Meanwhile in Sweden...

[gkmoberg1]

230 years ago today, one of the most famous events in Swedish history occurred when King Gustav III was assassinated* by Jacob Johan Anckarström at a masquerade ball in Stockholm.
Anckarström was born in approximately the same year as Eli (1762). The assassination plot is a central component of The Queen's Diadem (AKA Tintomara), a novel which influenced JAL and appears in LTROI as one of Håkan's favorite books, which he briefly looks in during his visit to the Stockholm Public Library.

I learned about this assassination through a historical fiction book I read several years ago called 'The Stockholm Octavo' by Karen Engelmann.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/131 ... olm-octavo

I don't know how or where I can recommend you find it, but it does very well at depicting life in the Swedish capital at that time, with our protagonist becoming entwined in the affairs going on in the city. The costume event occurs at a point late in the novel where things are getting out of hand for our hero.

Btw, fascinated by this book and its open ending, I was able to exchange emails with the author sometime last fall. I found that at least for now she is not working on a sequel or a similar historical fiction. [ Karen if you ever find this forum entry; please know you have a fan base waiting for more! ]

[Edit: I need to point out to anyone named @PeteMork that this is terrific example of a debut novel finding an audience and getting a nice round of interest. Yep, it happens! Case closed. ... Just saying.]

[PeteMork]

230 years ago today, one of the most famous events in Swedish history occurred when King Gustav III was assassinated* by Jacob Johan Anckarström at a masquerade ball in Stockholm.
Anckarström was born in approximately the same year as Eli (1762). The assassination plot is a central component of The Queen's Diadem (AKA Tintomara), a novel which influenced JAL and appears in LTROI as one of Håkan's favorite books, which he briefly looks in during his visit to the Stockholm Public Library.



* He was shot on March 16 but only died from his injuries two weeks later on March 29.

I just had to look this up for context in LTROI. I hadn't remembered the exact place. This jogged my memory:

Why then am I on my way to the City Library?
He was probably going to take out a book. The fire three years ago had consumed his life, and his book collection. Yes. He could borrow The Queen’s Diadem by Almquist, before he performed his good deed.
It was quiet inside the City Library this morning. Older men and students, mostly. He quickly found the book he was looking for, read the first few lines,
Tintomara! Two things are white
Innocence—Arsenic
and put it back on the shelf. A bad feeling. It reminded him of his earlier life. He had loved this book, used it in his class. Reading the first few words made him long for his reading chair. And the reading chair was supposed to be in a house that was his, a house filled with books, and he should have a job again and he should and he would. But he had found love, and that dictated his life nowadays. No reading chair.

Yet another interesting gem in this wonderful novel. Why do you suppose JAL included it as one of Håkan's favorite books?

[metoo]

Yet another interesting gem in this wonderful novel. Why do you suppose JAL included it as one of Håkan's favorite books?

The most obvious reason is that the character Tintomara is androgynous.

[Siggdalos]

Why do you suppose JAL included it as one of Håkan's favorite books?

JAL discusses it in the Swedish commentary track for the film. It looks like Sebastian Fabian's translated transcript is shortened down by a fair amount and missing one of the important bits, so here's my own transcript. This is from the 00:18:28 - 00:19:08 mark.

JAL: I boken har ju Håkan lite mer avancerade litterära intressen.
TA: Nämligen...?
JAL: Nja, han håller på och läser Almqvist. Han är svenskalärare. Tintomara ligger som något slags ideal för honom, vilket förklarar lite hans relation till Eli också.
TA: Ja, ja.
JAL: "Tintomara! Två ting äro hvita – Oskuld – Arsenik."
TA: Tintomara springer för övrigt... Jag var och såg den häromkvällen på Dramaten, Drottningens juvelsmycke, och då berättar berättaren att Tintomara springer förbi där jag bor, vilket jag tyckte var ganska roligt.

Translated:

JAL: In the book, Håkan has slightly more advanced literary interests.
TA: Such as...?
JAL: Well, he reads Almqvist. He's a Swedish teacher. Tintomara exists as some kind of ideal for him, which explains his relation to Eli a little bit as well.
TA: Ah, I see.
JAL: "Tintomara! Two things are white – Innocence – Arsenic."
TA: By the way, Tintomara runs... I watched it the other evening at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, The Queen's Diadem, and the narrator mentions that Tintomara runs past the place where I live, which I thought was pretty fun.

I haven't read The Queen's Diadem (yet; it's on my reading list), so all I'm saying here is based on what I know about it. Tintomara is a beautiful androgyne who becomes an object of fascination for everyone who encounters her, which obviously sounds a lot like someone we and Håkan know. I can't say to what extent JAL consciously based Eli on Tintomara when he was first writing LTROI, but he mentions in Misslyckas igen, misslyckas bättre that he in his youth was fascinated by androgynes, citing Tintomara and David Bowie as concrete examples.[1]
More generally, it serves as one of many literary references in Håkan's chapters which together build him up as a very well-read person who prefers the literature worlds of past decades and centuries to a modern world he feels estranged from.

[1] Misslyckas igen, misslyckas bättre, pg. 253.

[PeteMork]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. It further shows how well-fleshed-out Håkan's character was.

[metoo]

It's May!

In Lund, the first of May is celebrated with a concert by Lunds studentsångare (Lund University Male Voice Choir).

Because of the Corona epidemic this concert has not been given the last two years, so this year was extra celebrational!

Here's the event as televised by SVT:
https://www.svtplay.se/video/35058195/l ... id=jXy53WD

The white caps everyone are wearing are so called student caps, which one is allowed to wear when one has finished high school.

[metoo]

Erik Normark is a Swedish youtuber who makes rather unique films about himself being outside in varying seasons and weather.

Here he is skating on a (very) small lake, but watch his other movies too!

[gkmoberg1]

Clip-in ice skate make such sense. As a kid, I loathed having to get to the pond, remove my shoes, lace on the skates and get the laces tight, and then get going. Not that I had the opportunity to skate that often. To be able to clip in the boots as I would with my cross-country skis would be wonderful. I'm sold.

[metoo]

This kind of skates is designed for long distance skating. They are low and long, which is beneficial when skating mainly straight ahead, but perhaps less so in a confined area when manoeuvrability is important.

Wikipedia article about tour skating.

[metoo]

Erik Normark is out skating again: