Scotland

I have always, since I read Walter Scott as a teenager, been interested in Scotland.
Now I have been there in ten days, I am on my way home and I am for the moment in Stockholm. Tomorrow I will go home with Tapani's. Scotland was all that I had hoped it should be, friendly people, a fantastic town, Edinburgh, a beautiful,wild landscape, highlanders with an appearence that I had never imagined, some looked like vikings. I was at a clangathering, Prince Charles and Camilla were there, I saw them on a bigscreen. Some of them had long swords to the ground, some had old fashion tartans, a very long blanket wrapped around them like a kilt and over the shoulder. Some looked like Willie in Simpsons. I saw also a clanleader, a Laird, he had an aura of a man with hundreds of years of tradition behind him. My reason to go to Scotland wasn't this, it's only a bonus, it was to see my Grandson, four weeks old today. His other Grandfather from Canada was there too, we met for the first time, and we became friends. Our first Grandson is a big moment for us. We saw a lot interesting, for example Loch Ness, Rosslyn Chapel, known for the Da Vinci Code. A very interesting thing about that chapel, built 50 years before Columbus is the statues and carvings in the walls. They show corn, an American plant. There was a text there that said that Temle Knights had been in America in the middle of 1300 and met indians who had corn. Many of them we talked with seemed to know their history much more than we know about our. I'll finish here for today, but I will write more about Scotland later.

Zyklon-B

I read today in www.nsd.se about a man who is in court in Luleå for trying to assasinate his ex with Zyklon-B or Uragan as it is called in Czechia, and Cyanide. Zyklon-B is the same gas as they used in Auschwitz. he had put the gas in her car, cyanide in a bottle under her nose, in her Christmas porrige and Zyklon-B on paper outside her door, he has also druged her and raped her.He had gas enough for killing 42000 people, and says that he should only scare her. The gas is for rats, he says. He is in chains in court, it is very seldom that happens. He is an ordinary Swedish man, and I notice that there are very few comments about this compared if a Gypsy chops a criminal in the head with an axe. I wonder how many comments it had been if a Gypsy or an immigrant had done it.

Nameology

The names of places here in the neighbourhood can seem to be Finnish, but are often Swedish or Pre-Nordic. One example is Röyttä, South of Haparanda in Finland. The Swedish colonizers came here by boat 700 years ago and gave names to islands and shores in their language, which is similar to the Kalix dialect. An old Swedish word for stony shore is gryt, in Pre-Nordic, Kalix dialect it is gröyt. They came here,saw a stony shore and called it Gröyt. The Finns can't say two consonants in the beginning of a word, so they called it Röyttä. An other example is the island Kraaseli. Gråsäl, Grey Seal, Kraaseli. In Luleå one island is called Gråsjälören. One island in the Torne river is named by Germans, Tanskinsaari, Danzig Island. Danzig is now called Gdansk, in Poland. An interesting word is the name of the island Suutari, shoemaker. In Latin sutor means shoemaker,taylor. In ancient English sutere and Eng. dialect souter.In ancient Sw. sutare,swthar. In Sw. the island is called Skomakaren. There is also a fish named sutare.

Hasse, the busdriver

I will go on my annual bustrip to Stockholm, 1100 km, on Saturday, after that to Skavsta Airport, Nyköping and Ryan Air to Edinburgh. I use to go with Tapani's bus every year. they change driver in Sundsvall, Hasse takes over, he is the buscompany's answer on Basil Fawlty, always angry if the passengers put the bags wrong, don't know the bookingnumber and so on. He was angry to many people the first time I heard him, even to me because I had asked if i could go off the bus in Haparanda. I had the ticket to Tornio. It is cheaper to buy the ticket from Tornio because they reduce a tax when you travel over the border to Finland. It is only 500 meters between the two bus stations. He had already put in my bag to Tornio and didn't like to move it.
It is the same every year, I listen what he has to say, if he is angry to somebody. I even said it to Tapani's once at a market that I have never seen that kind of busdriver before. It is cheap to take the bus, only 900 SEK to Stockholm and back to Haparanda. But it takes 16 hours one way. Luleå-Stockholm with Norweigan is also cheap,600 SEK, but it costs money to go from Haparanda to Kallax Airport. I recommend you who is keen on visiting north Sweden, take the bus, www.tapanis .se, they drive three times a week. Norweigan has plans for a direct flight from Luleå to maybe, it's not sure, London. One alternative is to go from Helsinki to Kemi, Finland, it is only 25 km from Haparanda. There is a famous snowcastle in Kemi every winter. This was a little touristinformation, I use to do that too from time to time.

The Northbothnian way of saying yes (Sw. ja)

There are many various dialects in Sweden, in Skåne, southernmost Sweden they use a lot of vocals and diphtongs, yes (Sw. ja) is jeou in Skånish, Roger is Rougörr. In Gothenburg yes is ja vesst. The Northbothnian, my way, of saying yes is the most timesaving way of speaking in the world, we say yes when we inhale. We say jo when we take a breath. It is like whisteling backwards. The Sames say it in a different way, they start in the back of the throat like a Hindu. Joo.

Sweden News

I have written about a Gypsy family, if you want to know more about them and other Swedish news, look at www.thelocal.se and write vojakkala as searchword. It is a good site.

Tragicomic in the village

In the village were many original men, often bachelors with alcoholproblems. They had often nicknames as Tralle, Lukeri,Cat-Oskar,Bosso. Tralle was with his son in law in his Summerhouse on an island, they were drinking and the son in law fell into the water. I was told that it was only one meter deep, but instead of going up,he dug with his hands in the bottom and drowned. Tralle took him in the boat and went to the village, and when he came a shore some men stood there and he said I have a dead loss! When he was young he had told another boy to cut off his finger, and he did it. He had a lot of houses on the island, I called it Tralleville. R. is still with us, he has said many funny things, once when he had got his driving licence and bought a car, he was out driving with a friend and stopped in an emty road and opened the window and asked Do Miss care for a ride? His friend asked why he did that. I'm only practicing, he said. R.'s neighbour G. had committed suicide, an some Gypsies wanted to buy his house, they can't live where somebody has died. R. showed them the house, and when they came down to the cellar, there was a rope in the ceiling. There hanged G.! said R. The Gypsies ran out from the house. Cat-Oskar was known as a catkiller, he always chased me when I was a child, once when he chased me I went through a hole in the fence, he was too big, so he climbed over and teared his pants. He went to the sawmill and complained to my dad that he had teared the pants, but he had nothing for that. Once when he saw that I had climbed up in the top of a spruce (gran), he cut off the branches below afterwards so I couldn't go up there again. When I was older and working a week in a factory, he came and said that you have been shooting with a gun. I could proove that it was somebody else he had seen, I was at the factory when he said that he had seen me. I never understood that man, once he throwed ice on me too. Lukeri looked like Hemingway and drank everything with alcohol, they said when he had drank hairwater it smelled good in the toilet. He played accordion, and once when he fell into the water, he was floating on the accordion. My dad took him to an elderly home when he was nearly 80, and he had to make an urintest. He looked at the result and said; Real Brandy!
One man, B. fixed his girlfriend's false teeth with plastic padding. Finally, a man from another village was dancing in our village when a transvestite was there. He took he/she home, and his friends asked afterwards Ble de nå! Did you score! Yes! he said. I use to think of that when I see him.


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More Pacific, Thor Heyerdahl

I notice that i have now 413 wiewers, welcome. I have always been interested in foreign cultures and explorers, my idol is the Norweigan explorer Thor Heyerdahl 1914-2002. He built ancient vessels to proove that the world had been colonized over the oceans thousands of years ago. He first came to think of this when he studied the sea streams when he spent a year as a honeymoon at Fatuhiva, Marquesas 1937, which almost cost them their lifes, he was a Norweigan commandosoldier during the Second World War and 1947 he sailed from Callao in Peru to Raroia north of Tahiti in a bals raft, Kon Tiki, to proove that the Inkas sailed from Peru to Polynesia. He also sailed over the Atlantic and Tigris on reed boats. He lived also in New Zeeland and on the American northwestcoast and found out that the people and the cultures were similar. The Maoris and the Indians had both legends about a man who sailed to Hawaii. The first Maori came from Havaiki. Coco Island is also a proove of this, there is a coconutplantation there, but nobody lives there, it is only made for food and water supply on the way to Galapagos and Easter Island. When The Dutch explorer Roggeven came To Easter Island 1722 he found white people there. There are many similar culture objects in the Old and the New world. Fascinating.

Spike Jones Hawaiian War Chant

As you might have noticed I come to think of songs when I write down my memories, and when I wrote about the Pacific one of my favourites from the past came up in my head, Hawaiian War Chant with Spike Jones, I thought it was very fun, they played on car horns and things like that.

Tahiti

I am interested in my family's history, I know all generations on my father's side as far back as 1425, and on my wife's side to 1580. She has a familybook with 15000 names, I have found one of them in Papeete, Tahiti. She is a famous culturperson in the Pacific, from Finnish Pello. I have helped a man from Tahiti who collects all editions on paperback in all languages of Jostein Gaarder's Sophies world. He use to go to the local bookshop and talk to this woman, and I found out that she is in the same familybook as me. The world is small. He also told me about Paul Gauguin who died in Tahiti 1903. His Grandfather who was a sailor from Stockholm had helped him to build a house there, where he painted and carved wood sculptures. They didn't like Gauguin, and when he died he sent his son to clean up the house. He found a lot of junk there, drawings,paintings,sculptures. The Grandfather told his son to burn everything. A few things were saved, one was sold to the Swedish National Museum for big sum of money. Imagine what it had been worth today. Another artist who wasn't popular was Claude Monet, he had contract to paint from a company, and they didn't like that all paintings looked the same.Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his life and cut off his ear. I read a while ago that someone said that it was Gauguin who had cut off van Gogh's ear. Van Gogh shot himself. It isn't easy to be an artist.

Lars Levi Laestadius

Today starts the Laestadius week in Pajala. Lars Levi Laestadius 1800-1861, was a priest and botanist in the Torne valley who started a new, very religious church in the Torne valley. The Same people had very severe problems with alcohol, Laestadius saved them when they became Laestadians. He learnt to speak Finnish,Tornevalleyfinnish and all Same dialects in a few years, he was half-Same himself. Now there are two branches of Laestadianism, West and East. 100000 members,the Tornevalley and Finland branch are East Laestadians, they speak Finnish and sing Psalms and other religious songs. 10000, the Swedish Lapland branch are West Laestadians, they don't sing more than the necessary psalms. I don't know if it is like that now, but earlier they saw sin in everything, curtains was the Devil's underwear and they asked the priest if he was Christian, they considered themselves as the only true Christians. They have their meetings at home, have their own preachers and don't accept women priests, abortion,gaymarriages, birthcontrol. 10-15 children is not unusual.
My Great Grandfather was a West Laestadian, leading in the village, he built the chapel 1922. My Uncle has told me that when they had their meetings they talked about sin, and someone said they sin even when they sleep. He was under the table and heard that. They have Bigmeetings every Summer near my house, 4-5000 people as far away as from Canada.Laestadianism is a branch of the Swedish Church.

Music from Trafalgar Square

Tonight 9.00 Sw. time is an event at Trafalgar Square, it can be heard on www.oneandother.co.uk .they play a song with the Sw. folkmusic group Norrlåtar. It is Last letter from Liikavaara-Frans, a famous song by a famous drunk from Gällivare who used to sing his own funny songs for food or money. e spent his last 25 years at a mental hospital after he had stolen a bike. My aunt lived there when I was a boy and used to come to the Summerhouse in Easter with reindeerbones and made a soup of it. She also used to sing Frans' songs with the right dialect.
"När långt i söter jag sitta inne, då komma Gällivare i mitt sinne
Prukkeriet jag ej klömma kan, Karhakka-torget, voj Kaanans land"
The song is about all his friends and enemies and what will happen when he dies.
We had people with alcoholproblems an funny behaviour in my village too, I'll come back to that later.

The living pikes(gäddorna)in the zink

In the village was the main work 70 years ago the sawmillwork, there wasn't any social security, if the sawmill didn't have any timber, the workers had to go home without salary. In the winter when it was blowing hard East wind and the water was low, it was impossible to get the timber into the sawmill. No salary.
There was one job that was always payed, handyman for the sawmill manager. It was payed 125 Sek for two weeks. The manager lived in a big house with nine rooms, four toilets, one bathroom, two fireplaces, centralheating, a incredible luxury for a boy who lived in an old cowhouse with one room and kitchen together with seven others.
His work was to make fire every day 06.00, take away snow, plant poatoes ,cut grass and so on. My dad had that job, and one day he was ordered to buy two common whitefishes (sikar). He did that and left them, and the next day the Mistress was grumpy and said that they weren't fresh. Two weeks later he was ordered to buy two pikes (gäddor), he went to the same place, was on the ice with the fisherman and took them up alive and hurried back to the House. He filled water in the zinks and put the living pikes there. 15 minutes later, the Mistress told him to kill them, they had messed up the curtains so he thought that he should be fired, but she just said; Now they are fresh. He had one rule that I have tried to follow, Be in time and do your job. You can be quite free in your work and do a little as you wish without anyone interfering if the job is done in a good way. Later he got the job as sawblade sharpener, the best in Sweden. The factory, Sandvik, sent blades to him that they couldn't fix themselves. I am very proud of my father, I only wish that he had lived now to see his Great Grandson.

The Summerhouse

Many of the workers in the village had Summerhouses on the islands, it was a freedom from the low life houses we lived in, hired from the Company. It wasn't high standard on the houses,they were mostly built of wood from older houses. My Grandfather died 1927,36 years old three months before my dad was born. My Grandmother was 29, and was left alone with seven children. They lived in an old cow house. She lived there till 1957, when she and a man, Anton built a new house beside the old one. My dad took the wood and built the Summerhouse 1958. He hired a mason to make the fireplace and the chimney. He lived in a tent there. I was told once that he had no money to food for his family, so he took the gun and shot a brick from his neighbour's chimney so he was hired to fix it. We had a sauna there, and others came there to take a bath. We lived there on the island many Summers, it was a nice life. Now the house belongs to my brother.

Fucking latcentlal

About Gypsies, A Swedish TV serie is called The first Gypsy in Space. I think they saw it in China because their first man in Space was called Taikonaut. I wonder if he ate splinglolls. This gives me a reason to write about my best friend during my childhood, Anders. We were neighbours, he was one year younger than me, and he said L instead of R. This story is about rats. I hate rats, I can't understand how anyone can have them as pets. In the fifties when i grew up, the garbage was taken with a horse and driven to a dump about one km away, not all had water in the house, my parents had to take water from a pump 100 m from the house during my first year, then we moved to another house which had a toilet and water in the kitchen, but no bathroom. The garbage rats are huge, like cats, and we had them in the house, we heard them in the walls. My dad caught them in traps, put sharp teeth from sawblades from the sawmill around the rathole outside. Ít was like that a long time,I think it was several years, and finally they opened under the zink and found a ratnest there.
A man said; Fucking ratcentral! and Anders said; Fucking latcentlal!. He moved to south Sweden when I was nine and we haven't met since 1965.

More about Gypsies

I have mentioned a Gypsy family before which is known as the worst neighbours in Sweden, I will not write their name or where they live so that I end up at the same internetpages as the nazis who writes suggestions how to kill them. I first read about them 25 years ago when they lived outside Piteå and their dog attacked a policeman. The father has been in prison in Finland for a violentcrime. Piteå County bought a house to them in a village outside Haparanda. It didn't take long before the first neighbour had to leave their house, and it has continued like that in 24 years, stabbing,stones,shooting, a priest was beaten with an ironbar and the last, a man was beaten six times in the head with an axe. He survived, but lost an eye and half the scullbone. He, on the other hand is sentenced for manslaughter in Finland and has been in prison for illegal automatic weapons and a stolen fourwheeler during the time he was the nearest neighbour to this family. He has also said in TV that if they come to his house, he shall kill all of them, eight persons. Now the son who held the axe is sentenced to eight years, his father and brother six years for helping, one sister eight months and one sister six months for protecting a criminal and a friend to the family,68 years old, six months I think it was for helping a criminal. The father got six months in the first trial and six years in the second. He was 32 meters from the son with the axe, so the question is that if you are helping to kill somebody if you are standing 32 meters away.
I have known some of these familymembers in many years, and I have always thought that it is nice to talk to them, and they like me too. I think it is like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I must also say that some of the sisters has been payed to take care of the brothers who has psychic problems. Not many Gypsies work with ordinary jobs, these have racehorses, which is one of the causes to the problems, they have thrown stones on the neighbours when they have cut grass. One of the sisters has worked at an elderlycenter and has been very engaged in their welfare. This is something positive, but it has never been written about in media, it was a positive article in Sweden's biggest morningpaper,Dagens Nyheter about them a while ago, and many people were upset about the fact that the reporter wrote something positive. Many people think that they shall lock them in for good and throw away the key. I feel sorry for those people who never can live in an ordinary family with wife,husband,child. They are forced to lived together the whole life. I wouldn't like to change life with them. they are also Jehova's witnesses, imagine that! Who wants to be that, even more isolated from the rest of the society. A Jehova's asked me once if I think she is normal. I don't think it is normal to ask that.

My "Scientific" reports

I met my old schoolteacher from classes 1-3 yesterday when I was shopping. We weren't always friends, once I hade thrown mud on her sister's son, so she looked for me outside my home,but didn't come in, I had ran away. Next day she shouted at me in the class so the entire school heard it. I have studied in different schools in 17 years + one year leader education in the Good Templars. I was a youthleader, discos,tabletennis,miniracing and so on. I had to do investigations and write reports in the different schools, the first was about the history of Swedish film, I wrote 30 pages. It is good to write something that the teatcher doesn't know anything about, if it is wrong, she doesn't notice it. I have also written about my village's history, it was easy,because it was a lot of information available. I have had use of that many years later when I wrote a booklet about local history. I have written three reports together with others, one was about what you see first when you meet the opposite sex. The conclusion was that the men look at the body and the women at the eyes. Another investigation was the teatchers alcoholhabits, we were told by a teatcher to be careful, I didn't know at that time that two of the teatchers there were AA members. One of them visited me during a practice period and was drunk, so he had to come back another day. The visits were important, if I did a bad job, they could tell me to quit school and to something else. One report was about the relations between the staff on another practiceplace. We asked how many personellrooms there were, we thought they should answer the same, but the answers were between 1-5. One said one room, another said five.We knew when we did these investigations that nobody will ever read them, but it was a part of the school. One thing I am a little shamed of is when I studied psychology in High School (Gymnasiet in Sw), we should investigate in a group how handicapped are treated if they need help. We should borrow a wheelchair and pretend that one of us where handicapped.
We didn't do anything,and when it was time to talk to the class, I made up a story that I had fallen with the chair and nobody helped me. Nobody said anything in the class, not even the teatcher. He was a funny character, he had been a missionary in Ethiopia and walked always very close to the wall.

Peter Freuchen

I read a lot when I was young, there were two libraries in the village, the Good Templar's and the Social Democrat's. I read almost all books there.
My favourite books were about trappers,golddiggers,indians,briefly about the hard life in the North. I have Canadian connections now, my Grandson is half Canadian, so when my son had been to the Hudson Bay Company Museum in Winnipeg, he asked me if I knew about Hudson Bay. I was the right person to ask, I know a lot. I have met an author from Jokkmokk, Hans Anderson, who has travelled around the Arctic Circle in 30-40 years and written about people, and I have read most of it, I bought one of his books when I was a teenager. I liked to paddle and walk in the forest and in the mountains. About Peter Freuchen, he was a Danish author and polarexplorer, dead 1957.
He and Knud Rasmussen, a half inuit, founded the Danish tradestation Thule, now an American militarybase on Greenland 1909. They made many polarexpeditions, Knud Rasmussen died in one of them, and Peter Freuchen wrote books about it. I read them all. He had only one leg, he had been trapped under the snow with his sleigh once and couldn't find any other way to survive than making a crap, form a tool, let it freeze and dig himself out.He lost his leg. He also took the MGM lion to USA. My first memories of golddigging was when a man was in Folkets Hus at home and showed goldsand. I have always admired all explores who risked their lifes 100-110 years ago when they discovered the world. Ernest Shackleton was outstanding when he rescued his men with a boat between Elephant Island in Antarctic and South Shetland Islands.

le Rom Katarina Taikon

I sometimes upset people without any intention, one example of that is Katarina Taikon. She was a famous Gypsy author, who wrote among other books a serie of childrens books about herself, Katitzi. The background is that when I was a child, the Taikons had a camp in my village every summer, I never dared go near it. They came to Sweden from Romania and Russia 110 years ago. The Swedish Gypsies, who belong to two different groups, Lovara who has horses and Keldarasha who works with copper remains from them. The Finnish Kale´ Gypsies came to Sweden 500 years ago and were deported to Finland in the 17th Century. Their language Romani Chib is one of Sweden's five minority languages. An other group, the Travellers came to Sweden with the first Gypsies around 1400. Their Language, Swedish Rommani is related. When I was studying, Katarina Taikon came to the school and talked to us, and I said the word Romani, and she was angry about that, it is called Romane´s, she said. I thought it was called Romani, and now the official name is Romani Chib. Later she got a stroke and spent 13 years in bed before she died. Her sister Rosa is a famous silversmith.le Rom is their name of their people, I learnt that from Katarina Taikon.
The Gypsies used to come to the village and sell stuff in people's homes, my Grandmother had a way to say that she wasn't interested which has influenced me too, good or bad, she said on her Kalix-dialect Häv er uti arbete! Go to work!
It is a problem every summer here in Tornevalley that people, very often Gypsies go to elderly people and ask for water and steal all their money, the news never mention the word Gypsy, only women in long skirts.

A gift

When I was in Kalix and sold at Mainstreet there I looked at the people passing by. Many of them were handicapped and had personal assistance. I looked at those poor people and thought that soon my Grandson shall be born and I hoped that nothing should go wrong. Now I have perfect, healthy little Grandson.
It is a gift, he could had been like the ones I mentioned above. It is a joy, and I can only say Thank you.