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come reminisce about Oldedalen with me 🦋

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Funniest thread I’ve seen on r/sweden: How do you communicate to your colleague that you wish they’d drown themselves in a lake without seeming mean or being perceived as escalating the conflict?

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Ingrid Bergman, 1943

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Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

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Carl Holsøe - Girl reading by a window (1909)

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the journey will go on (by ausloeserin)

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His eyes are a little swollen. He has flushed them with water after a night of crying and thinks no one will notice. But in reality everything is noticeable, so the funeral guests have left him alone. Not out of respect but out of fear, because the world is afraid of those who cry.

Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame (Burnt Child) (trans. Benjamin Mier-Cruz)

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Iceland

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“The Prince rode under the stars”, from Among Gnomes and Trolls Vol. 9 by John Bauer (1915)

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Since it's about to be new years eve soon I want to remind everyone that this evening really does not have to be the biggest adventure party experience. Dinner with your parents? Awesome! Board games with a few friends? Nice! Watching a movie alone and going to bed early? Yes! Taking care of your pet? Good! Going to the party that does not seem as great as you expected? Well, there are so many other nights that can be better. We always force ourselves to have a wild and crazy life changing night but in the end it is just one night of so many more, do what you want to do, do what makes you feel comfortable.

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My favourite Swedish podcasts

Podcasts are personally my absolute #1 learning resource. I do extensive listening (upper intermediate to advanced!) whenever I have to do one of my 20~30-minute walks. My main goal of doing this is to make understanding a foreign language a natural, effortless thing as well as finding holes in my vocabulary. Here is a list of my favourite podcasts in Swedish (that are still actively producing episodes)! I just turn on auto-download in my podcast app and consume them whenever I have time.

(Note: I’m linking to iTunes because it’s the most common way people get podcasts. I personally never use it, so rest assured you can get all of these elsewhere as well.)

P1 Dokumentär: half- to one-hour audio documentaries about social issues or personal stories / struggles in Sweden. Usually in the very standard “P1 Swedish”. Comes out irregularly but very frequently.

P3 Dokumentär: pretty much the same thing. I actually don’t know the difference between the nature of the two documentaries - I think this one is more current affairs-ish? Comes out weekly on Sundays.

Historiepodden: a long-running podcast with two dudes randomly chatting about historical and sometimes contemporary themes. Probably a good idea only if you’re interested in history - but ‘history’ here refers to a really wide range of events from ancient to recent history. One of them speaks in some sort of southern accent, which is good for training. Comes out weekly on Sundays, can be up to 1.5 hours long.

Allt du velat veta: as the name implies, it’s an hour-long podcast where experts in different fields teach you about really random topics from science to politics to Sherlock Holmes. As of the time of writing I’ve actually just discovered it through the latest episode about conlangs (of course), so I can’t make too much comments yet. Comes out weekly on Tuesdays.

Den svenska musikhistorien: my favourite, even though I just started listening! (What can I say, I’m a music student.) It’s relatively new podcast, each episode less than half an hour long, that discusses, well, Swedish music. It goes all the way from the Middle Ages to folk and pop; it’s currently still stuck in the 1800s though, having already surpassed the total planned number of episodes. Comes out mostly weekly on Wednesdays.

Fredagspodden: guilty pleasure?! I don’t even know why I used to listen to this myself - it’s simply girl’s chat for an hour, and I’m a dude…I was probably just looking for something that’s regularly released to listen to and couldn’t find anything better…anyway it’s released weekly on Fridays (as the name implies).

That’s it for now. I’ll update this if I find any gems, even though I think I’ve looked through many different podcasts. Or if you have a favourite, tell me as well! Happy listening and happy learning!

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“Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. […] I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf.”

— Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper’s, 1974)

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Hamnøy, Lofoten during a light afternoon snowfall. Already missing this place.

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Reykjanes

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Foggy Day in the Faroe Islands.

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— Edith Södergran, from “You who never left your garden patch” (tr. by Martin Allwood)

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From a train journey with NSB, 1961