Help fight SPS!

My friends, the fashionable young men of Sweden desperately need your help.

There is a terrible affliction striking Sweden. The effects are devastating, both to the victim and to the people who have to see him. And as the weather gets warmer, the plague gets worse. We noticed it first in Stockholm, in 2006. It was rare at the time, and so we hoped that it would burn itself out quickly. But our hopes were in vain. And now the plague has spread to Uppsala.

On any given day, hundreds of young men can be seen on the streets suffering from SPS, or Stockholm Pants Syndrome. The condition is characterized by extremely tight jeans, worn extremely low so that the rear waistband cuts directly across the widest circumference of the buttocks. The underwear of the victim is then plainly visible to those around him, some of whom, through no fault of their own, cannot tear their eyes away. Some victims suffer bravely, with a sense of humor, and wear colorful undergarments that give the viewer a fit of the giggles. Other victims, more hopeless, seem not to even be aware of their condition, and therefore display their tighty-whiteys to the world. In the picture above, you can see some of the milder cases. For the comfort of readers, we will not show pictures of advanced cases... but they exist. Oh, they exist.

That SPS is uncomfortable physically can be inferred from the observation that the victims, should they need to walk anywhere, continually hitch their pants up in front. That SPS is uncomfortable mentally can be inferred from the fact that victims also continually tug their shirts down in back, looking furtively about as they do so. Heaven help the poor sufferer who attempts to perform both adjustments simultaneously while crossing a cobblestone street in front of a bus!

Won't you please make a donation today, to help eradicate this dread condition? Please call with your pledge of support. Operators are standing by.

Revelations

Yesterday I learned two things, fascinating to me if to no one else, and tangentially related. The first is that after months of waiting, the acceptance letters for the next round of Masters programs at Uppsala University finally came out yesterday, and I'm happy to report that I've been admitted to the computer science program starting in the coming fall. The announcement was originally scheduled for a couple of weeks ago but there was some sort of delay ("caused by our national agency, not Uppsala University," according to the head of the department) which has prolonged my agony. Hmm, where to begin my story…

All university applications in Sweden are submitted through a single agency, called Studera or University Studies in Sweden. They forward the applications to the appropriate schools and also provide feedback to applicants curious as to their status. Unfortunately, Swedish law severely limits the amount of information that can be provided online without a Personal Number, and as I didn't have one when I applied, I could only access the most basic information. Anyway, some time in early April my application was marked "Unqualified" because the University could not "verify" my undergraduate record (I say that as though they informed me of it, but actually it took two weeks of e-mails to figure that out, after I noticed that my status had been changed). Apparently they had requested a verification from EMU and never gotten a response, and so now my application was on hold. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking—notifications were supposed to go out any day now. I talked to EMU, and they said they would be happy to verify my enrollment, if only they had ever received a request! The Records office gave me detailed instructions for how to do this, which I passed on to Studera. The next day, my status changed to "Processing," and it was all better.

Well, for about six hours, anyway. Then I went back to being "Unqualified" with no further explanation. Fortunately, about then I found a phone number for Studera (listed on the Swedish version of their website, under the undergraduate course selection section), and a couple of hours on hold with them resulted in this information: they had nothing to do with it, and despite what their own website said I needed to call the University Admissions Office directly (which I could do most weekdays between 10:30 and noon). Argh. The Admissions office said they couldn't tell me anything, but redirected me to the department, where I finally talked to an extremely helpful woman who called up my file and confirmed that a request for verification had been sent but no response had been received. She also told me that none of the information I had sent to Studera to try and fix the situation had ever been passed on to the University, so thy weren't taking any further action. So I told her how to verify my enrollment, and by the next morning I was back on track, now equipped with a Selection Group and a Merit Rating. These are both required to be made available to the applicant—unfortunately, no one said anything about requiring an explanation of what they mean, so every university uses different letters and numbers and none of them are publicly explained. OK, fine.

By this point it was only days before the official announcement date, which was then rescheduled as I mentioned above. So I tried not to think about it for two weeks, and meanwhile obsessively checked the website three times a day. And then yesterday, a day before the new announcement date, I got my letter of admission. So now I'm exhausted.

Oh yes, I said two pieces of news. The second is that Jennifer figured out who the mysterious red jumpsuit people were at Walpurgis: they're the Uppsala University Computer Science Department! Apparently, undergrads at Uppsala are issued jumpsuits in their department's colors. These jumpsuits are then required to be worn at all department functions, and attending a function gets you a new patch. They even wear them to national student gatherings for the departments. Oh, and you aren't ever allowed to wash them. It's unclear whether this bizarre tradition extends to graduate students or not, but either way, I guess it explains why they caught my eye—those are my peeps!

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.