Gothenburg or Göteborg?

A section of our local paper Göteborgs-Posten - or The Gothenburg Post - has recently been taken up by a debate on the name of the city. Gothenburg (Göteborg) is the only Swedish city which has an ‘international’ name which is noticeably different from the city’s name in Swedish. Malmö gets called Malmo or occasionally Malmoe, and Stockholm is Stockholm – though some Brits insist on pronouncing it as Shtockholm. On Flickr, I made a point of tagging all my photos with “Gothenburg” and “Göteborg”; since I moved to Ipernity, as a gesture to the site managers and other users, I’ve added the French “Gothembourg”.

The above is a picture of the Gothenburg skyline looking up river from the disused Eriksberg warf.

A while back now, the city council here took a decision to promote Göteborg as the official name for the city, and to ignore or play down Gothenburg. This was rather silly. Gothenburg and Göteborg (both with a variety of alternate spellings) have existed as names for the city since it was founded in 1621. In fact, the earliest written document, the city’s original charter (which was written in German), calls the city Gothenburg. Beyond this, nobody outside of Scandinavia who hasn’t also studied Swedish has much of a clue how to pronounce Göteborg. (It isn’t Gotebork!)

More sinisterly, the Swedish extreme right has been promoting the idea of a ‘return’ to a ‘Swedish Göteborg’, which of course, has only ever existed in their imaginations. While I don’t think there’s any collusion between the city council and the extremists, I do think the official decision to promote Göteborg over Gothenburg is a sign of the council’s ignorance of history. I also think it can only further the impression among Gothenburgers who don’t know much of their town’s history that the extremists have a point. They might think: Göteborg is and always has been a Swedish city – look at the name! But in truth Gothenburg/Göteborg has always been international.

Lars-Gunnar Andersson, who started the latest debate in the paper, is a Professor of Swedish at the University of Gothenburg (official international name: Göteborgs university). His bugbear is the ‘swenglish’ sentences created by forcing ‘Göteborg’ into English phrases where it doesn’t belong. Language is close to home for many people and his argument that ‘swenglish’ mixtures are ugly and irritating has drawn both enthusiastic supporters and angry calls for him to stop wasting newsprint.

Me, I agree with Professor Andersson, but I’m teacher of English as well as history, so I would, wouldn’t I? 'Göteborgs university' is a good example of what bugs me. Apart from the change in name, there’s an error of grammar as well. If we don’t call it the University of Gothenburg in English, the other option is Gothenburg University. Both words capitalised and no possessive because both words together are make the university’s name. But the Swedification imposed by replacing Gothenburg with Göteborg has gone further. In the Swedish name, Göteborgs universitet, Göteborgs is the possessive. The correct translation ought to be Göteborg’s university. (And I'd prefer Göteborg’s University). It’s a small error, to be sure, but it suggests to me that the people who run the university are not only ignorant of the history of their city; they don’t care much about foreign languages either.

Not great for an institute of higher learning.

And in the meantime the rain is still falling ...

Raindrops on the steel head of a post in the street.

Warships and Runners and Songs in the Rain

Saturday 12th May was all go in Gothenburg. Sometimes weeks pass and nothing much seems to happens, and then you get a day like this.

NATO ships in Gothenburg harbour with Ramberget in the background, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Warships!
First off, NATO is conducting a naval exercise off the coast this week, and most of last week the fleet was in port here (on a good-will visit and to bunker up I suppose). Apparently there were more than 43 warships involved, including the British navy's HMS Ark Royal. Only the lighter ships with shallower drafts got all the way up the river to anchor in the old Free Port area just opposite the opera house. (The others, including the aircraft carrier, stayed out at the deep water container port at the mouth of the river). But the smaller ones were quite big enough: grey, prickly looking, faintly menacing and clearly observable from the high road and bicycle bridge that links the city with Hisingen. I saw them from the tram window as I came home on Friday and decided I had to go out and take pictures.

Of course, the visit did not go unnoticed. There is a song by one of Gothenburg's most beloved sons, Evert Taube, which describes the effect a British naval visit had on Gothenburg's female population once upon a time:

The English fleet has been sighted off Vinga,
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
A thousand little sailors that we're going to conquer
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

But that was then. Today (whatever the private feelings of the younger ladies of Gothenburg) the visit was not exactly celebrated. There were a number of protest actions and meetings during the week and over the weekend. On Saturday there was big demonstration (reportedly up towards 3000 people) that started off in town at midday and ended up at the Free Port at two. I had thought to document that as well, but domestic chores (Saturday is laundry day) interfered.

Runners!

By the time I got out, the protest was over and instead the roads were cleared for the next big event of the day, the Götevarvet, the annual Gothenburg half marathon, which was being run from 3 p.m. The name Götevarvet (or GöteVarvet), is a pun in Swedish: 'varv' means a movement in a circle (one revolution), and the race is run in a circle around the city and around the river. But 'varv' also means a shipyard (compare 'wharf' in English, which comes from the same root, even if it doesn't mean the same thing). Gothenburg used to be an important city for shipbuilding, and though the yards are almost all closed nowadays, their memory lingers on, and the route of the race takes the runners past most of the old yards.

So, as I was out for the ships, I decided to snap the race as well. That was when I discovered I had left the memory chip from my camera at home. I could only take 15 pictures on the camera's built in memory. So there was a lot of snapping and then scuttling off to shady spots where I could check the quality of the pictures and erase the ones I didn't want. The shade was necessary because the sun was out and the display screen on the back of the camera is difficult to see in strong sunlight.

It's always fascinating to watch other people exerting themselves, don't you think? I don't run myself (two knee joints in less than mint condition), but I don't begrudge other people the pain they seem to delight putting themselves through, and in public too!



Incidentally, Götevarvet is sponsored by a certain sports shoe manufacturer and so the route of the race is marked on the road by a line which imitates the sponsors' company logo. This involves three times as much paint as necessary, so I do hope the sponsorship covers more than just the cost of the extra paint. And that the paint is environmentally friendly.

Songs!
And still the excitement continued because on Saturday evening it was time for the Eurovision Song Contest. A. and I were invited home to a friend for this most Swedish of occasions. No, seriously! A meal, a bottle of wine, and snacks in front of the telly as we listened to one god-awful banality after another. Five days later, writing this, I can't remember a single melody - probably just as well for my peace of mind - though I do recall some of the staging. So we listened all the way through and commented with increasing volume on the quality of one song after another, and the consensus of the party was that Sweden's entry was the best. (It seemed most diplomatic for me to go along with this at the time.) And then we voted.

Oh yes, I spent actual money phoning in my votes for the Ukraine (the only people who seemed to take the whole thing in the right spirit) and Bulgaria. I think I may also have voted for Hungary - was it a blues number? Then the votes from the different countries started to be announced. Our Swedish company became progressively more and more subdued as nobody (but Norway and Denmark and a grudging Finland) gave them any votes at all. My suggestion that Sweden grant independence to Jämtland and Skåne to ensure at least the possibility of some votes from them, did not go down well. Sometime around the middle of the voting, our hostess nodded off.

Rain!
So we crept off just after midnight and discovered it was raining. In fact, it stared raining hard as we left, so we sheltered in a doorway at which point it started really chucking it down. Our desperate phone calls for a taxi were met by engaged tones, and attempts to flag taxis down simply involved getting wet and wetter, and being ignored. It seemed the taxi drivers were all in a collective sulk about the Eurovision result. Or, I suppose, they might have just had more business to handle that evening. Once a taxi did stop, but we got beaten to it by four other people who emerged from nowhere and four different directions, wrenched the doors open and flung themselves in while we were still dithering in our shelter. We got home eventually at about 3 on Sunday morning.

"Well, at least when people start talking about the Song Contest at work, this year you'll be able to join in," said A. But you know what? No one mentioned it.

Sunday's paper, originally uploaded by Gothenburg Observer.

Above is a collage of pages from Sunday's Göteborgs-Posten, our daily paper. So much happened on Saturday. Anti-clockwise from the top right corner: People protested against the NATO visit; ran the Göteborgsvarvet; saw the Swedish national ice hockey team lose to Canada; saw the Swedish hope for the Eurovision Song Contest go down in flames (18th of 24); saw Serbia's entry win and final (middle picture) were reminded that the East Indiaman Götheborg is on her way home and due to stop off in London next week. There wasn't room for everything in the blog!

Spring in April in Spring

As I noted in my previous entry, I’ve still not got the hang of this blogging thing. I have actually thought several times of writing up a “What I did last weekend” entry, but it hasn’t got beyond the thinking stage. However, I do have a small collection of rather nice pictures that I’ve taken with the new camera, some of which I’d thought to use to illustrate my entries here, and it seems a pity to let them all go to waste. (Not that they are. If you want to see them, they are gracing my Flickr site)

So here we go: The month of April (and the tail of March) as observed in and around Gothenburg.

Lärjeån
The first really warm day of spring here was March 25th, a Sunday. Sundays I have to decamp to Falköping. My weekly commute. But it was such a fine day A. and I decided to enjoy it and take a walk along Lärjeån. This stream meanders down to join the Göta River just inland from the old city walls, but starts from Lake Mjörn, east beyond Lerum. It flows through a valley of its own, a little pearl of natural beauty winding between some of the toughest high-rise suburbs of north east Gothenburg. It’s a relatively small stream, but in the early spring, it can run very full. Now, on the 25th, it was fast flowing, but quite low.

However, all along the course of the stream was evidence of how high it had been and how much force the water had had. Tangled branches and broken trunks, twisted straw and rushes and all the other detritus you would expect in the way of torn plastic sheeting, aluminium food containers, polystyrene packaging, wire, glass and planking.
The warning signs the council had put up about the path being unsafe were still in evidence, but we decided to walk along the stream anyway. It was only difficult to pass in one place where a footbridge had been twisted off its foundations and half upended. Otherwise, the walk went well and the dry light umber colours of the plants waiting for the spring, and grand-in-miniature, rolling shape of the landscape made the whole trip very enjoyable. That and the sun. It was like a warm summer’s evening – at three in the afternoon. For the whole length of the valley, the vegetation was pregnant. A. quoted Karin Boye to me:

Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister.
Varför skulle annars våren tveka?
Varför skulle all vår heta längtan
bindas i det frusna bitterbleka?
Höljet var ju knoppen hela vintern.
Vad är det för nytt, som tär och spränger?
Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister,
ont för det som växer
och det som stänger.

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking.
Why else would the springtime falter?
Why would all our ardent longing
bind itself in frozen, bitter pallor?
After all, the bud was covered all the winter.
What new thing is it that bursts and wears?
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking,
hurts for that which grows
and that which bars.

(The translation is by David McDuff. This link will take you to the publisher’s page for his translation of Karin Boye’s collected works, and this link will take you to a selection on the Internet at the Karin Boye society.)

The only signs we saw of spring having broken out were the catkins on the alders and three small yellow flowers that had obviously escaped from someone’s garden.

April Frogs Day
I decided to name the 1st of April this year as April Frogs Day. Walking in Hisings Park, around Slätta Pond, we saw dozens if not hundreds. There were so many A. and I couldn’t understand how the ducks were not gobbling them up, but they weren’t. Perhaps they had other things on their minds, or perhaps they were just too happy to bask in the sun.

Sunday 1st April was another warm day, and the first day of my weeklong Easter holiday. Glorious!

After that, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I walked with A. into the city centre every morning, and while she went off to work I took my camera around some of my favourite city centre streets, and along by the river.

I snapped this picture of a ghost house where the Victorian hotel (most recently called Hotel Opera) had just been demolished.

(I wonder about ‘Victorian’: in Sweden shouldn’t that be Oscarian after the two Kings Oscar that ruled the country then?)

Easter
The weather, which had started out so fine, grew cold and colder towards the end of the week. Come Easter Saturday, the day Swedes really celebrate Easter, it was very changeable. In fact, it cycled through sunny-but-with-a-cold-wind, cloudy, rain, sleet, back to sun again for a dramatic looking but very calm sunset. We celebrated with A’s family out by the sea near Lilleby, and drank snaps and ate sill (pickled herring) and all the other traditional food, and sang snaps songs. (To the distress of Victor, my 4 year-old godson who doesn’t seem to enjoy the idea – or perhaps the fact – of his elders and betters singing happily out of tune with one another. I can’t imagine why.)

All good things come to an end, and Monday 9th saw me off to Falköping again for another week of toad-work. But I was home again on the 14th, just in time to document our housing condominium’s Spring Cleaning (and post-SC celebration).

Those who walk away ...
On the 24th I took the opportunity to walk through Keilers’s Park and up to the top of Ramberget, following the development of spring (and trying out the macro setting on the camera). I have decided I am unlikely ever to become a successful wildlife photographer. Unless, that it, I can persuade people to accept that pictures of animals and birds walking away or turning their backs on me are daring conceptual art, and not just the animals being camera shy or simply getting impatient. How about a new Flickr group: “The ones who walk away from Olympus”? (There is a literary reference there for someone to find!)


Only the ants didn’t seem to care.


It's all happening ...
And so we come up to date with our most recent weekend – a long one, thanks to the May Day holiday. (Which we actually celebrate on the 1st May and not on the first Monday after as in Britain, please note!) A. and I took a long weekend break and entrained down to Copenhagen. We wanted to visit the gallery of modern art at Louisiana. A fantastic day. A chilly wind off the sea, but in the lea and in the sun it was baking hot. Louisiana is a marvellous place, far larger than it looks from outside (because of all the subterranean galleries), but with space and grass and great views across the Belt (Öresund) towards Sweden: a perfect setting for a collection of monumental modern sculpture by the likes of Moore, Calder, Arp and Miró. And indoors, the Cindy Sherman retrospective (“30 Years of Staged Photography”) and a representative exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, “Made in China”. Despite all the people (and all the families with young children) it was spacious and didn’t feel crowded (except in the 20-25 minute long queues in the cafeteria). I asked, and was told I could photograph items in Louisiana’s permanent exhibition, but not in the special exhibitions. If you want to see Cindy Sherman’ work (and if you haven’t, you should) go to Louisiana before the 20th May (ha!) or here. And as for “Made in China”, that’ll be on till 5th August.

The day after, on Monday 30th, we left our bags at the station and visited the Zoo. I’m not a great zoo fan, but it was too good a photo op to waste. Besides, (and this is a good tip for anyone thinking of visiting Copenhagen), there’s really not a lot open on Mondays. I went through a brochure listing all the museums parks gardens and attractions in the Greater Copenhagen area, crossing off all that were shut on Monday 30th April, and believe me, the Zoo was one of the few that were left.

Home again on May Day, I was just too tired to go out and take political photos of the parades. There will be another May Day in another year.