:: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 ::

Luciadagen

Today (or more accurately, yesterday, December 13) was a particular Swedish Christmastime holiday known as Lucia Day. I'm not sure what exactly it means (possibly something to do with bringing light back to the cold, dark Swedish winter), but in any case it involves a young woman in white robes with a crown of lit candles on her head, attended by other white-robed figures. I had a paper due and two Swedish exams today, so I was unable to attend any local ceremonies and missed the coronation of the national Lucia on television, but the university had their own mini-Lucia ceremony this morning right as I arrived. There was a Lucia, complete with crown of candles, and 12 other people in robes holding candles, singing beautiful music. It was quite a nice thing to calm my nerves right before a difficult Swedish test, and very beautiful, too, as it wasn't yet completely light. I have no idea what they were singing (minus the one English carol they sung), but it looked and sounded amazing. I did, however, find this song on the web, first in Swedish, then with an English translation:

Natten går tunga fjät
rund gård och stuva;
kring jord, som sol förlät,
skuggorna ruva.
Då i vårt mörka hus,
stiger med tända ljus,
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.

Natten går stor och stum
nu hörs dess vingar
i alla tysta rum
sus som av vingar.
Se, på vår tröskel står
vitklädd med ljus i hår
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.

Mörkret ska flykta snart
ur jordens dalar
så hon ett underbart
ord till oss talar.
Dagen ska åter ny
stiga ur rosig sky
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.

The night goes with weighty step
round yard and stove;
round earth, the sun departs,
leaves the woods brooding.
There in our dark house,
appears with lighted candles,
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.

The night goes great and mute
now hear it swing
in every silent room
murmurs as if from wings.
Look at our threshold stands
white-clad with lights in her hair
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.

The darkness shall soon depart
from the earth's valleys
thus she speaks
a wonderful word to us.
The day shall rise anew
from the rosy sky.
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.

Pretty cool, eh?

Well tomorrow I'm off on my whirlwind endurance trip home. The last train from Falun, overnight in the Stockholm bus station, a 4:00 AM bus to Skavsta airport, a 7:00 AM flight to Frankfurt-Hahn, a 2-hour bus ride to the main Frankfurt international airport, and then I get to try and find space on a flight to the U.S. Wish me luck! I'll only have about 2 weeks at home before I head to Prague for New Years, and then to Poland for the first couple of weeks of January. Quite the international jet-setter I've become.

So safe journeys to one and all, wherever you may be, and I hope to see you soon!

And Happy Birthday to Art!

Swedish words of the day: luciakrona, which means "Lucia crown," and luciatärna, which means "Lucia attendant"

:: posted by Rob 1:01 AM [+] :: 0 comments
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Flaws in the American Way of Life

From the New Statesman, May 17, 2004, Vol. 133 Issue 4688, complete link here.

"What the New Statesman and several of its commentators such as John Pilger and Ziauddin Sardar have said for the past two years is now being accepted across the political spectrum. The Independent's ex-editor Andreas Whittam Smith compares George W Bush and Tony Blair to Stalin - a comparison at which even the most dedicated anti-Americans would have baulked until now. In the London Evening Standard, the political commentator Peter Oborne calls the US "a rogue state". The editor of Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria, acknowledges that, to much of the world, the US is "an international outlaw". The proposition that America had the slightest interest in the welfare of the Iraqi people, and that a humanitarian mission could piggyback on its invasion, now looks wholly absurd. Attacked by Arabs on 9/11, it wanted to take the battle to Arab territory (that they were different Arabs was neither here nor there); alarmed by China's growing demand for oil, it wanted to strengthen its position in the oil-rich Middle East; dedicated to aggressive capitalism, it wanted to impose its ideology on the only region still largely resisting it.

As always, US leaders try to present America's crimes as an aberration. What happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, we are told, does not represent "American values". Yet as Stephen Grey shows in our cover story, the only exceptional thing is that Americans did the torturing themselves. More often, over the past two years, the US has used secret planes to move prisoners to allied regimes that have more skill and experience in torture. Again, the deaths of hundreds in Fallujah must be another aberration - or perhaps they didn't die at all or perhaps they were all armed terrorists.

Why we expect so much of America is a puzzle. During the Korean war, it bombed the north so intensively that it ran out of targets. In the 1960s and 1970s, it killed an estimated three million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. At the end of the first Gulf war, it killed retreating Iraqi conscripts in their tens of thousands. In Chile and Nicaragua, it helped armed opponents of democratically elected governments. It has tried to squeeze the life out of Cuba for decades and took new measures to stop Cuban Americans sending cash to their families back home only the other day. It opposes a host of international treaties - on banning nuclear tests and controlling carbon-dioxide emissions, for example - and now abjures the Geneva Conventions as well.

How a country conducts its internal affairs is a good guide to how it will behave abroad. It may treat foreigners worse than it treats its own people, but it will not treat them better. This is why tyrants' professions of peaceful intentions should never be trusted. What misleads us about the US is its commitment to many liberal values: free speech, a free press, a robust legal system and lots of voting, for example. But this is also a country that incarcerates two million (about one in every 140) of its residents - the world's highest rate of imprisonment. One in three black men spends some part of his life behind bars. Prison regimes are sometimes harsh and abuse is frequent, as a correspondent notes on page 35. The US also executes more than 50 people a year, some of them children.

The American way of life has many other shameful features: the subordination of politics to business interests; the uncontrolled possession of guns; huge social and racial inequalities; the pitiful provision of health and welfare for poor people. We tolerate these as an ally's flaw, rather as we might tolerate a few drunken binges in an otherwise amiable friend. We do not see how they add up to a vision of the world that America wishes to export - a way of life that seems comfortable enough for middle-class opinion-formers, but that brings misery to millions of others. We share, we think, "western values" and must unite against a common enemy. But are we sure that we and the Americans share the same understanding of western values? Are we sure that the extreme Christian fundamentalists who lurk behind President Bush, with their hair-raising attitudes to gays and abortionists, are a lesser threat than the extreme Muslim fundamentalists who lurk behind several Middle Eastern regimes?

Scoff if you like, and observe that the US does not behead people in cold blood. But who knows where its unshakeable belief in its own righteousness may lead it? Wiser rulers than Britain's would hedge their bets rather more, lest they find themselves obliged to defend worse things than beatings and sexual humiliation in a Baghdad prison. America, some say, is in a "pre-fascist" era. That now looks just a little less implausible than it did a month ago."

Food for thought.

Swedish word of the day: besviken, which means "disappointed"

:: posted by Rob 7:04 PM [+] :: 0 comments
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Turn your head, now baby just spit me out

Happy December everyone! Today (or more accurately, yesterday) was quite the milestone for me. First, it marks two weeks until I come home for Christmas (or at least spend Christmas in the Frankfurt airport). It also marked the completion of my paper for my Comparative Social Policy class, entitled To Form a More Perfect Union: Recommendations for Improving Gender Equality in Sweden, after an all-day, all-night flurry of last-minute activity. Yes, a paper that I've known about for 4 weeks that I didn't start until the day before it was due. It's amazing that my time-management issues have allowed me to go as far as I have in life - of course, some might say that I haven't gone very far at all, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms* entirely.

Of interest, however (especially for anyone with knowledge of Swedish social policy), is the fact that I could even write a paper on gender equality improvements in what may be the most gender-equal country in the world. In fact, there were so many resources on it that I had no time to go into during my one whole day of research, that I'm once again thinking of changing my Master's thesis topic to explore this in greater detail. Who would have thought I'd be interested in gender equality? It's amazing the doors opened to you studying in a completely different field in a foreign country.

So yesterday was a day of rest and recovery from my paper-writing exertions. And even better (or perhaps worse), Swedish class this morning was canceled - which was good because I didn't have time to do my homework, or bad because my Swedish is still not to the level where I would like it to be.

But it's a busy two weeks coming up: we have our final Comparative Social Policy seminar on Friday, where we will discuss our papers (which I am reading today), before the new class The EU After Enlargement starts next week. I also have a paper due for my Nordic history class before I leave, a Swedish test (or two) somewhere in that time, not to mention no less than three Christmas parties: one for the Master's program, one for international students, and one for my history class. So even way over here Christmas is looking to be a busy time!

Enjoy the season, and I hope to see everyone if/when I make it home!

Swedish word of the day: idiot, which is what I am for waiting so long to start my damn paper!

* Who controls the worms, controls the spice; who controls the spice, controls the universe. Send me pepper and cilantro NOW!

:: posted by Rob 3:18 PM [+] :: 2 comments
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