Archive for February, 2008

What would Bergman think?

Film, Media, Offbeat, Society, Sweden abroad: February 25th, 2008 by DL

In Be Kind Rewind, a new film starring Jack Black, the zany actor brings a new word to the lexicon of film: to Swede.

According to the film’s website:

Sweding is re-making something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on.

Hmmm…not sure what to make of that.

For more background, you can also check out this YouTube clip:

The question we have is how Swedes themselves feel about having been made into a verb, and whether or not the act of ‘Sweding’ is at all reflective of Swedes or Swedish culture.

Little drummer boy

Miscellaneous: February 16th, 2008 by PO

Read all about the little drummer boy who has been wowing Swedish YouTube viewers:

Sweden gets biblical…?

Books, Media, Offbeat, Society: February 15th, 2008 by DL

Back in the day, great novels were sometimes published over several months through installments appearing in popular periodicals. Swedish publisher Förlaget Illuminated has revived the trend with one of the most well-read books of all time.

The Wall Street Journal this week spilled some ink on the company’s serial publication of the Bible. Among other places, glossy, photo-enhanced books of the Bible started appearing last spring in places one usually doesn’t go hunting for spiritual guidance: news stand Pressbyrån.

According to WSJ,

The Swedish-language Bible marries the standard text to glossy magazine-style design. Full-color pages are illustrated with a striking combination of news and dramatized photographs: a homeless child wrapped in a sweater on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia, illustrates the book of Job; a man who drowned trying to enter Europe, for Deuteronomy; and models posing in stylized scenes convey joy or despair. Bible passages are pulled out as captions.

What is one to make of the decision to hawk the Bible along side titles like Cosmopolitan, Elle, and weekly news magazines?

Of course, Sweden has always had a unique relationship with Christianity, even before attaining the status of one of the world’s most secularized countries. After all, the daughter of the great King Gustav II who died fighting for Protestantism in the Thirty Years’ War, Queen Christina, eventually abdicated her post and fled to Rome to convert to Catholicism.

She was the first (only?) Swede–and woman–to get a final resting place among the Popes buried at St. Peter’s.

According a bishop quoted in the piece, Swedes–just like everyone else–apparently still have some of life’s ‘big questions’ left to figure out.

Although Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world, we are seeing a growing interest in existential questions across the Western world, of which [Bible Illuminated] is a part,” says Antje Jackelén, the bishop of Lund, in southern Sweden. “As people travel, as they are presented with a growing multiculturalism at home, they are thinking harder about what it means to be from a culture that is formed by Christianity.

The language of IKEA

Miscellaneous: February 5th, 2008 by PR

John Henley, writing in The Guardianon Monday, offers a linguistic analysis of IKEA’s furniture names, for those untrained in the Swedish tongue.

Kitchens are generally grammatical terms, and kitchen utensils are spices, herbs, fish, fruits, berries, or functional words such as Skarpt (it means sharp, and it’s a knife). Chairs and desks are Swedish men’s names (Roger, Joel); materials and curtains are women’s names. Children’s items are mammals, birds and adjectives (Ekorre is a set of children’s toy balls; it means squirrel).

But then you knew that already, didn’t you?