Did you know that all adult americans use a swedish word and object several times almost every day in every week? You didn't?! The object and the word I'm thinking on is “dollar”, it comes from our swedish Middle Age money “daler”, daler is the same as dollar! Fun, right? Don't ask me why this happened though!
The swedish daler was introduced by Gustav Vasa 1534. Daler comes in its turn from the Bohemian “Johannistaler” that was these days Euro. After a reformation 1776 daler became instead “riksdaler”, divided up in 48 shilling at 12 runstycken [12 piece of runes]. 1855 it was changed into “riksdaler riksmynt” and was a fourth of one riksdaler. The Goldstandard and the monetary standard “krona” we have still today was introduced 1873 from France. This year (2002) almost whole Europe, and France, joined together about “euro” except Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Great Britain.
Click here to see our swedish hologram money!

Why not take this money-story from the very beginning, the americans did not only lend our word for daler but did you know it was also Sweden that was first in the world to came up with the idea and use of papermoney? So maybe it is us you shall blame for the corrupt monetary system in the world?!
Anyway, here we go: In the beginning all people trade goods with each other, the goods that was exchanged had always roughly the same value, otherwise you had become cheated, twentyfour eggs was trade for twelve bottle of milk or one shoe on your horse... the Vikings was very good at trading most all over the world but the merchandises was more like spicies, leather, swords, gold, silver etc.
In time it become naturally to pay with gold- or silvercoin instead when trading, gold doesn't become as easy rotten as eggs. The value of a coin was the value of the amount metal it was made off, one had often to use a balance to weigh the coin to be sure of the value when doing business.
Hallmarked coins was used from the days of Olof Skötkonung in the10th century, long before the “daler”. Still the value of the coin was how much metal it was in it. (Olof Skötkonung was by the way the first King of both Svear and Geats, therefore the first swedish King.) However during Middle Age Sweden run short of gold and silver, we had not much of these metal in our kind of rock and the era of the Vikings bringing gold home was to its end, so we had to use coppers instead. Though coppers have some amount less value so in time the coins grew bigger and bigger. In the end a coin could weight more than 20 kg (44 pounds), quite cumbersome to walk around with only one of these coin in your pocket not?! These are in fact the biggest metalcoin in the world existing.
In the middle of the 17th century a man named Johan Palmstruch (1611–1671) came to Sweden from Livland (= Estonia + Latvia, which was conquered by Sweden at this time 1561–1710: “The Good Old Swedish Time” it was called though they were conquered!), he had the idea to do as they did in the rest of Europe; to start a bank. Eager encouraged by the Swedish king Karl X Gustaf he started the first bank 1656: Palmstruchska Banco in Stockholm. As the first bank in the world he begun to make banknotes 1661, (the heavy coppers was for a long time out of fashion so that was not the reason) the banknotes was by the way already with watermark and other safetythings. And it made immediately success! Much easier to trade expensive things with a few banknotes than plenty piles of coins or gold.
However as many things going well it sometimes comes a day when it must go down, after a few years they had sold too many banknotes related to how much gold they had in their vault. People got suspicious and went to change their papermoney into coins and when some did it other followed and the bank become bankrupt… this was the year 1668, this could also be one of the worlds first bankruptcy! Johan Palmstruch was sentenced to death, but was reprieved and became a free man already 1670.
Palmstruchska Banco was then taken over by the Swedish Parliament and became “Riksens ständers bank” later “Riksbanken”: the Bank of Sweden. Which are still today the oldest bank in action in Europe!
Swedish crown (SEK) are the eight biggest currency in the world though we are so few inhabitants (8.5 million). Sweden are the twentieth biggest economy (total GNP) though we are so very few, we are the fourth best in GNP per capita. There are more info if you click the papermoney-picture above.

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Regarding John Ericsson's exploit in science of engineering when he constructed and built Monitor in only 100 days I wrote it usual takes years to build something like a new battleship. I read somewhere it would usual have taken six years to construct something like this! On top of that during these 100 days he also maked more than hundred new innovations that got protected by patents. Monitor become the predecessor of all armoured battleship thereafter. Before the invention of the propeller he got known as the inventor of the steam powered fire pump, and with the steam engine “Novelty” he was in a contest with “Rocket” 1829 but lost because of a small damage of some small part, Novelty was though otherwise faster and better than Rocket in many ways. Later in his old days he constructed several sun panel machines but he got not that really succesful at all with that.
When he died 1889 he got the funeral of a hero, after the great homage was done in America Americas biggest battleship brought his body over the Atlantic to Stockholm where a big pavilion was built only for this purpose, and then he was slowly carried in a custommade railway carriage to his home town Filipstad, where he was put in a big mausoleum. I will someday if I afford go there to photograph his grave and show you here.
Though John had a big brother that was even more known! At least here at home. His name was Nils Eriksson, he built the Göta canal through whole Sweden (from west to east of course) and maneged to finish it in right time! A distance by 182 km, where 87,4 km is the dugged canal with 58 floodgates, the rest natural channels and seas. A great touristic adventure for tourists even today I belive. After that he built a even longer canal in south Finland. And after that he was in charge of the building of all the State-owned swedish railways around Sweden.
This was two quite ingenious brothers right?

And yes, I almost forgot, what I wrote about Monitor's victory over Merrimac are not maybe the fully truth, Herman Lindqvist, a swedish historical author that I quote on this are perhaps maybe not all that true, the info about the hole big enough to drive through with a horse-drawn carriage could actually be about another ship than Merrimac, that Monitor won is maybe not that easy to find either, some say the battle was a draw, some say and the facts speaks, in my opinion, that Monitor won a technical victory since Merrimac was prevented to accomplish further attacks against Minnesota.

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Here is what Sweden's biggest PC-magazine “PC för alla” [PC for everyone] write about this site in theirs summeredition 2002 (it was originally in swedish, mine translation):

Sweden's history comes to life
www.illustrata.com

It's score 10 points of 10 possible. (!)

A virtual museum that sometimes feels like interactive TV, where you get served a great portion swedish history with direction towards Sörmland. Illustrata begins with a shorth description of the swedish history in english. Then when the show aim towards Nyköping and Sörmland there are possibilities to spin pictures on castles with sound and music which convey different moods which makes the experience very vivid. One step in right direction on Internet!

+ Very professional picture-walks (panoramas) that make the most from the net's possibilities.

- Why does it not exists more?

–Thank You for that!

Scroll down to read what Spains biggest daily newspaper wrote!

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What was that about Goths and Geats you may wonder? Once I happend to view a episode of the beautiful Jenny Jones (or maybe it was Ricki Lake, don't remember) and the issue for the day was Goths and youngsters dancing at black (goth's) nightclubs with various degrees of drugs in their bodies. Jenny, or Ricki, told that Goths come from southern parts of Sweden and they were half vampires and drank human blood!
This is as I wrote in the intro ridiculous wrong! Not so polite either against 4 million Swedes. Perhaps Jenny or Ricki only mixed up Goths with Geats. But all you kids dressing up like goth's, learn your history instead. Perhaps this is all about money, invented by the owner of the nightclubs and the drugdealers to catch gullible youngsters into the abuse of narcotics and earn money on theirs addiction. However it is not cool to take drugs, if the dealers had existed in Viking Age they had most certain got their heads chopped of. It is only a weakness to try to escape from the presence. I assure you with a smaller booze on mead occassionally this was the furthest a Viking should have gone, to be willfully at such selfish burden to those around them as an drugaddicted are should have been punished with death or at least got them banished. I'm not against that you dress up as Goth's, that's pretty fun, just keep out from narcotics since the only way that leads is into misery and death. It is simply not cool. Just for wimps.
And girls, be extreme careful with alcoholics too, there is many men waiting for you to take advantages over you when you are drunk. Be careful and take care of yourself.

Edit: Actually, after some time I have understand the question abouts Goths are much more complicated than this, and the science are divided, the view I wrote above is perhaps close the common swedish science apprehension, however in every other country exist another version and I shall very short try to tell it as I remember I heard it. Actually Goths could have something to do with Geats but more obvious could be that they come from our biggest island Gotland in middle of Baltic Sea, and then spread around the shores of Baltic and eventually further down in Europe and then became the Goths that the kids in america above are exaggerated trying to imitate.
Don't know if I got it right this time, I suggest you find more fair literature yourself.

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Spain's biggest daily newspaper, “El Pais” wrote this 4 July about this site in theirs supplement CiberP@is (it's my translation, originally it was in Spanish of course):

History. World of the Vikings
Shows the wilde era of Vikings and illustrate objective the time of Swedish Viking Age, the development illustrates visually and with text (in english and with animations) the story about the time of the Nordic.

–Thank You El Pais for that!


Vikings lost in space!
These Vikings together with the surrounding of Nyköping, Sweden's biggest historical VR-site, is the first Swedish site that is transmitted in outer space! This autumn year 2002 european surfers connected via Sat@Once towards the Astra satellite can watch and vote for this site in a project together with ESA (European Space Agency), SES-ASTRA and Yahoo with today more than 14 000 connected surfers!
If you want more info about what it is: http://www.sat@once.csp.it

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“A beautiful mind”, the Hollywood movie about a professor of maths who got the Nobel Prize in reality but not in this movie!? The crew behind it must have slept their time through school. (They had not to learn english in school as we must, couldn´t they take that time instead to learn a little bit about foreign countries? Or at least when spending millions of dollars on a movieproduction someone could at least have looked it up in a encyclopedia?) However… the movie implies that the most known and finest prize in the world is called “the Noble Prize”. Maybe it is noble but nevertheless the correct name is “the Nobel Prize” after the Swede Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite 1866. It is thanks to him mankind could take the leap and seriously begin mine ore for steelmaking to build machines, houses, ships and cars and everything made by steel. Without him Hollywood had not been able to make movies as King Kong climbing the skyscrapers, Titanic, Indenpendence day or Armageddon but still would have to produce western movies! So give him at least the credit and call the prize correctly after him: the Nobel Prize! It is not either very polite to all these scientist who won the Prize for astounding discoveres to be so ignorent about theirs achievements.
Someone maybe wants to make a protest here, yes, maybe someone had later come up with dynamite ten, twenty or fourty years after Alfred Nobel, yes, maybe. But now he did, please credit him for that anyhow. And give him a thought, maybe the world had looked as in the 60's today without his invention, maybe…?

I must also say I am very proud of the exist of the Nobel prize, the englishmen got MTV award, the american and the french has the film award, they give prices away to those that already are celebrated... for what, they can sing or act and learn to say or sing phrases other has written, right? Nobel give away awards to a few that have some amount of intelligens, “genius and taste” and have worked very hard many many years to achieve something importent for the benefit of mankind. That is something to encourage I must say!

OK, now I have seen the picture, a very excellent movie by the way, but I really didn't hear or saw where they should have said Noble instead of Nobel, I guess the newspaper that wrote about this must have had all wrong. So I apalogize and let my mistake to stand here uncorrected, it could perhaps learn someone how to correctly spell to Nobel.

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This is also picked as Classy Site Pick Award at Duke of Urls site for August 2002, it's a seniors internet group known as the "50+ Friends Club", established in 1995, and an important part of the web-famous 50+ comprehensive site.
–Thanks Duke of Url for that!


Furthermore it got a very fine review in "Biblioteksbladet" under the vignette "nätnyheter": "Sweden's best historical site!" it said, further comments unnecessary.


I also got Nyköping municipality's culture encouragement award 2002, actual it's the first time someone got it for spreading culture with help of a computer!
–Thanks very much for that!


Sweden's official homepage "www.sweden.se" links twice to here:
http://www.sweden.se

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Speaking of Titanic… did you know there is one country where it lives more swedes than in Sweden?
Yes… in America it lives roughly 10 million descendant's of swedes, in Sweden it lives only 9 million! Of which one million is immigrants.

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More than 75 places over the world review or link to here, click here to see which and what they write, this makes Museum NY to a more frequented museum than Nyköping itself, many thanks to you all!

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Some believe there goes polar bears on the streets in Sweden! Well, you who have seen the panoramas from the square may have not noticed any polar bears, and it doesn't exist any in the woods either, some ordinairy brown bears though, but no polar.
Some other cool bigger animals in our fauna is elk, which in fact is the most lethal animal around here which kills most people (in car accidents) (and I don't mean it is the elks that drive!), (by the way, one ancient king I can't remember made a whole army of elks, pretty scary right?! Maybe the soldiers also was too scared to ride this beasts since it didn't get that successfully, or maybe they just were afraid of gunshot!) in north we have reindeers and some very few musk ox, bear, deer and roe deer, fox, wolf (too few actually, you can count them by a vey few hundreds), wild boar (too many is my humble opinion), and the coolest of them all our wild cat; the shy and beautiful lynx that are almost impossible to come in sight of. This beautiful animal is in my opinion the Queen of the woods (if the elk is the King) but are also as the wolf counted in a few hundreds, too bad. But as most often this is about the eternal question about animals living on conditions of the human...
In a few of our lakes there also lives a big fish that in swedish is called “mal”, can't find the english word for it in my dictionairy, maybe it doesn't have a english word, however it can get very very old, the record in length is 3.6 meter, it is quite ugly and can weigh up to 250kg! It is the biggest freshwater fish in the world. It is said it can eat small children, but do not try to catch any, they are placed under protection!

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Must tell you about something fun I did one day this summer, I showed the surroundings of Nyköping to a friend of a friend, a history teacher from Berkeley University of California and the friend is a teacher in Latin, it was performed in swenglish of course, but despite that they told me this was even better than the visit to Birka they made the day before!
Birka is an island full with plenty old stuff from Middle Ages and is widely known, this shows how fun and interesting a visit to Nyköping can be after have seen it virtually right here!

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Why does it calls Swedish massage in the porno districts? I have two clues to that, a swedish director Vilgot Sjöman once maked a movie with the swedish name “Jag är nyfiken gul” [I am curious yellow] (1967). For the first time in a movie the actress Christina Schollin showed in one scene her tits while bathing in a lake! This got some attention these days and after that people thought Swedes were a little bit sinful. Just because of half a minute naked women breast in the reeds!?!
99% of the porno movies that imply they are swedish are in fact not, just girls with blonde wigs shooted somewhere else. By the way, prostitution are legally forbidden in Sweden, one of few countries, so it is paradoxal that the country that associates almost most with porno are the country that are the least sinful!
EDIT: Recently I read in a book another explanation why it´s called swedish massage and etc, and quite serious one, during the cold war after WW2 Sweden that was governed by the socialistic leadership experienced a flourishing prosper without parallel in the world and this was a sty in the eye of the leaders of the right-winged America, Ike Eisenhower had to find out something that could make us to not look so good, propaganda with other words. At this point it happened that we in the school begun to educate in sexual continence and protection, and as you certainly know the americans always has been conservative in these issues so this was perfect to misinterpret and use as propaganda. Suddenly Sweden was not so superiour any more. No ideologic threat any more. Swedes were suddenly moralic inferior. And the worst is that since USA has such cultural influence in the world this quite effective propaganda was spread around the world.

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Ours ancients norse story of the worlds creation is in some parts vaguely similar with some other cultures, this is quite fun so I shall try to give you a short description. Though bear in mind this is mine interpreting, it could have some errors, it is hard to find a good version of text that explain this:

First there was a big nothing: “Ginnungagap”, between the world of light and warmth “Muspelheim” and the cold dark world “Nifelheim”, in this energyfield a big giant hermaphrodite man called “Ymer” arised from. From his armpit and feet's perspiration the hoarfrost-giants “Rimtursarna” was born! An old cow that seems to have been there always: “Audhumbla” fed Ymer with milk. The cow Audhumbla also licked out a man from a stone: “Bure”. Bure's three grandchildren “Oden, Vile and Ve” soon appeared at stage, they killed the first giant Ymer and the blood from Ymer drowned almost all the hoarfrost-giants. The Gods made then the Earth from the body of Ymer, his blood became lakes and seas, his flesh became the soil, his hair became to forests, his head became heaven, his brain transformed to clouds, and his teeth and bones became mountains and stones.
Thereafter these three cool brothers Oden, Vile and Ve (or sometimes also Oden, Höner, Lodur) walked a day on the beach and found two trees, from the first ash-tree the first male human was made: “Ask” (ash=ask) and from the second elm-tree the first women “Embla” (elm= alm/embla) was made. Oden gave them life, Höner gave them reason, sense and movement, and Lodur gave them senses and emotions. “Ask” is same word as ash-tree, the human Ask and the ash-tree Yggdrasil points at a relation between humans and the spiritual cosmos.
In the heaven's middle the Gods (=Asarna=Aesir) built a castle/house named “Asgård”, Oden had a house named “Valaskjalf”, one another more wellknown house was “Valhall” where Oden and the Valkyries welcome the dead warriors. A golden house “Gimle” where the just and upright dead humans come after the death. This heaven was carried up by the ash-tree Yggdrasil, the humans was somewhere beneath in “Midgard” and the dark forces under the roots. From the roots three springs murmur, one goes to Nifelheim.
Oden, the mightiest god, at last gave his own's life to himself by hanging himself in the tree Yggdrasil!?!

One could wonder what they put in their mead to think this out?! Maybe it's because they didn't have television? Well, then I shall not write about the almost other hundreds gods we had, that is too much even for me! Must say that the Christian story of the creation are very boring compared to this. I read that the complexity and range of fantasy Nordic mythology has is only comparable to Celtic and Greek mythology! However I've read somewhere Celtic and Nordic have many connections, presumably they got same origin: Erils or Arils (Pale blondes or redtops mostly existed only in England and Nordic.) There are also some new facts pointing on that what we call Celtics today in role plays, fantasys etc are much made up fantasies made by Irish monks that wrote down and spiced up more than 500 years old fairy tales, the real Celts were instead the ancestor of mostly all european people, not a particulair group with a same and distinct culture but everyone, besides the Vikings and areas of Ireland and Scotland where the real Celts children lives today with most of their language still preserved. But this is no theory of mine - and I can have misunderstand something - so don't flame me, take this instead as a startpoint for your own exploration!

Were the Vikings really heathen?
I accidently read this in the beginning of a book, an interesting aspect, were the Vikings with their Aesir cult heathen or religious? Supposingly not religious in the meaning we thinks of religion of today. A religious person today maybe live as everybody else the whole day at work and at home but takes five minutes or ten or more to make or think something religious, or goes into the church on Sundays.
The Vikings on the other hand were perhaps not even aware of that they were religious, because if everyone are religious and are living with it from the morning to night where most things they did and make also had a religious meaning, like sow and harvest, eat and kill the animals for food, build a house or ship, it was impossibly to look at it from outside and see that they were religious. Almost like a bird in a cage, the bird doesn't know about the existents of the woods because he has always been in the cage and therefore he thinks that the cage is his natural place to live in and he has no reason to even begin to think about if there is an outside.
So at the same time the Vikings let them be permeated with their gods all day in almost every daily duties, they lived inside their religious lifes and were really full-time religious, but they didn't know that they were religious. And this answere the headline question, they were not at all heathen, they were much more religious than many are today, their lifes were religious, but they didn't believe in the right God to be titled religious in the eyes of them who came from southern Europe.
At same time they got a more relaxed attitude to their religion, a more practical attitude, they had to since they never had survived else, so they never spend time on prayers and to sit still and think as many do today. They lived on and occasionally got theirs feasts instead where they invoke the gods and suchs things, and most work on the farm or ship or whatever did consist of something religious, but when Christianity came they were quite openminded and adopted it within a few hundred years, first added as just one more God to the existing gallery of gods, and then after time and supposingly with pressure from Christianiced kings they become more and more Christian. The Kings have also thereafter into modern times decided which type of religion we should believe on, from Catholic to today Protestant Lutheran. Though most swedes today are not noticeable religious.

The gods of aesir cult are many beacause they were added on in a long road of time and by different people from many places which the Vikings were. It is not an invention as the Bible that was written by a few men about one main event. That's an interesting distinction.
In another place here I write about that Vikings were skilled traders and travelled far away into East to peacefully trade, then we learned there were other beliefs and attitudes, not inferior, just only different.
Maybe it is because of this background people from the North tends to be more openminded and understanding of different peoples belief and habits and have long time worked for peace and understanding. I can mention Olof Palme for just one example.
We do also believe on to separate religion and politics, religion is up to everyone to practise at home, but politics must stand outside to serve everyone none regarding faith..

By the way, the middle-east religion Christianity tells us that hell is hot, very hot, the ancestors to the Vikings didn't wasn't very experienced of warm climate so for them hell was a very cold place, same idea though…

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Why were the Vikings more openminded?
The image of Vikings are in the west that they were berserks, that is not what is teached in the schools in the East, there they learn that the Vikings were skilled trademens. The truth is somewhere between but with the main focus at Vikings as skilled trademens. The cause is the attacked monk we robbed on gold could write, and since these were tragical events they wrote about it of course. However in the East less was written about us because there we didn't rob but instead trade peacefully, that is not that much worth to write about. (BTW, because of the trading culture every viking could read, not bad to be for thousends year ago?!) But why this difference? First we did not spending all our time robbing monks on gold in the west, we maked trade and settled down peacefully there also, not much worth meantion that either, but the real cause was that people in the west was poorly organizated, it was easier for the vikings to quickly land the ships from open water, ride in and swing the swords and take the gold like from sitting birds. However in the East there was a much stronger and heavier built defense, some few vikings didn't had a chance if they come in misdeed, so the only thing was to stick peacefully to trading. We even maked trade with caravans coming from China.
So with that in mind it seems that the Vikings knocked down more west-european than Orientals. That is pretty much against the common opinion about Vikings.
One could also say that within this time Vikings trade all over Europe and the East but today when we are within EU we raise customs against countries outside EU. That's why the headline about the Vikings were more openminded!

Why did the Viking era eventually die?
The Vikings trade merchandise from the west Europa to East where they got paid with silver. Most of the bigger silver mines was located in the East. Mostly all silver treasures found in Sweden from Viking Age are silver coins and stuff from the East. Dugged down in the soil during times of violence and then forgotten. And then found thousends year later, much found on Gotland. However the silver mines run short and new silver mines was found in the middle Europe, then the trading the Vikings did between got meaningsless. Simply.
At same time the Vikings maked the last unfortunately raid, called the “Ingvar's march” (?), ended up with thousends dead men died of some disease deep down away in the East. This event is the final point ending the era of Viking Age. Then disturbances within Svitjod during early Middle Ages in the progress of making Sweden united maked everyone enough occupied with those internal contentions to have time to even think on making more tradings or robbing abroad. Of course later on we got involved into long severe wars with other european countries. But that's another chapter.

Why does every English-speaker actually speaks Swedish?
Yes, if we stretch the truth a tiny tiny little bit we could say every English-speaker actual speaks a late version of swedish, I can almost hear you ask why and how! This is how, before Viking Age in England there lived Celts, they got partly conquered by Romans, during Viking Ages Saxons from south-west Denmark (vikings) and Anglor from north German/Netherlands (half germans and vikings) settled down in south England, these become Anglo-Saxons, which in short gave the name “England”. Also Juts from Jutland in Denmark settled down here. During this time also other Vikings settled down pretty much everywhere on the islands. 1066 in Hastings the Anglo-Saxons got defeated by the Normands from Normandie with its leader William the Conqueror. Those Normands was as I told before in the Splash-intro actually old vikings that had settled down in Normandie = Land of the man from North. Though at this time they speaked more French than Swedish. So all those folks were actually formerly vikings blending in with the locals and then fighting each other again, and again! The Normands then stood unbeaten ever since then though the somewhat faulty name England didn't changed and the Normands blended in with the rest of the locals. Or something like that.
During Viking Age a dialect of swedish was told in this area just as in the North and Iceland, but during Middle Ages the Englishmen blended together with the French and became a mix of Teuton and Roman, and Swedish become influenced by German and later on in the 19th century also by French and even later by English again. The most truthfully swedish are today actually speaken on Iceland - where mostly Norwegian and Swedes Vikings settled down - but is called Icelandic. To be fair I should mention that this time Danes and Swedes spoked roughly the same language and it was then called Danish because Denmark was slightly stronger. (Did you know that the Danish flag are the first flag in the world? And the second flag in the world very soon became the Swedish?) So if I was Danish I should say Danish instead of Swedish but... it's almost the same thing, we say swedish today since Sweden later grew bigger and stronger.

So English and Swedish has many similarities but not enough so I can write english perfectly, but anyway, some modern words we've recently got from English like “scanner” and “layout”, a little older words we got from France and German but even older words English instead inherit from Swedish, like bread (bröd) and soup (soppa) and knife (kniv) or house (hus), in the splash-intro I wrote about Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday that comes from our ancient aesir Gods: Tyr, Oden, Tor and Frej, or Frigg, maybe not everyone are thinking on that those very common words comes from swedish Aesir cult!
But the older common things the more similar words we share, like (I put the Swedish word inside brackets, please note that the english copied swedish): Head (huvud), hair (hår), eye (öga), nose (näsa), ear (öra), mouth (mun), tounge (tunga), teeth (tand), breast (bröst), arm (arm), hand (hand), finger (finger), thumb (tumme), knee (knä), foot (fot), toe (tå), blood (blod). Knife (kniv), (fork has no similarity since it didn't exist), hammer (hammare), axe (yxa), house (hus), door (dörr), tree (träd), bush (buske), grass (gräs), sea (sjö), boat (båt), starboard (styrbord) – simply the side where the helmsman stood, sail (segel), mast (mast), row (ro), live (leva), life (liv), die (dö), cat (katt), cow (ko), horse (häst), goat (get), swine (svin), elk (älg), stone (sten), etc, you see common words abot the human body and navigation mainly.
Words like father (fader), plough (plog) comes from our even earlier common Indo-European inheritance. But you easily see why I can say englishmen talks a late version of swedish.
One exception to the rule is the word window, here has englishmen kept the Viking word for window: “vindöga”, that means wind-eye, but we have paradoxically lost the connection and says “fönster”, earlier “fenster”, that comes from Germany.
By the way, in the same manner the meat that was prepared by the lowerclass vikings was called calf (kalv) or swine (svin), or sheep, but when finally served on fine dishes for the upperclass they were instead called in french: veal, pork and mutton.
...so therefore I say every English-speaker talks a late version of Swedish, to some part, but take a look at the Erik's chronicle in the Castle-area here, there we can trace some similarity between English and old Swedish but we can also easily see that spoken Swedish hasn't changed that much.

Why do we say the “civilizations cradle” stood in the East, Orient, Greece etc?
And why does many depreciate the importance of the Vikings and why are the image of Vikings in the west that they were only berserks? Why were we savages and the Christians from east the civilized? Etc, etc...
You maybe already have got the point, all this viking stuff on these pages are here to try to reflect the new facts we got about the Vikings and transmit a more balanced view on Vikings. As I have wrote before it is the the robbed monks and priests that wrote about theirs terrifying experience of the Vikings, but those who we trade peacefully with didn't write much at all, health remains silent as we say. The Vikings themselves didn't write that much either since we didn't had papyrus but only stones to carve in, we did actually carv much in wood but wood burns and get easily rotten, so much that could be told about are not longer existing. (Actually all vikings could read and write, the few wooden items found shows example on short “letter” messages like “we meet down the harbour when sun goes down” and also some love poem, something like this: “My love to you is hotter than all fires together”) Also our houses was made of wood and grass to hold the cold outside and also those houses burns down or rotten easily. We does not have the easy sandstone to build with either but just hard granite. The Vikings and all them before was also a people of sailors, with all the large impenetrable woods everywhere in North all transports had to be made on water, even more easily on the ice during winter. So there was not meaningsful to build big houses and citys that can tell us about earlier grandiose civilizations. So just because there is not much left written about us and not much old houses found it is rather unfair to say we shouldn't be civilized, not? Are the only cultures that built big houses civilized?
One can also say that they who conquer tells the story. Christian Spanish that killed Indians thought they were savages, in some way did the Christians from south regard our belief and way of living to be uncivilized, and neglected the good stuff we did or maybe just didn't see it. The conquerer acts with superiorety over the worsted, just like happendes much even today. In fact we were not just savages doing nothing before the civilized Christians comes with ideas from south-east, Stonehenge, a giant astronomical calendar, was raised 2000 year before Christ, before or at same time as the pyramids, the shipscraftsmanship stand highest in the North, the art of goldsmith was also the highest in the world, poets and musicians stood high in esteem, democracy, the wide and complex Aesir cult same or even more complex as the Greek mythology can't be invented by just savages, we maked trade with west and east, the Orient and even China and built cities in Russia and we even gave it its name; Rus, as in people from Roslagen or Rurik the Viking, the art of metallurgi was not that high as in the Orient but not that much behind. The Splash-intro showed you some good reasons to not look upon our ancestor as wild backward uncivilized but equals and perhaps just slightly a little different. We didn't just sit and wait for the "civilization" to come, but then the so called "civilization" come from south and new ideas blended in and formed simply what we are today.

Read an interesting theory yesterday in the newspaper, when we were hunter and collectors in small societies smaller than let's say 100 individuals it was gossip and social control between humans that controlled everyone so not anyone could escape ones obligations. When the community grew and gossip couldn't alone control everyone religion took control over the humans, and priests made norms of how to behave and look and even think and etc, this happends all over the world. And then even later when communities grew even bigger we built the society with laws, police and politicians that tells us how to behave to fit in and not be a burden, simply a bigger control system than gossip…

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We have a few norse customs left that has survived through Christianity, one is the Midsummer Eve tradition, when we still today raise a with flower decorated huge maypole and around that in a ring with the children dance childish dances! The pole is a symbol for fertility and the point of time is a tribute to the sun. In short we celebrate the peak of the sun after a long dark winter. This far north we have rather few hours of sun at midwinter but around midsummer we almost see the sun 24 hours per day, that must be celebrate!
Santa Claus is maybe not a Norse phenomen but an old Nordic mythologic being mixed together with a Christian saint from Italy! Yes, it is not something Walt Disney invented! In fact most of the Father Christmas and the tradition we know today with Christmas presents are coming from the Nordic. This is the story on the whole, I could be wrong in some few details but on the whole it should be the truth:
In old days we believed there were small brownies living beneath our houses, they looked almost the same as us but reached us only to our knees. They wore grey and red clothes and pointed caps. They took care of ours animals when we slept during the night. In gratitude for them we around Christmas time put out a bowl with porridge for them to eat. Of course the porridge was gone next morning so this was clearly a proof of their existens!
We also had a tradition perhaps since Viking Ages that early on Christmas morning we run to our neighbours and knocked theirs door and threw in a present, this present were though in the beginning only something weird, or a simple wooden log, with a note attached where something mean (just for fun of course) was written. We blamed the Christmas goat for doing this heinous deed. The swedish word for Christmas is: “jul”, to knock on the door is in swedish: “klapp” so that gives that our word for a Christmas present are “julklapp”, and still is. With other words we haven't to the whole adopt Christianity since Christmas still is named “Jul” in swedish. In same way our word for Father Christmas are therefore “Jultomten” (not either Father Christmas or Santa Claus) where “tomte” is our word for a brownie. Soon I will come to why our brownie took over the role of the goat.
With the entrance of Christianity many things became out of fashion or even became forbidden, the most populair things had to change to something that suited the Christianity better. The Midsummer Eve tradition I wrote about had to change a little, no maypole for a while in some areas of Sweden. After many years with Christianity the Italian saint Santa Claus much celebrated in south Europe finally made the entrance to Sweden. In some way our Christmas brownie seems to have grew a few centimeters and taken over the name Santa Claus and this transformed brownie took over the present giving idea somehow from the Christmas goat. Some mixing was made here during years I can't exactly give further details about.
1874 the swedish childrens' book illustrator Jenny Nyström drew hers version of the swedish Father Christmas that was a bigger version of our brownies. This is the version Walt Disney pretty much later on made into the little fatter and solely red coloured Father Christmas we think on today. There is though a small issue where exactly he lives, at the northpole some says, the Finns says he live in Finland and we say here, this argument is solved temporarily by sending half the letters that are addressed to Santa to an adress in Finland and the other half to an adress in north Sweden (Falun is my guess).

In the book and movie The Thirteenth Warrior (or The Eaters of the Dead and The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922) when in the movie Antonio Banderas plays the Arab Ibn Fadlan who 922 AD as the thirteenth member in a group of Vikings travels back home to the North and helps them to win over the Viking's enemies, the “vendols”. The book is built upon a true text by Ibn Fadlan and is the only written text about Vikings that has survived through time. The content that are so extensive that most experts believe it is a true story, however the interpretation can vary, please read the thrilling and fascinating book yourself and you will see that Ibn Fadlan gives something between fairly objective to subjective view on the coarse but in the length nice and winning way of the Vikings. Maybe not always in a positive way, but a few things depends on the interpretation of the old text.
As an example Ibn Fadlan writes about a basin of water that goes round between the Vikings and the leader begins with washing his face and hair and spit into the cup and then the basin passes over to the next man that does the same, with the same water. However, if this was true the Vikings should had been extincted by germs long before, the truth should probably be that the cup instead was a bathtub that the men washed them in in descending order. And if one knows that a pious Mohammedan only wash himself in running water he would probably think that even if the water was exchanged between every man the basin was contaminated by previous use since it was not running water. So, actually the truth could sometimes be very far from what is deciphered from the old texts.
The most interesting part comes when they will fight the “Vendols” or “Dimo-animals”, the vendols describe as more animal than human and they wear bear skins and live in caves deep in the forest. Who were the vendols then? It is so much written about this part so it can't be just made up for fun. Pretty much speaks for that the vendols actually were a last group of Neanderthal men, we are called Homo Sapiens Sapiens (2x sapiens), and we and the Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis are two branches of the group Homo Sapiens. And remember that late research tells that Neanderthals was highly skilled, not as the common belief is that they should be more like animals, they stood roughly speaking as high as we on a scale of development. Some believe that they were early mixed together with Homo sapiens and we are a result of these groups melting together. It sounds pretty logic though that Neanderthals that were physically well suited to live in cold climate (they had a bigger nose that stood better against cold) could live long time hidden in the big forests in the North. Vikings were seafarer and lived mostly at the coasts so it could be a good chance that the Neanderthals lived long time alongside the Vikings but hidden in the great forests until they finally got permantly exterminated by a combination of inbreeding and driving out of competition by the Vikings.
There are much material to read about this on the Internet, just make a search on Ibn Fadlan (or “Risala: Ibn Fadlan's Account of the Rus”) and read for yourself.
It's pretty interesting stuff, read the book, it is also very fun, but take his stories with a grain of salt. Remember that from an erudite Arab's point of view Vikings could look more coarse than they actually were.


According to the danish story “Gesta Danorum” a soldier that wanted to be engaged by the king had to be able to attack one, stand against two, give way a little for three and without shame flee from four! A dead soldier is to no use.

Some few words about the berserkers, and they didn't eat mushrooms, in Gesta Danorum the author Saxo Grammaticus describes a real berserk from Hälsingland (north Sweden) named Hartben, he was so big and violent so twelve members of his own berserk gang had the only assignment to hold Hartben so he should not kill too many innocent people. When he got really hungry he could eat glowing charcoal and when he was too hot he cooled off by hold his fists into a fire. That is what we call a berserk haha!


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Swedish food that has killed kings, and meatballs etc…
I start with my favourite bun: “semlan”, in english: “a cream bun with almond paste eaten during Lent”! (Now I understand why it is only eaten in Nordic, it is too exhausting to pronounce it in english!) (I suggest that you instead learn the real name of it: semla.) It is a bun from Middle Age but despite that it is the most delicate and tasty thing I can think of. We eat them traditionally from Christmas to Eastern and more often at Tuesdays why they are also called “Fettisdagsbulle” [fat-Tuesday-bun]. You can eat them plain to only a cup of coffee or you can eat several within bowls of hot milk as a whole dinner-meal. My big brother has our family's record, he once ate eleven of them! I can manege maximum five or six.

The bun above is a larger “luxury” semla, wider and with more cream and almond paste. If you want to experience a mouthful of heaven and you can't buy “semlor” in your local bakery you can do them easily at home: Buy or bake your own plain buns of wheat preferably with cardamom in. Chop of the upper top of the bun and spread a layer of almond paste there, you can make it a little bit softer and adding small amount of milk or some yolk of an egg to it. Then you whip some whipping cream, you can do it with lowcalorie cream if you must but it must be of a tasty brand, put a generous layer of the cream at the almond paste. Put the top of the bun back again on top of all and powder some vanilla sugar at the top. Voila! Serve to coffee as they are, or in a bowl with hot milk if you want to eat them in a medieval way: “hetvägg” [hot wall] (don't ask me what that name comes from but maybe it is after you have eaten a few hot ones it feels like you hit the wall?).
You may think it looks unhealthy with all the cream and almond paste, though you have more bread from the bun so it is not that unhealthy after all, and then you sometimes must allow yourself something of the good! But the feeling of satisfaction it gives are better suited in the colder season when the body needs more fuel to hold its temperature. Latest news is also that fat from cream are not that unhealthy that some have thought, I'm not saying it's healthy but sugar is what we really shall look out for, my believe is that if you eat a semla you get enough fat, sugar and bread so you go satisfied the whole time to next meal without eating any candy!
Actually one old swedish King Karl Fredrik I guess died because he ate too many semlor! …I can imagine many other worser ways to die in, right?

Above the semla you see two ordinairy swedish cinnamon buns.

It's a little bit interesting how our climate gives us our habits of foods, since we half the year have a colder climate we can easily store things as milk, cream and butter. In southern Europe they have not this luck but have to use olive oil instead and drink wine. Though to make a salad with a little bit of oil in are much healthier than eating cream and use butter so are the simple bottomline that you can't make tasty gâteaux with olive oil! In moderation though one could add! The colder climate have also made that we have a wide variations of wheaten bread that satisfy one's hunger where in southern Europe it is more common with small and very sweat things at coffeetime. The swedish cinnamon bun is one example which comes in many variations.
To go further on this sidetrack with climate you know Muslims from the Orient, saracenerna as we called them in Middle Age, and Jews by all means doesn't eat pork, they have a religious believe that pork is unholy. My guess is that from the beginning that comes by more practical reason than religious, why should a pig be more unclean than any else animal? Today we know it is in fact a very clean animal, like cat's they relieve themeself long away from where they eat and sleep for an example, and mudbath even human does nowadays... and then are the pigs the animal beside apes who looks most like us so why call it unclean? However one must understand that in warmer regions as in the Orient meat from a pig gets bad faster. Deadly bad if one's unlucky, so to save humans life saracenerna's spiritual leaders proclaimed simply that pork is unholy and should not been eaten to prevent people to be tempted to risk their lifes. There are no religious reasons behind that but just to preserve human lifes. However here in north we live in a big refrigerator half the year and have no issues to conserve pork in a healthy way so I hope everyone understand that too.
Back on track. Gingerbread biscuit we also eat during winter, if you haven't tried these sometime you must, they are very delishious, of course depending on what brand you choose. Try also them with cedar taste or lemon taste if you can get. I guess every single Swede remember the moments from theirs childhood when mum baked the first gingerbread before Christmas and the kids could guzzle on them with a glass of milk. This is also a cake with medieval ancestries even if they today are much tastier. In swedish they are still called “pepparkaka” [peppar = pepper], though it is no pepper left in them today.
mm
Something old and that gives you something warmth to eat that we has as tradition to eat at Thursdays are “ärtsoppa” [pea soup]. Our king Erik XIV died 1577 because someone had poisoned his pea sup! Pea sup shall otherwise be eaten with a little mustard and spiced only with some thyme. And a small glass of Swedish arrack punch too if you want. And I prefer a glass of apple-cider too, as it was eaten in old days… by the way, apple-cider and beer is the old swedish drink to have to dinner the time before we could import red wine.
Glogg, in swedish “glögg“: mulled wine served with raisins and almonds, are also very great a cold day in winter. But not many knows it is quite delishous served cold with an icecube in the summer too. The Swedish king Gustav Vasa (1496–1569) even had one special glogg-maker employed only for making glogg! So try glogg if you can find it but I can't recommend the one without alcoholic, it must be a little alcohol in it for the sake of good taste.
Swedish meatballs are also great stuff, no king have died because of them what I know but the story tells it was our warrior king Karl XII that had eaten meatballs in Turkey, liked them and brought them home, remade them a tiny bit and who knows then made them famous over the world as Swedish meatballs! The swedish way to eat them are with hot potatoes, cream sauce and lingonberry jam and a glass of milk or beer. Go to nearest IKEA department store and test it there if you can't make them at home.

Pickled herring are also a swedish delicate speciality I must mention though it has nothing directly to do with our kings. One could say pickled herring is the swedish sushi, but I shall immediately explain why it is not. Often when a famous international popstar visit Sweden there is always one stupid young journalist that must try to feed them with pickled herring. God knows why! Often the journalist first say it is some sort of raw fish and dangle the small piece of herring in front of his nose. Of course the poor famous popstar thinks it is disgusting!!! But for the first it is NOT raw, it is pickled! That is a HUGE difference! Then you shall eat it together with some soured cream with some chives on and hot fresh potatoes with butter and a glass of cold beer. Try that and you understand why it is so delicious it has its own distinguished place at the Swedish Midsummer Eve dinner table!
By the way, pickled herring exist in many flavours, one I like particularly well is a new one with garlic taste. Classic tastes is also mustard and the oldest classics of all is pickled in onion that must be on every table. There are many new nice tastes, dill, lingonberry, mustard and honey, “archipelago-”, “country house-”… Well… wonder why but now I suddenly got hungry…
One fun thing about pickled herring is it is the most equal dish of them all I can imagine, it is cheap so everyone affords it, on Midsummer Eve every swede from north to south and from the poorest man up to the King and his Queen sits and eat exactly the same food, pickled herring and hot fresh potatoes!

Falukorv = sausage from Falun, has nothing to do with Kings either but has an interesting story. When in the Middle Ages mining the big and deep coppermine of Falun they had to use a lot of ropes to get the ore and the water up to surface. Strong ropes could only be made from animal hide and sinew. This became though a big problem, animals had to travel from far-away to here to only become ropes, and they ended up with a huge stock of meat they didn't know how to preserve. The clever German and Wallons working at the mine came up with this sausage and it became soon a good export product to the rest of Sweden!
Personally I prefer this sausage together with some redhot spicies. Or the simpliest and most cheap you can make for dinner is this sausage sliced and fried in a frypan served together with macaroni and ketchup, I can't came up with anything so cheap and simple but yet so tasty as this!

A final note, small beer [svagdricka] is an old drink we doesn't drink that much of nowadays, it's little like beer but darker and sweeter and with lower percentage of alcohol, like something between beer or porter and root beer drunk at Christmas... but it is still available, test it, it is surprisingly tasty! By the way, do you know what root beer drunk at Christmas is? It's hard to explain, it is almost as Coke but made with similair spicies as Glogg and not that much sweet as Coke, in my opinion it is much tastier than Coke. I guess though you can only find it in Nordic during wintertime and Easter.

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Food that kills us, today in the modern West food is slightly “poisioned” because of the industrial chemical pollution and more often by what chemicals they put in the food, but also what is left out because of how the food is treated. The last statement I am thinking on for an example common wheat, most wheat today are so fine and much refined that much nutricious things we need are gone, this is the same for most of ours food, but if we add on top of that that we doesn't eat much natural food like we ate hundred years back we are heading for magnesium shortage. Magnesium is the forth most importent mineral for our bodies and is needed for almost every process everywhere in our bodies, in every cell. Lack of magnesium do we not only get because of lack of it in our modern food but also by drinking coffee, Coke etc, alcohol and by stress the intake of magnesium will be reduced, some believe shortage of magnesium are a major cause to burnt out syndrome, one proof of this is when a person comes into hospital with signs on burnt out syndrom they ask if the person drinks lot of Coke! I myself have felt tired every day the last six years, after a month with adding magnesium I felt more alert! I promise! I suggest you too continue search for knowledge of magnesium on your own, you will be amazed how importent it is. If you don't care or have time, try at least to buy additional vitamins with so much magnesium in you can find so will you be able to sit longer in front of the computer before falling asleep!
One cause I wrote is Coke or Pepsi, yes, you know you can use Coke to clean your Coffee maker from calcium or even remove rust, do you not think it does the same to your body then?! It makes our bodies acid and that has bad effect on magnesium and much more. But not only that, do you know how much sugar it is in a bottle of Coke and similair soft drinks? It is really plenty, you actually drink sugar, in one can (50cl) of Coke there are 18 sugarcubes, one small bottle of Coke (33cl) contain 12 sugarcubes, that makes around 55 cubes in a 11/2 litre PET-bottle! Try to imagine how you would feel after eating 18 sugarcubes, or 55, but drink them is not a problem!
Sugar are not good for our health, not for magnesium and especially because we get very fast fat since sugar changes into fat in our bodies. The latest is that sugar and lots of carbohydrates are even worser than fat from butter and meat. (If sugar had been introduced today it would have been forbidden as a poisonous drug! Yes, it's true, if you eat much sugar and suddenly avoid it it will take 2–3 days to get free from your withdrawal symptom! But after that you are free.) Unfortunately kids sitting put front of the computer also drinks much Coke, two good causes to get fat. If they want to get caffein to keep them awake it would be much better to brew a little coffee and then drink water or milk instead. But that is not considered cool. Often people also buy Coke when order hamburger meal at McDonalds, how good is that, does Coke contain anything nutritious but just unhealthy chemicals and lots of sugar? Some water of course but nothing healthy at all, just lots of empty calories that burns fast and make us fat and feeling hungry very soon again. But, yes it is very tasty I think too, I drink it also sometimes, I'm not saying you should avoid it completely, but if you want to stay healthy and slim, buy more often milk instead, even light beer is better, or water. Then you will live longer and can watch these pages for longer.
Another bad thing with sugar is what I wrote above, it will hook you up like a drug, if you eat much candy for an example you must continue eat candy to not get too low blood sugar level, you must all time compensate for the blood sugar level that goes up and down higher and lower when you eat sugar or candy. It is much simplier to just avoid it. But the real bad result of eating sugar is that your system in the body that controls blood sugar goes worn out for all compensating it does up and down and in the end you will become diabetic. That is a disease that is quite common but nevertheless very dangerous and will shorten your life. I saw Jay Leno spoke about that of the kids that are born today in USA, 50% of them will get diabetes when they get adult. Theirs president Bush talks about that terrorism is a threat against americans, no no no, the real threat and terror is Sugar and Fat, that will kill many more americans than any future Bin Ladin. And, this threat are against all people all over the world. The cost for society if we doesn't do anything will be so huge so we maybe doesn't longer afford to give care to the older =ourselves tomorrow.
And be careful with buying light Coke instead, noone knows what the chemicals replacing real sugar makes with us in a long perspective. Mice that feeds with much aspartame etc gets cancer. It is also believed the lack of real sugar and these chemicals makes one more peckish after real sugar and fat, so you more you drink light Coke for an example, the more you want it or other fat unhealthy things and the fatter you get! I cannot prove this, it's only a theory, I've read it in the paper years ago, search yourself after the truth and do not buy everything the advertisement says! Actually I myself instead of soft drinks drink water blended with low-sugar cordial.
A huge trend is also that food-industry replace fat with sugar, so when you pick a yoghurt where it stand low-fat on you can be sure of that they have increased the amount of sugar instead, they must do something to keep it taste good! But more sugar means more energy and more fat on your belly. In fact, and it is proved, a light yoghurt labeled as lowfat product contains more sugar and more calories than a common fatter yoghurt! So watch for the amount of calories and compare that instead of the amount fat.
Another latest news also tells that in fat from meat are a healthy substance, actually many thinks fat is unhealthy, it is not, too much of wrong fat is unhealthy! People that worked much outdoor in the fields or forests could eat enormous amount of fat since they burned all up with the work, my believe is that small amount of natural fat is healthier than large amount of chemical replacements and sugar.
OK, not all finished, French fries, chips… actually there is a common growing disease by youngsters, with some diffuse tiredness and irritability, more than usual I mean, the cause is as I wrote before lack of good nutritious food, and too much wrong food as Coke and the most bad thing of them all, French fries. Too bad it is so darn tasty, I know, I eat them, at most once a week, that is way too much (edit: last year this author has almost totally abandon French fries, not even once a month!), the oil when boiling fries go rancid in the high temperature and that makes also the same of our bodies. Not good for magnesium level or anything else. I should say to my kids if I had any, and to myself, French fries as most once in a week, maybe once in a month, no more. You are free to do the same or not, it's always up to ourselves what we shall do with our lifes. Keep them and enjoy or burn them out fast. …Many youngsters often says they don't want to be old but rather want to die fast, I promise you when you get only a little bit older you doesn't want to end your life very soon, and, if you continue with smoke, drugs, unhealthy food you will only get older and sicker faster. So why not think a little about it when you can?
One last thing that are positive though, depending on how you look at it, did you know that one glas of red wine have more calories than one big cream cake?! So now I can eat more cream cakes! ...or semlor! Hurray!

OK, read something interesting about magnesium again. The daily need of magnesium is around 300 mg. For fifty years ago if you ate ordinairy food you got roughly 1000 mg magnesium with the food. However today they calculate that the food we eat today gives us only around 250 mg. You see if we eat ordinairy food (how many really does that of us?) we will get a small lack of magnesium every day. When times goes and if we eat much fastfood you can imagine the small lack adds on (minus I meant) and some day in the end it will make us really sick. Please check that your vitamin pills also contain a good level of magnesium.

Can't help continue, I heard something interesting yesterday, do you know exactly why every attempt to lose weight always goes wrong when you stop reduce? Because when you start to eat less the body thinks it is bad times coming and it automatically puts the energy combustion to a minimum to save fuel and store energy, so then you must eat even less to see any result! But then when you stop reduce and begin to eat as you did before so because of the energy combustion are at a minimum level it will not combust as much as before you started and you will instead get faster fat again! A natural selfdefense system from our past. So the most importent thing to consider if you will lose weight is that you must eat almost as much as before, but change what you eat.
Can tell you something about myself, I never considered myself as fat, but for little more than a month ago my weighing-machine told me I was 93 kilo heavy, and if I calculate that with my length, 182cm, I got the result I was not just overweight, I was actually fat. According to a table I had to go down to 83 kilo to get back to just slightly overweighted or normal healthy level. OK, what to do, I had already begun to stop drink soft drinks, and much candy I didn't ate before but from then I stopped completely. Just without making no actions at all but just thinking of what to eat, buy one pizza and cut it in half, no french fries and no soft drinks and almost no candy - I have one small bag with chocolate I eat sometimes after dinner - and to sometimes drink cordial without sugar instead of with sugar, I have without doing anything, just not doing some things, have lost 3 kilo in a month! I still eat same things as before and get exactly my hunger satisfied as much as before, I just have cut down things I know is real fat and sugarbombs. I have even ate many pieces of cakes and buns. I hope that within 3–4 months I can report to have lost my 10 kilo! Hold your thumbs.
OK, second month has gone too, this month I have only lost one kilo, but I haven't done much, just keeping out of obvious sugar traps as soft drinks, I have commited many sins. On the other hand I have not gained weight so I eat exactly as much as I need, just having not done enough to lose my old sins. When I told my girlfriend I lost three kilo the month before she said “That much! 3 kilo is almost as two packages of (two kilo) sugar!” And if you hold two packages of sugar up in your hands you actually see and feel it is pretty much even if it doesn't sounds like much.
OK, third or fourth month gone now, from 93 kg I now weigh 87 kg, that is three packages of sugar less. I still commit sins every day but I bicycle to the school twice every day. It is not ten but six kilo, just four to go!
Heard something fun when talking to a friend that also is on a diet, if you get so fat you begin to grow breasts, if you are a male of course, you are in big trouble, because that fat is harder to get rid off. So then, when loosing weight it begin with your belly and then you've got boobies! He said also it is easier to get rid of fresh fat than fat you had carried around for several years. If this is true I dont know but it sounds logical, so if you got fat pretty recently it is a good choice to immediately make something to change that and not wait.
OK, now the year 2003 is almost to end and I can say that the weighing-machine stopped for a couple of months at 82–83 kg, however I have done nothing more to lose weight it has stopped there and not gone up, I still got a little belly, maybe I will try to remove also that next year, maybe not, I'm pretty satisfied to have lost ten kg (five packages of sugar!) and I feel more alert again.
OK, now almost midsummer 2004 I can tell I didn't gained weight during the months I've ate semlor, however after a while when they stopped existing for this year (semlor are made just during Christmas and Lent) and I begun with other more sugarlike stuff I gained, so now I´m up to 85 kg! That's not good for the bathing season. This strengthen though my theory that it is better to eat some fat once in the afternoon to prevent one from eating candy or other stuff that may lay in he way…
OK, now close midsummer 2006 I can tell I'm stabilized on around 83–84 kg, two kilos from the dreamweight, well no disaster.

I was on a interesting lecture about food (sept of -03) and I don't remember the scientist's name but it could be just as good since I can't remember exactly all what he said correctly, but it was something like this: (Since I don't earn money on this and it is only for human good sake I hope he excuse me.)
Human as we looks like today has with this design been here for about 100 000 years and our body has slowly adapted to what nature could feed us with, and since we in Africa long ago lived and lost our fur near or in the water we are used to eat fish and shellfish and fruit from the jungle and some raw meat, when we found out of the fire we could cook the fish and meat and more effectively assimilate its nourishment and then our brain could grow even more. Our brain contains 60% or more of fat of a special sort, much Omega-3 and Omega-6. Meat from animals and especiall from fish contains much of this fat and this fat humans can't produce, we must consume it. Animals that eat grass can from the grass transform a simplier type of fat into this Omega-3 and -6 type of fat we need. Any predatoy animal including humans have lost this skill and must instead get the fat from grass eating animals or fish, this has 100 000 years of evolution made us. This is the same for C-vitamine, humans cannot produce this like animals can and we have to eat fruit, vegetables or meat with C-vitamine in.
This Omega fat types are very importing since much of the brain's fat are made of this fat, but also every cell's surface in our body is made of this and also everything inside the cell are embedded in this fat. So you can imagine this fat is very important for us to maintain functional.
This healthy Omega fat is around every cell in the fish and animal meat and is not visible.
We begun to grow wheat for only a few thousend years ago and as you may already suspect our body that are fully adopted to this fish/meat/fruit meal cannot be very well suited to suddenly eat much wheat. At least not as much as we eat today. And on top of that the wheat we eat today are also very much processed and does not contain that much nutrients at all any more.
So nowadays when we eat less fish and meat and instead more wheat and worsest of all more sugar what happens is that the nutritious amount food are become less and the healthy fat we need we doesn't get in right amount and our body and brain runs short of gas. It's like a racercar that are build to go on high-octane petrol suddenly get thick boat diesel oil instead, the car will not go many meter or maybe not even start.
White common sugar comes into our lifes only a few hundred years ago, it's unnecessary to say we are not adopted to it, potatoes are something pretty similair, the sugar in potatoes are of a kind that rapidly goes into our bodies like sugar does. When we eat a meal with much sugar or potatoes like hamburgers or pasta the body start produce insuline that shall take care of all sugar and when it hits it hits little too much and we get tired before it adopt itself to normal level. The more sugar the more insuline and the more tired we get. But the organ that produce insuline gets also tired of repeating itself too many times and it cannot produce enough insuline and we become diabetic. As I wrote before. And that can happen fast when we already are young.
And we get also fat of sugar. BUT! But if we doesn't eat sugar and eat more meat and fish with Omega fat instead the body that are build to do this can handle this excellent and you can eat so much so you can feel satisfied and doesn't get this dips and doesn't become fat. You stay slim without even have to think about it.
Think of Americans where fastfood first started, they have the fatest population in the world and even kids nowadays can became diabetic type 2, what we called before Older-diabetic. Very much they can thank Coke and hamburgers and the candyindustrie for that. Sweden are not that long behind, kids today eat much fastfood and candy and Coke and doesn't run around as much as I did when I was kid for an example.
Oil… much low-fat food contains oil and sugar instead of natural fat, the fat in cooking oil doesn't contain Omega 3 and 6, the fat in oil when it get hot transform into another form I can't remember but that is not healthy, he said it is even better to eat real plain butter. You can also fry in butter instead of oil. He said he couldn't yet say if milk was good or bad but he said that butter, cheese, soured milk and yoghurt is OK. Leaven bread are better than white.
Cholesterol are very healthy and much needed for every process in body but what is really hazardous is if we get it in our veins, if it gets there you are in big trouble. He meant that sugar and lack of the good Omega fat makes our system in unbalance and makes the cholesterol to hit for the veins instead for in to the cells where it is supposed to be.
What is fun with this theories is that they are so logical, we doesn't need to be rocket-engineers to understand that you can't pour water in a racing car and expect it to run very fast or maybe not at all. We can easily understand that what our body has adopted itself to during hundred thousends of years evolution cannot change to run on MacDonalds fastfood unless in additional hundred thousends years into future. But you and I don't live then.
What is really fun to think, and we doesn't need to be very smart to think that out, is that if we doesn't eat in a few days we get tired and eventually gets out of humour, if we do this longer time it is easy to think it must happen something to our bodies and brain and mood. Many youngsters takes medicine today against depression. The Swedish Police actually discuss if they should force prisoners to take vitamines and Omega fat pills so their brains would function more normal. However this doesn't sounds ethic some says, but I can't understand that.
But this is fascinating, think if it is not just because stress increasing in modern society but the stuff we eat that makes us sicker?! Something it must be, it can't be the air or water, it can't be stress because we had stress when I was young too, it must to a big part be food then. And we can easily see that food industry makes everything to make cows milk more, breed bigger calfs and chickens in shorter time, that extra percent meat they produce faster on a unnatural way is much like blown up balloons, the nourishment doesn't increase, instead it does the opposite and decrease. Then we eat this empty calories and doesn't get full nourishment, we get much energy but less nourishment, we get fatter but are at same time underfed.
Think if we could only with better food make people healthier, make people happier and make criminals less criminal, the thought of this gets one in a whirl. It could be that easy. It's perfectly logic. The hard part is how we consumer could make food-industry change to produce expensiver but healthier food?
Somebody maybe will protest and say this doesn't match up since we are all time getting older and that must mean the food are going better. I guess it is so that it is we that are slightly middle age and older that ate good food in the 60's to 80's and doesn't always eat fast-food that gets older, we doesn't know how old our kids of today that eat fastfood and soft drinks will be. If 66% of them catch diabethics they maybe will not be that old. Secondly science and healthcare cure much more people today than before so we can hugely extend our lifetime with pills.
Somebody says that people that eat much meat doesn' get healthier than other, it could have three explanations, they maybe doesn't eat much fish if they eat much meat. That's not that good. Secondly the quality of most of the meat that are breed fast and with the help of power feed today doesn't produce the good Omega fat we need, it is only slowly breed animals that eat grass and fish that produce the good fat. Thirdly we doesn't know what the meateater eat otherwise. So there is no reason here to collect for those military vegetarian.

OK, maybe not all could be considered as the truth, it is just in the beginning, we will learn more in future, but remember that you read it first here! Do as always, eat little of everything.

Saw on the news a man with the name Montignac or something that had wrote a widely known book with receipts that makes you slim and he also preach abstinence of carbohydrate [kolhydrat], fun to see he came to same conclusions but started from another view.

Violence on TV and computer games that kills us, and the peacefully three eyed frog.
Read in the newspaper yesterday about something interesting, you know most humans have two eyes directed in one direction thus giving us the ability to see in stereo, to see depth, many animals has the eyes on each side of the head to better see approaching enemies from every angle. This makes the difference if it are a hunter or a victim. However scientists did a interesting experiment with a frog, frogs have one eye on each side, they first carefully analyzed the brain of a frog and then they took the poor frog and surgered a third eye right in the middle between the two other! After a time they analyzed its brain again. The human part of brain that receive vision in stereo consist of threads of braincells from each eye that lays together, by turns, so the brain can more quickly calculate depth. A frog for an example have instead one vision centre for each eye that sends the info to the rest of the brain, but this frog with three eyes and stereovision had within time also developed the same threaded pattern in its vision centre as the human brain!
We have for long time knew that persons that lost skills or vision or etc in car accidents can develop other skills or reveal same skills in new parts of the brain. The conclusion this and the frog experiment gives is that the brain can adopt or transform itself after conditions you give it. You can learn the brain and train its skill, that is what you do when you read books or practise maths or music or whatever. So if you lets say practise much maths for an example you will also change your brain physical to better understand maths! So a brain that gets no good practise during teenage will stay put on a lower level than a brain that gets more practise!
However my conclusion is also that if you feed the brain with much violence from TV, movies, computer games during all childhood and teenage as many kids do today it must result in a brain that are good in violence!? Right? So parents who read this, give this a thought, don't you rather want your children to learn and practise love and understanding instead of violence and war? If so, you should perhaps look at what your kids train their brains with more carefully.
Here in Sweden a few are talking again about to reenter censorship of violent movies, that should comprise TV- and computer games also, if we really want a more peaceful world we perhaps should also ponder on what is the cause of the increasing violence. This puts also responsibility on those who makes violent movies and games.

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What was that about brackish water and the Royal Swedish Man-of-War Wasa? The Baltic Sea consist of something called brackish water due to its small inlet through Öresund between Denmark and Sweden with salt water and all the outlets all around of fresh water. That means it is not only great to swim around in with your eyes opened but it also means that the worms that elsewhere in salt water eat wood doesn't like the un-salt conditions so a wooden ship that has sunk in the Baltic preserves rather well during many hundreds of years. That's why Wasa is so well preserved though it has been in the water for more than 300 years. In fact they have harder to preserve the ship nowaday since the air affect negatively on the wood and the chemicals they have preserved it with now slowly changes into nitric acid or something like that.
So take the opportunity to see it before you can't. It's the most visited tourist attraction in Sweden and its well worth a visit if you are in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, before you go here to Nyköping of course...

By the way, have you ever concidered that Sweden is an island? I have never done that, but more than 90% of all transports to and from Sweden comes over water. Technically it is a peninsula but that part of Sweden that are attached to Norway and Finland are so long away so not even 1% of the swedes have ever been so far north so we could say the feeling at least is that it is more like an big island.

The brackish water and our rich archipelago on the east coast is our pride and is where we living at the eastern parts of Sweden likes to be in the summer. However it is only something swedes seems to value. A cabinet minister I have forgot who told this story. They should receive some delegates from southern Europe and pondered how they should make the best of their visit. They decided that best should be to take them out on a trip out in the beautiful archipelago and have a picnic. However the noble delegates come then in fine clothes and the women with high heels and not anyone of them understood why the crazy swedes had brought them out in the desert nature! They was used with and wanted luxury restaurants, big cities and lots of people, they could not see what the swede was so thrilled about the sun, the water and a hell of small islands without any restaurants or nothing like that on. Total disaster! Simply we are totally different cultures, many of swede's dreams how a perfect summervacation shall be is an island in the sea totally without anyone else but just water and the sun and a flat rock and perhaps a good book. That is luxury for us. Maybe it is because we have sun a smaller period of the year and historically long time ago brought up in pretty desert area, Sweden have today only 9 million inhabitants but on an area roughly the same as Germany and France together, maybe that's why we like the nature that much.
Speaking about nature, in Sweden we have something called "allemansrätt", it's so unusual so there are not even a name for it in english what I know but it means legal right of access to private land. We can walk everywhere in the forest we like and gather mushrooms, berries and flowers and raise a tent for one night, but its a freedom with responsibility, one are not allowed to go closer private houses than 100 meter, or within sight, and not pick vegetables under protection and not leave litter or make any damage, and for your own safety not enter unknown fenced pasture etc. One could say that in USA you have the right to shoot anyone that trespass, but in Sweden we instead allow everyone to walk everywhere, that shows how different we think.

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Anna Lindh. After thirteen hour of struggle for life after being brutally stabbed by an insane person Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh dies 05.29 in the morning of 11 September. Anna became only 46 year old but she became after hard work and love Sweden's beautiful voice of humanity, sense and decency in this world of insanity. She was the type of politican that burned of a belief and desire that we could do some change to the better for the world and make it a safer world for everyone. She became not only highly respected by every swede and by all of the international leader that respected hers intelligens, knowledge, strong belief, devotion, courage, etceteras but she was also highly esteemed by her worsest political opponents, and that shows how much unique politician she was. She was realist but also an unyielding optimist. She was predetermined as the forthcoming prime minister of Sweden and rumours says also to a leading role within the European Union.
She was grabbed away from us before she got the chance to show her full potential and to make even more major change to the better for the world.
This crime was not only suicidal against Anna but also Sweden, our democracy and our open society. It's a crime directly aiming to you and me. Sweden are one of, or perhaps the world's best example of a working democracy and perhaps almost an utopia speaking about democracy, solidarity, welfare and openness. She was active in questions about many trouble spots in the world and had many chances to be killed but she got murdered in the fraudulent safety at home in a exclusive clothe shop in central Stockholm.

I don't recognize Sweden any more, this is not the Sweden I grew up in, Sweden without Anna is not the Sweden I want. The Sweden I grew up in and my childish dream about an idyll like Astrid Lindgren's “Bullerbyn” or “Lönneberga” or “Pippi Longstocking”, yes an utopia, but it stay now even more in the distant future. And this should ring a bell for our politicians, theirs biggest challenge must now be to find out how we shall turn the negative development into a positive so we gain back security and welfare to all again.
For Anna Lindh's memory let us cooperate for a better Sweden and a better world. Thanks Anna for your short time, I am proud of your beautiful and bighearted contribution to the world, you really showed that mankind can take responsibility for the earth and our fellow creature.

By the way, Anna lived in Nyköping, the picturesque town and its surroundings you can see in our NY-museum.

I read an interesting article of how the consequences of this was seen in German, and this I guess is not standing for German alone but every southern European country, it was pretty long ago I read it but in main parts the writer recognized a common view of that we swedish citizen was blue-eyed and stupid to believe that a minister could walk around alone on the streets without at least ten body-guards around watching out for threats. This event showed clearly that Anna couldn't. However, is it something to be proud of that in Germany, France, Italy, America, whatever, a politician can not walk outdoors without a whole bunch of bodyguards and bulletproof limousines?! Is it? I and many other believe that a politician must be able to live an ordinairy life and go out and meet common people and everyday life as everyone else. Anna could and most politicians still do. To have such a society is something to be very proud of. Tell me otherwise, how could politicans make decisions for a society if they are not present in it?!
The discussion here goes though in different main furrows, first, in such a debate-climate where Anna Lindh had a leading role SÄPO (Swedish Security Police) should had been guarded her the last weeks before the EMU-election, just as a few others ministers had protection. Here they made a huge mistake. Secondly the man who performed the murder is insane or psychotic sick, he should if the welfare system had worked been locked in in some psychiatric hospital or something. However in the 80s the politicians decided to let over care of psychotic people from county council to local government and at same time decided that to lock in people was not very nice act to do, they should get own apartments instead and be cured. The local governments took the extra money and put instead in theirs empty holes and didn't put them in new places where psychotics could get custody or gave them somewhere to stay. Most of the people became without care, roof and food and become down-and-out. New psychotics and drugaddicts was not getting the care they should and there we are tody with Anna Lindh's murder as a possibly result of this. Not only she has been murdered but many other because of this misdirected humanism. This is not anything to be proud of. But if we get this in order we maybe can continue to have a society where politician can safely walk around like you and I without guards, maybe…

By the way, european newspapers has printed reports that the number of murders are higher in Sweden than any else European country. Guess it was 800. This number is all wrong and is based on a misunderstanding, the number shall be less than 100, Sweden are amongst the very safest country to live in. The number 800 is the number of reported suspected murders, here is every death first reported as suspected crime, but then when the cause of death has been known it can be erased, though here had the wrong first suspected number got used.

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Sweden has the best working democracy in the world, not? Yes, I believe we have, it is not perfect but still the best example in the world of a working democracy, not America, nor any country in EU is close (possible besides Switzerland and Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, however to make this somewhat easier for me I regard all nordic countries as Swedish just for the moment, they have all been Swedish from a historical point of view and we are all the same people with same history since long ago so…), but how can I say so you might wonder... I shall try to explain but before that I shall remind you that politics really are not one of my strongest skills, the thoughts that are coming are also only my own personal thoughts and shall not be regarded as the fully truth, however this pages are not paid buy anyone else but me and I am unpolitical so I dare to say that I at least tries my best to give you an independent point of view, or at least my own view. Read this with this in mind and perhaps take this only as something you can start to discuss from or start your own investigations from. If you encounter anything that you feel are wrong you are welcome to write to me: “jochum(at)illustrata(dot)com” . With all that said let's start.

Since Viking Age and most possibly from Iron Age or even much longer before that, we had democracy here in Sweden, or the Nordic, not really as we thinking of democracy today but anyway a sort of democracy. The word “democracy” comes from Greece and Athen where all free men had a vote already for more than 2 000 years ago. The same we had also here but our word for it are not known, if we had a word, we might have taken it for granted, the closest I can think of is maybe the word “ting”, that means the place and time for where and when we voted. However, every free, not convicted man, but no slaves and no women had then a vote each, during Viking Age and before. Exactly as in Greece. (Slavery was by the way forbidden here already during the 14th century. (USA as late as 1865)) The “kings” on this time was kings over much smaller territories so when having “tings” 100% of the free men could come and vote. Even a better democracy than of today! It was also so that if a king didn't do as the men wanted he could be threw down from the throne.
A tale tells that during a raid on the coast of England or somewhere the enemies send out a patrol to negotiate about making peace, they called out that they wanted to meet the king or the chief of the band whereby they got the answer: “Here we are all kings, you have to speak to us all.”
However, during Middle Ages three smaller areas with each one king at the throne in Sweden become united under one king, it was these tree areas: West- and East Götaland (folkungar and erikar), and Svealand (sverker). The unified king was Birger Jarl and the new country was named Svea Rike [Svea Kingdom], soon later and more easier spoken: “Sverige” [that's Sweden in swedish]. However the Kings power was sent from God and everyone had to do what the King decided, many fought though to become the new King and many thousends swedes have died in combats against many of our kings that followed, with blood was Sweden shaped into one united country. King Vasa (Gustav I Vasa Eriksson 1496–1560) was one of the most important kings that unified Sweden, that's the good side he is remembered for, but not everyone remembers the thousends swedish opponents that died in combats against him, to defend theirs freedom and land, but that is as most often like life is, everything good have a reverse side of the medal, and the contrary. One shall not forget also that a king also defend his kingdom and its inhabitants against threats from other kings abroad, however they who hold the weapons was most often peasants' sons and not the Kings. However most Kings accepted our old thinking of freedom and as long they got their tenth in taxes they leaved many local decisions to the locals. Often the Kings also sought for the support from the important farmers to combat the nobility so this is like a tradition we still can see remains of in our local way of democracy, our local municipal council have almost the most power but also obligation toward us. The taxes I pay goes for an example mostly to my local municipality, to child-care, schools, eldercare, hospital, fire brigade, sports and culture, water, public cleansing and other local expenses, not much at all to the State.
Well, in a monarchy controlled by a king, is not really what we can call a true democracy... (By the way, Sweden is the oldest monarchy in the world! Yes, and we still are a monarchy but at same time a democracy, since our King has not the legal political rights left to decide anything political) however farmers that owned their square of land could feel anyway great freedom over theirs life... During 19th century the King was dethroned and we got the four estates: the nobility (adel), burgher (borgare), the clergy (prästerna) and the farmers (bönder) that maked all the major decisions in the State. Again the farmers was represented here as a heritage from our Viking past. Even a few women, widows after dead farmers husband had a vote.
Whith the entrance of the industries a new class was born, the workers. Workers had not any land to harvest, no sea to fish in, they could strictly only work in the factories and got salary to buy food for, they had no influence or any rights in the society, not even allowed to vote. They gathered often in unhealthy conditions in the cities near the factories. The dissatisfaction grew and they formed trade unions to speak for them: one person are no one but thousends are a power to count! It says the first Swedish demonstration or strike occured at the Nyköping's square amongst workers at the shipyard, that's another story though. Other movements was also formed, temperance movement and liberal nonconformist movements, (John Locke, englishman, father of liberalism “1632–1704”) these and other, like some intellectual leaders and leading personality in the field of culture begun to demand for equality amongst all people, 1842 public schools for everyone helped the situation, in order to be able to have general elections people must first learn to read and write to understand the society and why and what they shall vote. Of