Archive for the ‘Sweden’ Category

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How Sohlman and 3 white Russian stallions ensured the establishment of the Nobel prizes

May 15, 2014
Björkborn Manor (photo kkp)

Björkborn Manor (photo k2p)

Yesterday we visited the Nobel Museum at the Björkborn Manor and Estate in Karlskoga. Björkborn was Alfred Nobel’s last “residence” but he never really lived in it except as a sort of guest house. In fact he died at his villa in Italy. But Björkborn was critical in ensuring that the Nobel prizes even exist at all.  A visit I would now strongly recommend to any visitor to Sweden. For me personally it was memorable on many levels, but primarily for teaching me so much new and in such a dramatic fashion. Till this visit, I knew very little about Alfred Nobel’s last will and testament and what a close run thing it was that it was ever implemented.

This quite remarkable, but little known, story of Ragnar Sohlman and the 3 white Russian stallions which ensured that Nobel’s will could be followed and that the Nobel Foundation and its 5 prizes could be established was something quite new for me. Ragnar Sohlman who, at the age of 26 spent five years against formidable opposition in at least 3 countries to establish the Nobel prizes in accordance with Nobel’s wishes, is the real unsung hero of the creation of the brand equity which is today the hallmark of the Nobel prizes.

But more of Ragnar Sohlman later.

(more…)

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Posted in France, History, Norway, Science, Sweden | 2 Comments »

Stockholm’s Sheraton hotel exhibits its lack of class – denies a Roma guest entry into its breakfast room

March 26, 2014

Discrimination by appearance (dress, looks, hair style, skin colour, piercings ….) is endemic in most of Europe. The difference in Sweden is that there is a general, self-righteous perception that it is not.

Add to this that the Sheraton hotel in Stockholm is particularly lacking in “class” – which I define as the “elegance of behaviour”  – and this story is not at all surprising.

(I should add that I know the Sheraton well. I used to stay at the Sheraton on my regular trips to Stockholm but then stopped and shifted my custom to The Grand or to one of the more convenient local Scandic Hotels mainly because the Sheraton lacked “class”. Somewhat pretentious, the hotel and its staff always had a higher perception of their own worth than they actually had. And I prefer not to stay at hotels which look down on their guests. It may have four stars but it counts for me as a low-class hotel.) 

The Local: A Swedish expert invited by the government to speak at the release of its white paper on Roma discrimination was on Tuesday denied entry to the breakfast room at Stockholm’s Sheraton hotel. She had to drink her coffee in the lobby. Diana Nyman, the chairman of the Roma Council in Gothenburg, was set to speak at the release of the white paper on discrimination of Roma and travellers in Sweden. The government put her up at the four-star Sheraton Hotel, a stone’s throw away from parliament and the government quarter, but when Nyman, 45, went down for breakfast she was offered a modern-day example of the discrimination that the white-paper on Tuesday admitted had been endemic in Sweden. Nyman, who wears a traditional wide black skirt and frilly blouse and whorecently fielded questions about beggars in an online chat, said she was almost knocked over by a staff member who rushed to bar the Roma expert and speaker from entering the breakfast room.  “Even after I had showed that I’d paid for breakfast the staff insisted that I stay in the lobby,” Nyman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (DN) on Tuesday. “They got me coffee so I could drink it there instead.” 

I note that at the Sheraton’s Facebook page they have a half-hearted apology which does not go very far and does not impress the many commenters.

Thomas Hammarberg, UN advisor with Diana Nyman in Roma dress

Thomas Hammarberg, UN advisor with Diana Nyman in Roma dress image regeringen.se

 

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When pigs do fly

March 23, 2014

After two weeks of being immersed in the tragic story of MH370, I suppose I am looking for the absurd and the trivial as some kind of a reaction. My mind,  it would seem , can only take so much of tragedy.

The Local: Bystanders were left in shock when a truck collapsed in central Sweden, sending more than 200 frozen pigs flying across the road. ..

“Everything went everywhere – it truly was flying pigs.”  

The incident occurred on Thursday afternoon near Kumla, a small town south of Örebro in central Sweden. The truck was on a roundabout at the time and the pig carcasses were hanging on hooks from the trailer  ceiling. …….. the weight of the pigs was enough to cause the roof to cave in as the truck took a left turn into the roundabout.  …

While no one was hurt by the flying pigs, traffic was heavily delayed ….

Truck collapse sends 200 frozen pigs flying

200 frozen flying pigs Photo: Kicki Nilsson/TT

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Nils Horner RIP

March 11, 2014

I tend to listen a great deal to radio – mainly Swedish Radio and the BBC. One of the high points every morning was listening to Nils Horner’s reports on Swedish radio from South Asia. Just yesterday I listened to his report on Fukushima 3 years after the great earthquake and Tsunami. Swedish Radio cannot afford too many overseas correspondents and Nils Horner covered all of South Asia. And this he did with great insight while still maintaining an admirable objectivity. He never found the need or gave in to the temptation to sensationalise his reports  – and in this day and age that was quite remarkable.

Nils Georg Anthony Horner was of dual British and Swedish nationality and had been Swedish Radio’s Middle East and later South Asia correspondent since 2001. He was a radio journalist and reporter of the old school and while he did not have the reach that they had through the BBC, I would put him in the same league as Alistair Cooke and Mark Tully. Like them he had the uncanny ability to evoke the mood and colour and smell of his locations. I always felt I was learning something new when listening to his reports. He was a sympathetic interviewer with a wonderful knack of drawing out his subjects without having to interrupt or harangue or talk down to them. He tried always to get the story and not just to score cheap brownie points.

He was shot and killed in Afghanistan today. He was working on a report on the upcoming Afghan election and especially the views of women.He was talking to his translator outside a restaurant in an affluent and well guarded area of Kabul when approached by 2 men. He was shot in the head with a silenced weapon.

Nils Horner 1962 - 2014

Nils Horner 1962 – 2014 photo AP

He was just 51 and I shall miss his reports.

RIP

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A garden moose

January 23, 2014

We regularly get deer in our garden (and they eat everything but yellow flowers) but once in a while we are honoured by the moose (Swedish Älg). Two years ago we had a moose cow and her calf who got lost on a foggy morning and ended up in our garden

But this morning at about 0830 (sunrise today was at 0821), we had a lone moose cow which seemed to have spent a good part of the night sleeping in front of my garage.  It was wary but didn’t seem much bothered by my presence – about 10 m away – and continued munching on our bushes. It left after a leisurely breakfast about half an hour later.

Just minus 12°C and very light snow and an Urban Moose.

Moose in the garden 2

Moose in the garden 2

Moose in the garden January 2014

Moose in the garden January 2014

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Minus 42°C – back to a normal winter after a mild Christmas

January 21, 2014

This Christmas was the mildest in about 10 years but things are getting back to normal winter conditions. We have now had plenty of snow and are currently going through another cold wave. In the north of Sweden temperatures dropped to minus 42°C.

The usual chaos on the roads and with train traffic. My back hurts – as usual – after clearing snow from our garden path. Its only minus 12°C at the moment but thank goodness for electricity.

It’s just weather and we may even come up – temporarily – to a high of 0°C sometime next week. But the days are getting longer and summer is surely on its way.

Photo: Björn Lindgren/TT

The Local: 

Sunday night saw the lowest temperature of the season when Karesuando in the far north hit -41.9°C, but the mercury didn’t stop there.

“It was -42.5°C in the early morning hours,” said Lisa Frost, meteorologist at Sweden’s weather agency SMHI. “The high pressure system is still hanging over northern Scandinavia. These temperatures are here to stay for the coming days.

Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

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Greetings for the In-between days

December 27, 2013

A God Fortsättning, a God Slut and a Gott Nytt År to you all!

In most instances English has a much richer vocabulary than Swedish does – but when it comes to greetings during the festive season, Swedish wins hands down. The nuances of available greetings are just not available in English. Perhaps because there was a greater need for nuance during the long and cold and dark winters.

In Sweden the days between Christmas and the New Year are called the In-between days (mellandagarna) and immediately after Christmas it is no longer appropriate to use Merry Christmas (God Jul) as the greeting. It shifts to God Fortsättning which can only be translated as A Good Continuation. But it is also quite common to wish people a God Slut during this time. But this is also a nuance of greeting that Swedish has which does not appear in English. The literal translation of God Slut in English would be Have a good ending which may be taken to be somewhat morbid or an invitation to take hemlock!  Have a good ending to the Year is a little too long and doesn’t trip of the tongue as well and as succinctly as God Slut. Of course it is perfectly permissible to use Gott Nytt År – Good New Year – during the In-between days.

The In-between days run from December 26th to December 30th.

Clearly God Jul cannot be used after 25th December and God Slut cannot be used after 31st December but God fortsättning can. In theory God fortsättning can be used at any time. I have even heard it used at Advent and during the vacation period in July (when Sweden is closed). But I have heard it most often during the In-between days and then for the first 2 or 3 weeks of January. Gott Nytt År can be used well into February – especially if it is the first meeting of the Year.

And so during these In-between days,

God fortsättning! followed by a

God Slut! and a

Gott Nytt År!

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Volvo to test self-driving cars on Gothenburg streets in 2017

December 2, 2013

It is only a matter of time. As I get older it gets easier to drive. As it is, I already rely heavily on the car’s sensors and cameras when parking or reversing and especially at night. For parking in tight spots and getting as close to a wall as possible the proximity sensors work exceedingly well. And I miss them badly in very cold icy weather when my sensors are iced over. In 2017, 100 self-driving (autonomous) cars will be let loose on selected highways around Gothenburg with ordinary individuals as a test driver .

And it will not be long before the cars talk to each other.

Swedish Radio: (free translation)

Claes Tingvall, the Swedish Transport Administration’s Traffic Safety Director says that self-driving cars  cars are a prerequisite to achieving the “zero vision” of no fatalities due to traffic accidents. “One should be very careful with the word paradigm shift but for once, I think, it applies in the case of self-driving cars. If you look a little more into the long run, this is really like a fundamental solution to the problem of safety in a traffic system”, he says. To the question if this is what is needed to finally achieve zero fatalities he says, “Yes it is. And we are getting there”.

Self-driving cars thanks to cameras , GPS and various sensors detect the environment around the car . Therefore they can, all by themselves, can get around in traffic, so that the man behind the wheel can indulge in other things – read a book, for example. These robotic cars can virtually eliminate traffic accidents because computers are better at driving than humans and do not take unnecessary risks. “It is a fact that a machine, in most situations, is better able to deal with driving than a human”, says Claes Tingvall. “It will also be quite a careful driver. It is not going to take the risks that we as individuals are sometimes inclined to take. It will not be racing at 150 km/h at night with a drunken operator behind the wheel”.

Volvo’s autonomous car technology

Automakers around the world are right now intensively researching  self-driving cars. Among others Japanese Nissan has announced its intention of having self-driving models on the roads before 2020. Now Volvo has also joined the party.

The project, called “Drive Me” kicks off next year, and is a collaboration between Volvo, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Transport Authority , the City of Gothenburg and Lindholmen science park . In 2017, 100 self-driving cars will be let loose on selected highways around Gothenburg with ordinary individuals as a test driver .

“That’s what this kind of self- driving car provides, where it works with and supports the driver. It has its ears and eyes open and can intervene in situations when necessary. The effects will be enormous”, says Claes Tingvall.

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Democracy threatened as Swedish politician is attacked by cake!

November 7, 2013

The list of assassinated Swedish politicians is not very long and contains just 4 names : Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (1436), Axel von Fersen the Younger (1810), Olof Palme (1986) and Anna Lindh (2003). But each has come as something of a shock for the traditional openness of politics and the easy access to politicians. The Olof Palme murder (still unsolved) was a particularly traumatic event. 

Engelbrektsson was a rebel leader and was murdered by a member of the nobility who got off scot-free. Axel von Fersen (the reputed lover of Marie Antoinette and even thought to be the father of her first child) was stamped to death by an angry mob in the presence of many troops and (probably) with the acquiescence of the then government. Olof Palme was shot to death by an unknown assassin on a Stockholm street while walking home from the cinema. At the time of his death he was the serving Prime Minister walking the streets without any bodyguards! Anna Lindh was stabbed in a department store while shopping (also without bodyguards) and died of her wounds in hospital. Five days later a mentally disturbed man of Serbian descent was arrested. He apparently confessed 3 months later and was sentenced to life.

The leader of the far-right Swedish Democratic Party was attacked on Tuesday by cake at a book signing. He escaped shocked and “sullied” and his party earned some extra money by not wasting much time in selling the video of the cake-attack to a national newspaper. There is a little question mark as to how they came to be filming the incident just then and the speed with which they negotiated and sold the video. There is no report about what the cake tasted like and what recipe was used. Chocolate and cream?

Sweden Democrat leader ambushed in cake attack

Sweden Democrat party leader Jimmie Åkesson ended up with cake on his face after a woman attacked him with a baked good at a book signing in Stockholm on Tuesday evening.
The attack occurred around 5pm as Åkesson was signing copies of his new book, Satis Polito, under a tent set up in Nytorget on Södermalm in Stockholm.
Agents from security service Säpo quickly whisked a sullied and shocked Åkesson away from the scene.  “Åkesson ended up with a cake in his face. Then he was rushed into a Säpo car. He sat there for a while, and then they left,” a witness to the cake attack told TT. ….. 
The suspected cake-thrower was a 60-year-old  woman, one of an estimated 200 or so counter-demonstrators on hand for the book signing by the Sweden Democrat leader. She was quickly apprehended by police but was later released.

Politicians of all parties have condemned the cake-attack as being an attack on the very foundations of democracy. The Swedish Democrats are – not surprisingly – trying to portray Jimmy Åkesson as a victim. And so he is. But rather cake than knives and guns and angry mobs. And the Swedish Democrats – even if it is at its roots a neo-Nazi party  and has fantasies of a Swedish Kristallnacht – is not quite as horrible as the Muslim Brotherhood or Golden Dawn.

Shades of Axel von Fersen! For it was his lover, Marie Antoinette, who is reputed to have replied to a report that the peasants could not afford bread “Then let them eat cake”!

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Swedish University reprimanded for poor quality but refuses to return foreign student’s fees

November 6, 2013

In some respects the attitudes taken by Swedish Institutions today is reminiscent of the high-handed attitudes taken by old-fashioned, communist, East Block countries. Very high levels of individual freedom are coupled to a very high level of protection for institutions (and their employees) which can lead to peculiar situations at the interface.

Standards are – usually – very high but public institutions in Sweden – hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, local or national government organisations – rarely take responsibility for poor quality or negligence. The extent of accountability is normally restricted to correcting a problem once it has been identified. An individual who has suffered from the negligence – and even gross negligence  – has little recourse in law and generally gets little compensation. Damages for institutional wrongdoing are either at ridiculously low levels or completely absent. Institutional employees are highly protected and very rarely held accountable or sanctioned for their negligence or lack of quality. Blame – if wrong-doing can be proven –  is allocated to the institution as a whole which of course leads to no-one being accountable.

It is almost impossible for a lone individual to sue an institution or claim damages or get any equitable compensation for any damage suffered.

In this case it was Mälardalen University College which did not provide the promised education to a foreign student from the US. She paid a great deal of money for a 2-year course in Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics but received education which even the Swedish Higher Education Authority agreed was lacking in quality. But of course, the institution does not believe that it had any kind of contract with the student to provide any particular level of quality and feels no obligation to repay her tuition fees.

Sourced and freely translated from Sveriges Radio and Svenska Dagbladet:

Not enough chairs, not enough computers and a lecturer who could not speak Swedish or English properly. That’s what the US student paid nearly 200,000 kronor for (about $26,000). But Mälardalen University does not intend to return her money.

“I thought it would be interesting to study abroad. The program looked promising”, said Connie Dickinson .

A suitable program and being cheaper than in the United States convinced Connie Dickinson to chose to study mathematics and mathematical statistics at Mälardalen University in Sweden , where she has relatives . But it was nothing like she had imagined. “The lecturer did not spend  much time with us in the classroom. We had to share computers. There weren’t enough chairs and some students had to sit on the floor. The teacher handed out papers  and walked away and she couldn’t speak either English or Swedish. I was really surprised at the low standard”

Connie complained to the college about the problems, and even informed the Swedish Higher Education Authority UKÄ, about the shortfall in the education. UKÄ agreed that the the education lacked quality and has given the University one year to fix the problems or to discontinue the course.

But that is insufficient for  Mälardalen University to repay Connie her 183 000 SEK.

But whether it is discontinued or not, Connie attended a training course for two years that does not measure up  either for her or the Swedish Higher Education Authority.

Bjorn Magnusson , CFO at the college , claimed that it is not possible to give money back just because of a complaint about the lack of quality . “You can’t get back the tuition fee because of a complaint about the lack of quality. You pay the fee to participate in regular training. it’s not like a contract between us and an individual”. Besides dissatisfaction is subjective he says.

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