I found this clip on you.tube and wanted to show it to you in Italy. We live off the coast and are at the same time surrounded by lakes. In the summer we have plenty of beaches where we go swimming and before the winter comes we can ice skate on the same water. In the winter the ice gets so thick in the archipelago that we can actually drive on it from the town to various islands. Enjoy:
ps. I couldn't help adding a Luleå Hockey - clip link that came up after the above clip had been shown. Here you will catch glimse of what Luleå looks like in March and how important the ice hockey team is to the town. ds.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
ABBA
Abba was formed in 1970 under the name ”festfolket” (the party people). They have always had the same members: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulveus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad with their initials forming the acronym ABBA. ABBA has sold over 400 million cd’s worldwide. And they keep selling 2-4 million more each year. Abba had their breakthrough with the song “Waterloo” in 1974. Abba’s follow-up single, “Honey, Honey”, peaked at number 27 on the US billboard hot 100, and was number 2 in Germany. This increased the growing speculations that the group was simply Eurovision “one-hit wonders”. However in 1975 they released a new single, “Fernando”, and it took the world by storm, hitting number 1 in thirteen countries including the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. The single sold over 10 million copies and it stayed on the Australian charts for 40 weeks.
In January 1977, Abba embarked on a grand tour. They were now superstars, especially in Europe and Australia. Two years later, Ulvaeus and Fältskog announced they were getting divorced and in 1981 Andersson and Lyngstad did the same. This created tension in the group. Their last public performance together as Abba was on a British TV program, 11 December 1982. But even though they have never officially announced the end of the group, it has been considered to be dissolved for a long time. They have only been seen together all four, publicly, two times since 1983: in a TV-show 1986 and on the Swedish premiere of the movie “Mamma Mia” 2008.
In 2000, they were offered approximately US$1 1,000,000,000 to do a reunion tour of 100 concerts. That’s US$10’000’000 per concert! They turned it down and by that we got it confirmed: They must hate each other. Really really hate each other. Nothing more than a black void full of burning loathe and very pointy needles. However Björn and Benny, who have all the rights to the songs, are still working together creating wondrous magic.
By Jesper & Isak
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Midsummer in Sweden!
In June every year, we get together with our family and friends to celebrate the summer. In the old days when Sweden was a little child, the point was to celebrate the summer solstice. Today it is mostly to have fun with your friends and to be with your family.
You eat herring and potatoes, you cut eggs in half and put glob on them, that means if you are old and boring. If you are younger you barbeque meat and vegetables, drink snaps and soda. There is a thing called “snapsvisa”. You sing a very short song before you drink the snaps. (Hard to understand maybe, but google “snapsvisa” and you may get a clearer picture.)
It’s a family holiday and you get together with your friends and neighbors to pick flowers for dressing up a stick. Then we dance around it while singing songs like “Små grodorna” (little frogs), “Vi äro musikanter” (we are musicians) “Räven raskar over isen” (The fox is crossing the ice) “Ritsch ratsch fillibombombom” “Sju vackra flickor I en ring” (Seven beautiful girls in a ring), “Upp på källarbacken” (we can’t translate this..) and “Karusellen” (merry-go-round). It’s usually an old man playing on an accordion while people sing and dance. We also pick flowers to make a “midsommarkrans” (midsummerwreath). Mostly girls wear them, but boys can as well of course.
A very old and not so well kept tradition is to pick seven different flowers and climb over seven different fences. When you have done this, you put the flowers under your pillow and then goes to sleep. The legend says that you will dream about your future true love! This can only be done by girls. But today, fences is very rare in the modern society, so unfortunately this tradition of picking seven different flowers is about to disappear.
links to swedish midsummer songs:
// Emma and Alida
Monday, 21 November 2011
Hey!
I just figured out that I’ve been to Grosseto! Two times actually! Together with my family and my cousins I’ve been to Castiglione della Pescaia. We spent a lot of time bathing in the sea, playing beach-volleyball, just enjoying the warmth and the nice environment. We ate a lot of good Italian food and I especially remember the ice-cream “granita limone”. The year was 2006 when we last went to Italy(Florence+Toscana), so it was a while ago. But maybe I’ll come back soon! (I found an old picture from Castiglione della Pescaia where I'm just 12 years old. I'm the one in the middle, in a white/lilac dress)
Sunday, 20 November 2011
The Swedish Royal family
In Sweden we still have a monarchy, though the king or queen don’t have any power anymore. These days the royal family mostly does charity work, ceremonial duties and representation of Sweden in other countries. One of their duties includes handing over the Nobel prices each year and hosting the dinner afterwards.
Tourists from especially Germany where they don’t have monarchy find our royal family and the castles very interesting so the monarchy also attracts tourists.
The royal family has now six members: King Carl XIV Gustaf, Queen Silvia, Crown princess Victoria, Princess Madeleine, Prince Carl Philip and Victoria’s husband Prince Daniel.
King Carl XIV Gustaf
Carl XIV Gustaf is our beloved king. Even people who aren’t a fan of monarchy or the royal family usually likes the king, mostly because he’s so funny. Unfortunately, he’s seldom funny on purpose, but since he’s a public person it’s OK to laugh anyway. He has dyslexia and can also seem a bit bewildered sometimes which makes him an easy pick for comedians who do imitations.
The king is 65 years old, which is the official retirement-age in Sweden so it has been some speculations about the possibility of him stepping down soon. I for one hope he will stay king until he dies, I love him.
Example of what people with too much spare-time does to make fun of the King:
http://zverige.com/kingkong/
Queen Silvia
Silvia and our king, then crown prince, met in Germany during the Olympic Games in Munich 1972 and fell in love instantly. That year is now known in Sweden as “the year it clicked”. Silvia is half German, half Brazilian and was really gorgeous when she was young. She married the recently crowned king Carl Gustaf in 1976 and then became Queen of Sweden. Silvia does a lot of charity and is really engaged in children diseases and dementia and she was one of the founders of World Childhood Foundation. She is more anonymous than the king but is still well-liked among most people. To speculate over what dress she will wear to the Nobel party is as much fun every year, I love it. (Yes, I’m a total sucker for royalties.)
Crown princess Victoria & Prince Daniel
Victoria is now our Crown princess, but was born as just a Princess since a woman couldn’t inherit the throne back then. She is the oldest of the king’s and queen’s three children and is also the most responsible.
Daniel is basically a normal person who just happened to get the Crown princess as a customer at his work as a personal trainer. It’s a real Cinderella story, only backwards. They fell in love in 2002 and got engaged after the appropriate time of seven (!) years in 2009. Talk about moving slowly.
Victoria and Daniel got married last summer, which except the football world championship was the highlight of the summer. They are now expecting their first child and Victoria’s belly is now referred to in the media as “the royal bump”, which I find hilarious.
Princess Madeleine and Prince Carl Philip
These two don’t do very much. They are both good-looking and mostly just glide through life and look gorgeous on photographs. Sometimes they cause a few headlines and I guess they have some sort of tasks and duties, but you just don’t notice them as much. The prince is driving race cars or something and the princess does some charity work, but since none of them will inherit the throne they don’t really have to keep up as much as Victoria. Just livin’ the good life.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Swedish companies
IKEA
IKEA is a Swedish company which focus on furnitures and interior. It was started in 1943 by a man namned Ingvar Kamprad. IKEA is a shortening for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. Ingvar was only seventeen years old when he started to run the business. The company has now developed into a huge worldwide company with an annual sale of 21,5 billion euro. Today IKEA has department stores in more than forty-four different countries.
The environment is important for IKEA and they try to focus on things that are good for earth and the humans. For example they work with WWF, which is a company who works for making earth a better place for animals and nature. Together can WWF and IKEA produce cotton and use trees in a way that is better for the environment.
LKAB
LKAB is a shortening of Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB and the company is situated in Kiruna in the northern of Sweden. They focus on excavating iron ore in the mine. It all began at 1890. LKAB is an international high-tech minerals group and one of the biggest in the entire world. They are producing iron ore products for the steel industry and they constantly develop. From Kiruna they are shipping the iron ore by train and by boats to other Swedish cities and countries. There are about 3,700 employees which 600 of them work outside Sweden.
By Johanna and Mimmi
Swedish food
Every country has its own culinary traditions and I will tell you about a few of Sweden's culinary traditions.
Sweden has a long tradition of eating a lot of flour. The men brought meals containing a lot of flour to their jobs. Besides pancakes they ate ”palt”, which definitely is a Swedish phenomenon. Palt is simple home cooking in Sweden and is made of potatoes and flour. Today palt is a culinary speciality from the north of Sweden. We eat palt a lot but people from the rest of Sweden have often never tried it. So, in cases like this, you really notice that we have a long country.
I guess you have heard of Swedish meatballs. It is often considered a Swedish national course but it can be found in all parts of the world with different names. Traditionally, meatballs are to be eaten with potatoes (or mashed potatoes), gravy and lingonberry jam. Nowadays it is also eaten with spaghetti or macaroni, which probably is something we stole from your culinary traditions.
Another famous typical Swedish culinary speciality is the ”smörgåsbord”. A smörgåsbord is a like a buffet meal where you can choose from a lot of different meals. The point is to eat a lot of proteins so the selection of vegetables and potato meals are limited. This is at least how it was supposed to be from the beginning. Nowadays we eat our smörgåsbord as we like it.
Over to smörgåstårta (smur-gos tor-ta). Smörgåstårta is extremely Swedish and well, literally it means sandwich cake. The basic ingredients are bread and mayo that you “frost” the cake with. It is made of several layers of white bread with creamy fillings in between. The fillings and toppings vary but often includes some sort of cold cut or fish. You usally use tomatoes, cucumber and cheese as well. Smörgåstårta is served cold and sliced as a cake.
The best thing with the Swedish culinary tradition is definitely fika. You pronounce it fee-ka. Fika is a noun and a verb. We call it fika when we take a coffe break, kind of. It roughly means to drink coffee or tea accompanied with something sweet. Fika is not only the act of eating and drinking but also the social part of it. Fika is to enjoy each other's company.
Denise
Luleå
Luleå is a town situated in northern Sweden along the coast, here is a map. It has 46 000 inhabitants, a pretty big port, there is one university, one of Sweden’s biggest steel mills and not much else. But there are a lot of shopping centers here, three to be precise, all along the same street. So you can shop a lot if you like that. We also have some sport centers that are quite good. During winter we do not hunt polar bears because we do not have any polar bears in Sweden and we are also to busy freezing our arses off. Luleå is one the towns in Sweden that produces the most carbon dioxide, because of the steel mill, yet it is one of the most environment friendly mills in Europe.
Luleå is a nice city to live in or near and quiet charming. During winter time we have a lot of snow which is great for skiing and other outdoor activities. During summer on the other hand it is pretty warm. Not like in Italy but warm enough so you can swim in the deep blue sea.
If there is anything you want to know about Luleå, just ask.
Three jolly chaps. (Joel, Oscar, Kenny)
Swedish Actors
Everybody knows Swedes are blonde, tall and beautiful, especially the girls. That is the main reason the Swedes are beginning to dominate the red carpet in Hollywood. Lately the gorgeous Alexander Skarsgård has shown up in lots of magazines because of his appearance in the critically acclaimed TV-series True Blood and Generation Kill. He is also starring as Lady Gaga’s lover in the music video Paparazzi.
Maybe you recognize his last name, Skarsgård? That’s because of his famous father, Stellan Skarsgård, who is also a very famous actor. If you have seen movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Angels and Demons, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Mamma Mia (based on the music from the extremely well-known Swedish band ABBA), then you have seen Stellan Skarsgård.
Another dashing Swedish actor, who is famous all around the world, is Malin Åkerman. She is a flawless example of the perfect, blonde Swede. She is acting The Heartbreak Kid, Watchmen and 27 Dresses.
Sweden may not have a large population, but it has gifted the world with bounty of astonishing directors and actors. The early mentioned is just a tip of the iceberg of Nordic filmmakers and actors who have enchanted and engaged people around the globe.
Josefin, Amanda and Sebastian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLkwE-FPp1M&feature=related - check this out!
Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden the year of 1883. He was a chemist, engineer, innovator, and also an armaments manufacturer.
The dynamite he invented consisted of nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth. This was later patented 1867 as “dynamite”. It was an important explosive at that time. Later on he tried experimenting with it and combined nitroglycerin with different nitrocellulose compounds . He combined it with another nitrate explosive and obtained from that a transparent, jelly-like substance which was even more powerful than dynamite. It was called “Gelignite”, also named blasting gelatin was patented in 1876. After he had invented these explosives, his later researches resulted in the founding of ballistite. This was a precursor of many modern smokeless powder explosives and is still being used as an efficient rocket propellant.
He had many students and one day in 1864 a big explosion occurred at their factory in Heleneborg in Stockholm killing five people. Alfred’s younger brother Emil died in the explosion.
When Nobel was at his best, he owned over 355 different patents and the dynamite was the most famous of them. Before he died, he signed a will and instituted the Nobel Prizes from his big fortune.
/Anton
Swedish pop-artist - Robyn
The Swedish pop singer and songwriter Robyn is known for her worldwide dance-pop- and R&B hits, e.g. “Do You Know(What It Takes)”,”Show Me Love”, “With Every Heartbeat”, “Dancing On My Own” and “Indestructible”. She was born in June 1979 and she wrote her first song by the time she was eleven years old. Robyn has won and been nominated to several Grammy’s and other awards through her career and her success continuous. She has released seven albums and collaborated with famous singers and songwriters such as Snoop Dog, Royksopp, Kleerup, Max Martin and Denniz Pop!
/Katarina and Malin
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Second hand etc
Our overconsumption reaches new heights – we have so far not made our world justice. It’s not sustainable to throw away outrageous amounts of personal stash just because you find them unattractive or old. I mean; if it’s broke – well, I suppose you don’t have any other choice but to discard it and it’s of course natural to get bored by things you’ve owned a long time or that just has fallen out of fashion, but let’s face it;
Why throw away while you can give away?
Here in Sweden, we have two charity organizations called “The Red Cross”, and “The Antz”, or as it is called within our boundaries; “Myrorna”. Some of us Swedes “dump” our stash here, like old clothes, furniture and toys – this to be sold for a cheap amount of money to people who want them. Some things are even to be given away. If you feel like not spending big money on possessions and similar stuff, take a great ride to your nearest retailer and make yourself a good deal.
/ With love
GF (Arnold) and Frezd
AKA, Gustav and Fredrik
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