Travellers’ Tales 4- Sweden
Again
As I am sure I have mentioned before, from 1986 onwards, I
went to Sweden for work two or three times a year, with a very charismatic
Hungarian breast radiologist called Laszlo. My specific destination was usually
Falun, capital of what was called Kopparberg (copper mountain) county when I
first went there, but the county has since reverted to its ancient name of
Dalarna (the valleys). I and colleagues from Sweden, Finland, the USA and
Taiwan would beaver away for a few days, away from the distractions of our own
departments, and produce a considerable amount of research output in a short
time.
The town itself was pleasant enough. A river divided it into
two main districts, on the southern side, low-rise blocks of flats, apparently
of 1960’s vintage, not exactly ugly or pretty, but functional in appearance.
North of the river was first the centre of the town, with its cinema, a couple
of streets of shops including two supermarkets, a department store, a Chinese
Restaurant, a bookshop with a most welcome corner of books in English, and a
somewhat grand town square. The latter had a sinister looking 19th
century town hall at one side, an imposing church with an onion-domed steeple
at the other. The two sides between had a few shops and one of the town’s only
two bars. The other bar was across the river in a street of old wooden houses
which had somehow survived the rash of flat blocks. In a narrow side street off
the square was the Systembolaget, the state monopoly liquor store. The town centre
was eerily quiet at night and none too bustling during the day.
Beyond the town centre to the north was a sprawling area of
elegant villas, some of stone and painted yellow, others wooden and painted a
deep rust colour, known as Falu rödfärg, after the iron oxide pigment from the
former copper mine on the edge of the town. The houses were comfortably spaced
with large gardens and birch trees between them, and the occasional park. This
district also contained another impressive onion-domed church, the hospital
where I was working, and up towards the edge of town, the block of studio flats
where I lived.
In 1986 I worked there for several months. The previous
year, in Singapore, I had grown attached to listening to the BBC World Service.
Great if you like hearing the news every five minutes. However, it also aired a
number of sitcoms, some new and some very old, including Educating Archie,
would you believe (Google it if you are too young)! In Sweden, I found I could
never get a decent signal on the wireless and the World Service always sounded
like someone standing twenty feet from the microphone and trying to talk at the
same time as sucking a gobstopper, while another broadcaster crumpled a
newspaper considerably closer to the mike. My theoretical explanation for the
lousy radio reception was that at that time in those northern latitudes, there were
still hangovers from the cold war, including NATO and the Warsaw pact
continually each scrambling their own radio communications and each attempting
to interfere with the others. I don’t know if this is true, but I wouldn’t be
at all surprised.
My third visit was in February 1987. There was a metre of
snow on the ground, and thanks to the efficient and well-insulated design of
Swedish houses, on the roofs of the wooden houses in the villa district of the
town. It looked like Fairyland, Tir Na nOg. This was in that part of my life
before Hurricane Linda struck, and I was quite a lonely young fellow. And in
small town Sweden, there were few opportunities for socialising. There were a
couple of bars in the town, but in the 1980’s the only customers were the town
drunk and the visiting Scottish statistician. And how do you tell which is
which?
I have already held forth about the childish enthusiasm for
English-language television programmes, including shows which I wouldn’t have
dreamt of watching back home. However, I did improve my rudimentary linguistic
skills by watching foreign (i.e. not in English) films subtitled in Swedish. I
think my Swedish was improved by seeing Jiri Menzel’s Postriziny in Czech with Swedish subtitles and Fellini’s brilliant E La Nave Va in Italian with Swedish
subtitles.
One day I went to the barber’s and began the conversation
with my usual preface in all my dealings in Swedish, ‘Förlåt, ja talar lite Svenska’ (sorry,
I only speak a little Swedish). The barber smiled broadly and replied, ‘Det är
OK, ja talar mycket’ (that’s all right, I speak plenty).
As I say, the town had a disused copper mine, in which I
took the guided tour one long, otherwise empty Saturday afternoon. It was
interesting and strange down there, temperature around five degrees Celsius all
the year round, and we had to wear oilskin coats and hats to protect ourselves
from the vitriol which dripped from the roofs of the drifts. The guide told us
a story of how in the eighteenth century a man’s body had been found, looking
as if he had recently died. In fact, he was later identified as Mats Israelsson
who had disappeared forty-two years earlier. The vitriol had preserved his
features perfectly.
In the twenty-first century, my colleagues realised that to
analyse Swedish breast screening data, one didn’t actually have to be in
Sweden. One workshop took place in Roanoke, Virginia. Another two were in
Budapest, where I had a hotel room looking out on the Danube.
From 2020 to 2022, these workshops were virtual due to the
pandemic. In many cases, colleagues have found the virtual meeting strategy
quite productive, but to churn out substantive study results, it is best to be
on the ground together. In February 2023, we had our first face to face
workshop for more than three years. This was just outside Arlanda airport, as
by now, Laszlo has retired as head of mammography in Falun Central Hospital, and
is living in suburban Stockholm to be nearer the grandchildren. Yes, I know.
Heaven knows where the past thirty or forty years have gone.
Back to Falun. When I first stayed there, I used to see an
elegant, classically designed mansion a little way off the road on my walk into
the hospital in the morning. One day I asked Laszlo, ‘What is that very imposing
building just off the Linnevägen?’ Laszlo replied, ‘The Freemasons.
They get everywhere.’
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