Kategoriarkiv: Thoughts

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The ninetyninth åsic- Berlin Wall Memorial today

Today twenty-five years has passed since the Germans from both sides of the Berlin Wall could reunite with relatives, friends and lovers from the other side of the wall. This is indeed a day to celebrate!

 

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In so many parts of the world,  walls are built rather than destroyed. Strong borders can both be seen as a way to prevent others to visit, but even more sad is when national borders are used to prevent people to travel out of a country and find their happiness elsewhere. Who wouldn’t want to be as happy as possible? What if you wished to move to another city and a law said no… or what if you wanted to move to another country, and your prime minister had said that it was against the law to leave your country without permission? I cannot fully comprehend what it would be like to be trapped like that, but I have met people in my life who have shared their stories. My relief over not having to think about how to leave my country is monumental.

When borders aren’t there and people are allowed to move between countries, they may still end up in an aleniated reality in a segregated suburb, or they may realize that despite the struggle and hardship they have experienced, their new life as excluded from the feeling of ”we” is far from what they had anticipated in the first place. When poor citizens in a certain country move to places where many rich people live, they may meet such features as gated communities, because the rich fear the poor.

Not only national borders or gated communities are  obstacles in people’s lives. Sometimes borders are built within each human, in fear of another religious belief, another political idea, a different set of ethical rules etc.Let’s not build walls! Let’s tear them down! Plural societies are stronger than monocultures in the long run.

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The ninetyeighth åsic- The missing cars at IKEA in Philly

I noticed in almost every contact with my new American friends that their only connection to Sweden was that they liked the type of candy Americans call ”Swedish fish”. My first encounter with the so called ”Swedish fish” was about ten years ago when I bought some at Shoprite in the USA. When I now again got a lot of questions about ”Swedish fish” I was more and more curious about the fact that we really don’t see them much in Sweden. We rather eat a lot of other candy, for instance ”Ahlgrens bilar”, but many of us would probably spend time picking our true favorite candy at a store where we find ”pick and mix”. The answer to why there are very few ”Swedish fish” in Sweden, is to be found in the link below. Obviously this type of candy was created for the American continent and not for Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Fish

If I would like to by my favourite Swedish candy, Ahlgrens bilar, where would I go? To IKEA, of course… So I did… But obviously they sell large quantities of ”Swedish fish” and the SWEDISH candy ”Ahlgrens bilar” were nowhere to be found in the store. Peculiar, since the candy cars are VERY popular in Sweden and would be, too, in America, if only the Americans had a chance to find them…

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Let’s hope @IKEA starts selling @Ahlgrens bilar at the Philly IKEA from now on! I am sure that 400 kids from a school in NJ will be very happy to buy them! I would too, when I return one day!

 

 

 

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The ninetyfifth åsic- The Yellow Wall and The Blue Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is an American short story read  by many, but how many of the readers have spent a fortnight of pure creative language learning in a yellow classroom ? The teacher had painted her classroom herself and turned the dark dull room in the basement into a positive oasis for learning. All walls were painted in a bright yellow colour. Her combination of gifts from previous students, her own creations or things she had got here and there, together with wisdom on little plaques or instruction posters with different themes like weekdays, phrases or words for certain occasions, gave the impression of a nice and welcoming place where the soul of learning was more important than anything else. Soul in English almost sounds like sun in Swedish, sol.

My classroom is not painted by me and it is not yellow either, but I have hanged The Blue Wallpaper myself and I have added a lot of blue accents, such as glass, fabric or decorations. Blue is my fave color and it also lead my thoughts to water or to a realxing feeling that makes me calm. In one of the corners of my room I have a waterdoor… In another corner are verbs connected to language use. The many hearts on the window to our pentry is decorated with thoughs or words on the theme LOVE. I think my students are important in many ways. I also find their background, culture and languages important. I think it is necessary for a classroom where languages are taught, that you actually can see that we speak different languages. All those languages are important. Knowing several languages is a true wisdom!

BLÅTT och GULT

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The teacher I visited was teaching about weather expressions in Spanish when I was there and both the students and herself were happy… and yellow is the happy color that perfectly suits a classroom for Spanish lessons. A saying by an ”unknown” author that suits the yellow classroom very well:

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow
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The ninetysecond åsic- Being happy for having friends

In Swedish there are a few different words that means friend. They all have their different connotations and are not quite the same a few exampls might be kompis, kamrat, polare etc. This time I will however think just of the word friend as translated ”vän”. In my opinion a friend is a person who would always stand by your side no matter what happens. A friend is a person who love you the way you are, with all your shortages. Having such friends means the world to me and I am happy to have a few friends whom I trust like that. Sometimes I share thoughts or memories with my friends and risk being betrayed. But those moments I always think like this: ”What if this particular friend had asked ME for this favour? Would I have betrayed him or her then? No, of course not!”

To dare to trust a friend is amazingly rewarding when I notice that it ”works”. I once trusted a friend in a rather special way. I wrote a very important letter to myself. I needed to write the letter because I needed to write down the thoughts I had at that time, in order to understand myself. I first thought of keeping the letter somewhere at home, but I tend to be like a squirrel… I hide my things in very smart places and then I forget where I put them… Since I know myself, I instead asked a friend I trust, to keep the letter for me. I needed the friend to keep the letter for years, because the content of it was of a kind that I needed to forget in order to forgive. It took me eight years to get over the content of the letter and all those years, my friend kept my letter for me. When I asked for the letter, the friend found it for me and gave it back, without any comment or questions. Such friends are rare and I know it. I would without no doubt to the same for that friend.

But how do one find new friends? I think friends aren’t possible to ”find”. I know that sounds SO weird, but having said that I will also explain what I mean. I think friends can be friends although you met them yesterday. Friends just ”happen”. You hit it off with some and with some you just feel awkward and want to be alone. I heard somewhere that ”you never feel as lonely as when you are two together with the wrong person”. Being friends with someone is not possible to plan for , I think. Being friendly is possible and being nice is possible, too, but to really get the feeling of being friends with someone takes more. I think of the way I can call a dear friend when one year has passed since last time we talked. It is never a problem that a year has passed, if the person I call is a true friend. We just pick it up where we left our last conversation and we reconnect again, no problem.

When I just recently got to know a new friend, I could tell almost right away that it would be the kind of friend that I will keep forever. Sharing stories, sharing viewpoints and noting that there are many things that we have in common is one part of it, but just as important is the I can do everything for you!-attitude that one can feel after just a while in the company of a real friend. When a friend ask me for a favour I don’t have a problem at all thinking I can do everything for you! 

But when I am asked for a favour by someone who has let me down earlier I am more reluctant and need to force myself to be helpful. I guess it is a result of being disappointed before. Being friends is such a good thing! To my dear friends out there! Thanks for letting me be your friends. You mean the world to me! I often come back to a quote that Ralph Waldo Emerson uttered:  The only way to find a friend is by being one

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The ninetieth åsic- My New Favourite Tree

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For a couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to experience a very mild and nice autumn here in Pitman, NJ. One of the days we had +28C which is not at all like the temperature for October in Sweden. In my 71st åsic(#Sjuttioförsta åseriet), I wrote about the maples in Sweden and how I used to collect the colourful leaves in the autumn. I have always loved trees and since I live in a part of Sweden where forests are a part of the nice scenery, I always find a walk in the forest very soothing if I need to relax or find new energy. I have walked along nice streets here in Pitman, where mainly tall maples and oaks give gardens their share of fallen leaves. One kind of the tree was unfamiliar to me, but I could tell from what it looked like that it had to be a maple or an oak, so I picked up a leaf and brought it with me to #Pitman Middle School, where I asked everyone I met: ”Is this a maple or an oak?”. Most people said: ”I don’t know but I think it is…” and then two people very quickly said: ”It’s an oak, no doubt!” Now I KNOW it is an oak, since I have done what most people do nowadays… I googled it… It turned out to be a red oak.

The fallen red oak leaves has the same SOUND as the fallen Swedish maple leaves when you walk through them… The other day I took a shortcut home and ended up very far away from home in an empty yard…learning that just as ”genvägar är senvägar” , shortcuts tend to be longcuts…

One good thing by taking the ”shortcut” was that I had to walk on a narrow path in a little forest, passing a railroad to get back home. The fallen leaves in a thick layer sounded like the maple leaves from my childhood and around me both squirrels and chipmunks ran about. I knew I was very close to houses, but the trees and animals made me fly away in thoughts for a while. The beauty of coloured leaves is still the same, no matter where I am. It gives me a feeling of gratefulness to see all the colours, hear the dry sound of the leaves as I walk through them. The sunrays hardly pass through to the ground and there are merely dark soil and old leaves for the squirrels to run about in. In its lack of colours, the ground already seems ready to meet the winter. In my lack of inner compass, I also seemed ready to meet the winter… Luckily I made a correct guess and soon found my way back to Broadway again…

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Det hundrade åseriet/The hundredth åsic- A Moment 22 for many teachers

In 1992, I started off as a class teacher of twelve-year-olds in grade six. My exam covered Swedish, English and the four different subjects that are called ”SO” in Swedish, i.e, Geography, Social Science, History, and Religion. I was supposed to teach grades 1-7 in the Swedish Compulsory School System.  In 1992, it wasn’t unusual for teachers to teach both subjects they were skilled for as well as subjects where they didn’t have any exams. In my case my first job as a teacher was a position as a ”class teacher” with both Math, Science and Art. You may think:

”So what? If you have graduated, it doesn’t matter what subject you teach!”

I strongly object to that point of view. It DOES matter! First of all you need more time to prepare lessons properly in subjects where you have no academical skills or grades. Secondly you may not find suitable examples for students to understand complex structures or important details. Students who need extra attention from the teacher in order to ”get it”, would be better off with a skilled teacher in Math, rather than a teacher in Swedish, who tries her very best.

A Moment 22

The subjects you love most of all, will be neglected since you need to make an effort and focus on subjects you didn’t even want to teach in the first place. The estimated time for planning of lessons will be up when you start planning for your own favourite subjects.

An ordinary day when you have planned all for today’s lessons and come to school early enough to have a cup of coffee with your teaching friends, you notice that your dear friend in the classroom next to yours is on sick-leave. You hope for her (it’s often a she!) soon being back, but you also realize that you will be the one to fill her position in class, ALTHOUGH you have a classroom filled with students, too… What can you do about it? Not much, really. Hmmmm… 55 kids instead of 27? What is my options for today’s teaching…? As I said, I had planned it all from the start, right? But NOW, I will have to just dump my own plan, and also probably dump my teaching friend’s plan, because I am ONE teacher with TWO classes… I HOPE that is history by now!!!

I taught in a school where our policy was to be our own ”subteachers” in a flexible system. Quality??? Excuse me… We didn’t discuss that topic much. It was more about money. But why wasn’t it just possible to find a teacher who would be in our regular staff as an extra resource? Money… Again… OK… Then if there is no way to hire a TEACHER…can’t we just find SOMEONE????

For way too long it has been possible for principals in Swedish schools to hire ”teachers” who lack the required qualifications for teaching. Qualified teachers have also for way too long been responsible for ”helping” those subteachers in their job, instead of  teaching their own students with high quality. But why complain? It can’t be that difficult to help a friend who know nothing about teaching, right? No, not if it would be ONCE or maybe TWICE, but if it’s the rule rather than an exception, then it’s not fair at all. It is unfair to the students, both in my class and in the class where the subteacher works. We are all losing focus from our ongoing learning proccess.

A possible scenario

You rush into your own classroom, inform the students that  you will have to start a lesson together with a subteacher in the nextdoor classroom and will be back soon. Then you help the subteacher to find books or material, tell the students to help the subteacher as much as possible, also inform the subteacher about students with special needs, such as diabetes or epilepsy. You also try to write a short list of important details, such as at what hour you take a break, when students leave for PE, or when lunch is served. In some schools there is a binder filled with ”all a subteacher needs to know”, but despite the binder, many subteachers may either not have time to read the information, or are completely new to teaching and have never been in this particular school. Sometimes they are 18 years old and lack every experience there is to ask for. You help this person the best you can anyway, because you know it will turn out for the worse if you do nothing at all. Luckily, many subteachers have been teaching for a long time and also know the students in a few schools in their local community quite well. Then the options for a win-win-situation is a lot better. OK…It’s time to rush back to your own class and start off what you had planned for! Guess what? The students haven’t started doing what you asked them to… Instead you need to re-start the activity and sometimes you will have a hard time getting every student’s attention again. When you finally think, ”Yes!” and your class seems to be focused again, you hear a knock on your classroom door… The subteacher needs more help…

The results for Swedish school children in PISA and other international tests have never been as poor as the last few years. In my opinion it is possible to explain the failure as a misuse of resources and a slow motion in change or maybe blame the many changes in our school system. When will there be time to focus on learning again?

I am happy to say that I rarely hear about problems like these nowadays. I am also happy to say that some of the subteachers I have been teaching side-by-side with were really nice persons who did a wonderful job. A certain blonde whom I tried to persuade to become a teacher, instead decided to become a nurse. The lucky patients know who I mean! 

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One hundred and seventysecond Asic- Being alive!

Last night a terrible fire ruined a house in our block. Luckily nobody died or ended up in hospital. I thought of how easily life can change in just a minute. In our block, most houses are built of wood and a fire would easily spread between houses, hadn’t the fire guards been there to fight the fire. Our life is depending on others in many ways…

Last year a major fire kept a region of Sweden in a constant terror for a couple of weeks. Some people lost their homes and had to flee for their lives. Others tried in vain to protect their homes, but in the end they had to obey authorities who demanded everyone in the area to evaquate. Now, a year after the fire, the landscape reminds me of scenes from Tolkien…

This year has been a year of migration and many people have moved on to a safer place. On TV we have followed dangerous voyages at sea, fights between guards and refugees, hungry children pleading for food and desperate parents fighting for their children’s right to a meal. We have also had a chance to watch border control preventing people from passing the border of Hungary and other European states. News on TV show interviews and reports from refugee camps all over Europe, try to show who that typical refugee may be…

 

I think of the many Swedes who only one hundred years ago, urged to leave our country because they had no chance to lead the life they wanted to. Most of them moved to the USA, some to South America and a few to Russia. This very moment, my two daughters watch ”Kristina från Duvelmåla” which is a musical by Bjorn and Benny (ABBA). The musical is based on a novel by the Swedish author Wilhelm Moberg, who wrote four novels about the Swedish emigration to America in the late 19th century. Moberg’s books are available in English and very interesting to read if you don’t know anything about the Swedish people who moved to mainly Minnesota in the USA. The musical however, is mainly dealing with a certain family and what happened to them during their struggle to find a new life ”over there”. The music is catching and the lyrics makes you want to sing along, but underneath is a message to everyone in this world; We only live once. If our lives aren’t good enough, we’re the ones who need to make that change!

I meet them every day in my professional life as a teacher of Swedish as a Second Language, the refugees… I don’t think there is any reason at all for us, you and me, to say no to those who leave wars and famine, poverty and lack of work in order to make a living here.

We ought to help out as much as we can. We need to turn to ourselves with the thought; wouldn’t we move if everything we cherished in life was taken away from us? Wouldn’t we move if our home wasn’t a safe place anymore? I think for myself that if I met a completely unfamiliar place where I knew nobody, a friend would be a welcomed feature in my new life. I try to be that friend and wish for myself that I never will have to leave everything behind for another country. Be the friend in someone’s life! ❤

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One hundred and fortyeighth åsic- Freedom is a gift to cherish!

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Freedom is not to be taken for granted. It is a gift to cherish! Freedom of what? one may ask. To me it is definitely important to have a chance to change things in my own life and thus there are many aspects of life where I think the individual needs freedom to make decisions. Freedom is one of the most difficult expressions to describe, along with a few others, such as democracy, equality or justice. In my opinion freedom is essential, freedom of thought, of religion, of press or maybe the freedom to choose a way of living, whom to marry and even IF to marry? In my profession I meet many students who have not had the chance to make decisions of their own although they are adult students. Many of them have come to Sweden from countries with weaker Governments or with no Governments at all, OR they have come from countries where the Government decides almost everything and leaves very little for the individual to decide.

When I get to know young adults from other countries I notice first of all, that they have struggled a lot with many things in life in their past. Some of them started to work as ten-year-old to finance their schooling. Others didn’t have an opportunity to go to school at all, since they were girls. In many countries girls don’t have the freedom to go to school. Instead they are married off early to a future as mothers of many children. Some other countries seem to have the tradition of first educating girls and then as they become mothers they are supposed to stop working and be housewives from then on… If I had been one of those young women, I would have missed my work for the rest of my life! I am happy to have a chance to stay at home with my children when they are newborn and then get back to work again. To me, being at work if I like to, means freedom. Freedom of choice is to me the most important of all aspects of freedom as a basic condition for life. Choice is however individual and we may come to different conclusions when given similar options, simply because our conditions for life are completely different if compared between cultures or countries or socio-economical groups.

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Some of the adult students from other countries I have met in my profession, shared with me that they could not do otherwise but to follow their parents’ decisions without questioning them. They haven’t had the opportunity to decide whom to marry, what to become, if they like to be a parent or not and in that case, how many children they would like to have. Some of them come from countries where genital mutilation is reality. Giving birth to a child is matter of life and death in such a country. The freedom to use contraceptives or the possibility to have an abortion, along with a chance to go through IVF are taken for granted in my country, but it is prohibited in many countries worldwide. Despite bad health conditions or poverty along with a lack of general education for all children young students in some countries achieve their goals. I think they may need to be more determined than many Swedish students. I admire them for not giving up!

Taking things for granted may be contraproductive for achievements or grades in school. Almost all young adults in Sweden pass through twelve years of schooling without needing to think of their safety, or whether they will have enough food for the day or not. Many of them (but not all!) are supported by their parents and earn extra money after school in parttime jobs, where they save almost all the salary for luxurious consumtion, lazy holidays or other things that wouldn’t be possible in many other countries. Then some of them plan, too, for a profession where a long education in a university is necessary. It is possible through a national loaning system open for all citizens, to finance studies although your parents are not wealthy. Not all choose to go on to university, but the point is that there is a built in opportunity for everyone who likes to try.

If I take a look around, I notice that many people around the globe has a limited access to the freedom I cherish in my everyday life. I realize that being born in an industrialized country means being privileged. As I get older, I want to share some of the good opportunities with others. Yesterday a volunteer from Amnesty International called and asked for a contribution. It was in fact very easy to become a member. Easy both in mind and thought and moneywise. Right now I haven’t got a lot of time to be an activist, but with my membership I will recieve updates from the valuable work worldwide and I look forward to knowing more. Maybe I will be able to find a suitable way to a more active contribution in the future? I hope so!

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One hundred and fortyforth åsic- Je suis Charlie

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Press, are all manifestations of our right to express ourselves and our right to be exactly the persons we would like to. Any violance directly connected to those rights is a violation towards mankind, a step backwards in a process that needs to go forward! This is a serious situation not just in France, but everywhere in communities where democratic values allow people to stand up for their own view of life. Countries where these absolutely necessary rights are not allowed, should be questioned by the rest of the world, not once or twice, but over and over again! 

I live in a country where I am allowed to have an opinion of my own and I understand that I am very fortunate. A blogger in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to ten years for setting up a website for public debate, will apart from the ten years in prison also be flogged 1000 times. His ”crime” was helping fellow citizens to express their minds. I have lately had the chance to learn more about the conditions in a few countries with strong dictatorships. The  meaningless killings the last few days in France was connected to democracy and our right to express ourselves in different ways. It is not a multicultural problem or a religious problem in Western societies, but terrorism with extremistic features. Blaming a certain religious group is contraproductive. Blaming militant extremism is however to see what it’s all about. Violence created in the name of the religion is not the same as THE religion. But when innocent people are killed we are frustrated and sad and may seek for a scapegoat to blame instead of manifesting our strong will to end violence in general and terrorism in particular.

Today the tragic events in France reminded me of how many relations one single person is involved with and how many roles each and one of us have. As an example, I am a daughter, a mom a wife a sister, an aunt, I am a teacher a friend and a lot more of course. The impact of the terror acts in France is thus very much a global problem. We need to be responsible for our acts.

If we are not Free to Live if someone else has an opposing viewpoint, we might need to address the issue of how easily weapons are spread worldwide? No guns means fewer killings. Terrorists with no guns will not stop being terrorists, but at least we give them a hard time. Sadly enough Swedish weapons are used worldwide, although it is said that ”we” are not selling to countries at war… If Sweden stop selling weapons and starts producing something more useful in Bofors, at least we made a contribution for peace. Yes. I know. Many of you will say that if there is no weapons, how could we fight terrorists???? I don’t know. Do you? If we are not Free to Live if someone else has an opposing viewpoint and we do absolutely nothing to prevent the continuous killing, we will lose in the end. Let’s not lose! My contribution will be writing. What is your contribution?

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#Carl-Fredrik Reuterswärds ”Non-Violence” is placed outside the UN Building in NYC

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One hundred and fortysecond åsic- Trettondagsmarschen at Oyster Café

My husband and I had the great opportunity to drive in the countryside of Scotland in 1995. All our friends informed us about the damp and drizzling rain and the foggy hills and wondered why on earth one would even think of going to Scotland during the summer, when our Swedish summer is as its best… Luckily enough we were there the one and only fortnight when Scotland had lovely sunny weather round +30C for the first time in years. This was long ago, so we didn’t have any AC in our car, nor did we have any suitable summer clothes in our luggage… We had to put back all the woolies, the wellingtons, the raincoats and the umbrellas and search for a shop where we could buy shorts, swimsuits, tanktops and sun glasses. We also did a very exotic thing for being in Scotland; we swam in a creek, because if we hadn’t, we would have fainted from the heat in the car. We simply had to take a swim in the creek. I found some lovely pebbles in that very creek and I brought them back to Sweden. Why? Because I wanted to tease the future archeologists who might search for old habitats in my specific garden hundreds of years from now… I would want to be there at the time when they find the Scottish pebbles and frown at their findings of such a pebble so far away from the Scottish creek…

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On a day like this, called the Twelfth Day of Christmas, or Epiphany in Great Britain, but Trettondedag jul in Sweden (thirteenth day of Christmas), I remember one of the evenings on Isle of Skye when we walked from our hostel to a local café to try their famous walnut cake. The evening was crystal clear, not at all cold or damp and the sun was still out. The beautiful scenery of Scotland was at its best. The café was not far away and in there was more locals than tourists and that was a nice detail in my opinion, although I realize that we, of course, would represent a group that would be considered ”intruders” if we would ask the villagers for their opinion. We ordered the walnut cake we had heard so much about, and a kettle of tea. While we were having this fika (as we would say in Sweden)… we enjoyed the music from a CD. I could recognize ”The Boys of the Lough” since I had listened to them back home in Sweden, when they were playing at Falun Folk Music Festival. I love the way they play and I enjoy dancing to their music, too. This time, however, I could recognize a specific tune. I said to my husband; ”this is Trettondagsmarschen!!!!!”. Then I told him that all my childhood when I listened to fiddlers all the time, since my father plays the fiddle, I had heard this tune over and over again, since I liked it so much, but also because of its importance in official settings such as the beginning of the Bingsjöstämman, which was a big get-together for folk music lovers when I was little. It still is, but not as many visitors find their way to the middle of the forest outside Rättvik where the event is held. When I was little, as many as 30 000 people would be there to listen to the many fiddlers. Knis Karl Aronsson would be the leader of the many hundred fiddlers, conducting the tune Trettondagsmarschen. The teenaged Kalle Moreaus who is now in his fifties, would be there too, dressed in his folkloristic costume from his village Orsa in Dalarna, Sweden… I have many more memories to this marvellous tune that I love so much, but none of them is as exotic as the one at the Isle of Skye. I rushed up from the walnut cake and headed towards the girl behind the counter saying ”This is a Swedish tune called, Trettondagsmarschen, isn’t it?!” Oh, no, she said. This is an Irish group that plays celtic tunes in general and also some Scottish music. Yes, I said, but this very tune is Swedish, isn’t it? She handed me the CD-cover and still said; ”no, but you can check the tunes here, if you like”. I did… and I found it…! and the girl was really surprised when I told her that the tune WAS in fact Swedish. (http://www.boysofthelough.com/006.htm)

I couldn’t find it with Boys of the Lough, but on a day  like this Trettondedagen, you simply have to listen to it, don’t you? Kalle Moraeus plays Trettondagsmarschen together with Dalarnas Spelmansförbund, which is a group of musicians from the county of Dalarna: