The Grandfatherland

I´m in Stockholm. It´s corny, but yeah, this feels like home, kind of. The trees, the water, the buildings... We went to Hedengrens book shop and when I told the lady working there that my name was Hedengren, she made sure I had plenty of free bookmarks and bags. Nice people. But why have this attachment to Sweden when:


ä) my kinsfolk are actually Swedes from Vaasa Finland, not Stockholm at all and

b) I´m not entirely Swedish, but I have no deep drive to go to Denmark or Wales.


Huh. And yet this is very much like how, I suspect, Jews feel coming to Jerusalem. Everyone here looks like me. The historical recreationist apocraphary in the old town had my same blue-grey eyes, hair like my sister. Everyone goes around so nice and easy. It´s beautiful.

Comments

Sarah T. said…
That's great that you are in Sweden! I've got some Swedish in me as well.

Perhaps, your feelings can be likened unto the soldiers who are away at war who kiss the ground of the first U.S. soil they land on, but their home is 500 miles away. It's close enough and I'm sure if you went to your true city of ancestral origin you'd have the same feelings.
June 5, 2008 at 8:55 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Products of A Slightly Fevered Mind After A Long Girls' Night Out.

1. 28 Dresses Later a high-adrenaline zombie-bridesmaid thriller. When one dress too many turns the minds of the perpetual bridesmaid, they roam post-apocalyptic London, tearing to shreds everyone with well-manicured nails and biting them with their recently-whitened teeth. 2. I wake up, groggy, bed-headed, pajamaed. Lying next to me, fully dressed on top of the bed is Gregory Mankiw, the economist. "You're Greg Mankiw," I intelligently remark. He springs out of bed and stands up. "Would you like to discuss consumer surplus and tariffs?" "Why are you here?" I ask. "Don't you remember the Make-a-Wish Foundation?" 3. I was going to throw my tiara, but it turns out to be made of popcorn. "What a cheap groom I have," I think. He's already changed into jeans by the time his extensive family starts playing a traditional game of "here kitty, kitty," around the equally extensive reception grounds. I have no idea why we
Read more

In Defense of Stephanie Meyer.

It occurs to me that at this late stage I haven't lent my voice to the already cacophonous choruses debating the literary merits of Ms. Meyer's work. I realize that by making any sort of statement, I risk alienating good friends with strong opinions, but weighing that hazard against that of letting my friend continue in strong opinions unchecked, I have decided to go forth as originally planned. I don't think Stephanie Meyer is a bad writer. Now this isn't to say that I think her prose merits inclusion in the next Norton's anthology or that a world of Twilight would usher in the literary revolution we've been waiting for, but I've had enough of people calling her a talentless hack. Sure, maybe some lines of teenage angst strike the reader as perhaps overly melodramatic, or crudely hewn, but that doesn't make her talentless. In fact, if she's talentless, then may God bless me with the talentlessness to make the New York Times Bestseller Lists for seem
Read more

Moms and Vets: a little rant about people who complain about Mothers Day

Another year and yet again more op-eds published with the somehow still surprising revelation that not everyone is/has/wants to be a picture perfect mother. I don't understand why this is still news--why is it important to say again and again how no one is/has/wants to be June Cleaver? Feels like "asked and answered." But consider another minor holiday dedicated to a group of people who sometimes endure harrowing experiences: Veterans Day. Imagine these op-ed perspectives talking about how Veterans Day is so painful because: I wanted to be a veteran, but couldn't due to health reasons. I thought I wanted to be a veteran, but it wasn't what I expected and now I regret it. I don't want to be a veteran. Some veterans do terrible things.  Some veterans are lazy. There aren't any veterans in my family. There are veterans in my family, and some of them are not very good people.  I know some veterans who makes a really big deal out of Veterans Day, but it's e
Read more