, which kept the rescue swimmers busy with pulling people aside and out of the main current. Helmets of some kind (bike helmets and bandy helmets were common) and floatation vests were mandatory equipment, so I don't think anyone was really in much danger, but it is probably a good idea to have the rescuers on hand, especially since the mental facilities of the some rafters might have been slightly impaired.

The drinking had started well before the race, at least among the onlookers. For the most part, this just meant that people were perhaps louder in their cheering than they might otherwise have been. The only bit of "bad behavior" that either of us witnessed that morning was that one girl was spotted in the custody of the police, wobbling around as they tried to stuff her into a waiting car that then whisked her away.

Drinking alcohol was a major part of the day (heck, it was a major part of the morning!), but this part of the day was by no means dominated by young adults. Really, the whole thing was more than a little reminiscent of the Blossom Parade, with the very young and somewhat elderly all present to see the fun. And what parade is complete without vendors selling German almonds and coffee and hot dogs and mylar balloons? We had those too. Balloons were very popular—pink unicorns were popular with young and old, and even the Goth kids by the river were flying an Eeyore balloon as they drank their champagne and ate strawberries.

We took a a fair number of pictures, so if you want to see more, click on the gallery link by the title (mousing over the thumbnails gives a caption for many). Highlights include an igloo and polar bear threatened by Big Oil (seen at left), a carrot serving drinks and dinner to two asparagus stalks, Heroes attacking a hot dog, and a meat-eating cow. Oh, and we even got a picture of the drunk girl getting nobbled by the police.

Next on the day's hectic schedule—Champagnegallopp! Or, to give its more informal name, Bubbelgalopp...

Bubbelgalopp 2008

The second of the University's major public events of the day was the Bubbelgalopp. At 3 PM, all the students gather around the front entrance of the Carolina Rediviva. Then the University Rektor comes out and waves his hat at them, and they all go running down Drottninggatan waving their student caps in the air, racing back to their Nations1. All of this is witnessed by the gathered crowd of tens of thousands of people packed all around the hill leading down past the castle and into town.

This event wasn't really our highest priority for the day, but still we figured we should go and take a look, so having rested up from our morning at the raft race we hopped another bus downtown and headed towards Slottsbacken. We didn't really feel like fighting through the crowd, so we made a bee-line for the place where Drottninggatan crosses the river, figuring we'd get a view of several students hustling back to the several Nations which could be seen from there. We had a good view of the crowd stretching all the way up the hill, and at three the swing band sitting in front of Norrlands Nation suddenly struck up a tune, which seemed to bode well. Then nothing happened for about ten minutes, after which the students in their little white student caps came sort of casually strolling down the hill, along with all the people who had been watching, and everyone sort of milled about while the students headed back to their Nations to dress up for the evening's round of private parties. Anti-climax, much?

So we hoisted a toast from the flask of whisky we'd brought along, and middle-aged Swedish man in a suit good-naturedly chuckled at Jennifer as she spluttered after taking a swig (the last drops of cask strength Laphroig that we brought from the states). Then we watched the crowd for a bit before catching a bus back to Flogsta to rest up for the evening.

1The Nations, in case we haven't explained before, are these sort of mandatory student social clubs at Uppsala University. They're named after regions in Sweden, and traditionally students belonged to the nation named after their homeland (like Norrland or Uppland).

Valborgsmässafton 2008

Valborgsmässafton is one the big three traditional celebrations in Sweden, the other two being Christmas and Mid-Summer. In most of Sweden, the occasion is marked with large public bonfires, and Uppsala is no exception—quite the contrary, actually, as the Uppsala area (or Upplands) seems to have been the origin point of Swedish Walpurgis Night bonfires.

So, despite being exhausted by a day of watching other people get drunk, we took a deep breath and hopped on the #2 bus bound for Gamla Uppsala. Most neighborhoods have their own fires, ours included, and the Flogsta/Ekeby bonfire was probably a lot of fun, but it just seemed to us that we shouldn't miss an opportunity to see a huge bonfire by the Gamla Uppsala burial mounds, and it's only a thirty minute bus ride, so off we set.

We were a little late, as we hadn't counted on the buses being so completely swamped with revelers off to their next party. Fortunately for us, the #2 starts just around the corner from our apartment, and after going through downtown it heads straight out to Gamla Uppsala, with the end of the line being right at the mounds. So we didn't have to fight for a seat or anything, we could just sit back and watch the drunk people getting drunker as the ride went on (apparently that whole "no drinking on the bus" rule falls into the category of laws that just aren't enforced on Sista April). There was a lot of singing too, including some call and response stuff that had at least half the bus going.

Anyway, by 8:45 we were there. It was just heading into dusk, but the fire was already roaring. We made our way across the fields to the music of a large choral group perched on the hillside behind the fire, as small children ran about lighting bits of straw from the smaller fires set here and there, and larger children set off the occasional roman candle. There was a sizeable and mixed crowd: lots of baby strollers, plenty of kids running around the mounds and fields ("no walking on the burial mounds," another rule not in force today), gangs of teenagers hanging out, and so forth. Further away from the fire there was a stand where you could buy a hamburger from the firemen, and behind that a hillside dotted with smaller groups sitting in the darkness, some of them with fires of their own1.

The fire itself was huge, hot enough that you couldn't stand closer than 5 m to it for more than a moment. It seemed to have its own microclimate, spawning dervishes of flame on the upwind edge that would tear off in a whirl of ash and sparks. As darkness set in, the choral ensemble gave way to some somber speech making, replaced once the gloom had deepened enough with a fireworks display just outside the orange glow of the flame.

The whole effect, with the silhouettes of the burial mounds looming behind the fire, was more than a little moving. For more than a thousand years, people have been gathering at this very spot, on this night, to mark the coming of spring. There may or may not have been a thousand annual bonfires at the Uppsala burial mounds, but it was impossible at the time not to believe that there had been. This is a place that has been held sacred for well over a millenium, and when you stand there, you can feel it.

The mounds themselves date from the 5th century CE, and the archeological evidence shows that they weren't just burials. Each was dug down out of a long ridge, and once it had been leveled a huge fire was built to cremate the body along with all the trappings of royalty. Days later, when the ashes had cooled enough to handle, the remains were sorted through, and all the odd little melted metal bits gathered up with the ashes and placed in an urn, which would become the center of the large mound that was built up over the spot over the next year. The four largest mounds are at the northern edge, but the ridge continues to the south for quite a ways, and is dotted with hundreds of smaller mounds, each marking a funereal bonfire from 1500 years ago.

By the 10th century, the mounds at Uppsala had become the focal point of the annual spring rites dedicated to Odin. Every year around the end of April, the people would gather and light fires and make sacrifices, commemorating the nine days and nights that Odin hung from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, his side pierced by his own spear, in order to earn control over the runes, the magic of which allowed him to safeguard the power of the Aesir and protect their worshippers. Due to his death and rebirth, the night was considered to be a time when the boundares between life and death were weak, and the bonfires were lit to keep the spirits of the deceased at bay.

One of the three largest burial mounds, with the old cathedral behind.

In the 12th century the region started to become Christianized, but the bonfires just kept going. In the church calendar May 1 marked the day of St. Walpurga, an 8th century German Abbess (well, she was born in Wessex, actually, but she was an abbess in Germany), so now the bonfires marked Walpurgis Eve (in Germany they do the same thing, except that the bonfires are lit to keep the witches of Brocken in the Harz Mountains away). And the mounds? They just built the first Christian Cathedral in Sweden right next to them, so that no one had to change their travel plans.

Through most of Sweden, Valborgsmässafton was celebrated over the next centuries in a non-flamey way. Young people would gather sticks and greenery and make them into bundles, which they would then use to decorate the houses of their village. For this service they were paid in eggs.

The 18th century saw the birth of Swedish nationalism, and an emphasis on Sweden's cultural heritage. Naturally many looked once more to Gamla Uppsala2. At the same time, the Walpurgis bonfires, which were still going strong in the Upplands region, began to appear all over Svealand, and from there they spread to much of Sweden.

With the 20th century, Sweden became less Christian and more socialist. The result: out with Valborgsmäss, in with May Day, which just happens to fall on the same day. Voila, new holiday. I suppose these days the bonfires are lit to keep the capitalist oppressors away. Oh, and the teenagers now contribute nothing, for which they expect to be paid in beer.

So, today I am led to contemplate the transient nature of tradition. Last night, however, I was content to feel the heat of the fire on my face, the cold of the wind at my back, and the stirring of a Viking spirit betwixt the two.

1 The most inexplicable thing we saw all night was a group of people wearing red jumpsuits completely covered in random patches, all with keys and bottle openers hanging on chains from their belts. They were gathered around what appeared to be a large alcohol fire back on the hill. I'm thinking they're some sort of techno-cultists, like if the Masons based all of their rituals on the daily work of runway maintenance engineers instead of bricklayers. But I could be wrong.

2 Uppsala had since been moved about 6 km downriver, for bureaucratic reasons, so the area around the mounds became known as Gamla Uppsala.

Waffle Day!

As if a four day Easter weekend wasn't enough holiday for one week, today Sweden celebrates Waffle Day! Actually, it doesn't have anything to do with Easter, it's just that this year 25 March happens to fall a day after Annandag Påsk. Why waffles? Well, 25 March is the Day of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church, or Vår Fru Dag, and the faster you say "Vår Fru Dag," the more it sounds like "Våffel Dag!"

So, Swedes celebrate by eating waffles. Pretty much the only indication I saw today that it was Waffle Day was when I was in Clas Ohlson, which is sort of a mid-century department store sort of place—adjustable wrenches, frying pans, lightbulbs, office supplies, alarm clocks. Anyway, they were serving little heart-shaped waffles with ice cream and strawberry jam.

Not wanting to miss out on such an important cultural experience, we had waffles and coffee for afternoon snack today. We don't have a waffle iron, so I had to get waffles from the grocery store (fresh, not frozen), along with some lactose free creme fraiche and, of course, strawberry jam.

Having celebrated in the finest tradition of Waffle Day, I am left only to ask: how is this different than every other day in Sweden?

Glad Post*

*That's a (very) little Svengelska joke. The traditional Easter greeting here is Glad Påsk, and the 'å' is pronounced a lot like a long 'o' in English.

It's Easter, as I'm sure you've noticed, and an early one at that. Just about the earliest Easter there can be, and the earliest any of us likely to experience or have experienced (Easter hasn't fallen on it's earliest possible date, March 22, since 1818, and won't again until 2285). Which reminds me, Happy Easter Birthday, Aunt P.! It's going to be a long haul until the next one for you (2060, I believe), but take it from someone born on Modal Easter Day, it's not such a big thing.

Birthdays aside, Påsk is a pretty big deal in Sweden, as it turns out. Well, not so much the day itself, but it's the center of a four day national holiday: Långfredag, Påskaften, Påskdagen, and Annandag Påsk. It's a time for spring things here, just like everywhere, I suppose, specifically spring cleaning, airing out the country house, feeding the witches candy, changing the curtains to something flowery, decorating the house with birch twigs covered in colorful feathers, and eating turkey. Yes, you heard me right: turkey. Not a common bird here at all, but apparently something of a Påskaften dinner tradition, and Påskaften is the day for all the big Easter family celebrations here, not the day itself.

Right, so, witches. You see, the thing is, in Scandinavia, Easter is when all the witches go to meet the devil (or possibly Odin) at a place called Blåkulla. Since they are all on the road (as it were), there's a chance that one of them might decide to get off the broom for a while and stop by your place en route. The wisest course, as someone who doesn't want to be on the witches' bad side, is to have something handy with which to bribe them to leave you alone, and the most popular choice of bribes is sweets. Naturally, the children of Scandinavia, being a bright and enterprising lot, are not about to let such a golden opportunity pass them by; so, they traditionally dress up as witches and go door to door asking for candy. Let me emphasize hat last bit: asking. None of this, "Give me candy or I'll do something bad to your house," stuff here. In fact, when you give them candy, they are supposed to give you a Glad Påsk card in exchange. Oh, you're allowed to give them money instead, if you prefer. Say what you will about them, those witches are always practical.

Living as we do in a building of the more or less itinerant, we didn't actually get any Easter witches dropping by, but we armed ourselves with candy just in case. There's a lot of the stuff you'd expect, like peanut M&M things, and little fruit jellies, and gummy this and that, and chocolate covered marzipan. There's also a lot of marshmallow hens, and banana flavored slugs, and salted licorice so salty it burns the tongue (seriously, ouch!).

My favorite new Easter treat, though, has got to be Påskmust. This is a soda only available at Easter. Well, Easter and Christmas, because it's actually Julmust, and they just relabel it in the spring. Whatever you call it, it's sort of an unnatural cross between a Dr. Pepper and a Grape Nehi, which as long as you keep it really cold is quite tasty.

Another Påsk tradition we latched onto is that of Påsklillja, which despite the name are actually yellow daffodils. They're sold in grocery stores all over the place in the weeks leading up to Easter. Either we got a particularly prescient batch, or the Swedish florists really know what they're doing, because both pots of flowers we got waited until Easter morning to suddenly burst into bloom. On the other hand, they might have done a day earlier if Saturday hadn't been the coldest day of the winter for most of Sweden. For us, it alternated between glaring sunshine and near-whiteout-condition blizzard all day, with a low of -12° overnight. We headed out during one of the sunny bits to go and see the crocusses coming up all over the castle lawn, and to wander around the eerily deserted downtown area (most shops seem to close for the whole four days). Then it was home to shelter from the storm and have a dinner of Påskmust and Spaghetti Carbonara, followed by an encore presentation of "The Kipper and the Corpse."

By the way, if Swedish Easter traditions seem odd to you, check out this nugget from Wikipedia:

In Norway, in addition to cross-country skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, a contemporary tradition is to solve murder mysteries at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Agatha Christie's Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is Yahtzee.

Oh, those wacky Norwegians! Well, I'm off to try to solve "The Mystery of the Bean Soup Recipe," and Jennifer, as you can see, is hard at work studying her Swedish. Happy Easter!

Happy Hjärtans Dag

Well, it's hjärtans dag, which means it's also the 17th anniversary of the first time I asked Jennifer out on a date. Our anniversary doesn't seem to get as much media attention here as it does in the States, but we decided to celebrate anyway. We had lunch today at the cafeteria of the Evolutionsmuseet at the EBC where Jennifer works, for a traditional Swedish Torsdag meal of split pea soup and pancakes (with creme fraiche and strawberry jam, of course). We had planned on spending  little time checking out the Svensk Fauna wing of the museum afterwards (as opposed to the Utländsk Fauna wing) but this is Sweden, so the museum was closed this afternoon for no discernible reason. On the walk home I stopped by the Svenskundervisning för invandrare (SFI) office, which is supposed to be open for drop-ins from 13–15 on Torsdag afternoons, but they have also closed for the week with no visible explanation. Is something going on this week, or do official offices just close in Sweden for a holiday that no one here seems to celebrate? Ah well, at least I managed to get myself a city library card, and, as a result, a copy of the most recent Steven Erikson book, Reaper's Gale, which hasn't been released in the U.S. as yet; if you have any interest in fantasy at all and I haven't already recommended the Malazan Book of the Fallen to you, then I have been remiss in the extreme—he makes Robert Jordan look like a mouth-breathing hump, with all due respect to the dead… what was I talking about? Oh, yes, well obviously the library was still open, so it wasn't a complete governmental shut-down.
For dinner we had a salmon fillet glazed in a honey mustard sauce, with apples sautéed in rosemary butter and a bottle of South African Pinotage. The salmon here is excellent of course, and not really more expensive than any of the other meat. Also, it turned out we each bought chocolates, so for dessert we had one of our few remaining Zingerman's salt caramels, some cognac truffles, and some cayenne pralines (which in Sweden appears to just mean 'filled chocolate candies', not anything involving pecans, which don't seem to exist here). Actually, I'm quite full. Oh, and we watched SVT's coverage of today's skidskytte in Östersund (we're still marveling at getting 2-4 hours per day of cross country skiing coverage on television).