Lebanon déjà vu

Over the summer, since I started this project, I’ve mentioned what the newspapers are reporting briefly if at all. Actually I started recording newspaper headlines for each day in my diary, thinking there would be items that might spark off an idea or provide the basis for an entry here. I gave up on that after a couple of weeks, partly because copying out headlines was just too much like writing lines at school, but mostly because pretty much everything else I was doing was more interesting or more inspiring.

Pretty much everything else, but not quite. For example, the Götheborg – the replica East Indiaman that was built here (and which I’ve been able to visit at various stages of her construction) finally reached Canton, after a voyage of ten months or so. That would have been a good topic to write about, but it coincided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it seemed frivolous to be paying attention to the one while ignoring the other. And I have ignored the other – or I’ve tried to, writing this. I get a sick feeling thinking about what is going on in Lebanon. Partly, that’s déjà vu.

Once upon a time, in the spring of 1982 when I was busy qualifying as a teacher, it was really difficult to find work in England. At that time newly hatched teachers were two a penny, at least it seemed that way. Most of my fellow graduates were getting turned down from jobs right and left. Two of my flatmates, who were determined to get work and focused on competing with one another, managed to collect rejections from over 100 schools each. Even I managed to get turned down by over 40. English, history, sociology, religion, politics – expertise in these subjects was simply not in demand. The only one of my contemporaries who was able to get the job he wanted had gained his certification in as a teacher of maths, computer studies and sports.

My trump card was that I had also trained to teach English as a foreign language, and so after my fortieth rejection I started looking abroad. The second job I applied for, I got. I left England for a year and (the occasional summer school excepted) I’ve never worked there again.

But that first job foreign job, the one I applied for but didn’t get. It was in Beirut at a Quaker school.

At the time, I was a bit disappointed not even to be called for an interview. Then my second application was accepted and I was too busy to mope, getting myself organised to leave home and move to Bulgaria.

A little later in the year I found myself sitting in my flat in Sofia, my ear pressed to the shortwave radio as I tried to keep tuned to the BBC World Service reports from Israel’s first invasion. The school where I hadn’t got a job, along with the rest of Beirut was bombed and shelled and fought over and overrun by Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian regulars, and all the various irregular militias. The student and teaching body was dispersed. I don’t know what the casualties were, swallowed up in all the rest of that enormous misery. (And this para is a statement built on supposition and ignorance as I've not been able to find any more about what happened in Brummana. I doubt the school was unaffected, but they are obviously well re-established.)

Tucked away in Bulgaria, I followed the story on the BBC and in month-old copies of the only available English language newspaper, the Morning Star. I remember feeling both relieved and terribly frustrated. Relieved to be safe, of course, but frustrated that I wasn’t there where I might have been in the thick of something exciting, where I might have been able to do something noble and heroic. (In my defence, I was 24 and still a romantic and a pacifist. In all probability I’d just have been shit scared and desperate to get away.)

So, back to the summer of 2006, and here we go again, only this time I’m viewing the same thing through the different distortion of the Göteborgs-Posten and Sveriges Radio. (OK, also the BBC’s Internet service.)

***

I had gone on here to write a whole lot more about immigrants to Sweden and Gothenburg, and about how the Swedish reports from the Lebanon started out referring to all the Swedes caught up in the fighting. Many were people who had sought refuge in Sweden during the previous troubles, or their children. There was a deliberate attempt to compare the situation (and more particularly the behaviour of the Swedish Foreign Office) with events following on from the tsunami in South-east Asia a year and a half ago. However, I realised I was just getting boring, so I decided to stop.

***

Putting this together before publishing it, I came across the blogs maintained by Reem and dedicated to the present situation in Lebanon. Reem and the other contributors to his blogs have more serious and moving things to say about the present situation. Go read them.

Reem in Lebanon

Some other personal stories

Lies, damned lies and statistics

We have an election coming up in September, national and local. Last Sunday (6th August) our local paper, Göteborgs-Posten, chose to highlight the local election element by running four articles, one on each of the small parties which are not currently represented in the municipal council, but which all have a chance of getting in. One of these is the Sverigedemokraterna (Swedish Democrats or Sd for short). The Sd is the least poorly housetrained of the extreme rightwing parties. It seems they don’t like to be called “xenophobic” (främlingsfientligt) but prefer to describe themselves as nationalists. Well they would, wouldn’t they?

Defaced Severige demokrat poster, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

The Sd’s platform for the municipal elections includes the ambition “to recreate Gothenburg as a Swedish city” (Göteborg ska återskapas som en svensk stad). Gothenburg, of course, has never been a “Swedish” city in the sense these people mean. The very first city council in 1621 was composed of 12 individuals, of whom only 4 were Swedes – the others were German (3), Dutch (3) and Scots (2). The governor (burgrave – the king’s representative whom the council counselled) was first Jacob van Dijk (to 1631), then Daniel Lange. And those look like really Swedish names, don’t they?

As with all nationalists, the Sverigedemokraterna enjoy referencing history, but a history of their own re-writing. On their home page, they describe Gothenburg as being founded after the area was “fortunately incorporated into Sweden” (lyckats inbringas till Sverige). No mention of the repeated, bitter wars with Denmark to wrest from them control of the area. No, no, instead we are told that “our northern European brother-folk had reason to be grateful to us” (våra nordeuropeiska broderfolk hade skäl att vara tacksamma mot oss). Tell that to the Danes!

The Scots and the Dutch are recognised for having “helped to build the city’s canals” (skottar och holländare som hjälpte oss med bl a kanalbyggen), but the most important thing about these people is that they were “closely related to us and easily assimilated” (De var även genom sitt nära släktskap med oss lättassimilerade).

And there is the point. Modern immigrants, the Sd would have us believe, are neither closely related to us nor easily assimilated – so they must be got rid of. The foreign immigrant element in Gothenburg is “alarmingly large” (alarmerande stort), say the Sd. The number of people with foreign backgrounds in Gothenburg is 22.8%. (Antal personer med utländsk bakgrund i Göteborg: 22,8%).

I’m not sure where they got that figure from, grasped out of thin air I expect. The best source I can find, the Central Office for Statistics (Statistiska centralbyrån), says 20.1% of Gothenburg’s inhabitants were born outside Sweden. But the actual number is irrelevant. What the Sverigedemokraterna conveniently forget to mention is that the single largest group of “people with foreign backgrounds” in Sweden are, and always have been, members of “our northern European brother-folk”. That is, Norwegians, Danes and Finns, who accounted for something like 2 in 5 of all foreign nationals living in Sweden in 2005. Germans, Brits, Americans, Dutch and others whom Sd might consider “closely related to us and easily assimilated” represent another 1 in 5. In other words, that 22.8% is intended to make “the problem” look as alarming as possible. As ever, these scare tactics are not directed at anyone with their eye on the ball, they are intended to misdirect the unwary and sway people who are already half convinced.

Footnote: My spelling checker doesn’t like Sd – it suggests Sod.

Whatever the weather …

Rain
(Monday 31st July) The weather broke today, rain sheeting down from a heavy grey sky (though still warm). I spent most of the morning and early afternoon writing and uploading my chronicle of the previous week, editing and uploading photos. It was also the last day of the month for Flickr; 20 megabytes a month and I had only used about 50% of my total, so I filled it up with pictures from my expedition in search of Gamla Älvsborg the previous weekend.

So last week I was a day or so behind with the week’s blog, and now it’s a Thursday afternoon and I’m four days behind. Oh well, I’ll only be doing this day-on-day for one more week. (Four more days now.) After that school’s back and I will have much less time to Observe Gothenburg – not least because I will be living, on and off, in Falköping during the weeks.

This is the butterfly whose wing beats are responsible for the weather we've been having all across Europe. No, really! originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Changeable
(Tuesday 1st August) The weather is changeable, so though it’s dry and sunny while I’m wandering through Trädgårdsföreneingen’s park, I can see the clouds piling up over there in the west. Trädgårdsföreningen translates (approximately) as “The Garden Association”, and is a park, laid out on what used to be part of the empty field of fire ground around the demolished city walls. It’s “in the English style”. I still have to find out a bit more of the history… (To visit Trädgårdsföreningen's home page - all in Swedish - click here.)


I’m meeting friends at Hotel Eggers. In view of the heat we want to meet out of doors, in view of the piling clouds we choose a table well under the awnings. Good choice. When the heavens open a bit later we are snug and dry and able to comfortably watch everyone out on the street sprinting for cover. Monica (who used to work at Eggers) keeps remembering tit-bits about the history of the hotel. Example: During the Second World War the hotel was the venue for a meeting between German and Norwegian officials prior to the official capitulation of Norway. Gothenburg was a convenient neutral ground. The Germans wanted the hotel to fly the Nazi flag, but the owner, Axel Eggers, wasn’t charmed by the idea. On the other hand, refusing these guests might be dangerous. His solution was to have all the hotel’s flagpoles sent away for repair and repainting. No flag poles – no flags. An elegant solution. (Of course, I suppose he’d have had to have done it at the last moment to avoid any German offers to bring their own flag staff.) (Click here to read Hotel Egger's own account of their history.)

Thunder
(Wednesday 2nd August) This afternoon I met two other friends for supper. We’d all, variously, been shopping and needed to contact one another to decide where to meet and when. I was at home when Lena called on her mobile – a flash of lighting, rolling thunder and the skies opened. The rain was falling so violently around her it was setting off car alarms, so it was hard to hear her speak. Plantagegatan, the pasta restaurant next door to the English shop. We sat and talked and eavesdropped on the chat-up lines which the middle-aged, long hair, fat guy at the only other occupied table was using on his much younger female companion. Apparently, claiming to write pop songs for boy-bands seems to work … at least, she was still with him and still listening when we left. Of course, he had trapped into a corner of the room by sitting next to her behind the table. The only way out would have been under or over the table.

Showers with sunny spells
(Thursday 3rd August) To what extent can the life of a human being and the life of a city be compared? I try this out on Agneta as we walk in to the city in the morning, and continue to mull it over during the rest of the day. Both a person and a city are created, planned or unplanned, both grow, both develop, both face trials they must overcome and both experience happy times when all seems to be going well. Early expectations may be realised, or development may respond to unforeseen events and conditions. Both grow old, both can die. Agneta asks: At what point can a city be described as adult? Is it when the city becomes independent of its mother country? (Thinking of the Ancient Greek polis or a modern city like Singapore.) Or is it when the city itself gives rise to further cities? (Colonialism in the Greek or Carthaginian sense, or the modern establishment of green-field suburbs.) I am still turning this over in my mind when I meet Martin at lunch. Martin prefers to compare a city with an organism – and I see that. We talk about dead cities: Machu Pichu, Pompeii.

Vinga, (see below), originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Weather suspended
(Friday 4th August) The English pride themselves on the variety of ways they have to describe the weather, but you can’t say: The weather today will be suspended. In Swedish, you can: Uppehålls väder. Thus it was on Friday. Most of this day I worked on other things – in particular articles and teaching suggestions for working with poetry. I’m choosing famous pieces of English language verse and putting together a series of worksheets. There will be one published each week from next week under the title of “Poem of the Week”. I’m doing this for a publishing company called Mera Förlag who will be bundling Poem of the Week with their English language “News Quiz” (which I’m also responsible for translating). The target audiences are secondary school classes and perhaps adult education study circles.

Fine and sunny
(Saturday 5th August) Perfect weather for our long planned expedition on the Göta Canal. Early morning bus from Gothenburg to Sjötorp on Lake Vännern (third largest inland sea in Europe). Transfer to the canal cruiser MS Bellevue (carrying on this occasion nearly 200 passengers). Cruise up the canal to Töreboda, a distance of about 15km, through 16 locks with a rise of more then 40 metres. Bus back to Gothenburg. Very enjoyable, if a bit crowded.

Passing through a lock on Göta Canal, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

The final lock we passed through was the upper lock at Hajstorp (literally Shark’s Thorpe or Shark’s Homestead – a name to conjure with – this is out in the middle of a bucolic landscape where trees and bushes line the canal and cattle come down to drink at the water’s edge). The opening of this lock in 1832 marked the completion of the canal, which had taken more than 22 years to build, and which gave Sweden a navigable waterway from the Baltic in the East to the North Sea and the Atlantic in the West. The lock and the canal were officially opened by King Karl XIII Johan (a.k.a. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte). All the locks along the canal are identified geographically (e.g. Hajstorps övresluss = Hajstorp’s Upper lock), but each lock also has an official name, and the official name of the Hajstorp’s Upper lock is the Thomas Telford Lock. It is named after the great Scots engineer and canal builder who advised on the Göta Canal and recruited foremen for its construction from among the corps of engineers he had himself trained up. I’ve tried (as yet in vain) to find anything written about these people. There must have been, at the very least, a few letters back to Telford, which could mean they are preserved with Telford’s own correspondence on the canal in the library of the Society of Engineers in London. Wouldn’t it be great, though, to have one of the foremen turn out to be a diarist or enthusiastic letter writer? (You can see a commercial English language site dedicated to the Göta Canal here.)

Sunny, mercury rising
(Sunday 6th August) Out to the seaside to swim and sunbathe. First time for me in the sea this year.

Hot and sunny
(Monday 7th August) Today spent in shade recovering from too much sun on Sunday. I worked on Poem of the Week rather than anything else.

Warm and sunny but cloudy towards the end of the day
(Tuesday 8th August) To Vinga. Vinga is the island furthest out in the Gothenburg archipelago, the first and last sight of Gothenburg for ships on their way in or out of port here. It holds a special place in the heart of all true Gothenburgers, partly because everyone is familiar with it from ferry trips to Denmark, England or Germany, partly because on clear days the various lighthouses and signal stations at Vinga are visible in silhouette from the city, and because the light itself is clearly visible at night – a double white flash every 30 seconds. But Vinga’s most important claim to fame is Evert Taube, the lighthouse keeper’s son, born in Gothenburg in 1890, brought up on Vinga till he was 14, who sailed the world as a seaman and then became Sweden’s foremost balladeer. A composer and singer of songs celebrating the sea, the travelling life and the beauties of the Swedish west coast. His statue stands in the harbour near the new Opera House, gazing out towards Vinga.

Taube, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

On the island there’s a museum dedicated to Taube, but I couldn’t find it. (I admit to not looking very hard.)

The ferry trip out to the island from Gothenburg takes about 1½ hours, and once out there, you’re stuck for 4½ hours till you can take the boat back. (Unless you can persuade a charitable yachtsman to take you off earlier, that is.) It’s a good idea to go as we did, prepared for a day in the sun with protection factor 30 cream, a swimsuit, a good sun hat and a picnic. Then it’s a fun day out. (Here's a Swedish internet page dedicated to Vinga.)

My travelling companions are of the opinion that I should include a diatribe on the subject of inconsiderate motorboat owners who try to moor right over the best spots for swimming from the rocks in the long bay to the north of the island, but I wasn’t there for the argument, so I will just draw a veil over it. The whole seems to have resulted in a fairly typical Swedish compromise.

Cloud over Vinga, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Generally fine, but changeable with the possibility of showers
(Wednesday 9th August) Two fun things today. A guided tour of the main Gothenburg synagogue – 151 years old – which was fascinating as much for the tour and the history as for the questions the (mostly Swedish thus mostly Lutheran) visitors put. “What is the biggest difference between Judaism and Christianity?” Answers on a postcard, please ...

Synagogue interior, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

In the evening Agneta and I took the Hisingen Round Tour. The MS Carl Michael Bellman, sailed from the pier at Lilla Bommen at 6 p.m., up the southern river to Bohus Castle, down the northern river to the sea, around the coast and back up the southern river again to the city. A tour of about 4 hours with a very nice (and expensive) meal along the way. The trip deserves an entry of its own. Maybe a little later. Probably call it Coasting.

Thunder and rain
(Thursday 10th August) Another day indoors – writing all this up. But I’m up to date at least!

Floating islands, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Bulstrode and me

You’ve got to admire someone who goes through life with a name like Bulstrode Whitelocke. I do, anyway. At university, I managed to avoid studying the early modern period of British history – thinking two years of Tudor and Stuart Britain for my A levels was quite enough. This meant I missed out on Bulstrode. I’m sure I’d otherwise have met him sooner. He was one of the second rank figures of the Parliamentary Revolution – important enough in his day, but skated over in school histories. (Or maybe my A level teacher was more interested in Henry VIII and Elizabeth). Whatever the reason, I didn’t finally make his acquaintance till I was living in Sweden and looking for English language perspectives on Swedish history.

Whitelocke’s Journal of the Swedish Embassy wasn’t published until 1772, nearly 100 years after his death at the Biblically prescribed age of 70 in 1675. But the Journal probably circulated in manuscript for years before. He seems to have written it with the expectation that others would read it. Throughout the Journal, he refers to himself in the third person, and I can’t think of any credible reason for this but that he was covering his back in case someone objected to what he’d written. He could always say: You can’t know that I wrote that – look, it says “Whitelocke said this. Whitelocke did that.” (Actually, he writes “Wh”.) He was a lawyer as well as a Parliamentarian and would be careful not to tell a falsehood, while still providing grounds for “reasonable doubt”.

The embassy to Sweden took place in troubled times. It’s true that the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, had ended more than thirty years of religious-inspired war in the middle of Europe. But the solution which Westphalia established – that the citizens of a state should share the same religion as their ruler – did not make for a great deal of tranquillity. What ought to happen if the people of a state follow one religion and their ruler gets it into his (or her) head to switch to another? Do the people have to change their religion? Or do they change ruler? How? One of the reasons for the Parliamentary rebellion in England was Charles I’s Catholic tastes combined with his conviction that he had a divine right to rule, which the people could not take away. Whitelocke arrived in Sweden – the bastion of Protestantism under it’s previous king, Gustavus Adolphus – just in time to witness the conversion to Catholicism of Gustavus’ daughter and successor, Christina. The Swedish (or perhaps Christinan) solution was not civil war but abdication. Whitelocke also witnessed the coronation of Christina’s Protestant cousin and successor.

Whitelocke liked Queen Christina. It comes through in his description of his meetings with her. He found her intelligent, well-informed, witty and attractive, and despite being nearly twice her age, was not above flirting with her. (He was 48, she was 27.) If what he writes is to be believed, she flirted back. Bizarre as it may seem today, at the time, the English had a saucy reputation in Europe. The standard English greeting between men and women, friends as well as strangers, was a smacking kiss on the lips. Accordin to the Journal, the Queen encouraged Whitelocke’s entourage to demonstrate this English custom – though she herself did not participate.

Whitelocke arrived in Sweden in November 1653. He stayed in Gothenburg for two weeks, allowing his company (especially the horses) to recover from the voyage. His account of Gothenburg in the Journal is the earliest extensive picture of the city in English, just 30 odd years after it was established. Then Whitelocke and his people set out for the Queen’s court, which had moved to Uppsala “by reason of the sickness at Stockholm”. It took them 20 days to cross Sweden, arriving in Uppsala on 20th December. Not an easy trip, as the roads were icy and food was difficult to obtain. On more than one occasion the Journal records the company dining off “cow that was rotten and had died in the field”. There was at least one broken leg caused by a slip on the ice, one traveller had his head kicked in by a horse, and several people (including Whitelocke himself) fell ill from the cold. Getting to Västerås on 15th December, Whitelocke reports “letters from the court … to this effect:- That the Queen and her court were astonished that the English Ambassador was advanced so far on his journey, with such a train, in so short a time.”

The Embassy lasted until after the coronation of Karl X in the early summer of 1654, when Whitelocke took ship from Stockholm and sailed home.

I went through a phase where I thought it would be fun to visit schools and perform a monologue based on Whitelocke’s Journal. History and English in combination. I still think it might be a good idea, but I don’t know how I would go about it. And anyway, the economic situation in Swedish schools today is such that I can’t imagine I’d be able to get anyone to pay me enough to make it worthwhile. Just a pipe dream. (Or perhaps UR might be interested?)

Oh, yes, you might be wanting to know how Whitelocke got his first name. The story goes like this. His mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Bulstrode and there was a tradition in the Whitelocke family that children should be given a first name from their mother’s side. But when Bulstrode was to be christened, all the male names on his mother’s side had already be given, and it was another tradition that two members of the same generation should not share the same first name.
“What name do you give this child?” says the minister officiating at the christening.
“Bulstrode!” says George Croke, uncle and designated godfather to the baby.
“Bulstrode?!” exclaims the minister. “You can’t call him that!”
“Either Bulstrode or Elizabeth!” Says Croke, cheered on by the rest of the family.
In the face of a united congregation, the minister decided it was better to go along, and Bulstrode Whitelocke was christened. In a subsequent generation, a nephew from the Bulstrode side was christened Whitelocke Bulstrode. How would Skatteverket react to that, I wonder.

The only modern biography of Whitelocke is Ruth Spalding's aptly titled The Improbable Puritan (from 1975). Ms Spalding has also edited Whitelocke's Diary (which includes his notes for the Journal), but in my quotes on this Blog I have used the copy of the 1772 first edition in held by Gothenburg University library. I'd really have liked to illustrate this entry with a picture of the man himself, but the National Portrait Gallery charges for reproduction rights. If you want to see a picture, though, go to this page.

Arrival

This is part of the first draft of my first section, written last week.

As usual, the Ryan Air plane is packed; as usual, the cabin crew are hunted. Check the overhead lockers. Are seats in the upright position? Please fasten your safety-belt, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to switch off your phone now. Then there’s the safety floor-show with the comic Spanish pronunciation: “Hinavent esudden drop hinapressure, hohegeen emask hover ehead anda breth normálly”. After that there are in-flight menus to distribute, then the magazines to hand out, the blocky trolleys with refreshments and “freshly made” sandwiches to trundle up and down the aisle: Excuse me, sir, keep your arms in please. Then it’s: Duty-free, madam? Lottery tickets? Win a car? Collect in the magazines, the menus, the litter. And: Cabin crew, stand-by for landing.

Across the aisle and a row of seats in front of me there's a teenage girl with a big notebook open on her lap, sketching – for a moment I think she’s drawing the cabin crew, but then I realise she’s just doodling. A bald man with a long face, a pipe and a tie; a fat man with a bucktooth grin, wearing baggy trousers and standing in a city of oblong blocks. Further along there are families with children, remarkably un-fractious, elderly couples, young men with clipped hair and sporty t-shirts, middle-aged women in summer dresses, a couple of teenage Goths, all dark eyes and leather coats. (In the cabin it's air-conditioned, but how do they manage out of doors in the heat we've been having?) And then there are the punks, savagely pierced. The one I've been watching has a cockscomb of hair braided with some synthetic blue material which glitters. Through his nose he has a thick horseshoe-shaped bar, each end of which is decorated with a small steel ball. From the corner of my eye it looks like two massive blobs of snot hanging beneath each nostril. I suppose that’s the idea.

As we descend from the sunlit heights through the white, then ever greyer cloud cover to Gothenburg City Airport, the captain says something about the weather on the ground: it’s “not very nice”. He sounds English. Landing, the rain streams across the windows. And now the pace picks up again. Please keep your seatbelts secured till the captain turns off the fasten seatbelts sign, but once it’s off get up and get out, Out, OUT! The aisle is suddenly full, and between the rows of seats, the twisted bodies of passengers who didn’t manage to reach the aisle in time, press their heads against the underside of the overhead luggage compartments and their knees against the backs of the seat in front of them. Unwilling to sit again having dragged themselves up, but unable to stand straight. A few of the more experienced travellers, and those in window seats, sit smugly watching the chaos and discomfort of the rest.

And, freeze! We all hold our positions until the doors can be opened. Once that happens the pressure begins to let up, but finally at the door, with a plunge down the open stairs and across the tarmac to the little terminal building ahead, I realise the airport is the epicentre of a downpour of tropical proportions, the heavy rain, driven by wind, is not falling so much as flying horizontally straight into my face. But the rain and the wind are warm, and the rush to the terminal is stimulating after the flight. Someone shouts “Welcome to Gothenburg!” Kids of all ages are running around, chattering in English and Swedish, jumping in puddles, trying to catch rain in their mouths. There’s a good-natured atmosphere among the adults – even the Goths and the punks look quite cheerful. Only the elderly couples don’t seem to be enjoying themselves.

In the serpentine queue to the immigration, spirits are good, though they become muted somewhat in the long, crowded, hot wait to reclaim baggage. Some children begin to whine and cry, though one little girl in her mother’s arms leans backwards to look at me upside-down and reaches to touch my beard, till her mum pulls her hand away.

It takes about an hour and half to fly from Stansted to Gothenburg nowadays. Getting to Sweden was never so easy. Even the ferry, which runs from Newcastle by way of Kristiansand and takes 23 hours, is fast. In 1653 it took Bulstrode Whitelocke ten days of hard sailing through November storms.

Whitelocke was on his reluctant way as ambassador from Oliver Cromwell’s England to the court of Queen Christina. He was reluctant for several reasons. The prospect of representing a government of regicides at the court of a powerful and highly regarded monarch was not a job to be relished, however much the two countries were on the same side of the religious fence in the struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. The job had been practically forced on him by Cromwell himself, with veiled threats to Whitelocke’s family and fortune if he refused. Not that his fortune was going to be left intact by his acceptance of the job. It was the custom of the time for an ambassador to pay his own way, claiming back what he could from the authorities after the event. Whitelocke was financing the embassy from his own pocket – the clothes he and his hundred-strong entourage would wear, the gifts he would present, the horses and carriages he would use in Sweden, the provisions for the voyage and the ships he needed to carry everything. The state’s generosity extended only to a flagship and a naval escort.

The most serious reason for Whitelocke’s reluctance, though, was the prospect of losing his life at sea, or, worse, surviving his voyage and mission but returning to find his wife had died while he was away. While he could take his two eldest sons with him, he had to leave the rest of his family of ten behind. His wife, Mary, who was heavily pregnant, was distraught.
“My dearest love,” he records her saying. “I would fain speak to you, but tears will not suffer me; let them speak for me and you, you ought not to leave me: for if I cannot, yet – how – because – then – if you will – how can your heart but be melted towards me and these poor children?”
“Consider what is best for us all, and let not passions have too much power over us,” says Whitelocke. “God knows I leave thee with as sad a heart as ever husband parted with from a most loving wife.”
“Oh then why will you go?” She cries. “Let me conjure you by all my tears, by all loves … by marriage promises and affections, not to leave me, especially at this time when the pangs of travail are coming upon me. Alas! What is it I require but a little time and strength, to enable me to bear you company, and in danger to take part with you?”
Whitelocke answers: “I am neither in a capacity to stay nor you to go: you know the necessity on me: I must go and go presently. … [On the sea] I confess my life is in danger; if I now do not go, my life, it may be, is in more danger [in England]. Those who have engaged me will not be baffled by me: they have the power; let us have the prudence and temper to submit to that which we cannot well avoid … God is all-sufficient: I doubt not but that he will preserve me in my journey and bring me back again in safety to a joyful and comfortable meeting with thee and all my children.”
“The Lord … grant us this mercy,” Mary replies, but cannot stop herself from adding that: “it must be more than ordinary mercy if we ever see the faces of each other again.”

It is not quite the sort of leave-taking you expect to overhear at Stansted.