Groundhog Day

Last year Groundhog Day passed more or less unnoticed by me; this year, I had thought to describe the peculiar custom. It turned out to be a busy day, though, and I didn't get a chance to bring it up. But I watched the ceremony on my computer live via a webcast, and recorded part of it. As my officemate S. was on his way out, I stopped him.

"You know, it's Groundhog Day," I said.
"Oh?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
"It's real?" he said.

I played for him the climax of the ceremony, in which a fine fat specimen of Marmota monax is brought out, held up to receive the accolades of the thousands who are chanting his name, and then put down onto his sacred stump to snuffle around for his shadow before whispering to his tuxedo-clad oracle which scroll to choose, and thereby deciding whether winter is over yet.

S. at the screen, speechless. "He's more than a hundred years old," I said. "This is Punxsutawney Phil, the original Groundhog, you know. They give him a potion every summer that prolongs his life force."

S. stared at me. I stared back, doing my best to maintain a poker face. But he beat me, I confess, and I started to giggle and had to look away first. We agreed that the whole thing is, well, somewhat Lovecraftian.

"But it's real?" he said again. He had seen the movie, and he had thought that the holiday had been invented solely for the movie, as a way to make fun of a holiday without offending anyone. Nope, it's real, I said. Complete with souvenirs.

S. stared again at the screen, which had been stopped on a frame of Phil leering evilly over the shoulder of one of his Inner Circle. "Don't have nightmares," I said. "Best stop thinking about groundhogs entirely. Just put them right out of your mind."

"Oh, that's great, telling me not to think about them!" he said. "I think I am glad that there are no groundhogs in Sweden."

Whiskyprovning

On Wednesday night we attended our first EBC whiskyprovning. This is, apparently, a tradition which predates the EBC itself: this particular group started meeting nearly 15 years ago, and they still get together three or four times a year. In addition to Jennifer and myself, German A. from her lab and F. (star of last year's Disputationsfest post) were in attendance, as well as six of the core attendees, who I can only remember now as Per, Almost Per, Micke, Håkan, Definitely Not Per, and Per. Per, being the one in charge, started the evening by carefully measuring out exactly 2cl of each of the seven whiskies for each of us, into a series of 70 glasses, arranged on paper mats printed for the occasion with a description of each whisky and plenty of space for notes. For lids we had a set of square cards from a Concentration game, with images of Swedish stuff on one side (Crown Princess Victoria, the Vasaloppet, a moose, etc.).

Per started us off with a brief description of what we would be drinking, and then we were off. For the record, the evening's selection was three Clynelish bottlings, three more from Bunnahabhain, and a single 32 yo Banff. One was quite simple (Bunnahabhain 12 year), and a second a little off putting (a 27 year of the same), but the remainder ranged from quite good (a cask strength, 23 year Clynelish put down in 1974) to excellent (a 31 year old Bunnahabhain from a refill sherry butt, mmmm).

The lesson the night really brought home, though, was this: when meeting a group of Swedes for the first time, make sure there's drinking. In general Swedes are noticeably shy around people they don't know, and it can take a while (read: a couple of weeks) to get the conversation flowing naturally. Alternately, get them a little lubricated and, bam!, instant loquaciousness. Amongst the evening's more memorable moments:

F.: …and that's why we have no natural gas, we would have to buy it from Russia.
Innocent Foreigner: Yes, but you could buy it from Norway.
F. (genuinely shocked): Norway!

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Per (on the relative prices of sherry and bourbon casks): Sherry casks get reused, but American law is that bourbon casks can only be used once. They either have to throw them away or sell them to Scotland—and Scots never want to spend any money.

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Per: Technically, you have to go to Denmark and get the bottle for yourself, but there's a guy from Skåne who goes to Denmark and picks them up for Swedes1.

So, much whisky was drunk, and its relative merits debated, and crisp bread and cheese were eaten, and topics of greater or lesser weight were discussed (i.e., the fall of the Icelandic government, the price of sake). A little before 11 there were only a few of us left, and so Jennifer and I made our farewells, and I began the long, slow bike ride home. Ah, nothing like a bit of fresh air…

1 Skåne is a region in southern Sweden which was part of Denmark until 1658. Modern polls continue to show that most Scanians want to become part of Denmark once more; popular opinion in the rest of Sweden seems to be that this would be a good idea. I just like the implication that the guy from Skåne isn't quite Swedish.

Downtown ski day

A week ago Friday, early in the morning, I had seen snow machines at the back of the castle, industriously hosing down the hill with snow. There hasn't been much snow since our big storm in November, but why would anyone by making snow at the back of the castle? I figured that they were doing it to take wintery pictures or something, and thought no more about it. That same day, at lunch, the newspaper I was reading had a headline that I thought I must have misinterpreted. "Does this say that they are building a ski run at the back of the castle?" I held up the newspaper to the lunch crowd. "Yes, it looks like it," they said, and rustled through the pages. "Yes, and they will even have a race." "Why on earth are they doing that?" I asked, incredulously. "It's a block long! The winning time will be five seconds!"

This wooded park area of Slottsbacken does have a fairly steep slope; cyclists more often than not simply dismount and walk up, and it was also the site of last May's communist rally (pictures from the May Day post give you an idea of what the area looks like in spring). Still, it's not very big, and... a ski slope? Really?

The competition was held on the day everyone went skating*, so we didn't see that, but the course was left there on Sunday for people to fool around on, so we went in to check it out. Sure enough, they had built a gate at the top, and there was a trail winding down through the trees. Equipment could be rented on-site. The main slope was mostly populated by small children, but there was a fairly large number of teenagers and adults at the free-style area that had been set aside, with the rails being rather crowded.

As stunts go, this one was quite fun and pretty successful, I think, certainly providing the local ski club with some positive publicity. And who wouldn't want to be able to say that they had skied at a castle? Oh, and I did underestimate the winning time of the race—I believe it was 5.91 seconds.


*what did I do while they skated? Why, I found a soccer game, of course! (Yes, in January. Yes, there was snow.)

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.

The Skating Party

It's known the skating pond conceals
A family of enormous eels

Edward Gorey, The Iron Tonic

Yesterday was an exceedingly Swedish day for us, as we went on a långfärdsskridsko with our Swiss friends G. and D., and one of Jennifer's coworkers, N. To put it as simply as possible, we went ice skating, but it was an ice skating experience unlike any I've had before. Just to set the stage a bit, when N. asked earlier in the week if I skated, I answered confidently that I knew my way around a pair of skates. I'm not a great skater—there weren't constant opportunities for ice skating growing up in southern Alabama—but in my teen and college years I did my best to make up for lost time. Why, I thought to myself, I own a pair of hockey skates! I once skated for the better part of an hour with my hands clasped behind my back! Can I skate, indeed. In retrospect, the fact that those hockey skates had been sitting unused in my basement for the better part of fifteen years should have given me pause, but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself there.

My first hint that this would be a different skating experience was shortly after G. and D. picked us up, as we pulled up in front of N.'s apartment and saw N. waiting for us, a large pack strapped to his back and a pair of cross country poles in his hand. Hmm. Next stop: Fjällskog, an outdoor equipment store in Uppsala, to rent our skates. Swedish långskridskor are completely different from my rusted hockey skates. To start with, the blades are about 45 cm long, with long curve at the tip. Stranger still, the boots are actually telemark ski boots, and the blades are attached to a long board which you strap to the bottom of the boot. They come in a bag which includes a wrench for adjusting the angle of the blade and some other hardware whose purpose was, at the time, unclear.

Armed with our rented skates, we drove off towards Stockholm. Our destination was the village of Norrvik, on the shores of Lake Norrviken, about 40 km south of Uppsala. There are plenty of places to skate closer to Uppsala, but we were meeting some of D.'s friends who live in the Stockholm area, so we wanted to meet halfway. We weren't really sure what to expect, but I certainly hadn't anticipated the scene we were confronted with on our arrival at the Norvikken IP parking lot: there were cars parked all the way to the road, and people all over the place. So, it wasn't to be a quiet afternoon of skating in the middle of the Swedish wilderness.

Norrviken, as it turns out, is about 7 km long, and all winter the local sports club keeps a 14 km loop cleared for skating. Yes, 14 km, with more Swedes than I could count zipping around it. As we looked for a place to sit while strapping on our blades, N. began to explain all of the extra equipment. The odd bit of hardware turned out to be a pair of ice picks to wear around your neck, for you to grab in case you fall through the ice. "Not that we'll fall through the ice today," N. assured us. Just in case, though, he had all of his safety equipment: a dry pack full of spare clothes, which doubles as a flotation device, a rope to throw to anyone who does go through, and a pole to check the ice as you go.

N. wasn't the only one there with the full kit, but he was clearly in the minority. The majority of the skaters could be divided into three camps. First, sporty skaters, mostly decked out in techno gear, but with a small group of colorfully clad people (mostly older men) in traditional skating garb (Scandinavian sweater, knickers, big socks). Next were the families, mostly with a horde of small skaters around them, but a fair number of young couple pushing baby carriages across the ice as well. Finally, there were the dog walkers. There was actually a snow track that appears to have been left for the dogs to run on as their owners skate along side.

The ice, let me assure you, was quite thick. It's hard to be sure just how thick, but you could clearly see that there was a good 50 cm of ice. The slightly warmer weather along the coast this week was apparently partly responsible for the masses of people at Norrviken, as the radio that morning had started to recommend heading inland for the safest skating.

My first lesson in humility for the day came the instant I stood up from strapping on the blades. Turns out that a decade and a half might have been long enough for me to forget how to skate. A few minutes of sliding around and I began to regain a little of my former on-ice stability, but I can't say that I ever got completely comfortable. It's possible that the difference in skates was somewhat to blame, but I suspect that played a smaller role than I would like to believe. As long as you aren't trying to turn sharply or stop suddenly, the skates aren't really so different. The long blades do let you get up to a fair clip without trying too hard, and they also handle rough ice better.

Not that the last part was too important yesterday, because once we waved farewell to Jennifer and headed off to the circuit it quickly became clear that the ice was quite good. The cleared path was about 6 m wide for the most part, although the snow cover on the rest of the lake was not so thick that you couldn't skate over it in a pinch. As the path started out we passed a small area cleared for some bandy practice, and then a good smelling fire that someone had built out on the ice, but within a few minutes all signs of civilization were behind us. It was all very picturesque, with the spire of Norrvik church rising from behind the hills around the snow covered lake, no sound except the scraping of the blades on the ice.

2 km I was felling pretty good, as we took the first turn through the center of the lake so that we could head back and get some food. The next 2 km were a little harder, but still we all made it back in good order to the picnic table Jennifer had scored for us out on the ice. As we fortified ourselves on sandwiches, blueberry soup, and Swiss chocolate, D.'s friends showed up, complete with tiny child in carriage. We finished eating as we made the introductions, and then we headed back out.

Now, the plan the second time out was to do the whole 14 km loop. While several muscles I didn't recall possessing had stiffened up somewhat over lunch, after a few minutes the loosened up again, and any shakiness I may have felt at the end of the first round had passed. At the first turn I was feeling good, so I didn't turn back with the first member of our group but instead headed on. At the second turn there was some discussion of turning back, but then someone pointed out that the next turn wasn't very far away, so we all headed out for that one.

Well, it was actually a bit further than it looked, that next turn, and by the time we got there some of those new muscles were starting to protest. Just as we made it I took my first tumble for the day, which was jarring but left me with no longer term injury. Now another difference about wilderness skating came to light, however: with a little bit of sun out, all that lovely ice was covered with a nice coat of water, and now I was wearing a lot of it. There are several reasons that this wasn't a serious problem. For one thing, the temperature was just around 0° C all day; for another, I'd opted for the fleece top instead of a wool sweater, and silk long underwear, so I was still quite cozy really; and finally, N. had brought a spare pair of gloves to replace my now quite thoroughly wet ones. Still, I was starting to fell a little shaky, so I opted to make the turn and head back. I also borrowed a pair of poles from N., which added a lot of stability.

That was at the 5 km mark. Things were fine as I headed across the lake, but when reached the other side and turned towards home I learned the the day's final lesson: pay attention to the wind. Yes, 5 km of skating is fine with a light breeze at your back, but the 5 km home into a nasty headwind is inte så bra. With 4 km to go the arms were starting to get tired; with 3 km to go it was time to take a break by sitting on someone's dock and watching an impromptu peewee hockey game (for which one of the goalies seemed to be wearing cross country skis, which seemed an odd choice to me at the time). That's where I was when N. and G. caught up with me, and where I had to finally admit defeat. I gave N. his poles back, which I think he was grateful for, as they do make a big difference when heading into the wind. As for me, I was grateful for the fact that I could just pop those blades right off my boots and march back on the shore.

I made it about halfway back before turning inland to pick up the main road through Norrvik, which is where I met everyone else. The ride back to Uppsala was a quiet affair, with Jennifer performing her self-ascribed duty of talking to the driver to keep him awake, while the ret of us dozed in the back seat. We made it back to Fjällskog at 5 minutes to 4, just in time to return our skates. Then it was off to home where I had a nice long soak in a hot tub, followed by a dinner of lentil soup and grilled cheese, and then an evening of sitting on the couch and groaning every time I moved.

I'm not sure that I can claim, as Calvin once did, that I consider the day seized and throttled; but I can pretty confidently state that the day has seized and throttled me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to lying down for a while.

UPDATE: As Roald Amundsen said, "Eventyr er bare dårlig planlegging." A few minutes spent at the website of Norrvikens IP revealed this fascinating factoid: there's a city bus that runs from one end of the lake to the other. No need to skate against the wind at all, just park upwind, skate to the other end, and take the bus back to your car. Should have seen that one coming, I suppose.

Twelfth Night, or What the Hell?

It's Twelfth Night tonight, the traditional end of the Christmas season (except in Sweden, actually, but that's a story for next week), the night before Epiphany, which also happens to be the last of the twelve days of Christmas. I could have this wrong, but my understanding is that when numbering the nights of Christmas, they come before their corresponding days; that is, tonight is the Twelfth Night of Christmas, and tomorrow is the Twelfth Day of Christmas. When I get confused is when I count backwards, because this means that Christmas Day is not the first day of Christmas, although Christmas Day Night is the first night of Christmas (and, as a result, I think I'm going to insist on calling Christmas Eve Night "the Zeroth Night of Christmas" from now on).

Why am I going on about this at such length? Because in Sweden, the Epiphany is not the Twelfth Day of Christmas, but rather Trettonde Jul—the Thirteenth Day of Christmas—and tonight isn't Twelfth Night at all, but rather Trettondedagsafton—Thirteenth Christmas Eve. This is only one of the minor liturgical oddities that has arisen for us this season; for example, Lessons and Carols, which is traditionally held on Christmas Eve, and which I expect to happen on the fourth Sunday of Advent, is, in Uppsala, celebrated on St. Stephen's Day (we actually went to Lessons and Carols at Uppsala Cathedral, despite its odd timing, and it was quite pleasant—it isn't generally used in the Church of Sweden, but they performed it as a sort of Anglican oddity).

We tried to observe Trettondagsafton rather prosaically: Jennifer dutifully returned to work after a week's hemester, and I took the computer in to the shop (the video card died rather abruptly on Saturday, the result no doubt of the 'higher than normal rate of failure' in the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT). It was no good though, as Jennifer was one of only three people who bothered to show up at work (all foreigners), and everyone else in town seemed to be out shopping. The issue, apparently, is timing: Trettonde Jul is a holiday, on which the University is closed along with the banks, the post, etc., and falling on a Tuesday this year there just wasn't any motivation for anyone to go to work on Monday.

So we gave up and met at Konditori Fågelsången for lunch, a popular cafe with perhaps the best weinerbröd in town and excellent views, even if, as Jennifer points out, the only fågelsång in the area is the kvack, kvack from the ankdamm across the street. Then we set off to spend some Christmas money while the sales were still on: Jennifer got an excellent haircut, and we picked up a thermal carafe for the morning coffee and a half-price set of speakers for the computer.

After all that, our Twelfth Night festivities may be somewhat muted. We'll have a little hot apple cider, some bacon wrapped chevre salad, and then a bit of spice cake to round out the evening. You know, I'd intended this to be a sort of Christmas retrospective post, but looking back now it seems overlong already, and that spice cake isn't going to bake itself… well, I suppose the retrospective will have to wait. Meanwhile, have a great Twelfth (or Thirteenth) Night.