The Swedish word of the day is tänkande. It means, of course, thinking.

The Swedish word for the day is djurriket. It means animal kingdom.

The Swedish word for the day is pyjamas, spelled exactly as the British spell it, pronounced more like pu-YAW-mus, however, with the u being like the German ü, a sound we don't use in English.

I walked 13,327 steps yesterday, according to my step calculator - I don't even remember what these things are called properly in English, so I just translated it directly from the Swedish: stegräknare.
...You already got your Swedish word for the day in the first sentence, in case you've forgotten.

Summer has come, all in a rush: It never quite gets dark out, and as I wander through the apartment turning out lights before we go to sleep, the deep dusk outside means that it never gets quite dark in the apartment either. Dusk has always been my favorite time of day, and the long drawn-out dusk of Swedish summer mmmmm is a bit romantic, a bit fantastical.
The other sign of the rush of summer is the panic of getting the balconies ready for the short season when you want to sit on the front balcony in the full sun to watch the world go by with a drink in hand, or on the shady back balcony for a bit of quiet breakfast or dinner with something juicy to read.
The priest and the policeman and our goddaughter Signe helped us get plants: ivy and tiny yellow petunias and some kind of purple sedge-like plant, clematis, and hostas for the back balcony; for the front balcony it was lavender and what could be a big mistake, polygonum baldschuanicum, which supposedly grows like mad (although I guess it can only grow so much in a pot). Then everyone, even Signe, helped plant everything, emptying the pots of the current dead plants and filling them up with fresh dirt that stank pleasantly of cowshit, and with new plants.
After we'd cleaned it all up, and Signe was finished coloring with crayons and we'd sipped the dregs of the coffee sounds nice, and they were on their way out the door, the priest said as she looked at the three garbage bags full of old dirt and sticks and dry leaves and plastic pots and spindly wooden stakes, and then out towards the front balcony: "It's so strange about plants, isn't it? They're living things, you have living things sitting on your balcony right now."
I wonder what the plants are thinking now. Do they mind sitting on the windy balcony, listening to the busses going by, waiting to seduce a passing bee, hoping for rain, looking at the church at the end of Odenplan, or the library at Sveavägen, wondering if they'll make it through the summer with our horrible track record of watering?
The Swedish word for the day is törstig. It means thirsty.

When A. the TV producer was a little girl, she was cast as an extra in Fanny and Alexander, which I saw in Toronto when it was first released in 1983 - I suppose it was one of the only things Swedish that ever stuck in my mind in all the years before I moved here, the part in the movie when the whole family dances through the grand apartment hand in hand singing "nu är det jul igen."
But A. wasn't in the movie because she got the flu, and Bergman didn't want her on the set. Still, she remembers talking with him before she got sick.
Me, I've never met him, I've just seen a couple of movies and a play... I suppose one of the few advantages of knowing this obscure language is being able to see Ingmar Bergman pieces and not need subtitles.
But now there won't be any more plays, since Ingmar Bergman died today. I guess he's gone to the big green room in the sky where difficult and demanding directors go.
The Swedish word for the day is geni. It means genius.

Rummaging around in the refrigerator, I noticed that we have 18 jars of jam.
Well, actually, I took them out and counted them: one rhubarb and ginger jam, one rhubarb and vanilla conserve, one cherry jam, one lemon marmalade, one blueberry jam, one blackberry jam, one black raspberry jam, one strawberry jam, one raspberry jam, one Countess' jam (which is apple and elderflower), one cloudberry jam, one apricot and pinenut conserve, one fig conserve, two lemon curd, two ginger marmalade, two orange marmalade... not to mention one jar of cranberry sauce and one jar of jellied lingonberries.
It makes me think of the film Hope and Glory and the scene when the father comes home on leave from the German front and hacks open a can of German jam that he's somehow gotten hold of. The mother doesn't want any of the children to eat it, because she thinks it's been poisoned. "They know we're mad for jam," she cries.
The Swedish word for the day is sylt, which means of course jam.

When I was 13, my parents flew the whole family from Chicago to the West Coast of the U.S. for a holiday, where we spent three weeks travelling.
One of the highlights of the trip was visiting family friends, who lived in a house in Portland, Oregon that had almost everything I ever would have wanted in a house: front and back stairs, a secret room behind a set of sliding bookcases, and a dumbwaiter.
The only thing missing was an elevator. Of course now I live in an apartment building with a tiny elevator big enough for four people at the most, as old as the building itself - 100 years - with a gate that you pull shut, and wooden panelling, a mirror, and little leather seats that fold down if you feel faint on your way up to your apartment and simply must sit down. mm. Eloise.
Some people find old elevators a bit scary, worried that they'll break down and leave you stuck between floors.
They don't worry me. I love them. I feel like I'm in an old movie.
The only thing missing is a little old man in a cap at the controls, who doesn't even have to ask me which floor because he already knows.
The Swedish word for the day is hiss, which is Swedish for elevator, of course.



most recent top elevator August 19, 2007 - least recent bttm thinking May 20, 2007
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