Swedish county letters

A Mora knife from the 1930s-40s

[Image source: https://thebladeblog-ulf.blogspot.com/2011/08/1920s-erik-frost-mora-knife-model-no24.html .]

In two hours there appeared just eight cars.

Two Volvos, two puttering Saabs, a Borgward Isabella, a Hillman, a Morris Minor with an old guy at the wheel and a green Opel Olympia.

But actually it wasn't the types of car that interested us but the county letters. 

It was Bert-Egon and me who were sitting there on the milk table below Uncle Arvid's house. It was Friday evening and as usual we had nothing in particular to do.

We sat and dangled our feet and dug out splinters from the weatherbeaten planks with our Mora knives and looked at the cars that went past. 

And there were not many.

The majority were Y reg cars,but two were from AC. One of the Saabs was an A reg. That was a Stockholmer. At that point we jumped down off the milk table and threw stones after it until it disappeared in a cloud of dust in the direction of Nybystrand.

"The next one's a P," said Bert-Egon.

"P?" I said. "Where does a P reg car come from? That must be way down south, eh? Skåne or Småland or Blekinge?"

"Got no idea," answered Bert-Egon. "I've never seen P on a car, but there's always a first time, like the girl said."

We were playing a game. We had to guess which county letter the next car would have. I was 5-3 up, so it was a bit weird that Bert-Egon took such a gamble instead of going for Y.

"A," I said, even though I reckoned it would be a Y.

But we were both wrong. Around the bend behind the bridge came a strange procession, no less than three cars in convoy. Three big American cars that rolled forward on the gravel road. 

The first one was a Chevrolet Bel Air, Bert-Egon knew that one, with grillwork like a grinning mouth, a jetplane as hood ornament, and fins.

The second was even bigger, with even longer fins, black and white, but with the same dollar grin.

The third was all black, just as big as the second car but not quite so snazzy, more sober and solemn, as if it was carrying a mourner or a state governor.

But all three seemed run-down and dirty. 

We stood up on the milk table, as if in tribute, and gaped with wide eyes. 

"The second one's a De Soto and the last one a Chrysler," whispered Bert-Egon, his voice filled with admiration.

"And we both got it wrong," I whispered."X, what is that?"

"I'm not sure," said Bert-Egon. "Gävle, I think. What cars!"

They had already started to turn in towards us. ...

(Opening of Spådomen (The fortune), a 1988 young adult novel by Bo R Holmberg.)

*

The story takes place in the early 1960s in rural Ångermanland in the north of Sweden. 

The county letters (länsbokstäver) formed the alphabetical part of Swedish number plates between 1907 and 1973. The idea caught on and the county letters still sometimes show up in other contexts. 

The counties in question (läns) are not Sweden's historic provinces -- such as Ångermanland -- but administrative regions; they sometimes nearly coincide with a historic province, but often not. The läns aren't a modern imposition, having existed in some form or other ever since 1634. They've been fairly stable since 1810 though changes still occur. 

The ones referred to here: 

Y: Västernorrlands län. The local letter in Ångermanland and Medelpad.

AC: Västerbottens län. This would also be a regular sight, because the län border is not far to the north of where the story is set.

A: Stockholm city. Not very near to Ångermanland, but Stockholm being so much more populous than any of the northern counties, an A car would still be a fairly common sight. 

P: Not the far south as Lasse surmises, but Älvsborgs län. Incorporated into Västra Götalands län in 1998, it was a region inland from Gothenburg that included e.g. Borås and the historic province of Dalsland.

X: Bert-Egon was right, X meant Gävleborgs län.

Full list here: 

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nsbokstav

A map of län boundaries and their letters. From a 1973 edition of Vägvisare, a road atlas published by the motoring association Motormännens Riksförbund (now M Sverige).

Puttering Saabs: the Saab of those days had a two-stroke engine. It was agile, lightweight and could win rallies but hadn't yet become a status car. 

Milk table: the table outside a farm where dairy vehicles would collect the full milk-churns and return the empty ones.

Nybystrand: As in other Holmberg books, this is code for Nyland (the town near Bollstabruk on the Ångerman river).

The dollar grin: an expression that apparently originated in the Britain of post-war rationing, enviously referring to the dazzling wide grillwork of American cars that Britons couldn't afford.

*

The two boys make friends with this traveller family and eventually they have their fortunes told. Their stories are going to be so different. Lasse, an imaginative but ordinary boy from a happy, stable family, with a deep attachment to his village. You could see him becoming a regional novelist one day...

And Bert-Egon, from a disastrously broken home, with a binge-drinking father, having to grow up fast, spontaneous, moody, sometimes compliant and sometimes crazy, having to take the kind of decisions that his friend will never have to face. 

It's a concise book, easy to read, but it stirs up some of the same depths as the more complex Dagsmeja, the adult novel that Holmberg wrote next.

Pelle Molin

Nämforsen, painting by Pelle Molin c.1891

[Image source: Wikipedia .]

HARDY FOLK

Two red hill-villages stood opposite, each on its own high cliff; far down between them ran the strong black river, brawling and roaring through rapids and waterfalls on its way to the sea.

Directly between the villages lay a stretch of calm water, but above it and below it the rapids ran foaming and white. 

This tale begins with the moo-stone.

When the river ran high the moo-stone lay far below the surface of the water, but at low water it sometimes thrust its sharp black head out of the depths. Like all larger obstacles in a current it formed a backwater behind it.

The local name for it was the eddy. Whenever there was a drop in the powerful spurting of the lower fall, and the mountain wind Åk-vissla wasn't rushing down the dale, then you could hear a mooing sound from the stone on still and quiet nights, as the water ran over it. Thus it got the name "moo-stone". 

Now, as everyone knows, the salmon rest up in such places, when they are tired of swimming against the current, and here they may easily be caught.

The farmers on the southern bank had fishing nets there, because the moo-stone lay within their part of the river. Those who dwelt on the northern side looked on enviously and put out nets on their own side, but they caught nothing to speak of.

The biggest farmer on the south side was called Zakris, and he had a half share in everything that was taken. The biggest farmer north of the river was called Kerstop and he took a half share in all the northern farmers' sense of grievance.

And every time he came down to find nothing he brooded on an effective means of making the salmon take the northern channel.

Late one half-lit summer night he rowed out on the river, and he had a strange contraption in the boat. 

Now the moo-stone was so formed that its upper edge was narrow and high; below it there was a walled hollow and in this he placed a paddlewheel, lodged it in place, saw that it  could turn, and with a little smile rowed his boat back north until it dipped within the cliff's deep shadow.

The next day he stood behind a barn and watched the southside farmers pull in their nets. Not one living creature! "Aye aye," said Kerstop. The next day he did the same. Not a single fin! "Fancy that," said Kerstop. He heard how they invoked the prince of darkness. 

The third day he had his own net out, but first he watched the others' catch. Not a thing! "Yes, but damn it," said Kerstop. He heard how their curses crossed each other.

Only when he saw the last blue cotton jacket disappear over the brow of the hill did he row out and take from his own net a heap of silver-scaled salmon.

*

The beginning of a story by the Ångermanland artist/author Pelle Molin (1864 - 1896), rather approximately rendered. The original is in old spelling with lots of northern dialect.

The feud continues into the next generation, until the day that Kerstop's son survives Zakris' wicked challenge to cross the river before the ice has set fast, and thus wins Zakris' daughter. 

The story was published in the posthumous collection Ådalens Poesi (1897). Ådalen is the valley of the big river Ångermanälven. Molin was born beside the river in Tjäll, just east of Sollefteå, but during his most productive years (1890-94) he lived further upstream at Näsåker, his mother's birthplace. 

[Internationally the name Ådalen is mostly known for the infamous shootings of striking workers in 1931. That was in the broad lower part of the valley at Lunde, south of Kramfors.]

On an 1895 trip in search of a painting subject Pelle Molin was trapped for several days in terrible weather on the Sulitelma massif. (At the time Sulitelma was thought to be the highest mountain in Sweden.) He died the following year in Bodø (Norway), shortly before his 32nd birthday.

*

Ådalens Poesi, complete online text. 

https://runeberg.org/adalen/

Contains page images as well as transcript; useful as there were a couple of transcription errors in the page I translated.

Swedish text of the above extract:

KÄRNFOLK.

Två röda fjällbyar lågo midt emot hvarandra på hvar sin höga nipa; djupt nere och emellan dem gick den kraftiga svarta älfven med larm och dån i forsar och fall, på sin väg mot hafvet.

Mellan byarne gick älfven i sel, som är spakvatten; men ofvan och nedan gick forsen skummig och hvit.

Vid råmstenen börjas denna historia.

Då floden gick hög nådde råmstenen på långt när icke vattenytan, men vid lågvatten stack han ibland sitt svarta slipade hufvud upp ur djupet. Som alla kraftigare hinder i en ström gjorde han nedanför sig ett bakvatten.

I bygden kallades detta eda. Bar ej sunnan det kraftiga hväset från nedra fallet eller fjällvinden Åk-visslans breda ljudström ned genom dalen, råmade stenen i vindstilla och tysta nätter, då vattnet gick öfver honom. Af detta hade han sitt namn.

Nu, som hvar man vet, hvilar laxen på dylika ställen, då han tröttnat i strömmen, och där fångas han gärna.

Bönderna på södra sidan hade nätfiske där, därför att råmstenen låg inom deras vattenrätt; norrborna tittade afundsjukt på, satte sina nät på sin sida, men funno ingenting att tala om.

Största bond’ på södra sidan hette Zakris och hade halfparten af allt som ficks. Största bond’ norr om ån hette Kerstop, och han tog åt sig halfparten af all norråböndernas förargelse.

För hvarje gång han gick ner till “inget“, funderade han på talande utvägar att få laxen att gå efter norra fåran.

Sent en halfljus sommarnatt rodde han ut på älfven och hade en konstig maskin i båten.

Nu var råmstenen så bygd, att öfre kanten stod smal och hög; nedanför var en fördjupning med väggar och i den satte han en kvarnkall, gjorde den godt fast, såg till att den var rörlig och rodde småflinande sin snipa norröfver, till denna dök in i nipans djupa skugga.

Dagen därpå stod han bakom en lada och åsåg söråböndernas vittje. Inte ett lif! “Jojo“, sa’ Kerstop. Följande dag på samma sätt. Inte en fena! “Betänk“, sa’ Kerstop. Han hörde hur de åkallade afgrunds-fursten.

Tredje dagen hade han sina egna nät ute, men såg först på de andras vittje. Inte ett lif! “Ja, men besitta“, sa’ Kerstop. Han hörde hur förbannelserna korsade hvarandra.

Först då han såg den sista blå bomullsjackan försvinna bakom nipkrönet, rodde han ut och tog ur sina egna nät en hop silfverfjälliga laxar.

Kärnfolk....  Kärn means "core". The term (often used in military contexts, though not here) connotes toughness, genuineness, reliability.

Sel ..... A Norrland term meaning a smooth, broad, calm stretch of river (hence possible to row across). The word appears in place-names dotted round Ångermanälven: Åsele, Långsele, Ramsele, Junsele...  A "sel" was then an important river feature, because infrequent. Nowadays the appearance of Sweden's big northern rivers has changed. They have become one long "sel", interrupted only by hydroelectric dams. The treacherous brawling river as described and painted by Pelle Molin belongs to history. 

Talande ..... "weighty" SAOB 10b, approximately. 

Kvarnkall.... the drive wheel of a mill, with paddles round the rim. Of course it wouldn't spin when totally immersed, but perhaps it would jiggle enough to frighten the fish.

Åkvisslan, painting by Pelle Molin

*

I heard of Pelle Molin via another Ångermanland author, Bo R Holmberg in his YA novel Spådomen (The Prediction, 1988). 

Here Lasse's artist uncle Arne has shown up.

He usually came home once a year, but no-one knew when he was coming. 

Suddenly he just turned up, as a rule in a taxi from the station at Nybystrand [nb = Nyland].

But this time he had come on a Vespa.

-- I'm renting a cottage in Nordingrå, he said. I've been there a few weeks trying to capture the light. I borrowed the Vespa.

He was different. He had his own times. He sat up half the nights and read or drew, but in the morning when everyone else got up he slept on and dragged himself up only in time for elevenses.

Arvid had some downtime for a bit now. All the hay was in the barns. He sat at the table too, but in jeans and work-shirt.

-- I just got here, Arne said. Riding a Vespa was an experience, with the wind in my face all through this monstrous nature that God created when he was both angry and smiling, as Pelle Molin put it.

He really spoke like that. It was hard to believe he was Dad's and Arvid's brother.

-- He's always been like that, Arvid used to say. He's flaky* and has never done a day's work in his life.

Arvid poured coffee in the saucer and slurped it.

Arne got up and stretched. He patted his stomach contentedly, pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and flipped it around in his hand.

-- Here time stands still, he said and lit the cigarette. Here you walk between the cowshed and the cabin day after day. You've done it for thirty-forty years and you'll carry on the same for maybe twenty more.

-- There are those who will do it too, said Arvid and his jaws tightened. There are those who understand about responsibility. 

* "en slingbirum". As often happens, most online occurences of this dialect word come from Holmberg's own books.

Lasse appreciates Arne's free and easy ways, the way he talks to the boys just the same as the adults. But he bristles at Arne's reductive view of village life. This chapter becomes a meditation on Lasse's own thoughts of being a writer.

(Arne's quote comes from Pelle Molin's lyrical prose piece "Gamla Ådalen".)

*

[Image source: https://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/item/?type=film&itemid=4223#plot-summary .]

A still from the 1947 movie Ådalens Poesi, based on the story "Kärnfolk". Olle (Kerstop's son, played by Carl-Henrik (Kenne) Fant) fights with Zakris (played by Adolf Jahr).

selkrok

A simple selkrok or selbåge with the wooden pads in place

[Image source: https://vlh.kulturhotell.se/items/show/201579 .]


Today's obscure Swedish word. In the novel I'm currently absorbed in, Bo R. Holmberg's Dagsmeja (1989), which is set in the early 1960s in northern Sweden, there is this sentence about Edvin's father, a dealer in scrap.

På vintern samlade han, sålde och köpte batterier, bildelar, selkrokar, pumpar, fälgar och däck. (p. 18)

Which I translated:

In the winter he built up his stock, bought and sold batteries, car parts, harness fittings, pumps, wheel-rims and tyres.

A selkrok (literally "harness crook") is really something more specific than a "harness fitting", but there's no English word for it.

Also known as a selbåge (literally ”harness bow”), it was an old-fashioned part of the harness of a working horse in Nordic countries. It was an arch-shaped piece of wood or metal that rested on wooden pads on the horse’s withers; its function was to keep the reins high above the traces and to keep the harness straps aligned. It did not bear any part of the load strain, which was taken by the collar; it was basically a kind of harness saddle (not the kind you sit on). The older wooden selkrokar were often beautifully carved and decorated, and are now found in folk-museums. I imagine Edvin's dad was picking up the plain metal ones. They were used in the 1920s (see the photo below), but perhaps by the 1960s they were becoming farmyard clutter?

A selkrok in use by Lapland forest workers in the 1920s.

[Image source: https://www.storumansfotoarkiv.se/items/show/2392 . A photo from the 1920s, taken at Gunnarn in Storuman, Västerbotten (Lapland). ]

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/021028291451/selkrok . Wooden selkrok, carved and painted, from 1776. In the county museum at Gävleborg.]

More information:

About harness types and terminology (in Swedish):
https://korning.ifokus.se/articles/4daea25688f47226c5000e3a-olika-typer-av-selar

About harness fittings, including selkrokar, that became folk-art objects (post by Robert Pohjanen, in Swedish, on the Norbotten museum blog):
https://kulturmiljonorrbotten.com/2016/10/07/bogtran-och-selbagar/

a virtual Norrland

Summer plans for physically visiting northern Sweden being on hold, I've been finding other ways to indulge my Norrland nostalgia. 

My marginal notes on Bo R. Holmberg's novel Dagsmeja have begun to sprout pictures and recipes when a simple translation doesn't really do it; it's starting to look quite decorative. 

Holmberg's novel is set in Ångermanland, near to eastern Jämtland, where for many years we had our summer cottage. A little south from there is Västernorrland (the old county was called Medelpad), dominated by the large town of Sundsvall, where my mother grew up. So that's the bit of Norrland that I know reasonably well. A little above it are the forbidding distances of what used to be called southern Lapland and is now Västerbotten.  

[I often used to wonder how Västernorrland and Västerbotten got their names, when they are on East coast of Sweden. Ultimately it goes back to the time when Finland was effectively a Swedish province. The popular term "Norrland" embraced the distinctively northern parts (many trees, few people) of both Sweden and Finland. So Västernorrland was in the west of Norrland. Västerbotten lay (as it still does!) to the west of the Gulf of Bothnia (Bottenviken), and Norrbotten to the north of it, but these names made more sense when there was also an "Österbotten", historically the corresponding county of Finland, on the east coast of Bottenviken.]

Norrland is a land of dialects, still vigorous today but also with many archaic terms whose memory is cherished. Norrländska describes words commonly used across the whole of northern Sweden, but not in the south. But apart from this there are the more narrowly regional dialects. In my area, that means jämtländska, ångermanländska, and medelpadska. (These are dialects of Swedish, not the Sami languages that also spoken in the north.) Jämtländska was the best known to me. It reflects Jämtland's more westerly centre of gravity, its history of connection with Norway (it has belonged to Norway at one time or another), and its inland transhumance culture. But the other dialects have their own terms. For instance Holmberg speaks of en skryd släkt, a family (descent, lineage, breed) whose members tend to die young. Skryd is an Ångermanland word that bundles the ideas of scantiness, scarcity, and ephemerality: "short-lived" would be the best translation in this context. 

Mjölkbord: a milk churn table (they existed in Britain too). Once a common site by country roads. A table where the churns were placed, to make it easier for the dairy vehicle to pick them up and drop them off. 

Pinnstol: a chair with the back composed of turned struts.

krimmermössa: literally, a Crimea cap. It meant a popular kind of sheepskin hat without a peak or brim. The term arose in Germany (where the sheepskin really did come from the Crimea).

Here are some other local or northern terms I've encountered so far:

ala to plough, harrow (see päral)
på fyromfötter on all fours
knix  bump in the road
lägda field
nipa erosion cliff bank on river bank

Päral

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/011023835143/paral .]

päral small plough for potato field
päranna potato harvest
pärland potato field
stötting horse-drawn sled e.g. for carrying timber
täv locked-in smell (Ångermanländska)

saxen: I knew this meant "the scissors", but that made no sense in the context of hauling logs. I eventually realized that in this case it referred to timber tongs, as pictured here.

My dictionary gave me translations for the numerous horse terms, but what use was that to me, when I didn't know what they meant in English?

Old Berglund was böjd som en spiskrok, "bent as a poker". That made no sense, until I remembered the shape of the stove poker in our own cottage. It had a crook at one end (to hang it from a rail when not in use) and a crimp at the other end, which was used to lift up the heavy hob rounds in order to access the wood-burning compartment from above. When the stove was cool you would do this to sweep it out. But sometimes you had to do it even when the stove was hot, e.g if the fire didn't draw properly and the kitchen was filling with smoke.



The internet has often failed to match the most obscure terms, but it would be churlish not to acknowledge how often it's been useful. A reference to bacon with uppstekt tunnbröd (fried crispbread) would have meant very little to me but for the recipe that I found online: https://www.matklubben.se/recept/uppstekt-tunnbroed-med-kall-falukorv-30322 .

The Swedish equivalent of the OED, Svenska akademiens ordbok (SAOB) is available online and is indispensable. Of course it doesn't contain all the dialect and local terms, but it does have a surprising number of them.

http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2012/08/swedish-wild-flower-diary-july-2012.html
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/02/flowers-from-jamtland-july-2013.html
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/05/leaving-cottage.html
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/01/melodies-of-eastern-jamtland-joel-bohlen.html

the black overcoat going round and round

     Dreams can reassure us, they can help us to overcome mistrust, fear or evil presentiments.
     And stories can do that, too.
     Old man Berglund had a pack of them, but not many listeners; he had Edvin.
     He never talked of her who lay tied to the bed for at least one month in every year, nor of Helge who had died from cancer. He talked about horses.
     And how you should never lose hope, or start to believe the worst, or think that things won't be all right.
     So he leaned himself back in his rocking-chair.  Edvin reversed a kitchen chair and sat down on it, with his arms along the back, and listened while his grandfather recounted the story about the horse and the rye-meal:

    "The horse was ugly, sure enough, not its head so much, but its back didn't go down into a dip but rather into a hump, its backbone rose up into a ridge, as on a cow. But Bodin had been drinking all day, and it was Christmas Eve and the seller was only asking four hundred kronor* and that included a brand new harness, and an old kibeck sleigh as well, and he had the money, Bodin did. He lived over on the far side of the lake, just opposite the Swedish-American, though it's been rebuilt now, that house.
     Anyway, when he woke up on Christmas Day his mouth was dry and his clothes were dirty and the horse was standing out in the snow, and a black overcoat with a velvet collar was draped over its withers. And Bodin, he could see through the bedroom window how the horse was pulling the sleigh round and round in the meadow and carving a deep track through the snow.
     How he got home from town he hardly remembered and still less did he recall how he went down to Sundberg later the same morning and how he drunkenly drove the horse back through the woods.
     And now my dad got to hear about all this. I myself had been born just the evening before, so I don't remember anything, but Dad used to tell me the story and it's all true.
     He came down to our place later on Christmas Day, Bodin did.
     I don't want any bloody horse, he said. It's no good, someone like me with horses.
    Then they stood out on the slope by the stable and Dad felt its belly, breast and shoulder, he measured the distance between the front legs and he ran his hand along the backbone and down over the loins and the croup.
     There's nothing wrong with him, said Bodin. I bought him in Sollefteå yesterday, but there's no way I'm keeping a horse.
     That's quite a back, that is, said Dad and ran his hand along it, lifted the tail and examined the buttocks.
     The tail hasn't been trimmed, that's so he won't be scared around his legs. He's a strong one. Look at those legs, said Bodin. He sounded like a salesman.
     And he leant down, Bodin did, and felt at the hocks but the horse kicked out backwards and he had to jump to one side.
     He's got spirit and he's strong, he said and laughed. The guy who owned him before was going to buy a plough, a single-horse model from Kulvert and Co., but he made a mistake, he ended up with an Överums 50 for a pair of horses, but he hitched him up anyway and it didn't bother the horse, you can be sure of that.
     But Dad just ran his hand along the humped back.
     Mm-mm, you're thinking about the back, said Bodin. Yes, he's as ugly as sin, but you won't be putting him in the front hall.
     Finally Dad nodded and went for it. Four hundred kronor with the harness and sleigh, the kibeck, which was falling apart and underpinned with rusty runners. Two hundred down and the rest in a month.
     He didn't have things so easy, Dad didn't, but this much he could manage. The old nag had just gone to slaughter, and the slaughter money plus a bit more that he'd saved up and kept in his pocket, Bodin had it all as a deposit. The old nag had been seventeen years old, and he really needed a new horse, not so much for the small-holding itself, but for the timber wood, and for the occasional run to and from the steamboats.
      After Bodin had gone, Dad took the horse by the halter and led him up to the kitchen window, and knocked on it. Mum held me in her arms so I might see the horse too, and then she went outside with a cardigan over her night-dress.
      He doesn't look so great, she said, but he'll do. As long as he doesn't turn out to be a cribber, or restive.
     He won't, said Dad. Bodin's evil when he's had a drink, but he doesn't swindle people. It's a Finn-horse. He's quick, he's done beer deliveries up and down the coast.
     He's a good one, he said, and he patted the horse that was now his. And you know, we have to have a horse.
     The horse stood still beneath the window and flicked its ears and Dad filled a nose-bag with oats and let the horse stand and eat while he drew up the sledge. Down by the earth-cellar there was a fair old heap of big logs that he bundled up using the grapple. This would make a good trial load, but first he went indoors for a moment, and there I lay, swaddled at Mum's breast and sucking like a baby calf.
     Dad heated the coffee-pan and drank while standing beside the stove, and he thought about the horse, and maybe about me too.
     It's Christmas Day you know, Mum said.
     Yes, said Dad, but I'll just do a trial pull, see if he'll be any use in the wood.
     When he came back out the horse had emptied the nose-bag and Dad tightened the yoke, bitted the horse and led him up to the sledge.
      He hitched him to it, stroked the horse's muzzle and whispered:
      Fine horse, fine horse, now we shall see.
      He drew in the reins, cracked them and the horse pulled but only that, the sledge squeaked and shifted a little bit. Dad struck him with the reins, the horse stretched forward and then suddenly went down on his knees. Dad shouted and struck and the horse made an attempt to get up but instead slipped to one side. There was a creak along the timbers and soon he was lying on his side frothing at the mouth with one of the shafts off.
      And Dad, he rushed forward and released the other shaft and tugged at the bit and got him standing up. He stood there in the snow and just trembled, the horse did, and Dad was doing about the same.
      But one should never lose hope or think the worst.
      He went indoors again, Mum had got up and put her clothes on. That was the end of her lying-in, and she was up and about once more.
      How did it go? she asked, shooting a birch log into the stove.
      It went all right, Dad said, and coughed, but in the morning I'll just have a wander down to Lundgren's so he can take a look at him before I decide for definite.
      Lundgren, he lived down at the ferry, in the red house on the left hand side.
       Dad slept little enough that night but when he came out to the stable the horse had eaten and emptied the water bucket and was looking a bit more lively, and he drew the kibeck nice and easy down to Lundgren's.
        He was old then, Lundgren, with a grey beard and dirty homespun frieze trousers. He put on his sheepskin cap and followed Dad out onto the slope and took a good while to check the horse over. He felt the calves, the belly and shoulder, looked into his eyes, lifted the upper lip  and examined the teeth.
        Then he spat twice and hitched up his trousers.
         He's utterly marrowless, he said. Both out and in. But there is a remedy, and if he manages to eat it without it spurting out of him then it'll be all right. But if the guts don't hold, you'll simply have to sell him to the tinker or put him down.
          Never will I sell him to the tinker, Dad said and rubbed his moustache.
          If he stands the remedy he'll get his marrow back, said Lundgren. You buy a hundred kilos of sifted rye-meal. Then chop up the best hay you've got. Mix the meal with the chopped hay and stir the whole lot up together with some water and give it to the horse morning and night. Get good stools from that lot and the horse will be whole and well again, but if it just comes spurting out then there's nothing for it but to put him down.
          He spat far out in the snow and scratched the horse under one ear.
          That sort of horse, it's no use beating it either. A cross-breed mare that lays herself down, you can spark her up with the thick end now and then, but for this type of horse, rye-meal is the only thing that works, said Lundgren, spat once more, shivered in the cold and stepped back into his warm kitchen.
            And Dad, he did just as Lundgren said. He chopped hay and mixed it with rye-meal into a greyish mash and fed the horse.
            All that night he lay awake. He thought, about the horse and about those four hundred kronor, and the timber wood, and the sledge, and the old nag, and when it lightened he went out to the stable with a paraffin lamp in his hand. It was freezing cold and he shivered as he went. The horse was standing and Dad lifted the lantern up to the horse's head and the horse flicked its ears, and then Dad lowered the lantern down to the manure and there was a song within him when he saw the heap of round balls, and he stroked the horse's muzzle and crammed a bit of sugar into his mouth and there was singing inside him and it coursed all through his stroking hands.
            Yes, well, later he hitched him to the sleigh. It was still dark, but the horse stood erect and when Dad pulled on the reins he set off at once towards the stable and out onto the track, up over the meadow and into the woods, and Dad sat on the logs and sang, and the horse drove mil on mil through the wintry wood, over rivers and dikes, over ridges and mountains and even where the snow was absent far down the valley, there was a puff of flame and smoke behind the runners on the sleigh drawn by the new horse who had got his marrow back."

             Oh yes, that was a story, that was.
             And so one must never lose faith.
             They sat quietly, but grandpa rocked in the rocking-chair and searched in his memories for more stories, now that he had a listener.
             But Edvin stood up, shifted his chair back to the kitchen table and went towards the door.
             -- It's time for her medicine again, he said.





(Bo R. Holmberg, Dagsmeja, pp. 67-72)


 *400 SEK = about £40.

Gosh, this is hard! The whole novel, set in Ångermanland in northern Sweden, has a lot of local dialect words, and a lot of technical rural terms. I know nothing about horses and less about sleighs, so translating this is quite an education. The words in bold type are where I've been defeated and either made a guess or simply thrown up my hands. 

A kibäck is evidently some kind of sleigh, but it's a word that that doesn't exist on the internet, at least not in that sense. (Apparently IKEA once named one of their products, a kilim carpet, KIBÄCK, to the general bafflement of even Swedes.). It's probably a variant of kibitka  or kibicka, meaning a covered sleigh (originally Russian). 

Where I've put "there's nothing wrong with him", the word -- again, unknown to the internet -- is lastbränd -- "cargo-burnt". I imagine this might be a condition arising from pulling heavy loads, perhaps sores on the flanks or just being worn out? Another word I couldn't match is födslovilan, which I take to mean birth-rest, i.e. lying-in. Lundgren's sentence about the lethargic mare is less than guesswork, it's just papering over the cracks. The original sentence is: En blanningsmärr som lägg sej kan man dänga upp med grovändan på en vi, . . .  I've found no parallel for på en vi. 

Cross-breed mare. The word in the text is blanningsmärr  ( = blandningsmärr). That is, a cross between the local North Swedish breed and the heavier Ardennes breed, introduced to Sweden in 1873. K.G Holgersson in Dalarna in the 1930s, remembering his first farm horse: “Putte was a gold-bay and probably a cross-bred horse, in other words a cross between Ardennes and North Swedish. Crossing the two breeds produced a slightly heavier horse, which better suited the daily farm-work of ploughing and hauling loads of timber.” (Gold-bay: a bay with a light, not black, mane and tail.)  “Putte var guldfux och antagligen en blandningshäst, alltså en korsning mellan ardenner och nordsvensk. Genom att korsa de båda typerna fick man en lite tyngre häst som bättre än nordsvensken passade för gårdarnas dagsverken framför plogen eller timmerlasset.” (Mitt liv och mina hästar, by K.G. Holgersson in collaboration with Willy Klaeson, 2008).

*

Bo R. Holmberg, a teacher in Ångermanland until his retirement, now 75, the author of some fifty books in various genres: children's books, young adult fiction, a series of eight historical whodunnits covering the period 1840 - 1960, memoirs, local history and topography -- and adult novels, of which Dagsmeja (Day-melt, 1989) is I believe the earliest. Some of his other books have been translated in various languages, but Dagsmeja feels like a book in the provincial hinterland of national culture, the kind of book whose rich local detail is aimed purely at a Swedish audience and never translated or even heard of outside Sweden (except here). That's the kind of writing I find most intriguing.

Opening pages

Practicing my Swedish... translations of the opening pages of four of the (fairly random) Swedish books I've picked up over the years.

*

The wooden coffin is unpainted and placed on two stools in the middle of the kitchen floor, while the lid leans against a folded gate-leg table just next to the window. In the coffin lies the Swedish-American, dressed in his American army uniform.

The face is bare, with closed eyes but with mouth slightly open, and in one corner of the mouth there's a trace of powder that should manage to stave off decay for a few more hours.

The uniform jacket is buttoned right up to the throat. One can't see that the uniform is American, because from the second highest button down a white sheet covers his breast, arms and hands. But at heart level lies a miniature American flag, giving colour to all that white.

Why he has chosen to rest for ever dressed up in that way, none of the people in the room know. They are thirteen, the dead included. Six children and seven adults.

She who lived with him these last years, and bore him two children, stands nearest, somewhat bowed over the coffin, in a moment of stillness over him. She holds the two youngest children in her arms and ruckles her grey blouse, but her black skirt curves in to her waist as abruptly as if she's holding her breath and shows she's still young, for all that she's had five children.

The three others that are not his stand a little to one side,   ...

(From Dagsmeja by Bo R. Holmberg (1989). The title means day-thaw, i.e. thawing during the day and refreezing at night, common towards the end of winter. This story is set in a village in Ångermanland, in northern Sweden.)


*


Bus number 2013 departs Alexandria on squealing tyres. It's rained all night. The asphalt glitters in the morning sun. Against the light it looks like the street-sweeper is sweeping a lake.

It's only when we leave the city that we understand how big it is. Halts at an endless number of bus stations. A seller gets on, cries his wares, jumps off, is replaced by another. The industries and suburbs of this city of six million people lie between dams, ditches and canals, linked together by viaducts and roads lined with advertising billboards. Alexandria floats on the water of Africa's interior.

We roll out on a four-lane coast road that leads via El Alamein to Marsa Marruh, then south-west through the Libyan desert to Siwa; the same route that Alexander took exactly 2,335 years ago, when he wanted the Oracle of Amon to confirm his divine extraction.

It isn't the first time we've crossed the world-conqueror's indistinct path. For several years he has mocked us with his shadow. Fully read up and full of expectancy we've searched for signs and traces that witness to his former presence. Like outside the town of Gorgan in Iran, on the border with Turkmenistan, a stone's throw from the Caspian Sea. Here we sat for a whole day with drawn-up knees in the back seat of a Paykan taxi, crossing the flat-as-a-pancake landscape, staring like two owls out towards the horizon for Sadd-é Eskandar -- Alexander's wall. Ali, the young man who drove us, was an unemployed limnologist, specializing in the inland sea's flora and fauna. He had never heard any mention of the wall that our English guidebook so clearly indicated. ...

(From Café Musa: Egyptian Journeys by Tomas Andersson and Stefan Foconi (2007).)

limnologist -- studies inland aquatic ecosystems.
Paykan -- make of car, manufactured in Iran between 1967 and 2005.


*


"Here is a lad who has five barley loaves and two fishes; but what good is that among so many?"
                                                                                                                         John 6:9.


OF THE LIFE OF ANGELS

                Each year the lily stems bear
                their white flowering splendour.
                But if there weren't any angels
                who should then round the Throne
                better than lilies keep watch?
                For still vibrates the silver tone
                of the world's first choir,
                the white procession
                       that never dies.


OF THE LIFE OF ANGELS

Of the life of angels, of the service of God
    a psalm of praise, a song of penance.
Our harp is the wind -- who orders its sound?
Who raises, when the guard walks with the baton,
its curbed word like a lark's trill to the skies?
    What touches us with the seraphs' wings,
when the prison walls set bounds to our sight?
     -- Accompanied by menaces are the sounds
of the life of angels, of the service of God
    a psalm of praise, a song of penance.   ...


(From Five Barley Loaves and Two Fishes / Fem kornbröd och två fiskar by Hjalmar Gullberg (1942; eighth edition 1950).)


*


Foreword to the second edition

I've given birth to two children and I'm currently expecting my third. The first time was in 1985, I was 28 and was the first of my friends to have a baby. This was before the baby boom, which came a bit later, at the end of the 1980s. My world up to that point had been filled with travel and work and relations with other people without any children, and I was neither very informed about pregnancy nor very prepared for delivery.

The nine months were long and heavy. I had ten different midwives and didn't get to know any of them. And they in turn didn't even learn my name. I was three weeks overdue. The baby should have been born on the 19th of January if the midwives and doctor were correct. On the 13th of February I was taken in to the delivery unit. My delivery was to be artificially induced, I was told (and I went along with that and everything else). But most things went wrong and just two days later my baby was born by acute Caesarian section. What I recall most clearly about those nightmare days of delivery is all the medical students who came and went in my room, so as to see with their own eyes this especially unusual case.

My baby was a happy, curious, hungry and well-formed little girl. But it took some time for her mum to recover.

(From 100 Questions and Answers If You're Expecting a Baby by Anneli Rogeman (1990; second edition 1994).)

"och jag fann mig i detta ..." -- " and I went along with that..." (lit. and I found myself in that).  I found this the most troublesome expression in all these four pages. It wasn't in my dictionaries (or in Google Translate). I followed the usual procedure: guess the meaning from context, then check it by doing a search for other uses of the same expression...