I grew up with a singing mother. Not so that she was constantly warbling, flitting hither and dither, but she liked to sing, and in particular she liked to listen to and sing along with Italian artists – more specifically San Remo winners. Why this love affair with Italy, one wonders, and I suppose the
In those faraway times when the Scandinavian region spawned bellicose Vikings at a horrifying rate, most of Europe was already adequately christened. Not so Norway, Denmark or Sweden, where the ancient religion honouring Odin, Thor and Frey was alive and kicking well into the second millennium. Adam of Bremen, writing in the 11th century, has
Sweden has the dubious honour of being second only to Third Reich Germany in the number of people sterilised against their will. It is one of those “skeletons in the closet” things, in that the Swedish establishment avoided talking about it for a number of years, preferring to bury this rather sordid aspect of our
Early June is graduation time here in Sweden. We all go quite wild and crazy when it comes to high school graduation, which we call “studenten”. Back in the good old days, this graduation day was preceded by a sequence of horribly tough final exams. On the graduation day itself, the wannabee graduates had to
Life was not a walk in the park in previous centuries. Unless you were born into the landed & wealthy classes, chances are you’d spend most of your life hand-to-mouth, earning today what you needed to survive today – and maybe half of tomorrow. Those of us enamoured of history tend to forget this, seeing
…is a good reader. Today, I’ve invited Lisl Zlitni to visit, precisely because she is just that – a good reader. She also happens to be a very good writer, which is apparent not only in her excellent reviews but also in her poetry and those snippets of prose she has chosen to share. If
Say “tartan”, and most people think of Scotland – and of kilts. The word conjures up images of stalwart warriors, dressed in skirts as they charge the English soldiers of centuries long gone by. Not necessarily historically correct, and no matter just how dashing Mel Gibson looks in a kilt, I can assure you William
Someone once told me that a man lives his life in neat little boxes, and either he is busy dealing with one box or the other, but rarely does he do two boxes at the same time. It’s called compartmentalisation, which is why – as per this person – men are so good at ignoring
One of the benefits of working for a multinational company is that one gets to see a lot of places one might never have visited otherwise. Like Salt Lake City. Had it not been because of work, chances are I’d never have gone there – it sort of didn’t make my bucket list, no matter
Trust is one of the more beautiful words in the English language. It is also a very fragile word. Just like respect, trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, and once broken, trust is difficult to repair. To trust someone is to take a leap of faith. After all, you don’t know if