Observing Gothenburg: The Blog

Planet Gustaf Adolf

2011-04-15T15:52:00.002+02:00

I‘ve just learned how to make planets from 360º photo panoramas. This is my first successful effort.

The picture is based on eight photos taken in Gustaf Adolfs Torg here in Gothenburg on the first sunny day in April (4th). I stitched them together with Photoshop’s panorama tool then used Photoshop’s Polar Cordinates distortion tool to make the planet.

See it also on my home page here:
http://thesupercargo.com/2011/04/10/planet-gustaf-adolf/

Frozen Seas and New Year 2011

2011-01-02T10:37:00.004+01:00

Greetings! My very best wishes to one and all for a happy 2011 with all the success and achievements you may wish for yourselves. Here's one of the photos I took of Göteborgs-Posten's New Year firework display. I share more on my homepage at http://www.thesupercargo.com/2010/12/31/happy-new-year-2011/

Yesterday’s paper reported what the radio news had said the night before, that the sea was frozen right across the Kattegat. Thin ice to be sure. You couldn’t walk across and a passing ship or even the wind could beak it up. Still, the sea was frozen, frozen all the way to Denmark.

In the evening, a wind from the south got up and blew increasingly hard and all night. The temperature, which had been going up anyway during the day, continued to rise through the night, something it hasn’t done for weeks now.

Last time I looked, the thermometer stood at +4º C, and now the sun is up. I wonder if the seas are still frozen across to Denmark?

Here below is a photo of the frozen sea off the west coast of Hisingen, taken with the camera in my mobile phone on 26th December. More on my homepage here: http://www.thesupercargo.com/2010/12/26/walking-on-water/

When I Grow Up

2010-12-20T16:32:00.012+01:00

The homeless people's magazine in Gothenburg is called Faktum. It's the equivalent of The Big Issue and similar street paper's elsewhere. For this Christmas, Faktum has published a calendar for 2011 with large, black-and-white photos of 12 homeless people dreaming of the jobs they would like to have (would have liked to have had perhaps) "when they grow up". The sequence of photos is called "När jag blir stor" which translates exactly as "When I grow up".

The photographer is Patrik Andersson, a son of Gothenburg now living in New York, who has made a name for himself with high fashion, commercial and celebrity photography. He's photographed the likes of Bill Clinton, Mick Jaggar, Jennifer Lopez & Kate Moss. This commission (which he is doing pro bono) is a bit out of his usual way, but he brings a clear eye to it even so.

The subjects are photographed dressed in the clothes or together with props suggesting their dream profession, but the pictures are much more portraits of real individuals than this suggests. (For example this to the right - a man who would be king.)

All twelve photos are currently on display in the central square (Gustaf Adolfs Torg) in Gothenburg, where most of my illustrative pictures were made. Here to the left is a picture of the exhibition in the square.

The calendars are being sold, at 150 Swedish kronor per each, by the same homeless men and women who sell Faktum (and who have acted as Patrik Andersson's models). You can view all the photos, and buy a copy of the calendar over the Internet from Faktum's homepage here (but you'll need to read Swedish - or trust Google's translation engine to give you a fairly accurate idea of what you're doing!)

And here below is a picture of my own copy (still in it's plastic cover till 1st January). As you see, in this illustration I'm trying to be creative and not just reproduce the front cover photo. (Bertil Johansson, 74; Dream job: Priest; Homeless since 1994.) The two pictures here are of the same subject, the right taken with a flash, the left taken without.

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Related links

Faktum on the Internet at http://www.faktum.nu/

Patrik Andersson's homepage at http://www.patrikandersson.com/index.html

The homepage of the International Network of Street Papers at http://www.street-papers.org/

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Visit my main blog at http://www.thesupercargo.com/

Winter

2009-03-02T10:43:00.015+01:00

This entry has been in the planning for weeks now, so long, in fact that in any country closer to the equator, winter has long turned to spring. Fortunately (well, depending how you look at it) winter is still very palpable up here in the north. Last week my wife and I spent a happy few days away visiting our old haunts up in Sundsvall on Sweden’s north east coast, and there the snow was piled high.

Sundsvall is a bit out of the geographical reach of this blog, but actually has a number of historical connections with Gothenburg which allow me to feel happy including some talk about the town, and some pictures taken up there last week. First of all, Sundsvall was founded by the same king who founded Gothenburg (Gustaf II Adolf – the Gustavus Adolphus of English language history books). Then Sundsvall’s industrial development in the late 1800s was stimulated by many of the same Anglo-Scot-Swedish families that first built their fortunes in Gothenburg (the Dickson’s in particular).

And then, of course, we lived up there for ten years, moving to Sundsvall from Gothenburg in 1987 and back to Gothenburg again in 1998.

But to get back to the Gothenburg and the west coast, winter here has been marked by some very variable weather. We have had some snow, but not really enough to get excited about. What we’ve had instead are cold snaps that have taken the temperature down well below freezing, often quite quickly.

Being a coastal city and built around a sizeable river, Gothenburg has a generally mild, and often damp climate. When I first moved back here after the 10 years or so in Sundsvall, I was enchanted by the sound of the rain falling. You don’t have a lot of that up in Sundsvall which has a relatively dry climate for all that it faces the Gulf of Bothnia. Of course Gothenburgers did think I was a bit daft when I told them how much I was enjoying the sound of rain … and of course my enjoyment wore off after about six months of unremitting rainfall.

The point I’m trying to make here is that a damp climate, especially one in which a snow fall is followed by a temperature rise be it ever so slight, tends to fill the city with mists and fogs. When these coincide with a snap temperature drop, the result is hoarfrost. This winter I’ve not seen the most dramatic hoarfrost of my life (I can remember winter days with much thicker, longer spikes of frost), but it’s been pretty dramatic even so. Sufficient to get me out and about with the camera as soon as there’s a suggestion of the sun breaking through.

Our local park, Keiller’s Park, is a happy hunting ground on these days, but even just leaning out my window can make me cheerful about what I can catch in my viewfinder.

The whole extended family spent Christmas with my brother and sister-in-law out at Tjuvkil near Marstrand. A wonderful spot. They were house-sitting for friends who were otherwise engaged. (Conducting a tiger safari in India I think it was!) The house in question is a youth hostel/b&b in the summer months, but was unbooked now, so we took it over. My godson Victor is 6 going on 7, and now highly suspicious of the existence of Santa Clause.

Now, in Swedish houses, Santa (or Tomten as he’s called) is actually expected to put in an appearance, and this year was no exception. The knock came at the door in the early evening of Christmas Eve (as it should do by Swedish tradition). The Old Man – or the Anthropomorphic Personification if you prefer – was welcomed into the warm and ushered into the living room where the presents (earlier concealed by a curtain) were now to be found.

Victor was quite convinced that our Tomte was not the real Tomte. Everyone else in the house, though, doggedly stuck to the fiction, asking after the reindeer, offering a glass of something and a bowl of rice porridge, thanking the Tomte for including us in his busy day, and eventually poor Victor started to doubt his own convictions. Next year will be more difficult, I suppose. He was happy enough with his presents, though.

The night was cold and dark – we were far enough away from the lights of the city to see something of the stars. Not like being out at sea, of course, but still. There was Orion and there was the Great Dipper – the only two constellations I can identify with confidence – and there was the Moon and Venus so the heavens were in order and all was right with the world.

The weather was cold at Christmas, a few degrees below freezing, and there was ice on puddles and fringing the rocks in fresh water lakes, but the sea hadn’t frozen yet. That came a few days later, just after New Year.

On the 5th January we decided to wrap up warm, take our cameras and visit the southern archipelago. The Swedish word for archipelago is skjärgård (say “sharegourd”) which sounds less high-faulting. In origin it’s the same word as English “skerry”, and though there are plenty of low-lying boulders and jagged rocks which tear up the sea (and tear the bottoms out of unwary boats), there are also plenty of little islands, so you can’t call them skerries. Not in my opinion anyway. So we’re stuck with archipelago – like it or lump it.

Gothenburg has two archipelagos, one lying north of the river mouth and reaching up towards the islands of the Bohus coast, the other lying to the south, stretching down towards Halland. For reasons I’ve never bothered to explore, while the northern archipelago is its own administrative area, the southern archipelago is a part of the Gothenburg municipality. This has the distinct advantage that you can travel 90 minutes out to the farthest of the islands on the public ferry transports for the same flat rate fare you would otherwise pay for a ten minute trip into the town.

Of course, you have to pay again to get back home, but it still feels like very good value.

We took tram number 11 out to the harbour at Saltholmen and then the Vrångö ferry all the way out passed Styrsö and Donsö. (The Swedish word for island is ö.)

Bitterly cold. We could only manage to stand up on deck (gloves off to operate the camera) for about 10 minutes at a time. The cameras also became sluggish after a while, I suppose rechargeable batteries don’t manage so well at those temperatures. (Certainly my mobile phone went into hibernation!)

The sun was incredible, bathing everything in this golden, almost syrupy light. It looked like it ought to be warm, but it was not. And the sea was also somehow syrupy. Thick.

There was almost no wind, except the wind the ferry made passing, so the water was unruffled except by our wake, and the wake itself didn’t seem to churn up the surface of the water nearly as much as usual. The water settled quickly back into unbroken billows that reflected the sunlight, passing ships, islands, distorting them as in the mirrors of a funfair.

It was a cold journey, a Cold Journey to the South as I wrote in my photblog, but very beautiful, uplifting.

I could write more, but I think I’ll stop there. This blog has become somewhat irregular, but I shall continue with it from time to time. If you want a more frequent update on my doings, gentle reader, look at my photoblog (mentioned above) or at my more-or-less weekly musing on the art and discipline of writing At the Quill. You are also welcome to visit my new home page where I’m trying to tie together and link up my disparate Internet personas. The home page addres is www.thesupercargo.com

Välkommen!

Keiller’s Park and Ramberg

2008-10-28T16:34:00.003+01:00

My local park, just down the street, is a place of trees, rocks, wind and colour. I see it daily from my window, and in this season, daily see the colours shift and change. The sunlight and the wind, but also the seasons. Autumn is advancing.

The park surrounds our local not-quite-a-mountain that is crowned by a flagstaff with halyards that snap and slap in the wind. On flag days and high days, the flagstaff bends and sings as our blue and yellow flag flies out in the wind.

The not-quite-a-mountain is Ramberg. Berg as in mountain, Ram as in ramn or ravn, the Old Norse name for raven. Either because the berg was once a home for ravens or because it looks raven-black against the sky. Or, I suppose, both.

I go with the raven-black myself, since Ramberg can still look very black against the rising autumn sun, but I’ve never yet seen a raven there. (Though I’m told they used to be common on the southern side of the mountain and still sometimes do build nests.)

Why “not-quite-a-mountain”? Well, I know the definition of “mountain” is very subjective, but the highest point is only 87 metres above sea level. That doesn’t seem really high enough. On the other hand, there are no other peaks higher than that close by, and it’s so rocky and some parts of it are so sheer it gives the impression of being higher than it is.

Ramberg has been here a while, long enough to have a Viking name. The park, though, that’s just a hundred years old. We celebrated its birthday earlier in the month, which is when many of these photos were taken.

A hundred and two years ago the owner, James Keiller, presented Ramberg and the land around to the Gothenburg city council. His wish was for the land to be used in perpetuity as a park for the citizens of Gothenburg. It took a couple of years to get the park in order, but the grand opening was in October 1908, and that’s the anniversary we have just celebrated.

James Keiller was the son of Alexander Keiller, a Scottish immigrant to Gothenburg, who started an iron foundry here in the 1840s. By the end of the century, the foundry had grown into Götaverken, the largest of the shipyards in the city and briefly (early in the 20th century) the largest shipyard in the world.

The foundry started life on the south bank of the river, west of the old city centre, but the Keillers saw the potential in the marshy land on the opposite side of the river around Ramberg. They bought the land cheaply, drained it and built their shipyards. Later, secure in his wealth and property, James Keiller could play the role of liberal patron and donated the bits of land he couldn’t use on the rocky shoulders of the little mountain.

Ramberg has two peaks, the flagstaff peak with its wide views over city and the river out to the sea. The lower peak is called Ättestupen (roughly “the relative drop”) in the belief that it was from there the Vikings used to throw their elderly relatives. This is probably a 19th century invention. Probably. Hopefully.

Between the two peaks is the widest, flat shoulder on Ramberg where the park itself was laid. In fact, long before the Keillers appeared on the scene, housing and boat construction and the demand for firewood had denuded Ramberg of its trees. The local people’s practice of letting their cattle and sheep browse on the common land meant that no trees grew back. It wasn’t until the land was enclosed by private landlords that trees started to return.

In the 1850s another immigrant entrepreneur, Peter Dickson, gave money so a local school could buy trees to plant in the area that is now the park. After Keiller’s donation, this forested area was re-fashioned into an “English” park (though with Swedish “national romantic” elements). Most of the trees on the wild sides of Ramberg, though, the ones I admire daily from my window, they are self-seeded. Birch, beech pine and oak. As you see from these pictures, I was particularly taken by the oak trees when I went out, the day before the celebrations, to take a few pictures.

In the event, the celebrations lasted three days, and we had decent weather for at least one and a half of them.

On Friday at midday the celebrations kicked-off with speeches (among others, from David Keiller, descendant of James and Alexander), and the unveiling of a new sculpture for the park.

The sculptor calls them “The Three Graces” and they are supposed to call to mind the cranes that used to work in the harbour and the ship yards. At least a couple of the older people who were among the crowd at the unveiling prefer to think of them as workers from the shipyard, which is a fair interpretation. Personally, I think they look like giraffes.

There was a piper – bagpiper that is – (who had some problems starting and finishing his tunes) and a very serious looking drummer. A whole crowd of people from around about including kids from the local primary school who had been “doing a project” on the park and the Keillers.

The sun came out and, all in all, it was a nice day.

Celebrations continued the day after at the top of the hill

At 6 p.m. on Saturday 4th October the weather gods decided they were tired of holding back. The wind picked up and short but intense rain showers blew horizontally in our faces. There was to be a second opening ceremony. The previous midday’s affair was obviously too soft for real Gothenburgers.

So we waited, as the rain lashed us and the wind snapped the flag overhead, for Göran Johansson, to open the proceedings. The local (non-socialist) press like to describe Göran Johansson as “Gothenburg’s strong man”. As the leader of the Social Democrats on the city council, he’s run the city for years and is a canny politician.

He’s also a good public speaker (when he has a script). I’ve heard him a few times and his speech on this occasion was quite up to par. In particular he stressed the important contribution to Gothenburg made by immigrants throughout its history. (This is an important truth that at least one extreme right-wing political party are trying to fudge. The Sweden Democrats have called for Gothenburg to be “returned” to its natural 100% Swedish state. They may well get a toe-hold in the local council at the next election.)

Then Göran Johansson had to ad lib in response to some questions from the master of ceremonies, Harald Treutiger (a TV personality), and that didn’t work out quite as well. (Repetitive.)

The opening ceremony also involved Göran Johansson helping to rivet two pieces of iron together. In memory of the shipyards I think and in recognition of his own past as a metal worker. By then, it was nearly dark and a light show that had been set up on the mountain was starting up. Cold, wet and hungry, I decided the celebrations could get along without me, so I headed on home.

I missed the male voice choir of retired ship builders from Götaverken (though I think I caught some of them in my photos), I missed breakdancing by Octagon Crew, I missed Åsa Fång singing Piaf and someone else walking on fire. I missed the fireworks (well, I saw a corner of them from my window, but I’m sure they’d have been more dramatic from up on the hill.

I was happy to get indoors.

The next day it rained pretty much all the time. Coward that I am I stayed home in the warm. I did make coffee for my parents-in-law though, when they came by. They were both up on the hill for day three as they had been for days one and two. For both of them, but especially for Ulla, my mother-in-law, Keiller’s Park and Ramberg have an importance that goes beyond my mild curiosity and current pleasure. Ulla grew up in Rambergstan, the part of town closest to the west side of Ramberg, and went to primary school in Kvillestan, on the east side of the park, climbing the hill and walking through the park in both direction twice a day.

I don’t suppose any of the kids who go to Ramberg school now make the same journey. Their parents drive them, I expect. The park has a reputation for not being entirely safe. There was a murder committed here ten years ago (satanic, homophobic) and the reputation hangs over the park still.

A pity. There’s so much beauty here and so much variety.

If you liked these photos and want to see more, welcome to my photo site at Ipernity. Click here or on the photo below.

The Hollow Woman and a Three Legged Buddha

2008-07-22T14:41:00.003+02:00

An open air exhibition of modern sculpture at Pilane on Tjörn

At the risk of being permanently associated with open air sculptures, this blog and accompanying illustrations are all about a visit to the island of Tjörn [sounds like shurn], a drive of about an hour and half north of Gothenburg on the Bohus coast. Tjörn is both an island and its own municipal area (eller kommun på ren svenska). Like Borås – see my previous entry – Tjörn has been trying to promote itself as an attractive place to visit for the culturally minded tourist. In my opinion, they’ve made a better job of it.

Tjörn is the home of the Scandinavian watercolour museum, and has been cleverly building on the success of the museum for a number of years. This summer, for the second year, the island is playing host to an exhibition of modern sculpture at the iron-age grave fields at Pilane [PEE-lan-eh – sort of].

The large-in-a-small-scale landscape of the Swedish west coast is a beautiful setting for the pieces that have been chosen for exhibition, though it probably helped on the day of my visit that the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the clouds were fluffy, white and flying and the breeze was warm. The sculptures are distributed among the low stone circles and grass-overgrown settings of the graves, and there was a peaceful, timeless atmosphere that was only made more apparent by all the enigmatic faces of the black and grey sheep grazing the grass or chewing the cud all about the statues.

You walk and you look and most of all, you touch. The surfaces, especially of the stone sculptures invite your hand. Different stones, different finishes, different textures. The sun warmed slightly irregular flat surface inside the slit of Knut Wold’s “Pilane Sten”, for instance, feels exactly like living skin.

The most extreme example of a sculpture inviting human contact, though, is one I’ve been thinking of as “The Hollow Woman”, though I see from the Pilane Internet site that the sculptor, Marit Lyckander, calls it “Helt i VIII” (= Completely in VIII). Inside a stone boulder is a space. You can enter the boulder through a slit door (if you’re not too fat that is – I couldn’t get in). Inside you find a hollowed out shape into which you can put your arms, legs, breasts (it’s a woman, ok?) and face – there’s a slit to look out of. You become the body that has been freed from the stone.

Scattered around, up on the rocks and variously over the grazing land, these figures contemplate the scenery, one another, the visitors. Neither specifically men or women, rather both genders in one. Androgynous. Human. Thoughtful, bored, meditative, afraid, listening, despairing, amused, questioning. The faces and poses tell different stories depending on how you look at them. I thought of them as Silent Figures, but the sculptor (Hanneke Beaumont from the Netherlands) gives some of the figures names, “Ennui” is one, and others are just “Bronze #7”.

Over the rocks and juniper bushes, out of the corner of your eye, you see glimpses of a massive leg, or two. Or three. The largest of the sculptures at Pilane is the “Three-Legged Buddha” by Zhang Huan. Apparently, this was first exhibited last winter at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. I’ve seen Zhang Huan’s work before. He was included in the exhibition of modern Chinese Art at Louisiana in May 2007. I remember most the video sequence of him standing in a Tibetan river, repeatedly stamping the water with a giant stamp engraved with the Chinese character for “China”. This three-legged Buddha is a similar commentary on Chinese imperialism, cultural and otherwise. Shards of Buddhist statues collected and rearranged in an unnatural form. One foot rests on the Buddha’s head – for a Buddhist from south-east Asia that must be a blasphemy on a par with a drawing of Mohammed for a Moslem (though I can’t imagine any Buddhist trying to murder the artist in retaliation). Religion overthrown. And yet something remains – half buried, still the Buddha’s meditation is undisturbed.

When we got to Pilane on Saturday, (it was an outing for my wife and a friend, too), the car park was filling up, but at no point did the exhibition seem crowded. The sculptures are widely distributed, (though each is in line of sight of at least one other), so there is never a feeling of being crowded. Although I sometimes had to wait for people to get out of shot, if I chose I could easily take pictures that placed the sculptures in a wide, empty landscape.

Inevitably, I find myself drawing comparisons between the efforts to showcase modern sculpture at Tjörn and in Borås. Both are displaying monumental sculpture in open-air settings, one in the countryside, one in a town. Both have abstract and representational sculptures, both have sculptures in stone and bronze. Both have a really big statue as a feature.

So what’s to choose between them? Borås is free, but you have to make a paid phone call for each statue to get more information; Tjörn’s exhibition costs 40 Swedish crowns a head, but you get a little illustrated booklet (in Swedish), to take with you. Tjörn’s exhibition has a very nicely made Internet site, text in Swedish, with lots of pictures; Borås has an internet site, but it’s not very extensive and a bit boring. On the other hand, the recorded messages on the telephone for the Borås exhibition give some of the artists an opportunity to talk about their work, which is a nice touch.

No, the real difference it seems to me is that the Borås exhibition is just nowhere near as visitor friendly as the exhibition at Tjörn. I paid 40 crowns, but I saw all the sculpture at Pilane. In Borås, I saw less than half of the sculptures, and even though I didn’t have to pay anything, I still felt cheated!

Pinocchio in Borås

2008-07-11T15:48:00.006+02:00

[Pronunciation note: Borås. Say ‘bore-awe’ and put an ‘s’ sound on the end.]

Borås is a little town. (The people of Borås would probably want me to call it a city. They insist that the proper name is Borås Stad; they passed a resolution in the council making it so. But calling a place a “city” in the local by-laws doesn’t actually make it one.)

So, Borås is a small place that nowadays is little more than a dormitory town for Gothenburg. Once it was an important textile centre; weaving and spinning cloth for the Swedish market and for export, but that was then. Today, only the shell remains. Some of the local schools offer tailoring and design programmes, some Swedish textile and clothing designers are based here, there are a number of clothing chains and mail-order clothing stores with warehouses and offices in and around Borås. Borås folk, especially women, seem more fashion conscious that the average Swede, and (for Swedes) remarkably well-dressed. And there is a museum reflecting the glories of the past.

Other than that …

During the summer now, Borås is hosting an exhibition of modern sculpture. Exactly why they are doing this is a bit of a mystery, but it seems to have to do with the town’s curious decision to buy a nine metre high painted bronze statue of Pinocchio by the American pop-artist Jim Dine.

Pinocchio, yes. The wooden puppet, who comes alive, whose nose grows longer for every lie he tells, who goes on a journey to find out how to become a real boy. Him. This spring the story has been a gift to Swedish newspaper columnists (and bloggers) with nothing else top write about. Trying to find a connection, I mean. Does the Pinocchio story have a particular appeal to the people of Borås? Are they rather wooden? Thick as two short planks? Are they, like the wooden puppet, searching for a place in the world where they will be taken seriously as real people? Are their noses particularly long? If not, does that mean they tell fewer lies than other Swedes? How likely is that, given that the town’s previous anthropomorphic personification was a knallehandlare, a peddler?

Some Swedish journalists and bloggers have compared the Pinocchio statue to the Eiffel Tower. Nobody knew what good the Tower would do when it was built, but look, more than 100 years on it is a world renowned symbol for Paris! OK. But Paris was still Paris before the Tower (capital of France, major European city, place of trade industry and culture ...) With or without Pinocchio, Borås is still, well, Borås.

There’s a Swedish gesture. If you’ve fooled someone, or witnessed someone fooled, and you want to draw attention to the fact, you can ‘make a long nose’. Put the tips of the fingers and thumb of your right hand together, touch the end of your nose with them and ostentatiously pull your hand out from your face, going “Nä-nä” the while.

I don’t like to think of myself as having a closed mind, and my regional bus pass had 24 hours left to run, so on Tuesday I decided to take myself off to Borås and see for myself the new attraction, and the rest of the sculpture exhibition.

If you are tempted to do the same, here’s a tip: Go on the Internet and print out the map of the town which has the sculptures marked. Go here. (The link should work and map should be available till the 21st September 2008.) Why? Because this is the only place you are going to get any help finding the sculptures. Borås is not a big town, and the sculptures are generally quite monumental (though none come up even to Pinocchio’s hips), but trust me, you can’t find them just by wandering around. That was what I tried to do.

Another interesting fact about Borås. The only tourists they expect are the ones who come to study at the technical college. It must be so: that’s where they have located the tourist information centre. Not at the bus station, not at the rail station, not in the town square, not near the town’s main hotel, not even near the town (“city”) hall, but across the road from the college. I found it, now, on an internet map. On Tuesday when I was in Borås, though, I asked several people, and got some friendly (and contradictory) directions, I never did find it.

(Oh, and a tip for the people in Borås, why not tell Eniro that you have a technical college? They don’t know - see right!)

The first sculpture I came across was near the train station. It was (is I suppose) called “Whirlwind”, and looked as though it had been made from several lengths of different coloured hosepipe. The light was very dull, so I didn’t take a picture, which I regret in retrospect. Nearby I found a metal sign which identified this as sculpture number 16. The metal sign also identified the sculptors (a pair in this case). And then there was a telephone number to call for more information about the sculpture.

A telephone number.

Well, this is the mobile age, and did have my cell-phone with me, but I wasn’t sure how much money was left on the card, and there was no indication how much the phone call would cost me.

Having carried out some investigative journalism (ahem) I can inform you, dear reader, that the price is “the price of a normal local telephone call”. (I got this information by phoning the people who organise the service, a company called "On Spot Story".) It’s a clever idea. Saves the museum, or whoever is organising the exhibition the cost of printing information, but it could so easily cost 10 or 20 crowns a call and be a method for the organisers to help finance their exhibition.

Hi! Borås people! It would intelligent to tell the public how much a call is going to cost. Not doing so sends the usual message when there’s no price tag on something you have in your shop window: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

So on I walked. This statue of a meditating head and shoulders rising out of the water of the town’s little river (Viskan) was the next sculpture I came across. Actually, this one’s been in Borås for four or five years, so I’m not sure whether it’s part of the exhibition or not. (I couldn’t find any metal signs.) But it’s a nice statue and someone had crowned it with a wreath of flowers (now a bit withered). I sat on the steps down to the river opposite the statue and as the sun obligingly broke through the clouds, I took some pictures.

Walking further along the river, I crossed over to the park on the other side when I saw this monumental stone quadrolith. (Well, it’s not a monolith, is it! There are four blocks of stone. What would you call it?)

It has a name – apparently it’s called “Dogon”. I don’t know why. (OK, now I know. I phoned the number and heard the sculptor explain that he was inspired by the masks of the Dogon people of Mali. I do actually see something of a similarity.) It was dull again, so my photos were dull too, but I’ve tried to brighten them up with some Photoshop tinkering. What do you think?

The next statue was a giant rabbit with blind eyes. Then there was a twisted yellow shape that looked plastic but turned out to be metal lacquered like a car. And then there was a corkscrew of metal tubing, square in cross-section which I found quite fascinating and which I think has the shape of an eye in either end. But maybe I’m just seeing things.

There were several more statues in the park along with the twisted eye, but as they were not monumental, not abstract and not ‘pop’, I assumed they weren’t part of the exhibition. I did like the two life-size children playing on a see-saw, though it crossed my mind to wonder whether such a statue would be acceptable nowadays. The children just pre-teen and are naked (or should that be nude?) Thinking about the recent political censorship of photos of nude (naked?) teenagers in Australia and the general hysteria over child pornography. See my other blog on Ipernity for more on this.

Eventually, I found my way to Pinocchio. He’s on a roundabout on the edge of the town centre, striding in towards the town. A local pizzeria has taken advantage of his presence to become the Pinocchio Pizzeria – complete with some much more cheerful representations of the Disney character. Because, frankly, Jim Dine’s sculpture doesn’t seem very cheerful. He doesn’t seem to have much character at all. Blank expression, little eyes, long nose. Well, more character than the Eiffel Tower, I suppose, but still. This little girl was playing about his feet with her brother, under the watchful eyes of their father. She seemed to be having fun – and to be oblivious to the giant metal monster towering over her.

I ended up seeing eight or nine sculptures in the exhibition, but the Internet (go here) lists 28 or so. So, again, if you are planning to visit the exhibition, print out the map in advance.

Oh, and a footnote to those phone-in recorded messages about the sculptures. They’re only worth calling if you understand spoken Swedish. Yes, there’s a message in English and German as well as Swedish, which tells you when to input the code number for more information about a given statue, but the information itself is only in Swedish. The exhibition organisers obviously don’t expect any visitors who are not Swedes. Way to go, guys. That’ll really put Borås on the international map!

Back … and Crowing

2008-07-04T19:49:00.004+02:00

After three years Observing Gothenburg, if at all, from back of beyond (that’s a place called Falköping), I moved home again last week. For a more developed account, see my blog at ipernity.com/supercargo.

Last Saturday, after days of dust and distress and lifting and lugging, my wife and I decided to take a day off just to celebrate my return. We went out into the countryside – for more on that, see below. But first, let me crow a little. This morning I had a picture published in our local paper!

The Opera ship

On Monday, one of the paper’s journalists repeated a frequent comment made by the guides on the sightseeing boats here in Gothenburg. The guides love to point out the new waterside opera house and say something like: “The design is supposed to be based on a boat, but I’ve been coming past here for four years and I still can’t see it. Perhaps you have a better imagination?” The journalist added his tupennyworth “Nej, tyvärr” (= no unfortunately).

Well, I see it every time I cross the bridge into town, so I thought I’d respond. I also thought I could point out that the view is from Hisingsbron, as you come from Hisingen. This is important (in a very parochial way) because some mainland Gothenburgers look down their noses at us Hising Island dwellers as not real Gothenburgers. (Hisingen houses about a quarter of the tax-paying population of the city. It also includes most of the Volvo plants – where upwards of 20,000 Gothenburgers work – the major container and oil ports, Gothenburg’s second airport and large areas of countryside. It’s also been lived in and on for several thousand years more than the city of Gothenburg has existed. More about that below.)

But the fight against local prejudice is long, and setbacks are many; Göteborgs-Posten removed my Hisingen references when they published.

Violence and Death on Hisingen

That could be a headline in GP. We Hisingers feel the local press unfairly highlights social problems with a Hisingen connection. If someone is murdered in Askim (posh mainland district), or if there’s a bank robbery in the centre of town, and they can connect at least one of the perpetrators to Hisingen, then that’s what they’ll do. Am I going on too much about this?

OK, what this heading actually refers to is Saturday’s walk and some of the pictures I took. We enjoyed the walk on Saturday so much, that we repeated a part of it yesterday evening, in order to sit on the rocks by the sea and paddle by the light of the setting sun. On the original walk, we’d seen masses of wild honeysuckle and wanted to smell it in all its glory, but even at 8.30 p.m. the sun was still too high and it wasn’t till we were walking back again that we began to notice the scent that would not come into full strength for an hour or more. It was a beautiful evening, even so, and the walk on Saturday also.

Yesterday it was really warm, over 25 degrees, and today as I write it must be about the same, with blue sky and the very occasional fluffy white cloud. But on Saturday the weather was still changeable. The walk was the Bronsålderssund stig (the Bronze Age Sound Path, where sound means a narrow inlet of water).

Bronze Age Settlements

Once upon a time, about 5,000 years ago, the whole of Scandinavia was lower relative to the level of the sea than it is now. Hisingen was not one large island, but many smaller islands. The first permanent inhabitants here were fisher folk and farmers, and they made their homes at the edge of the water. As the land rose, what were shallow bays and straits, drained and ultimately became rich farmland, while the stony meadows of the Neolithic and Bronze Age people were abandoned as too infertile.

The places they lived and worked became overgrown, or were used only to pasture sheep and goats. For centuries, the only signs of the earliest people were the cairns of stones they raised to cover their dead. These were on the higher ground, above the settlements, on land even the Bronze age people thought too infertile to farm. But the cairns stood out and as the land rose, they became even more prominent. Generations of sailors used them as markers to identify the coast and navigate the channels.

Then came the archaeologists, who opened the cairns (those that hadn’t long ago been plundered) and found cremated bones, earthenware pots, bone combs and bronze artefacts. They began to piece the story together.

The Bronsålderssund walk, meanders along the Bronze Age coast, visiting the sites of the settlements that have been discovered. Sometimes it clambers up to the cairns and stone settings on the tops of the hills, and furthest out on the island, it reaches the present sea coast, which is where we went paddling on Thursday. There’s not a lot of history to see. A few signs with brief information in Swedish (and briefer information in English). But the landscape is large on a small scale. Though the hills are not high, there’s a scramble to climb them, though the path itself is only about 4 km (1 mile), it winds about through trees and bushes, rocks and boulders, and gives a sense of great variety, complexity and distance. And it is easy to picture how it might have looked all those years ago, when the settlements were alive and the dead in the cairns were newly mourned.

A good day’s outing, in fine weather any time in the year. If you’re visiting Gothenburg and want to find out more go here! The path (my wife assures me) is clearly marked. Clearly, if you are not red-green colour-blind. If, like me, you have difficulty seeing red spots painted on lichen covered rocks, it’s a good idea to take someone with you who doesn’t have that problem. Or a dog.

The are more photos from the walk at my Ipernity site. Come and visit!

Well, it’s good to be back and I will try to keep up this blog with a new entry every few days from now on. For now, though, Hej då!

Gothenburg or Göteborg?

2007-07-05T09:02:00.000+02:00

A section of our local paper Göteborgs-Posten - or The Gothenburg Post - has recently been taken up by a debate on the name of the city. Gothenburg (Göteborg) is the only Swedish city which has an ‘international’ name which is noticeably different from the city’s name in Swedish. Malmö gets called Malmo or occasionally Malmoe, and Stockholm is Stockholm – though some Brits insist on pronouncing it as Shtockholm. On Flickr, I made a point of tagging all my photos with “Gothenburg” and “Göteborg”; since I moved to Ipernity, as a gesture to the site managers and other users, I’ve added the French “Gothembourg”.

The above is a picture of the Gothenburg skyline looking up river from the disused Eriksberg warf.

A while back now, the city council here took a decision to promote Göteborg as the official name for the city, and to ignore or play down Gothenburg. This was rather silly. Gothenburg and Göteborg (both with a variety of alternate spellings) have existed as names for the city since it was founded in 1621. In fact, the earliest written document, the city’s original charter (which was written in German), calls the city Gothenburg. Beyond this, nobody outside of Scandinavia who hasn’t also studied Swedish has much of a clue how to pronounce Göteborg. (It isn’t Gotebork!)

More sinisterly, the Swedish extreme right has been promoting the idea of a ‘return’ to a ‘Swedish Göteborg’, which of course, has only ever existed in their imaginations. While I don’t think there’s any collusion between the city council and the extremists, I do think the official decision to promote Göteborg over Gothenburg is a sign of the council’s ignorance of history. I also think it can only further the impression among Gothenburgers who don’t know much of their town’s history that the extremists have a point. They might think: Göteborg is and always has been a Swedish city – look at the name! But in truth Gothenburg/Göteborg has always been international.

Lars-Gunnar Andersson, who started the latest debate in the paper, is a Professor of Swedish at the University of Gothenburg (official international name: Göteborgs university). His bugbear is the ‘swenglish’ sentences created by forcing ‘Göteborg’ into English phrases where it doesn’t belong. Language is close to home for many people and his argument that ‘swenglish’ mixtures are ugly and irritating has drawn both enthusiastic supporters and angry calls for him to stop wasting newsprint.

Me, I agree with Professor Andersson, but I’m teacher of English as well as history, so I would, wouldn’t I? 'Göteborgs university' is a good example of what bugs me. Apart from the change in name, there’s an error of grammar as well. If we don’t call it the University of Gothenburg in English, the other option is Gothenburg University. Both words capitalised and no possessive because both words together are make the university’s name. But the Swedification imposed by replacing Gothenburg with Göteborg has gone further. In the Swedish name, Göteborgs universitet, Göteborgs is the possessive. The correct translation ought to be Göteborg’s university. (And I'd prefer Göteborg’s University). It’s a small error, to be sure, but it suggests to me that the people who run the university are not only ignorant of the history of their city; they don’t care much about foreign languages either.

Not great for an institute of higher learning.

And in the meantime the rain is still falling ...

Raindrops on the steel head of a post in the street.

The road to hell is paved with grey cobblestones

2007-06-16T23:14:00.001+02:00

The road to hell is paved with grey cobblestones, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

I'm really sorry to feel I have to do this, but I've been reading with mounting concern the forums, news posts and blogs about Flickr and their owner behaving like Yahooligans. This coincides with my reaching a 200 pic 'amateur' limit. I was just about to upgrade to a 'pro' account ... but that's on hold.

Delays southbound on the northern line

2007-05-31T21:20:00.000+02:00

Three trains delayed at Herrljunga, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Last Friday, my usual journey home to Gothenburg from Falshopping was prolonged by hours. The 16.50 train arrived on time and we swooshed off with hearts high for the big city, but at Herrljunga everything stopped. A goods train, further down the line between us and Gothenburg had shed its load and derailed and was blocking both tracks south of Alingsås. Could they clear it in time for us to continue? Would we have to switch to busses? Would they be able to arrange busses at such short notice? Apparently there were trains backed up at all the stations ahead of us to Alingsås as well. While we waited, two X2000s - the express trains that run between GBG and Stockholm also arrived and stood.

Coffee and a bun at 1 crown a piece from the cafeteria car, a stroll along the platform (at least it wasn't raining though it looked threatening), a report home by mobile phone. And then? I hadn't got a book or a paper with me, but I did have my camera. So ...

Waiting on the platform: at least one person had a book.

After more than an hour's wait, there was an announcement that there would be a train departing from platform one to take anyone who wanted down to Gothenburg by way of Borås. Two sides of a triangle. Along with everyone else from the three trains who was still hanging around, I hurried down into the subway to get across to the right platform. There was no panic exactly, but a bunch of boys and young men did push forward and barge their way through the crowd in the tunnel to swarm up the steps to platform one.

When we all got up on the platform though, it turned out the train hadn't come in yet. I overheard a railway employee say there must be over a thousand people on the platform, and there wouldn't be room enough for everyone on the train. I think she was exaggerating.

As the train hadn't come in, some teenage boys started jumping down onto the tracks and running along as if they could reach the train and board it before it arrived. Some people (including the guard I'd overheard) shouted at them, but they took no notice. Eventually the train showed up, but when the driver saw the kids on the track he put on the breaks and waited. Now more people were shouting at the boys and they climbed back on to the platform. (Reluctantly it seemed, and without the least sign of embarrassment, still acting as if they hadn't heard the shouting.) Then the train came in and the doors opened.

Of course it stopped so I was equidistant between two doors, which meant I was one of the last aboard, still, I found a seat without difficulty. Some people in our carriage did end up standing, but not many. I killed time to Borås by reading a newspaper I found and solving the sudoku. Not the greatest of challenges, mind you. Then we sat at Borås station for what seemed like a hell of a time. I sent a long and involved text message to a friend. And finally set off of Göteborg, whereupon I fell asleep and think I must have slept with my mouth open since it tasted terrible when I opened my bleary eyes to find us rolling in to GBG at about 9 p.m. Three hours delay and then a half hour on top to get home.

I saw film of the derailment on the news the following day. The damage to the rails was worse than expected and they were to have been working on them all this week. Still, delays on the line haven’t been so bad since Friday. I travelled up from Gothenburg on Sunday evening and arrived in FLKPNG only 10 minutes late.

Yes, I know. But seemed more interesting this way up.

You can see more of my photos by going to my Flickr page where I go under the name of Gothenburg Observer

More News

2007-05-23T21:59:00.001+02:00

More News, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Saturday's paper carried an amusing article on the lessons about democracy to be learned from the Eurovision Song Contest. Sunday's paper headlined the arrival in London of the world-famous-in-Gothenburg reconstructed East Indiaman Götheborg.

Warships and Runners and Songs in the Rain

2007-05-17T16:17:00.000+02:00

Saturday 12th May was all go in Gothenburg. Sometimes weeks pass and nothing much seems to happens, and then you get a day like this.

NATO ships in Gothenburg harbour with Ramberget in the background, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Warships!
First off, NATO is conducting a naval exercise off the coast this week, and most of last week the fleet was in port here (on a good-will visit and to bunker up I suppose). Apparently there were more than 43 warships involved, including the British navy's HMS Ark Royal. Only the lighter ships with shallower drafts got all the way up the river to anchor in the old Free Port area just opposite the opera house. (The others, including the aircraft carrier, stayed out at the deep water container port at the mouth of the river). But the smaller ones were quite big enough: grey, prickly looking, faintly menacing and clearly observable from the high road and bicycle bridge that links the city with Hisingen. I saw them from the tram window as I came home on Friday and decided I had to go out and take pictures.

Of course, the visit did not go unnoticed. There is a song by one of Gothenburg's most beloved sons, Evert Taube, which describes the effect a British naval visit had on Gothenburg's female population once upon a time:

The English fleet has been sighted off Vinga,
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
A thousand little sailors that we're going to conquer
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

But that was then. Today (whatever the private feelings of the younger ladies of Gothenburg) the visit was not exactly celebrated. There were a number of protest actions and meetings during the week and over the weekend. On Saturday there was big demonstration (reportedly up towards 3000 people) that started off in town at midday and ended up at the Free Port at two. I had thought to document that as well, but domestic chores (Saturday is laundry day) interfered.

Runners!

By the time I got out, the protest was over and instead the roads were cleared for the next big event of the day, the Götevarvet, the annual Gothenburg half marathon, which was being run from 3 p.m. The name Götevarvet (or GöteVarvet), is a pun in Swedish: 'varv' means a movement in a circle (one revolution), and the race is run in a circle around the city and around the river. But 'varv' also means a shipyard (compare 'wharf' in English, which comes from the same root, even if it doesn't mean the same thing). Gothenburg used to be an important city for shipbuilding, and though the yards are almost all closed nowadays, their memory lingers on, and the route of the race takes the runners past most of the old yards.

So, as I was out for the ships, I decided to snap the race as well. That was when I discovered I had left the memory chip from my camera at home. I could only take 15 pictures on the camera's built in memory. So there was a lot of snapping and then scuttling off to shady spots where I could check the quality of the pictures and erase the ones I didn't want. The shade was necessary because the sun was out and the display screen on the back of the camera is difficult to see in strong sunlight.

It's always fascinating to watch other people exerting themselves, don't you think? I don't run myself (two knee joints in less than mint condition), but I don't begrudge other people the pain they seem to delight putting themselves through, and in public too!

Incidentally, Götevarvet is sponsored by a certain sports shoe manufacturer and so the route of the race is marked on the road by a line which imitates the sponsors' company logo. This involves three times as much paint as necessary, so I do hope the sponsorship covers more than just the cost of the extra paint. And that the paint is environmentally friendly.

Songs!
And still the excitement continued because on Saturday evening it was time for the Eurovision Song Contest. A. and I were invited home to a friend for this most Swedish of occasions. No, seriously! A meal, a bottle of wine, and snacks in front of the telly as we listened to one god-awful banality after another. Five days later, writing this, I can't remember a single melody - probably just as well for my peace of mind - though I do recall some of the staging. So we listened all the way through and commented with increasing volume on the quality of one song after another, and the consensus of the party was that Sweden's entry was the best. (It seemed most diplomatic for me to go along with this at the time.) And then we voted.

Oh yes, I spent actual money phoning in my votes for the Ukraine (the only people who seemed to take the whole thing in the right spirit) and Bulgaria. I think I may also have voted for Hungary - was it a blues number? Then the votes from the different countries started to be announced. Our Swedish company became progressively more and more subdued as nobody (but Norway and Denmark and a grudging Finland) gave them any votes at all. My suggestion that Sweden grant independence to Jämtland and Skåne to ensure at least the possibility of some votes from them, did not go down well. Sometime around the middle of the voting, our hostess nodded off.

Rain!
So we crept off just after midnight and discovered it was raining. In fact, it stared raining hard as we left, so we sheltered in a doorway at which point it started really chucking it down. Our desperate phone calls for a taxi were met by engaged tones, and attempts to flag taxis down simply involved getting wet and wetter, and being ignored. It seemed the taxi drivers were all in a collective sulk about the Eurovision result. Or, I suppose, they might have just had more business to handle that evening. Once a taxi did stop, but we got beaten to it by four other people who emerged from nowhere and four different directions, wrenched the doors open and flung themselves in while we were still dithering in our shelter. We got home eventually at about 3 on Sunday morning.

"Well, at least when people start talking about the Song Contest at work, this year you'll be able to join in," said A. But you know what? No one mentioned it.

Sunday's paper, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Above is a collage of pages from Sunday's Göteborgs-Posten, our daily paper. So much happened on Saturday. Anti-clockwise from the top right corner: People protested against the NATO visit; ran the Göteborgsvarvet; saw the Swedish national ice hockey team lose to Canada; saw the Swedish hope for the Eurovision Song Contest go down in flames (18th of 24); saw Serbia's entry win and final (middle picture) were reminded that the East Indiaman Götheborg is on her way home and due to stop off in London next week. There wasn't room for everything in the blog!

The Snail

2007-05-13T13:58:00.000+02:00

Morning Snail Macro, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

On my way in to school the last week I have noticed the garden snails on the pavement and bicycle paths, and been charmed. On Thursday, I took the camera with me and tried out the macro. Of course, on this one day of the week the sun was shining brightly and it had been a cold night, so mostly the snails seemed to have gone into hiding. I did find this one, though, making its way across the bicycle path, oblivious to danger. I watched it and took some pictures and maybe saved it from being crushed, that morning at least.

My biology teacher colleagues were not impressed by these photos, but did regard my having taken them at all as a sign of my coming over to the natural sciences from the pointless arts.

Well, if it makes some people happy ...

The snail made me think of Bunyan's poem.

The Snail
She goes but softly, but she goeth sure,
She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do.
Her journey's shorter, so she may endure
Better than they which do much farther go.
She makes no noise, but stilly seizeth on
The flower or herb appointed for her food,
The which she quietly doth feed upon
While others range and glare, but find no good.
And though she doth but very softly go,
However, 'tis not fast nor slow, but sure;
And certainly they that do travel so,
The prize they do aim at they do procure.

That's the poem as I remembered it. Of course, this is Bunyan here, the author of Pilgrims Progress, so I shouldn't have been so surprised to find that the above - the bit that gets anthologised - is only half the poem. The rest goes like this:

Comparison.
Although they seem not much to stir, less go,
For Christ that hunger, or from wrath that flee,
Yet what they seek for quickly they come to,
Though it doth seem the farthest off to be.
One act of faith doth bring them to that flower
They so long for, that they may eat and live,
Which, to attain, is not in others power,
Though for it a king's ransom they would give.
Then let none faint, nor be at all dismayed
That life by Christ do seek, they shall not fail
To have it; let them nothing be afraid;
The herb and flower are eaten by the snail.

The sun through dew
On the same morning, I took this picture of the sun through the heavy dew on the grass by the side of my way. I tried to take it as closely into the sun as possible, to get the sparkle. I thought it looked pretty.

Morning Dew on Grass, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Spring in April in Spring

2007-05-03T20:17:00.000+02:00

As I noted in my previous entry, I’ve still not got the hang of this blogging thing. I have actually thought several times of writing up a “What I did last weekend” entry, but it hasn’t got beyond the thinking stage. However, I do have a small collection of rather nice pictures that I’ve taken with the new camera, some of which I’d thought to use to illustrate my entries here, and it seems a pity to let them all go to waste. (Not that they are. If you want to see them, they are gracing my Flickr site)

So here we go: The month of April (and the tail of March) as observed in and around Gothenburg.

Lärjeån
The first really warm day of spring here was March 25th, a Sunday. Sundays I have to decamp to Falköping. My weekly commute. But it was such a fine day A. and I decided to enjoy it and take a walk along Lärjeån. This stream meanders down to join the Göta River just inland from the old city walls, but starts from Lake Mjörn, east beyond Lerum. It flows through a valley of its own, a little pearl of natural beauty winding between some of the toughest high-rise suburbs of north east Gothenburg. It’s a relatively small stream, but in the early spring, it can run very full. Now, on the 25th, it was fast flowing, but quite low.

However, all along the course of the stream was evidence of how high it had been and how much force the water had had. Tangled branches and broken trunks, twisted straw and rushes and all the other detritus you would expect in the way of torn plastic sheeting, aluminium food containers, polystyrene packaging, wire, glass and planking.
The warning signs the council had put up about the path being unsafe were still in evidence, but we decided to walk along the stream anyway. It was only difficult to pass in one place where a footbridge had been twisted off its foundations and half upended. Otherwise, the walk went well and the dry light umber colours of the plants waiting for the spring, and grand-in-miniature, rolling shape of the landscape made the whole trip very enjoyable. That and the sun. It was like a warm summer’s evening – at three in the afternoon. For the whole length of the valley, the vegetation was pregnant. A. quoted Karin Boye to me:

Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister.
Varför skulle annars våren tveka?
Varför skulle all vår heta längtan
bindas i det frusna bitterbleka?
Höljet var ju knoppen hela vintern.
Vad är det för nytt, som tär och spränger?
Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister,
ont för det som växer
och det som stänger.

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking.
Why else would the springtime falter?
Why would all our ardent longing
bind itself in frozen, bitter pallor?
After all, the bud was covered all the winter.
What new thing is it that bursts and wears?
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking,
hurts for that which grows
and that which bars.

(The translation is by David McDuff. This link will take you to the publisher’s page for his translation of Karin Boye’s collected works, and this link will take you to a selection on the Internet at the Karin Boye society.)

The only signs we saw of spring having broken out were the catkins on the alders and three small yellow flowers that had obviously escaped from someone’s garden.

April Frogs Day
I decided to name the 1st of April this year as April Frogs Day. Walking in Hisings Park, around Slätta Pond, we saw dozens if not hundreds. There were so many A. and I couldn’t understand how the ducks were not gobbling them up, but they weren’t. Perhaps they had other things on their minds, or perhaps they were just too happy to bask in the sun.

Sunday 1st April was another warm day, and the first day of my weeklong Easter holiday. Glorious!

After that, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I walked with A. into the city centre every morning, and while she went off to work I took my camera around some of my favourite city centre streets, and along by the river.

I snapped this picture of a ghost house where the Victorian hotel (most recently called Hotel Opera) had just been demolished.

(I wonder about ‘Victorian’: in Sweden shouldn’t that be Oscarian after the two Kings Oscar that ruled the country then?)

Easter
The weather, which had started out so fine, grew cold and colder towards the end of the week. Come Easter Saturday, the day Swedes really celebrate Easter, it was very changeable. In fact, it cycled through sunny-but-with-a-cold-wind, cloudy, rain, sleet, back to sun again for a dramatic looking but very calm sunset. We celebrated with A’s family out by the sea near Lilleby, and drank snaps and ate sill (pickled herring) and all the other traditional food, and sang snaps songs. (To the distress of Victor, my 4 year-old godson who doesn’t seem to enjoy the idea – or perhaps the fact – of his elders and betters singing happily out of tune with one another. I can’t imagine why.)

All good things come to an end, and Monday 9th saw me off to Falköping again for another week of toad-work. But I was home again on the 14th, just in time to document our housing condominium’s Spring Cleaning (and post-SC celebration).

Those who walk away ...
On the 24th I took the opportunity to walk through Keilers’s Park and up to the top of Ramberget, following the development of spring (and trying out the macro setting on the camera). I have decided I am unlikely ever to become a successful wildlife photographer. Unless, that it, I can persuade people to accept that pictures of animals and birds walking away or turning their backs on me are daring conceptual art, and not just the animals being camera shy or simply getting impatient. How about a new Flickr group: “The ones who walk away from Olympus”? (There is a literary reference there for someone to find!)

Only the ants didn’t seem to care.

It's all happening ...
And so we come up to date with our most recent weekend – a long one, thanks to the May Day holiday. (Which we actually celebrate on the 1st May and not on the first Monday after as in Britain, please note!) A. and I took a long weekend break and entrained down to Copenhagen. We wanted to visit the gallery of modern art at Louisiana. A fantastic day. A chilly wind off the sea, but in the lea and in the sun it was baking hot. Louisiana is a marvellous place, far larger than it looks from outside (because of all the subterranean galleries), but with space and grass and great views across the Belt (Öresund) towards Sweden: a perfect setting for a collection of monumental modern sculpture by the likes of Moore, Calder, Arp and Miró. And indoors, the Cindy Sherman retrospective (“30 Years of Staged Photography”) and a representative exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, “Made in China”. Despite all the people (and all the families with young children) it was spacious and didn’t feel crowded (except in the 20-25 minute long queues in the cafeteria). I asked, and was told I could photograph items in Louisiana’s permanent exhibition, but not in the special exhibitions. If you want to see Cindy Sherman’ work (and if you haven’t, you should) go to Louisiana before the 20th May (ha!) or here. And as for “Made in China”, that’ll be on till 5th August.

The day after, on Monday 30th, we left our bags at the station and visited the Zoo. I’m not a great zoo fan, but it was too good a photo op to waste. Besides, (and this is a good tip for anyone thinking of visiting Copenhagen), there’s really not a lot open on Mondays. I went through a brochure listing all the museums parks gardens and attractions in the Greater Copenhagen area, crossing off all that were shut on Monday 30th April, and believe me, the Zoo was one of the few that were left.

Home again on May Day, I was just too tired to go out and take political photos of the parades. There will be another May Day in another year.

Restarts and camera ramblings

2007-04-06T09:48:00.000+02:00

I don't have the hang of this blog thing. I have no desire to log on and express myself at every opportunity. When I post something, I want it to be just right. Well-considered. Appropriately illustrated. Nothing I'm going to squirm over in embarrassment for days after.

And the result is constipation - as you can see looking back here for a few entries. This is my first of the New Year and we're into April already.

So, a new leaf then? Not likely! I think this is just going to stumble on in the same vein. (Can you stumble in a vein? Vision of red blood cells tripping over the uneven cholesterol paving along the vena carva, tumbling over one another.) Stumble along anyway. But at least I'm picking it up again from time to time.

Of course one of the problems has been that during the weeks I'm not in Gothenburg to be an Observer. I have another existence (another life would be putting it too strongly) in a little town called Falköping to the northeast, on the Stokholm train line. Up until March I had no Internet connection from there which meant anything I wanted to do on the net or on Blogger was in competition with all the other things I wanted to do during my 48 hours of real life in Gothenburg. More than that, my pig-headed determination to stay in the 20th century (and a very empty wallet) was keeping me to my old Minolta SLR camera. Great pictures, but getting them developed was so slow or so expensive, and then getting them scanned so I could use them on the net ...

Of course I borrowed my wife's little digital camera and used it for some of the other illos here, but I can't keep doing that.

So now I have a new, digital camera of my very own. (See the thumbnail above!) An Olympus SP-55OUZ. An x18 optical zoom - more than the zoom on my old Minolta even with the zoom lense. A wide angle lense. Image stabilisation. All sorts of interesting settings (P, A, S and M as I'm used to on the manual setting for the Minolta) plus automatic. Plus some sort of light compensation software which allows it to take pics even in low light down to 1600 ASA (they claim - I've yet to test that). Of course, I'm buying it on the never-never, but isn't that what credit's for?

Here is one of my first pics with the camera; taken a month ago on March 4th.

Spring songbird 1, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

This bird was singing lustily and alone in a bush just down the hill from our flat. I used the zoom to get close and then cropped the picture and adjusted the colour in Photoshop. As you can see on one of the shots (below) the automatic focus decided the branch in front of the bird was more interesting and focused on that.

Spring songbird 2, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

These pics have been up on my Flickr site for a week now. When I first published them I added a comment that I wasn't sure what the bird was, but that I was sure it wasn't a robin. Well, the more I look at it, the more convinced I am that it is a robin. Rödhaka in Swedish. It's just I'm not used to seeing robins from this angle. (They should be sideways on and portly, preferably perched on the handle of a garden implement, and with snow or frost around. On a Christmas card.)

Well, that's my story anyway. Merry Spring!

Seasick

2006-10-11T15:32:00.000+02:00

In the newspaper the other day I read that DFDS is planning to close the ferry line it operates between Gothenburg and Newcastle. Out competed by cheap air tickets and the end of duty-free sales within the EU. I don’t know exactly how I feel about this. In one sense it’s sad news. There’s been a regular ferry link between Gothenburg and England for years. It has been interrupted for longer periods by war and for shorter periods by storm, it’s true, but the connection (to Newcastle, or Hull, or Harwich, or Felixstowe, or London) has carried people and goods across the North Sea in both directions for well over a century. On the other hand, the ferry route hasn’t always been operated by DFDS, and just because this Danish company has decided to drop the route, doesn’t mean some other enterprising company, perhaps Swedish, perhaps Gothenburgian, might not try their luck. (Should that be Gothenburgundian, I wonder?)

It was Svenska Lloyd who brought Kathleen Nott to Gothenburg in the 1960s, on her way to research her hatchet job on modern Sweden: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. I don’t know who brought Sidney Wood Cooper in the 1880s, but from what he writes (Rambles in Sweden, 1884) it seems to have been a packet steamer operated by an English company. Cooper makes it clear that he doesn’t like the English. At that time thousands of Scandinavian emigrants to the New World were travelling annually across the North Sea in the other direction, to Hull for transhipment onward from Liverpool. That irritated Mr Cooper too. He wished they could be transport by American ships directly to New York. He got his wish, at least in part, in 1915 with the inauguration of the Swedish-American Line. Six years later the Americans started closing the doors on unrestricted immigration, and in 1929 the Great Depression ended it altogether. (The Swedish-American Line carried on as a luxury cruise line until 1975.)

You have to reach back to the era of Napoleon and the French Revolution to find a North Sea crossing that was less regular and less reliable, though it was still there. In 1795 Mary Wollstonecraft, her baby daughter and her daughter’s French nurse, had to be put ashore in a rowing boat as the merchantman they were travelling with didn’t have time to stop in Gothenburg. And 150 years before that, Bulstrode Whitelocke’s little fleet made the same crossing.

That was a much more serious affair.

The little fleet of six ships which carried the embassy to Gothenburg met storm and dead calm, contrary winds and enemy action. The fleet consisted of three fighting ships, Whitelocke’s flagship, the Phoenix, and the Elizabeth, (both naval frigates), and a chartered privateer (name unknown). Beside these there were two chartered merchantmen, the Adventure and the Fortune, mostly carrying baggage provisions and horses, and a fast naval ketch that was supposed to be available for carrying urgent messages back to England.

They sailed from London on 6th November, 1653: “The wind being fair and a fresh gale … By the evening they had sailed as far as [wait for it!] the … Thames mouth.” At this speed, you understand a North Sea crossing was a serious undertaking. And in November, too. No joke.

On the night of 8th, “the frigates were fain [forced] to tow the baggage ships, whose slow sailing much hindered the voyage. The wind blew high and the night was very tempestuous … By the breaking in sunder of the great cable by which [the Phoenix] towed the Adventure, so terrible a crack and noise was made that it awakened all that were asleep with affrightment, and endangered the ship. … Most of Whitelocke’s men were very seasick, only himself and three or four more held well; the ketch was lost, or ran home for fear of the weather.” Except where he is reporting speech, Whitelocke refers to himself in the third person throughout his Journal.

“November 10th: The wind continued all night full against Whitelocke’s course … the ships rolling and tossing very much, and were in great danger … Towards break of day the wind slackened; all the ships were near together, but advanced little or nothing in their course … The wind in twelve hours came about in almost all the points of the compass; it continued most of all against them. … Having thus traversed up and down the wide and rough seas, about four o’clock this afternoon the wind came to the south-east and blew a fresh gale fair for their course … and from four in the afternoon till eight at night the wind blew large and fair, and they … began to come somewhat near to the Continent, towards the coast of Denmark.”

“November 12th: Toward noon the wind came about more to the north-west … The wind was so violently high, and those northern seas so exceeding rough and breaking, that much water came into the ships …”

“November 13th: About eight in the morning, by sounding, they found themselves in great danger; Whitelocke’s ship … made foul water by striking as she passed over the Riff, which is a long bank of sand coming from Jutland in Denmark into the main sea. … about this place the last year, a gallant English frigate was cast away, and her men lost. …”

“November 14th: … Elizabeth fell in chase of a Dutch ship which she could not master till she had shot down one of the Hollander’s sails.” The Netherlands and the English were currently at war, and Whitelocke’s fleet had been earlier shadowed by a Dutch man-of-war. “From her skipper they understood that the late great storm drove eighteen of the Dutch men-of-war on shore and split most of them, and that four thousand dead carcasses of their men floated to the Holland shore.”

Four thousand drowned sounds like an exaggeration. Wishful patriotism? To me that seems unlikely from Whitelocke. If eighteen ships were really lost, and all the crew on each were drowned, it would mean a complement of about 220 sailors on each ship. I suppose that’s possible.

“November 15th: … to the Pater Noster rocks, so called for that the dreadfulness of them puts the passengers in mind of saying their prayers; and surely that coast and country …” (He means the coast of Bohuslän, at that time a part of Norway, now Swedish.) “… being full of huge, tall, craggy, numberless company of rocks … and scarce anything else to be seen, yielded a prospect full enough of dread and terror. … The wind being fair and large, Whitelocke hastened by twelve o’clock at noon, blessed be God, in safety to the port of Gothenburg.”

The Pater Noster rocks are still there. There was a report recently in Göteborgs-Posten about the former Pater Noster Lighthouse, which is being renovated and refurbished by a club of enthusiasts. It is due to be reinstalled on the rocks and open for visitors next the summer. The duties the lighthouse used to perform have been superseded by GPS.

I've been trying to remember when I first arrived in Gothenburg myself, but I can't. The earliest arrival I remember was by boat (DFDS) from Harwich in 1985. I was coming to Sweden to work as a study-circle teacher and was on my way to a town on the other side of the country. There were 33 of us that year, recruited, by an organisation called Kursverksamheten, to work in various towns around Sweden. We had gathered for a 10-day induction course in Salisbury and were then bussed cross-country to Harwich.

After living 2 years in Finland, (home of the sauna), and six weeks in England, (sauna-less), I was delighted to see the ship advertising its bastu, which is the Swedish equivalent. As soon the ship had sailed, I collected my sponge bag and my towel and headed on down. The bastu was down in the keel of the ship, below the lowest car deck and deep below the waterline. I sat in the dimly lit steam room with one or two other bastunauts and sweated.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I wasn’t just sweating from the heat. There was something else as well. My stomach didn’t feel quite right. Perhaps I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me? I wrapped my towel around me and stepped out of the bastu into the ‘relax area’. There was a lavatory – a single cubicle – which was unoccupied. I shut myself inside and sat on the stool. Then I sat on the floor with my chin over the bowl. Then I changed back. Neither position felt quite right. My head was pulsing and my stomach was churning and I was in sweat that was getting colder and more clammy by the minute. What was wrong with me?

After quite a while (during which several people came and tried the door, knocked, hammered, and called out in rising irritation in Finnish or Swedish), I decided that where I really wanted to be was on deck. I opened the door, ignored the baleful, towel-draped queue and reached the changing room where my clothes were hanging. I got dressed as quickly as I could and staggered off through miles of corridors and up a mountain-side of steps until I reached fresh air. Up there, I realised at last what was wrong with me. At that point, I don’t think I’d ever been seasick before in my life.

I hung over the railings snatching lungfuls of damp, salt air, swallowing and trying to fix my eyes on the horizon, but I kept losing it. After a while, I found my way back indoors and to another lavatory where I was royally sick. I hauled myself out again to the air and back again to the toilet several times. In the mirror over the hand basin, my face looked as white as the basin. There was one fixed idea in my head now – I wanted this to stop. I wondered if air-sea rescue was an option, decided it probably wasn’t and dragged myself off to the reception desk where I begged for sympathy and something, anything, that would make me feel better.

The receptionist eyed me up and down and seemed to be judging the likelihood of me throwing up over her counter. I backed off a little, which seemed to be the right thing to do. She rummaged under the desk and handed over a tablet with the air of one who’d seen this – and worse – and wasn’t about to feel very sorry for me. She reminded me that I ought to have taken a travel sickness pill before boarding, and I think I promised faithfully never no more to go up another gangplank without having taken a handful, cross my heart and hope, an it please God, not to feel like this soon and never to feel like this again.

I sat on the companionway steps and hugged the banisters as I waited for the pill to take effect – which it did, after about an hour and a half. Then I went off to bed.

Anyone who criticises modern technology and medical science and has a hankering back to the good old days needs to think about this: Would you be prepared to spend days in a sailing ship, the wind blowing “high and … very tempestuous, … the ships rolling and tossing very much”, sick as a dog, without pills or a flush toilet?

I have my doubts.

The detritus of democracy or post-election blues

2006-09-21T13:59:00.000+02:00

Götaplatsen election detrius, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Well, now it's all over, but on the 17th September Sweden went to the polls to elect a new Riksdag (National Parliament) as well as all the Regional and Municipal Councils. The election was actually quite exciting, even though (as usual) I found it difficult to see much to choose between the political parties. The official pollsters tell us there was an 80.4% turn out, which is slightly up on the previous election 4 years ago (80.1%), which is good, but still means that 19.6% who had the right to vote, chose not to exercise it. Only two of the parties, the Social Democrats (Socialist) and the Moderates (Conservative) polled more than that, so the Sofa Party is still the third largest political group in Sweden.

As a long-time resident in Sweden, but without Swedish citizenship, I got to vote in the regional and local election, but not the national one. I can live with that. At local level, at least, politics has a more practical cast. It's also much easier to vote for a person at local or even regional level. Although the electoral system in Sweden is proportional, and so you cast your vote for a party list, there is the possibility to choose a particular candidate on a party list. You do this by putting a cross in the box against the name of your favourite. It's called "crossing for" (kryssa för). Some of the candidates who were low down on their party's lists, carried out personal campaigns to try to get themselves elected. A few managed. In Gothenburg, for example, the Christian Democrat, Annelie Enochson managed to get herself elected to the Riksdag over the head of her party colleague, Per Landgren (who lost his seat).

On a national level, too, the election seems largely to have been a matter of personalities. A lot of people voted against the Social Democrats as a protest against the party leader (and Prime Minister), Göran Persson. Persson has been seen increasingly as smug, self-satisfied, overbearing, presidential, patronising, distanced from the concerns of many people, a bully and a bore. Persson has now resigned as party leader.

On the other hand, the Moderates (who have been marketing themselves as the "new" Moderates - I wonder where they got that idea), seem to have attracted a lot of votes thanks to their leader, the dog-eyed Fredrik Reinfeldt. Reinfeldt will now take over as Prime Minister at the head of a coalition government of the right.

The other thing that almost certainly attracted votes from the left to the right was the right-wing Alliance group of parties united front, and their talking up employment as an issue. It's still baffling that the Social Democrats spent so long telling us how low the unemployment figures are and how this wasn't an issue they needed to worry about.

Alliance election cottages, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

One feature of Swedish elections which is very different from elections in England is the election cottages. Little villages of cottages or garden sheds spring up in various strategic spots. In central Gothenburg, this election, the best place to see the variety of cottages has been by walking from Brunsparken, near the centre of the city, up past Kungsportsplatsen along the Avenue to Götaplatsen, outside the Art Museum. The cottages are usually bought from garden suppliers or builder's merchants and really are garden sheds or Wendy houses. During the campaign, the parties sell lottery tickets and once the election has taken place the cottages are lotted out and quickly disappear into people's back gardens.

Feminist Initiative's cottage at Brunsparken, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Sometimes, of course, one party or another will try to stand out a little from the crowd by doing something different in the way of a cottage. This year, the new feminist party, Feminist Initiative ("Fi" for short) has had the most remarkable utilitarian box shaped, lilac cottage. I have also seen the Greens (Miljöpartiet) use a greenhouse. I should think that was a bit hot.

Fliers mixed with commercial ads on a poster pillar on The Avenue. From the top down I see a personal campaign for a Folk Party candidate, Left Party fliers, and fliers for two Feminist Initiative candidates. , originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

It seemed to me, this election, that the established right-wing parties didn't bother too much with fly posting, they obviously had money to invest in commercial posters (of which there were a good many). Both the Left Party and the Social Democrats stuck more to tradition as far as I could see. Traditionally (or at least for as long as I can remember), the parties are allowed to attach posters to sheets of hardboard and stake these out in various places - usually alongside roads - or fix them to lamp-posts. Traditionally, these posters are also regarded as fair game for defacement, though some destruction does seem to have been taken to an extreme.

Defaced Severige demokrat poster, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

On the 16th September, I did the walk from Brunsparken to Götaplatsen, taking pictures on the way. When I got to the square in front of the Art Museum, the Social Democrats were packing up after their big, final rally. Later that evening the square would be the site of a street party organised (without permission) by the anarchist group which calls it self "The Invisible Party" (Osynliga partiet). According to the local paper, quoting the police, the street party went off without trouble and the 200 or so youngsters who took part had dispersed by midnight.

Hooded statues outside Art Museum, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Before then, I walked around the square and realised that many of the statues that decorate the space had their heads hooded with black cloth. I couldn't work out why this was, and I've not seen any explanation. If it hadn't been so close to the election, I'd have thought it a university student prank. As it is, it seemed like it could be anything from an installation to a protest about the election. Were the statues having their eyes hidden from the perfidy of the political process? Were they imitating prisoners at Guantanamo (and so protesting the Swedish government's perceived pro-American, pro-Israeli stance)? Were they hooded to suggest they were hiding their identities in a demand for greater individual freedom? Or were they hooded in black like prisoners before a firing squad to show that culture would be destroyed by the next government - of whatever colour?

Any thoughts?

Hooded Poseidon at Götaplatsen, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Lebanon déjà vu

2006-08-25T12:00:00.000+02:00

Over the summer, since I started this project, I’ve mentioned what the newspapers are reporting briefly if at all. Actually I started recording newspaper headlines for each day in my diary, thinking there would be items that might spark off an idea or provide the basis for an entry here. I gave up on that after a couple of weeks, partly because copying out headlines was just too much like writing lines at school, but mostly because pretty much everything else I was doing was more interesting or more inspiring.

Pretty much everything else, but not quite. For example, the Götheborg – the replica East Indiaman that was built here (and which I’ve been able to visit at various stages of her construction) finally reached Canton, after a voyage of ten months or so. That would have been a good topic to write about, but it coincided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it seemed frivolous to be paying attention to the one while ignoring the other. And I have ignored the other – or I’ve tried to, writing this. I get a sick feeling thinking about what is going on in Lebanon. Partly, that’s déjà vu.

Once upon a time, in the spring of 1982 when I was busy qualifying as a teacher, it was really difficult to find work in England. At that time newly hatched teachers were two a penny, at least it seemed that way. Most of my fellow graduates were getting turned down from jobs right and left. Two of my flatmates, who were determined to get work and focused on competing with one another, managed to collect rejections from over 100 schools each. Even I managed to get turned down by over 40. English, history, sociology, religion, politics – expertise in these subjects was simply not in demand. The only one of my contemporaries who was able to get the job he wanted had gained his certification in as a teacher of maths, computer studies and sports.

My trump card was that I had also trained to teach English as a foreign language, and so after my fortieth rejection I started looking abroad. The second job I applied for, I got. I left England for a year and (the occasional summer school excepted) I’ve never worked there again.

But that first job foreign job, the one I applied for but didn’t get. It was in Beirut at a Quaker school.

At the time, I was a bit disappointed not even to be called for an interview. Then my second application was accepted and I was too busy to mope, getting myself organised to leave home and move to Bulgaria.

A little later in the year I found myself sitting in my flat in Sofia, my ear pressed to the shortwave radio as I tried to keep tuned to the BBC World Service reports from Israel’s first invasion. The school where I hadn’t got a job, along with the rest of Beirut was bombed and shelled and fought over and overrun by Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian regulars, and all the various irregular militias. The student and teaching body was dispersed. I don’t know what the casualties were, swallowed up in all the rest of that enormous misery. (And this para is a statement built on supposition and ignorance as I've not been able to find any more about what happened in Brummana. I doubt the school was unaffected, but they are obviously well re-established.)

Tucked away in Bulgaria, I followed the story on the BBC and in month-old copies of the only available English language newspaper, the Morning Star. I remember feeling both relieved and terribly frustrated. Relieved to be safe, of course, but frustrated that I wasn’t there where I might have been in the thick of something exciting, where I might have been able to do something noble and heroic. (In my defence, I was 24 and still a romantic and a pacifist. In all probability I’d just have been shit scared and desperate to get away.)

So, back to the summer of 2006, and here we go again, only this time I’m viewing the same thing through the different distortion of the Göteborgs-Posten and Sveriges Radio. (OK, also the BBC’s Internet service.)

***

I had gone on here to write a whole lot more about immigrants to Sweden and Gothenburg, and about how the Swedish reports from the Lebanon started out referring to all the Swedes caught up in the fighting. Many were people who had sought refuge in Sweden during the previous troubles, or their children. There was a deliberate attempt to compare the situation (and more particularly the behaviour of the Swedish Foreign Office) with events following on from the tsunami in South-east Asia a year and a half ago. However, I realised I was just getting boring, so I decided to stop.

***

Putting this together before publishing it, I came across the blogs maintained by Reem and dedicated to the present situation in Lebanon. Reem and the other contributors to his blogs have more serious and moving things to say about the present situation. Go read them.

Reem in Lebanon

Some other personal stories

Lies, damned lies and statistics

2006-08-12T10:54:00.000+02:00

We have an election coming up in September, national and local. Last Sunday (6th August) our local paper, Göteborgs-Posten, chose to highlight the local election element by running four articles, one on each of the small parties which are not currently represented in the municipal council, but which all have a chance of getting in. One of these is the Sverigedemokraterna (Swedish Democrats or Sd for short). The Sd is the least poorly housetrained of the extreme rightwing parties. It seems they don’t like to be called “xenophobic” (främlingsfientligt) but prefer to describe themselves as nationalists. Well they would, wouldn’t they?

Defaced Severige demokrat poster, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

The Sd’s platform for the municipal elections includes the ambition “to recreate Gothenburg as a Swedish city” (Göteborg ska återskapas som en svensk stad). Gothenburg, of course, has never been a “Swedish” city in the sense these people mean. The very first city council in 1621 was composed of 12 individuals, of whom only 4 were Swedes – the others were German (3), Dutch (3) and Scots (2). The governor (burgrave – the king’s representative whom the council counselled) was first Jacob van Dijk (to 1631), then Daniel Lange. And those look like really Swedish names, don’t they?

As with all nationalists, the Sverigedemokraterna enjoy referencing history, but a history of their own re-writing. On their home page, they describe Gothenburg as being founded after the area was “fortunately incorporated into Sweden” (lyckats inbringas till Sverige). No mention of the repeated, bitter wars with Denmark to wrest from them control of the area. No, no, instead we are told that “our northern European brother-folk had reason to be grateful to us” (våra nordeuropeiska broderfolk hade skäl att vara tacksamma mot oss). Tell that to the Danes!

The Scots and the Dutch are recognised for having “helped to build the city’s canals” (skottar och holländare som hjälpte oss med bl a kanalbyggen), but the most important thing about these people is that they were “closely related to us and easily assimilated” (De var även genom sitt nära släktskap med oss lättassimilerade).

And there is the point. Modern immigrants, the Sd would have us believe, are neither closely related to us nor easily assimilated – so they must be got rid of. The foreign immigrant element in Gothenburg is “alarmingly large” (alarmerande stort), say the Sd. The number of people with foreign backgrounds in Gothenburg is 22.8%. (Antal personer med utländsk bakgrund i Göteborg: 22,8%).

I’m not sure where they got that figure from, grasped out of thin air I expect. The best source I can find, the Central Office for Statistics (Statistiska centralbyrån), says 20.1% of Gothenburg’s inhabitants were born outside Sweden. But the actual number is irrelevant. What the Sverigedemokraterna conveniently forget to mention is that the single largest group of “people with foreign backgrounds” in Sweden are, and always have been, members of “our northern European brother-folk”. That is, Norwegians, Danes and Finns, who accounted for something like 2 in 5 of all foreign nationals living in Sweden in 2005. Germans, Brits, Americans, Dutch and others whom Sd might consider “closely related to us and easily assimilated” represent another 1 in 5. In other words, that 22.8% is intended to make “the problem” look as alarming as possible. As ever, these scare tactics are not directed at anyone with their eye on the ball, they are intended to misdirect the unwary and sway people who are already half convinced.

Footnote: My spelling checker doesn’t like Sd – it suggests Sod.

Whatever the weather …

2006-08-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

Rain
(Monday 31st July) The weather broke today, rain sheeting down from a heavy grey sky (though still warm). I spent most of the morning and early afternoon writing and uploading my chronicle of the previous week, editing and uploading photos. It was also the last day of the month for Flickr; 20 megabytes a month and I had only used about 50% of my total, so I filled it up with pictures from my expedition in search of Gamla Älvsborg the previous weekend.

So last week I was a day or so behind with the week’s blog, and now it’s a Thursday afternoon and I’m four days behind. Oh well, I’ll only be doing this day-on-day for one more week. (Four more days now.) After that school’s back and I will have much less time to Observe Gothenburg – not least because I will be living, on and off, in Falköping during the weeks.

This is the butterfly whose wing beats are responsible for the weather we've been having all across Europe. No, really! originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Changeable
(Tuesday 1st August) The weather is changeable, so though it’s dry and sunny while I’m wandering through Trädgårdsföreneingen’s park, I can see the clouds piling up over there in the west. Trädgårdsföreningen translates (approximately) as “The Garden Association”, and is a park, laid out on what used to be part of the empty field of fire ground around the demolished city walls. It’s “in the English style”. I still have to find out a bit more of the history… (To visit Trädgårdsföreningen's home page - all in Swedish - click here.)

I’m meeting friends at Hotel Eggers. In view of the heat we want to meet out of doors, in view of the piling clouds we choose a table well under the awnings. Good choice. When the heavens open a bit later we are snug and dry and able to comfortably watch everyone out on the street sprinting for cover. Monica (who used to work at Eggers) keeps remembering tit-bits about the history of the hotel. Example: During the Second World War the hotel was the venue for a meeting between German and Norwegian officials prior to the official capitulation of Norway. Gothenburg was a convenient neutral ground. The Germans wanted the hotel to fly the Nazi flag, but the owner, Axel Eggers, wasn’t charmed by the idea. On the other hand, refusing these guests might be dangerous. His solution was to have all the hotel’s flagpoles sent away for repair and repainting. No flag poles – no flags. An elegant solution. (Of course, I suppose he’d have had to have done it at the last moment to avoid any German offers to bring their own flag staff.) (Click here to read Hotel Egger's own account of their history.)

Thunder
(Wednesday 2nd August) This afternoon I met two other friends for supper. We’d all, variously, been shopping and needed to contact one another to decide where to meet and when. I was at home when Lena called on her mobile – a flash of lighting, rolling thunder and the skies opened. The rain was falling so violently around her it was setting off car alarms, so it was hard to hear her speak. Plantagegatan, the pasta restaurant next door to the English shop. We sat and talked and eavesdropped on the chat-up lines which the middle-aged, long hair, fat guy at the only other occupied table was using on his much younger female companion. Apparently, claiming to write pop songs for boy-bands seems to work … at least, she was still with him and still listening when we left. Of course, he had trapped into a corner of the room by sitting next to her behind the table. The only way out would have been under or over the table.

Showers with sunny spells
(Thursday 3rd August) To what extent can the life of a human being and the life of a city be compared? I try this out on Agneta as we walk in to the city in the morning, and continue to mull it over during the rest of the day. Both a person and a city are created, planned or unplanned, both grow, both develop, both face trials they must overcome and both experience happy times when all seems to be going well. Early expectations may be realised, or development may respond to unforeseen events and conditions. Both grow old, both can die. Agneta asks: At what point can a city be described as adult? Is it when the city becomes independent of its mother country? (Thinking of the Ancient Greek polis or a modern city like Singapore.) Or is it when the city itself gives rise to further cities? (Colonialism in the Greek or Carthaginian sense, or the modern establishment of green-field suburbs.) I am still turning this over in my mind when I meet Martin at lunch. Martin prefers to compare a city with an organism – and I see that. We talk about dead cities: Machu Pichu, Pompeii.

Vinga, (see below), originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Weather suspended
(Friday 4th August) The English pride themselves on the variety of ways they have to describe the weather, but you can’t say: The weather today will be suspended. In Swedish, you can: Uppehålls väder. Thus it was on Friday. Most of this day I worked on other things – in particular articles and teaching suggestions for working with poetry. I’m choosing famous pieces of English language verse and putting together a series of worksheets. There will be one published each week from next week under the title of “Poem of the Week”. I’m doing this for a publishing company called Mera Förlag who will be bundling Poem of the Week with their English language “News Quiz” (which I’m also responsible for translating). The target audiences are secondary school classes and perhaps adult education study circles.

Fine and sunny
(Saturday 5th August) Perfect weather for our long planned expedition on the Göta Canal. Early morning bus from Gothenburg to Sjötorp on Lake Vännern (third largest inland sea in Europe). Transfer to the canal cruiser MS Bellevue (carrying on this occasion nearly 200 passengers). Cruise up the canal to Töreboda, a distance of about 15km, through 16 locks with a rise of more then 40 metres. Bus back to Gothenburg. Very enjoyable, if a bit crowded.

Passing through a lock on Göta Canal, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

The final lock we passed through was the upper lock at Hajstorp (literally Shark’s Thorpe or Shark’s Homestead – a name to conjure with – this is out in the middle of a bucolic landscape where trees and bushes line the canal and cattle come down to drink at the water’s edge). The opening of this lock in 1832 marked the completion of the canal, which had taken more than 22 years to build, and which gave Sweden a navigable waterway from the Baltic in the East to the North Sea and the Atlantic in the West. The lock and the canal were officially opened by King Karl XIII Johan (a.k.a. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte). All the locks along the canal are identified geographically (e.g. Hajstorps övresluss = Hajstorp’s Upper lock), but each lock also has an official name, and the official name of the Hajstorp’s Upper lock is the Thomas Telford Lock. It is named after the great Scots engineer and canal builder who advised on the Göta Canal and recruited foremen for its construction from among the corps of engineers he had himself trained up. I’ve tried (as yet in vain) to find anything written about these people. There must have been, at the very least, a few letters back to Telford, which could mean they are preserved with Telford’s own correspondence on the canal in the library of the Society of Engineers in London. Wouldn’t it be great, though, to have one of the foremen turn out to be a diarist or enthusiastic letter writer? (You can see a commercial English language site dedicated to the Göta Canal here.)

Sunny, mercury rising
(Sunday 6th August) Out to the seaside to swim and sunbathe. First time for me in the sea this year.

Hot and sunny
(Monday 7th August) Today spent in shade recovering from too much sun on Sunday. I worked on Poem of the Week rather than anything else.

Warm and sunny but cloudy towards the end of the day
(Tuesday 8th August) To Vinga. Vinga is the island furthest out in the Gothenburg archipelago, the first and last sight of Gothenburg for ships on their way in or out of port here. It holds a special place in the heart of all true Gothenburgers, partly because everyone is familiar with it from ferry trips to Denmark, England or Germany, partly because on clear days the various lighthouses and signal stations at Vinga are visible in silhouette from the city, and because the light itself is clearly visible at night – a double white flash every 30 seconds. But Vinga’s most important claim to fame is Evert Taube, the lighthouse keeper’s son, born in Gothenburg in 1890, brought up on Vinga till he was 14, who sailed the world as a seaman and then became Sweden’s foremost balladeer. A composer and singer of songs celebrating the sea, the travelling life and the beauties of the Swedish west coast. His statue stands in the harbour near the new Opera House, gazing out towards Vinga.

Taube, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

On the island there’s a museum dedicated to Taube, but I couldn’t find it. (I admit to not looking very hard.)

The ferry trip out to the island from Gothenburg takes about 1½ hours, and once out there, you’re stuck for 4½ hours till you can take the boat back. (Unless you can persuade a charitable yachtsman to take you off earlier, that is.) It’s a good idea to go as we did, prepared for a day in the sun with protection factor 30 cream, a swimsuit, a good sun hat and a picnic. Then it’s a fun day out. (Here's a Swedish internet page dedicated to Vinga.)

My travelling companions are of the opinion that I should include a diatribe on the subject of inconsiderate motorboat owners who try to moor right over the best spots for swimming from the rocks in the long bay to the north of the island, but I wasn’t there for the argument, so I will just draw a veil over it. The whole seems to have resulted in a fairly typical Swedish compromise.

Cloud over Vinga, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Generally fine, but changeable with the possibility of showers
(Wednesday 9th August) Two fun things today. A guided tour of the main Gothenburg synagogue – 151 years old – which was fascinating as much for the tour and the history as for the questions the (mostly Swedish thus mostly Lutheran) visitors put. “What is the biggest difference between Judaism and Christianity?” Answers on a postcard, please ...

Synagogue interior, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

In the evening Agneta and I took the Hisingen Round Tour. The MS Carl Michael Bellman, sailed from the pier at Lilla Bommen at 6 p.m., up the southern river to Bohus Castle, down the northern river to the sea, around the coast and back up the southern river again to the city. A tour of about 4 hours with a very nice (and expensive) meal along the way. The trip deserves an entry of its own. Maybe a little later. Probably call it Coasting.

Thunder and rain
(Thursday 10th August) Another day indoors – writing all this up. But I’m up to date at least!

Floating islands, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Bulstrode and me

2006-08-04T13:09:00.000+02:00

You’ve got to admire someone who goes through life with a name like Bulstrode Whitelocke. I do, anyway. At university, I managed to avoid studying the early modern period of British history – thinking two years of Tudor and Stuart Britain for my A levels was quite enough. This meant I missed out on Bulstrode. I’m sure I’d otherwise have met him sooner. He was one of the second rank figures of the Parliamentary Revolution – important enough in his day, but skated over in school histories. (Or maybe my A level teacher was more interested in Henry VIII and Elizabeth). Whatever the reason, I didn’t finally make his acquaintance till I was living in Sweden and looking for English language perspectives on Swedish history.

Whitelocke’s Journal of the Swedish Embassy wasn’t published until 1772, nearly 100 years after his death at the Biblically prescribed age of 70 in 1675. But the Journal probably circulated in manuscript for years before. He seems to have written it with the expectation that others would read it. Throughout the Journal, he refers to himself in the third person, and I can’t think of any credible reason for this but that he was covering his back in case someone objected to what he’d written. He could always say: You can’t know that I wrote that – look, it says “Whitelocke said this. Whitelocke did that.” (Actually, he writes “Wh”.) He was a lawyer as well as a Parliamentarian and would be careful not to tell a falsehood, while still providing grounds for “reasonable doubt”.

The embassy to Sweden took place in troubled times. It’s true that the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, had ended more than thirty years of religious-inspired war in the middle of Europe. But the solution which Westphalia established – that the citizens of a state should share the same religion as their ruler – did not make for a great deal of tranquillity. What ought to happen if the people of a state follow one religion and their ruler gets it into his (or her) head to switch to another? Do the people have to change their religion? Or do they change ruler? How? One of the reasons for the Parliamentary rebellion in England was Charles I’s Catholic tastes combined with his conviction that he had a divine right to rule, which the people could not take away. Whitelocke arrived in Sweden – the bastion of Protestantism under it’s previous king, Gustavus Adolphus – just in time to witness the conversion to Catholicism of Gustavus’ daughter and successor, Christina. The Swedish (or perhaps Christinan) solution was not civil war but abdication. Whitelocke also witnessed the coronation of Christina’s Protestant cousin and successor.

Whitelocke liked Queen Christina. It comes through in his description of his meetings with her. He found her intelligent, well-informed, witty and attractive, and despite being nearly twice her age, was not above flirting with her. (He was 48, she was 27.) If what he writes is to be believed, she flirted back. Bizarre as it may seem today, at the time, the English had a saucy reputation in Europe. The standard English greeting between men and women, friends as well as strangers, was a smacking kiss on the lips. Accordin to the Journal, the Queen encouraged Whitelocke’s entourage to demonstrate this English custom – though she herself did not participate.

Whitelocke arrived in Sweden in November 1653. He stayed in Gothenburg for two weeks, allowing his company (especially the horses) to recover from the voyage. His account of Gothenburg in the Journal is the earliest extensive picture of the city in English, just 30 odd years after it was established. Then Whitelocke and his people set out for the Queen’s court, which had moved to Uppsala “by reason of the sickness at Stockholm”. It took them 20 days to cross Sweden, arriving in Uppsala on 20th December. Not an easy trip, as the roads were icy and food was difficult to obtain. On more than one occasion the Journal records the company dining off “cow that was rotten and had died in the field”. There was at least one broken leg caused by a slip on the ice, one traveller had his head kicked in by a horse, and several people (including Whitelocke himself) fell ill from the cold. Getting to Västerås on 15th December, Whitelocke reports “letters from the court … to this effect:- That the Queen and her court were astonished that the English Ambassador was advanced so far on his journey, with such a train, in so short a time.”

The Embassy lasted until after the coronation of Karl X in the early summer of 1654, when Whitelocke took ship from Stockholm and sailed home.

I went through a phase where I thought it would be fun to visit schools and perform a monologue based on Whitelocke’s Journal. History and English in combination. I still think it might be a good idea, but I don’t know how I would go about it. And anyway, the economic situation in Swedish schools today is such that I can’t imagine I’d be able to get anyone to pay me enough to make it worthwhile. Just a pipe dream. (Or perhaps UR might be interested?)

Oh, yes, you might be wanting to know how Whitelocke got his first name. The story goes like this. His mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Bulstrode and there was a tradition in the Whitelocke family that children should be given a first name from their mother’s side. But when Bulstrode was to be christened, all the male names on his mother’s side had already be given, and it was another tradition that two members of the same generation should not share the same first name.
“What name do you give this child?” says the minister officiating at the christening.
“Bulstrode!” says George Croke, uncle and designated godfather to the baby.
“Bulstrode?!” exclaims the minister. “You can’t call him that!”
“Either Bulstrode or Elizabeth!” Says Croke, cheered on by the rest of the family.
In the face of a united congregation, the minister decided it was better to go along, and Bulstrode Whitelocke was christened. In a subsequent generation, a nephew from the Bulstrode side was christened Whitelocke Bulstrode. How would Skatteverket react to that, I wonder.

The only modern biography of Whitelocke is Ruth Spalding's aptly titled The Improbable Puritan (from 1975). Ms Spalding has also edited Whitelocke's Diary (which includes his notes for the Journal), but in my quotes on this Blog I have used the copy of the 1772 first edition in held by Gothenburg University library. I'd really have liked to illustrate this entry with a picture of the man himself, but the National Portrait Gallery charges for reproduction rights. If you want to see a picture, though, go to this page.

Arrival

2006-08-01T08:21:00.000+02:00

This is part of the first draft of my first section, written last week.

As usual, the Ryan Air plane is packed; as usual, the cabin crew are hunted. Check the overhead lockers. Are seats in the upright position? Please fasten your safety-belt, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to switch off your phone now. Then there’s the safety floor-show with the comic Spanish pronunciation: “Hinavent esudden drop hinapressure, hohegeen emask hover ehead anda breth normálly”. After that there are in-flight menus to distribute, then the magazines to hand out, the blocky trolleys with refreshments and “freshly made” sandwiches to trundle up and down the aisle: Excuse me, sir, keep your arms in please. Then it’s: Duty-free, madam? Lottery tickets? Win a car? Collect in the magazines, the menus, the litter. And: Cabin crew, stand-by for landing.

Across the aisle and a row of seats in front of me there's a teenage girl with a big notebook open on her lap, sketching – for a moment I think she’s drawing the cabin crew, but then I realise she’s just doodling. A bald man with a long face, a pipe and a tie; a fat man with a bucktooth grin, wearing baggy trousers and standing in a city of oblong blocks. Further along there are families with children, remarkably un-fractious, elderly couples, young men with clipped hair and sporty t-shirts, middle-aged women in summer dresses, a couple of teenage Goths, all dark eyes and leather coats. (In the cabin it's air-conditioned, but how do they manage out of doors in the heat we've been having?) And then there are the punks, savagely pierced. The one I've been watching has a cockscomb of hair braided with some synthetic blue material which glitters. Through his nose he has a thick horseshoe-shaped bar, each end of which is decorated with a small steel ball. From the corner of my eye it looks like two massive blobs of snot hanging beneath each nostril. I suppose that’s the idea.

As we descend from the sunlit heights through the white, then ever greyer cloud cover to Gothenburg City Airport, the captain says something about the weather on the ground: it’s “not very nice”. He sounds English. Landing, the rain streams across the windows. And now the pace picks up again. Please keep your seatbelts secured till the captain turns off the fasten seatbelts sign, but once it’s off get up and get out, Out, OUT! The aisle is suddenly full, and between the rows of seats, the twisted bodies of passengers who didn’t manage to reach the aisle in time, press their heads against the underside of the overhead luggage compartments and their knees against the backs of the seat in front of them. Unwilling to sit again having dragged themselves up, but unable to stand straight. A few of the more experienced travellers, and those in window seats, sit smugly watching the chaos and discomfort of the rest.

And, freeze! We all hold our positions until the doors can be opened. Once that happens the pressure begins to let up, but finally at the door, with a plunge down the open stairs and across the tarmac to the little terminal building ahead, I realise the airport is the epicentre of a downpour of tropical proportions, the heavy rain, driven by wind, is not falling so much as flying horizontally straight into my face. But the rain and the wind are warm, and the rush to the terminal is stimulating after the flight. Someone shouts “Welcome to Gothenburg!” Kids of all ages are running around, chattering in English and Swedish, jumping in puddles, trying to catch rain in their mouths. There’s a good-natured atmosphere among the adults – even the Goths and the punks look quite cheerful. Only the elderly couples don’t seem to be enjoying themselves.

In the serpentine queue to the immigration, spirits are good, though they become muted somewhat in the long, crowded, hot wait to reclaim baggage. Some children begin to whine and cry, though one little girl in her mother’s arms leans backwards to look at me upside-down and reaches to touch my beard, till her mum pulls her hand away.

It takes about an hour and half to fly from Stansted to Gothenburg nowadays. Getting to Sweden was never so easy. Even the ferry, which runs from Newcastle by way of Kristiansand and takes 23 hours, is fast. In 1653 it took Bulstrode Whitelocke ten days of hard sailing through November storms.

Whitelocke was on his reluctant way as ambassador from Oliver Cromwell’s England to the court of Queen Christina. He was reluctant for several reasons. The prospect of representing a government of regicides at the court of a powerful and highly regarded monarch was not a job to be relished, however much the two countries were on the same side of the religious fence in the struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. The job had been practically forced on him by Cromwell himself, with veiled threats to Whitelocke’s family and fortune if he refused. Not that his fortune was going to be left intact by his acceptance of the job. It was the custom of the time for an ambassador to pay his own way, claiming back what he could from the authorities after the event. Whitelocke was financing the embassy from his own pocket – the clothes he and his hundred-strong entourage would wear, the gifts he would present, the horses and carriages he would use in Sweden, the provisions for the voyage and the ships he needed to carry everything. The state’s generosity extended only to a flagship and a naval escort.

The most serious reason for Whitelocke’s reluctance, though, was the prospect of losing his life at sea, or, worse, surviving his voyage and mission but returning to find his wife had died while he was away. While he could take his two eldest sons with him, he had to leave the rest of his family of ten behind. His wife, Mary, who was heavily pregnant, was distraught.
“My dearest love,” he records her saying. “I would fain speak to you, but tears will not suffer me; let them speak for me and you, you ought not to leave me: for if I cannot, yet – how – because – then – if you will – how can your heart but be melted towards me and these poor children?”
“Consider what is best for us all, and let not passions have too much power over us,” says Whitelocke. “God knows I leave thee with as sad a heart as ever husband parted with from a most loving wife.”
“Oh then why will you go?” She cries. “Let me conjure you by all my tears, by all loves … by marriage promises and affections, not to leave me, especially at this time when the pangs of travail are coming upon me. Alas! What is it I require but a little time and strength, to enable me to bear you company, and in danger to take part with you?”
Whitelocke answers: “I am neither in a capacity to stay nor you to go: you know the necessity on me: I must go and go presently. … [On the sea] I confess my life is in danger; if I now do not go, my life, it may be, is in more danger [in England]. Those who have engaged me will not be baffled by me: they have the power; let us have the prudence and temper to submit to that which we cannot well avoid … God is all-sufficient: I doubt not but that he will preserve me in my journey and bring me back again in safety to a joyful and comfortable meeting with thee and all my children.”
“The Lord … grant us this mercy,” Mary replies, but cannot stop herself from adding that: “it must be more than ordinary mercy if we ever see the faces of each other again.”

It is not quite the sort of leave-taking you expect to overhear at Stansted.

One Week's Blog (23-30 July)

2006-07-31T11:24:00.000+02:00

Old Älvsborg and the Carnegie Brewery

Carnegie Brewery complex from Älvsborgs bridge, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

(Sunday 23rd July) Today I made a small photo study of the old Carnegie porter brewery at Klippan. Actually I was trying to find my way to the ruins of the original Älvsborg – the fortress which once guarded the Swedish possessions on the river (älv), and which was captured by the Danes and ransomed, not once but twice, in 1570 and 1613. The second ransom, paid between 1613 and 1619, was set at 1 million silver dollars, equivalent to 25 000 kilos of silver. It was after this that the present city of Gothenburg was founded, and is the reason the city was built not only as a trading centre but also as what was for many years the most well-defended city in northern Europe. As part of the defences, Älvsborg was moved out to an island in the river, and the old fortress fell into disuse. Now it lies in overgrown ruins, protected by a few sheets of corrugated iron and surrounded by the bulk of the brewery which grew up on the site many years later. Times change, and even the brewery has passed on. A huge amount of demolition and rebuilding is going on around the site, and I wasn’t able to find my way in to the ruins of the fortress, but I was able to take some pictures from a distance. Instead, I wandered around the buildings of the brewery which are being used for all sorts of small enterprises. The brewery started life as a sugar refinery, founded by a German immigrant in 1808, but in 1836 it was taken over by the Scottish entrepreneur, David Carnegie. For more than 100 years, it supplied the beer, and especially the porter, with which the growing numbers of industrial workers in Gothenburg and the rest of Sweden slaked their thirst after hard days in shipyards, foundries and mines.

Gamla Älvsborg from Carnegie building site, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Screaming in frustration
(Monday 24th July) Today I uploaded my first 'blog of the week' (just after midnight – having spent most of Sunday evening writing it). I also wrote and uploaded my first 'Progress Report'. Generally I was feeling very happy with myself and the progress I was making. Then I spent hours composing, cropping and formatting illustrations in order to upload them to Blogger, as I had done at the beginning of the previous week in the week for the 'Introduction' and 'The Story So Far'. It didn’t work. And it kept on not working: I couldn’t believe it, and was convinced I must be doing something wrong, but no matter what I tried, I had no joy. I started to read the FAQs and realised I wasn’t alone in having just this problem. There are plenty of suggestions for 'work arounds', but it all takes so much time and I really don’t want to spend hours of my life trying to pick my way through this solution or that, trying to edit HTML I only half understand. I end up screaming blasphemies at the computer, the Internet, Blogger …

Off day
(Tuesday 25th July) Spent another miserable day failing to make Blogger work, setting up an account with Flickr, failing to make Flickr and Blogger co-operate. By mid-afternoon I’m no longer screaming with frustration. Instead I’m working myself down into a depression, calculating all the time spent – read wasted – on this project. Thinking about all the work I’ll have to put in to my new teaching year (starting 14th August). This project’s 6-8 month time span is a joke. In the afternoon, because she felt sorry for me, my public persuaded me to meet her from work and go to the fun fair at Liseberg. We went to see the young (nowadays, I suppose, youngish) Gothenburg magician, Carl-Einer Häckner, who has become an institution on Liseberg’s open-air stage. This was the 10th year of his summer variety show and he did a series of clips from his previous shows. Most appreciated (by the younger members of the audience), was the blood and guts magic (cutting off his ear, mangling his thumb, sawing off his arm). His showmanship is inspired by Tommy Cooper, but he enjoys performing in the context of a story. I don’t think this comes across so well on the big open-air stage. He also enjoys singing sentimental songs which I can do without. Nobody in the audience seemed agree with me on either point, though. The place was packed, even under a blazing sun. Apart from Häckner there was a German Buster Keaton-inspired acrobat-cum-mime, who was rather good, and a couple of English roller-skate performers who were boring: Round and round and round and how many ways can the fat man hold the thin woman so she flies out as he spins? Still depressed after the show. Beer and crisps and chocolate do not help.

Häckner, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Day off
(Wednesday 26th July) I wrote up 'Dreaming' and published it, feeling much more stable. After this, I decided to take the rest of the day off from the project.

Tales the toad told
(Thursday 27th July) In the afternoon to town for the Paddan tour. Paddan is Swedish for toad, and the Paddan boats are sightseeing boats – low, flat, broad motorised barges – which give a 'toad’s eye view' (quote from their ad) of the town. I’ve done this trip before, long ago, but I remember it as more interesting. Perhaps it’s just that I know more about the town now, perhaps I am more critical after having taught history intensively for five years. I make a list of 'Tales the Toad Told' – half-truths and disinformation – for future analysis. The sun beats down and though there is some respite on the water, by the time the trip comes to an end, the only thing I want to do is get under the shade of some trees and drink water. In the park, dozens of men and women, dressed in wool, linen and leather (skirts, britches, waistcoats, blouses), are walking around, dancing or playing instruments. What was that about mad dogs and Englishmen?

Hop, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Practical problems melt away ...
(Friday 28th July) After looking again at Flickr’s instructions and making some adjustments, Hallelujah! The photos work. Spent the morning uploading pictures and getting them to show where I wanted them in the blog. I met Martin for lunch. Martin is one of my sounding boards for this project. When he isn’t sounding, he’s hounding me to get on with it … Whenever I speculate about doing something, Martin wants to know when I’m going to do it. Publish a draft of the first chapter as a PDF file? Sure, when? Record it as an MP3 file? When will that be available? Martin is very optimistic on my behalf – in discussion, practical problems melt away. I come away from the meeting feeling even more buoyed up than I felt this morning – it’s only on the way home I remember about the Blogger/Flicker photo frustration.

In the park

Slätta damm with white and yellow waterlillies, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

(Saturday 29th July) The heat continues. We take a long,but necessarily slow walk in Hisingspark photographing lillies and ferns, and pass S.A. Hedlund’s Guest Book. Once upon a time, S.A. Hedlund, the proprietor of a Gothenburg newspaper, used to have a summer residence here. Then, it was a boat across the river and a carriage ride from there, well out of town. Now it’s about ten minutes on the bus from the city centre. Part of the Hedlund estate is built over with four storey blocks of flats, part has been amalgamated into a larger area of greenery with a series of small lakes, rocky hills and woods, Hisingspark. Hedlund was a man whose interests and profession coincided so that he enjoyed the company of the famous men and women of his day. Literary lions such as Ibsen, explorers like Nansen and Sven Hedén, writers and feminists such as Ellen Key and Frederika Bremen, all visited his summer residence. Their visits are commemorated in the guest book: on the surface of a granite cliff face near what used to be the entrance to the estate, the names of all Hedlund’s famous visitors are recorded, carved into the rock and picked out with yellow paint. (In Hedlund’s day it was gold leaf.) There are about 70 names, but only one of them looks as if it might be British. In fact, W. W. Thomas Jr. was an American – one of Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War consuls. Later, he served as the US Ambassador in Stockholm and wrote a massive book – Sweden and the Swedes – at least a third of which is taken up with his hunting, shooting and fishing expeditions. He seemed to have been determined to kill at least one example of every form of Swedish wild life. I think he’s included in Hedlund’s guest book more for his translations to English of the poems and journalism of Viktor Rydberg, Hedlund’s protégé and employee.
(On second thoughts, I suppose Ellen Key’s name could be taken for English, but she wasn't. According to the Swedish Wikipedia, her family are distantly related to the Scottish MacKeys).

Another year older
(Sunday 30th July) My birthday. Let us draw a veil over this. I end the day sitting on the balcony in the cool of the evening, re-reading Coasting.

Paddan = Toad. One of the motorised sightseeing barges carrying visitors around the waters of Gothenburg., originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Hallelujah!

2006-07-28T09:10:00.000+02:00

Finally I have managed to get the photos I want, more or less the way I want them, inserted into my earlier blogs. Talk about blood sweat and tears. (Ok, the blood is hyperbole.) Take a look! And if you want to see more pictures on the Gothenburg theme, I will be adding them periodically to my new site at Flickr where I go under the name of Gothenburg Observer. Site URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/obsgothenburg/
Cheers!

Dreaming

2006-07-26T12:17:00.000+02:00

Last night I had a dream (or it may have been two dreams, they soaked into one another). It was a hot night and I’d eaten too much before going to bed, so I slept badly. I’d eaten too much too late because I was feeling depressed and eating is my comfort. I was depressed and unhappy and frustrated by Blogger.com, which has swallowed more time than I want think about these past two days as I’ve been trying to make pictures appear alongside my writing. But I’d also got myself into a state over this whole project and was letting myself get stressed out by the time scale. A stupid thing to do as the project is entirely voluntary and the deadlines, at least at this stage, are completely arbitrary.

The Chinese box
So, anyway, I slept badly and I dreamed. In the dream I was 8 or 9 years old playing with a Chinese box. It was about 7 inches broad by about 6 inches wide and perhaps 3 inches deep. Intricately carved on all its sides and top (the bottom was smooth). Something rolled about inside, not in every direction, just when I tilted it forward or back, so I imagined it was a cylinder or something like a cylinder. There were no obvious hinges or locks, so I turned the box about in my hands trying to open it.

Now this was something which has happened to me in real life. When I was a child, I was staying with my foster aunt, Jill, a close friend of my mother. Jill’s house was crammed with curios which she had picked up in her travels, or which people had given her, and the Chinese box was one of these things. In the real event, the box was empty and Jill had given it to me and challenged me to open it. After what seemed like half an hour, I gave up and admitted being baffled. Then Jill showed me the two slender pieces of wood that had to be slid in sequence, one to release the lock-strip, the other, the lock-strip itself, to release the lid, and how the lid then slid smoothly off. There was no metal, all the parts were finely carved in wood.

In my dream, I remembered this, and turned the box over and over, pressing and pushing with my fingers and thumbs, trying to find a piece of the box that would slide. But I found nothing, and the little cylinder in side rolled back and forth, each time with a little clunk, and it was driving me crazy.

The lump of clay
Then the dream shifted and instead of holding the Chinese box, I was holding a lump of clay about the size of two fists. It was the sort of clay used to throw earthenware pots, a light ochre brown, and glistening because it been dipped in water. It was as if I intended to throw it, but I had no potter’s wheel to throw it on, instead I was holding it in my hands, shifting it from hand to hand, turning it around and around. Searching.

Gradually, it came to me that I was a sculptor looking for the right angle at which to begin cutting. In my dream this seemed perfectly sensible, even though it’s actually more than a bit odd. Stone or wood sculptures usually begin with this turning around while the sculptor looks for the point of attack. Michelangelo – I think it’s Michelangelo – is supposed to have said that in every piece of stone there is a statue hidden, and it is the sculptor’s job to identify the hidden form and to cut away the surrounding matter n order to release it. Clay sculpture is rarely a matter of subtraction – cutting away. It’s more of a process of addition. Most clay sculpting starts from a frame and builds up to a completed figure.

Be that as it may, there I was holding this lump of wet clay and turning it around, just as I’d turned the box. There was no feeling of anything rolling about inside, however, though I was convinced there was something there, something that, if I could just find the right angle of attack would become a beautiful thing. But I found nothing, and the clay seemed to become wetter and wetter as I turned it (though I wasn’t dipping it in water), and more and more loose. It squeezed out between my fingers like mud, which it was fast becoming. The more I turned it, the wetter it became and the more escaped between my fingers until the ball of clay had shrunk down to something I could hold in the palm of one hand, into a puddle of mud cupped in my palm and trickling down my wrist.

Coda
When I woke, the first thing I thought of was this quatrain from Fitzgerald’s Khayyam:

For in the marketplace, one dusk of day
I watched the potter thumping his wet clay,
And with its all obliterated tongue
It murmured: “Gently, brother, gently, pray!”

An interpretation
I’ve got an interpretation, but having written all the above, I can see how it might give a Freudian a field day. Well, let ‘em have their fun.

Here’s what I think it means:

I am trying to write something, but I am not clear in my own mind exactly what I’m trying to do. I have material, but I don’t know what to make of it or where to start. A part of me believes there is an intellectual solution (that’s the business of opening the Chinese box), but another part of me is looking for inspiration (the clay sculpture). At the same time I have a fear that the material I have and am collecting (and possibly the whole project) may be irrelevant, (the clay which turns to mud and runs through my fingers). There’s also a reflection of my frustration over Blogger (being unable to get to the cylinder – which might be a cylinder of photographic film). On the whole, I think the dream would have been quite depressing, if not for the poetic coda. I actually found that quite encouraging. I read it like this: my subconscious is telling me not to over-exert myself, not to get stressed, to go gently.

Blog with photos (17-22 July)

2006-07-24T14:11:00.000+02:00

The copper mare

(Monday 17th July) The first Gothenburg was founded by Karl IX in 1607 - and burned to the ground by the Danes in 1611. Three hundred years after the event, to commemorate the first foundation, a copper statue of the king, riding on a charger, was commissioned and unveiled. The statue is known in Gothenburg as Kopparmärra - The copper mare. This is one of those witticisms for which Gothenburgers are famous (at least in their own lunchtimes). The horse is obviously a stallion. Every so often a local newspaper will print a letter from a visitor or foreign resident who hasn't cottoned on, calling for the name to be changed. These letters are also considered a great joke.

Kopparmärra - The Copper Mare at Kungsportsplatsen

The Copper Mare - a detail. Just so there's no doubt!

Hasselblad
(Tuesday 18th July) Where was the first camera on the moon made? Correct! It was made in Gothenburg by Victor Hasselblad AB. But that was then. Hasselblad, who have been making cameras since 1941, made the mistake of not taking digital technology seriously. Believing their reputation for excellence was proof against any newfangled electronic claptrap, and the downturn they were experiencing was a temporary event, in 2004, they moved production from their old established quarter at Lilla Bommen to a new purpose built prestige site across the river. Almost immediately they found themselves teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. A couple of mergers and buy-outs down the line and they've given up their fine, new, very expensive building and have moved into an old warehouse. The prestige building is being converted to accommodate local TV and radio stations and the original building, Hasselbladska house, at Lilla Bommen is being converted into luxury apartments. On Klädpressaregatan the demolition is in full swing of the more modern accretions to the Hasselbladska house. I watched as a wrecking crane pulled down wall after wall and the builders sprayed water to damp down the dust which anyway swirled around.

The original Hasselblad head office at Lilla Bommen - soon to become 24 luxury appartments ... And below, Hasselblad house from behind.

Hasselbladska hus from behind, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Supercargo
(Wednesday 19th July) This is the life! Coffee and croissants for breakfast on the balcony. Headline in today's paper "Celebration as Götheburg reaches the Pearl River". The "Götheburg" is the replica east-indiaman, built here and sailing to Canton to commemorate the Swedish East India Company and to promote Swedish-Chinese trade. On my list of people to research is Colin Campbell, one of the original founders of the Swedish East India Company and Supercargo on the first voyage to Canton in 1732 and 1733. Campbell kept a handwritten journal which surfaced in the sales catalogue of an antequarian bookseller in New York only in 1986. It had been carried away to Scotland from Sweden sometime in the 1760s by Campell's friend and fellow director, Charles Irvine and remained in the Irvine family archives in Drum Castle, Aberdeenshire for 200 years or so until being sold by Irvine's descendants. The original manuscript was bought by Gothenburg University library, and an annotated version of the journal was published in 1996. I must try to lay my hands on a copy.

Vasagatan
(Thursday 20th July) On Vasagatan, I passed a group of Americans. Even from a distance there was something unusual about them, though I couldn't put my finger on it. They were cheerful and all of them dressed for the summer - except the two young men. Dark suits, ties, badges. The penny dropped as I was passing them. Mormons. The two young men were missionaries ("elders" as they like to call themselves) and the the rest were their families come to cheer them along. Why do Mormon missionaries have to dress like they are FBI men from 1950s movies? The men, that is. Women missionaries (of whom there are few) seem required to look like housewives from the boondocks in the 1930s. Is the Mormon Church trapped in a time warp? I think we need to know.

The sun through an alley of trees on Vasagatan

Friday 21st
My public read the first draft of the first sectrion (completed today). One laugh. (Good!) One complement. (Very good!) One criticism. (Justified.) One suggestion: Get in some sex. Well, I suppose this is Sweden ...

Älvsborgsbron from Masthugget, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Squawks-from-lampposts
(Saturday 22nd July) Late this evening, looking down from the balcony, we saw five seagulls walking about on the patch of grass under a streetlamp, pecking at the ground. It was dark and we saw them at first only because they were so white against the ground. We'd have taken them for pigeons, but even from directly overhead, a seagull doesn't look much like a pigeon. But there they were, silent, waddling about, pecking. This is very unusual behaviour. We decided that they were secretly trying out pigeon behaviour. Trying, perhaps, to see if they could find out whether pigeons know something seagulls don't, and doing it secretly so no other seagulls would see them and screech at them. We had just spent 4 hours watching Dances with Wolves on TV. Decided that if other seagulls saw them, they would have to live the rest of their seagull lives with names like "Pecks-with-pigeons" or "Waddles-on-grass" instead of brave seagull names like "Squawks-from-lampposts" or "Shits-on-cars".

Progress Report 1

2006-07-24T00:33:00.000+02:00

From now on, I’m going to try to separate out my musings on the technical progress (or otherwise) of the book from other entries. If you, dear reader, are only interested in the experiment, you only need to read the entries flagged as Progress Reports. If you are more interested in pictures of Gothenburg and little anecdotes about the city, go for the other bits. OK?

Gress
There was a moment this week – a grey morning around 5 a.m. – when I wondered whether I would be able to call this a progress report. Gress there had been, but whether pro- or retro- (or in- or e-) I didn’t know. Later the same day, though, I completed the first draft of my first section, and started to feel better.

On Monday 17th, after having managed to get Blogger.com to work for me (more or less) and posted my first two blogs, I set out for town. First stop was a stationer’s to buy a notebook and a pen. Chatwin supposedly used a French notebook called ‘moleskine’. This is now produced in Italy. (Go to http://www.modoemodo.com/ and click on ‘history’ and ‘stories’.) I did look at them, but I didn’t like the soft covers, and the only hardbacks on sale were reporters’ notebooks and too small. At getting on for 150 Skr for one book, I also thought they were ridiculously expensive. Instead, I bought a locally produced hardback notebook (lined paper) for 29 Skr. (Ten Swedish kronor is worth about 1 Euro, 75 British pence or 1.30 US dollars.)

I also wanted a retractable ballpoint pen – a Bic or something similar – which I thought ought to be easy to find. No, no. All pens must be ‘jell’ pens nowadays. Horrible stuff. Blots almost as much as a fountain pen. A pencil then? Swedes seem to use propelling pencils for preference, but I don’t like them. I don’t like pencils. It probably has to do with age and habit (and bad eyesight). In the end I was able to find a ballpoint I was satisfied with, though it cost me more than my notebook (32 Skr). Worked fine for two days and then started to blot … Sigh. I should have gone with the jell pen and not kicked up such a fuss. But you know us artists :-)

Then I sat in a café and numbered the first 30 pages in the notebook. This is also something Chatwin is supposed to have done, but it’s not an affectation. It helps if you’re writing a lot and jotting down ideas of all sorts as they come to you. With numbered pages, you can produce a running index or list of contents and find your ideas again when you need them. It’s also a good way to overcome the moment of totally blank panic that overcomes you (well, me anyway) when you actually sit down to write something. No matter how much I think I have to write, an empty sheet of paper which I’m supposed to be filling with “deathless prose” can chase everything else out of my head as soon I sit down to it. (That “deathless prose” is Lawrence Durrell reported by his younger brother Gerald, by the way.) Numbering a few pages is a way to distract your mind for a moment in order to let the words start to come. It also helps if you want to calculate numbers of words written, which for this project, I do.

Jonathan Raban
Just so you know I don’t have a monomania about Bruce Chatwin, another of my role models is Jonathan Raban, author of Coasting. This is a perfect little book which manages – seemingly without effort – to combine travel with history and biography, and literary criticism with navigation, at the same time as it presents a many-faceted picture of Britain at the end of the 20th century. Here’s a reading tip! Read Coasting immediately before or after reading Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea. They were both written at the same time, they’re both based on a journey around Britain – Theroux walked clockwise around the coast, Raban sailed anti-clockwise – and they both describe meeting one another (in Brighton, my home town). The Theroux book is well-written, interesting and a lot of fun, but Raban’s book has all that and a depth of thought, a perspective which puts a completely different spin on the things he reports. Let’s face it, I’d be hard pressed to write as well as Theroux, but (apart from Chatwin) it’s Raban I’d like to measure myself against.

In one chapter of Coasting, Raban plays the tourist in London. I have decided to do the same here in Gothenburg – at least for a time. (For more on Raban, there seems to be a new Internet site devoted to him at http://www.jonathanraban.com/ – go look.)

Touristing
So, most of this week has been devoted to touristing – not a hard job exactly, though in the hot weather we’ve been having, not as easy as it might have been. My days have looked more or less like this: Mornings I sit and write on my laptop, working on the first draft of the book or reading in my various sources. Afternoons, I go into town and walk around, stopping off in cafés, parks and museums as the occasion presents itself. I’ve been working my way through two books: One on the stories behind some of the street sculpture in Gothenburg (Statyer berätter by Bengt Öhnander). The other is a brief presentation of some of the city’s listed buildings (K- – for Kultur – marked) called 100 utmärkta hus i Göteborg. I bought these at the Tourist Information office on Monday. Sometimes there’s something new, more often (I’m pleased to be able to say) they remind me of something I have heard before.

What I’m collecting as I tourist are: a) much of the diary entries (bits of which may appear in this blog, though not under this heading); and b) most of the photos (some of which will show up here, others of which will be the basis for illustrations in the book). My reading however is mostly to remind myself of Gothenburg’s history and track down the details of some of the more interesting stories.

Words
Well, well. I started writing this early on Sunday morning, and now we’re into the small hours of Monday, so let me wrap things up with a quick word tally. In the 7 days between Sunday 16th and Saturday 22nd I have written, by my count:
4000 words approx in the diary
2790 words in the first draft of the first section – this includes some quotation
1275 words in the two blogs published Mon 17th
1100 words in various texts which may turn out to be part of other sections of the draft.
9165 words total for the week
= c.1300 words/day for 7 days.
My target was 2000 words/day, so I’m falling short, but it’s still quite respectable. We'll see how it goes next week.

Göta Älv from Masthugget, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

The Story So Far

2006-07-17T14:06:00.000+02:00

Having decided to do this at last, I'm getting quite excited about starting. We've been in England this past couple of weeks, but I've been turning ideas over in my mind wondering how to go about things. The start is always difficult. I can say that with benefit of experience since I've started many writing projects. The end, though, that's even worse - at least I think so, I've so very rarely got to the end of any major writing project. As for the middle ... I'm beginning to get cold feet.

I'm writing this before having set up the blog site where it will appear, so I'm already thinking it might be better to pull the plug now before I embarrass myself in front of more people. (I have so far told only four people about this, all of whom have heard about my writing projects before and are not going to have their opinions of me much undermined by one more which doesn't get off the ground.) But the whole point of risking a more public pratfall is that it might give me the impetus actually to succeed.

So on we go.

We returned to Sweden last Tuesday, 12th July, and on the plane I was thinking about beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures. Three weeks earlier, I had intended that the final work would be a kind of personal magazine, with sections taken from various of my unfinished projects - the Book of Beasts, Viking Words, Sweden Observed. But then I re-read Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, the kaleidoscope twisted and everything looked different. Chatwin's book was probably the seminal book for the post-modern generation of travel writers. In it, he travels to Patagonia, apparently in pursuit of the true story behind a relic from his childhood - the piece of mylodon skin which his grandmother kept in a glass-fronted cabinet in her dining room. He travels the length and breadth of Patagonia, ending up in Tierra del Fuego, and recounts the stories of the people (especially the British and people of British descent) that he meets, and the places that he visits. The book is a snapshot of southern Argentina and Chile in 1976, but it is also, at least to some degree, a work of fiction. Although the structure appears simple - travelled here, spoke with this person, slept here, saw this - in fact it is put together with considerable artifice. After the book was published, some of the people identified and quoted protested that Chatwin had put words into their mouths, and even the character of "Bruce Chatwin" may be fictional - at least to some degree.

I am not going to pretend that I can emulate Chatwin, but I can aspire, no?

I've also been thinking about marketing. As I noted in Intentions, my objective is to interest enough people to be able to sell at least 100 copies of the final book and/or to break even. I think I'll have a better chance of doing this if I give the book a sharper focus. So out goes the magazine idea, and in comes Gothenburg. I've lived in Gothenburg for 8 years now, ever since the early months of 1998. My wife comes from the city, and we lived here for two years also just after we were married in the mid '80s. Gothenburg is Sweden's second city, and has a relationship with Stockholm rather like that of Manchester with London or Glasgow with Edinburgh. It's also a city with an interesting history. It has been the gateway to Sweden for visitors from abroad since the early 1600s, and Sweden's gateway to the west forlonger even than the city has existed. There many stories to be told (or re-told), and there have been many ideas expressed about Gothenburg, just as there are many ideas currently in circulation. Gothenburgers are proud of their city, they don't compare Gothenburg with Stockholm (except to disparage Stockholm), but are happy to tell you that Gothenburg is "Little London". (In fact, "Little Glasgow" might be more appropriate, but more of that later. Perhaps.)

For some years I've been collecting material for an anthology of writing in English about Sweden - working title: Sweden Observed. But I've also been toying with the idea of a travel book using some of the same stuff. So my current thought is to use the historical material I have collected where it refers to Gothenburg, weaving it into an account of a tourist's exploration of the city today. I have three weeks of holiday coming up (one of the few benefits left to the teaching profession). These will give me a chance to establish contexts for my story.

Later
The above was written on Friday and Saturday (15th-16th July). Today I have established the blog, learned about templates and uploading pictures and discovered that a picture with poster edges doesn't look very good as a thumbnail, which may partly explain the rather washed-out portrait on my profile. The circle of friends who know my plans has grown, I have begun to fill a notebook with ideas. I have also been out for a Swedish summer-style walk in the woods (bare feet) and helped nature along by contributing blood to three mosquito families. (I come up in boils after mosquito bites - only Scandinavian mosquitoes, not British ones - and now have three lovely ones, two on my left foot and one on my right. Gritting my teeth and trying not to scratch. At least my feet are no longer cold.)

I don't intend to update this blog on a daily basis, but I hope to be adding something at least once a week - perhaps more often in the first month or so.

Even later
Hm, some trouble uploading pictures, but I seem to have overcome it now. (It seems as though Blogger doesn't like long titles on jpeg files.) What should be showing are four variations on the Gothenburg city lion. First some flags on Kungsports Avenue with the modern emblem and the city's modern Swedish name, Göteborg. Then a painted lion (from the side of one of the city's older trams). After that there ought to be an embossed lion (from one of the bollards around the city art gallery - konstmuséet). And finally, to the right here, there a lion peeping over the edge of a parapet on Södra Hamngatan.

Intentions

2006-07-17T10:16:00.000+02:00

My intention with this blog is to document the development of an experiment. The goal of the experiment is to create a web site and printed book, to be called Observing Gothenburg. In doing this, I want to explore the possibilities for self-publishing afforded by modern technology, and to teach myself how to go about it. My immediate objectives are, by the end of November this year (2006), to have created an Internet site and a printed book. The Internet site to have commercial and non-commercial facilities for downloading texts, images and sound files; the book to be available as an illustrated, printed text (utilising print-on-demand technology), and also as a spoken-word text (in MP3 format or equivalent).

By providing myself with a publishing opportunity and deadline, I hope to encourage myself to complete writing a book, (something which I have, to date, signally failed to manage without a publisher's deadline). When completed, I intend to use the book as a sort of portfolio. With this, I hope to influence commercial publishers, agents and others to take an interest in my work and creative ideas. The objective of this blog and of the Internet site, will be to advertise the book (and myself).

I am fully aware that most self-published books sell few copies commercially. From what I've been reading, it seems typical that only about 100 copies are sold - often, I guess, to the author and his or her immediate circle. Still, 100 copies sold seems a reasonable target for the book and I will be very satisfied with sales which allow me to break even. At the moment, I don't know whether 100 copies sold will be above or below the break-even point, but this blog gives me a place to identify the costs and the break-even point as I go along.

This is me.