Laundry Room Violence
Anyone who's been to Sweden, lived in a flat here and needed to wash their laundry knows well what a tvättstuga is. They also know that this word, usually translated as laundry room, has no counterpart in most of the world. And if they've been here long enough they often find the laundry room's booking system either too rigid or too easily misused. Those who've stayed for a long time, but even those with a basic knowledge of the country, also know that Sweden is a fairly peaceful society. Which is why I occasionally ponder the particularly Swedish form of violence known as laundry room violence (tvättstugevåld). My prepondera

Grey Area
If you do not like grey, the North may not be the place for you. November's haze, rain, wind, hail, fog and heavy, day-long dusk, which in some years outlasts winter and casts over spring, summer and fall, and then drizzles back into winter again, can wear down most of us.The continuous haze of grey in a year like 2008, when the temperature constantly hovered around 45° F (8° C), is veritably an acquired taste. The most lucid literary gestalt I've found for this is in Jonas Gardell's Så går en dag ifrån vårt liv och kommer aldrig åter (And so passes a day from our lives, never to return):Grå tunghimmel

Death – A Memory from the Future
This post is aimed to be a meditation suited for Halloween, All Saint's Day and today, All Soul's Day.I. Death's Certainty For AllIn ”Death's Certainty for All” (1937) Harry Martinson wrot

Glad Halloween

Höst
My friend who's lying on the couch wakes up from her nap because late-afternoon sunrays beaming from behind yellow, jangling birch leaves, are twinkling on her face. On the wall I see her shadow stand up, birch and pine shadows shimmy around it. We go out to lay on a la