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Breaking! Nobel laureate Steinman died last Friday — and posthumous awards are not allowed.

October 3, 2011

UPDATE 2! Steinman will keep his award. 

 The Nobel foundation said in a statement:

The decision to award the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the late Ralph Steinman shall remain unchanged, in keeping with the earlier announcement from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.

As announced earlier, Ralph Steinman – one of this year’s three Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine – died on September 30. This information reached the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet via the president of Rockefeller University, where Steinman worked, at 14.30 CET on October 3, 2011. Earlier the same day, at 11.30 CET, the Nobel Assembly had announced the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine without knowing of Ralph Steinman’s death. 

The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize. In light of this, the Board of the Nobel Foundation has held a meeting this afternoon. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award. However, the statutes specify that if a person has been awarded a prize and has died before receiving it, the prize may be presented.

An interpretation of the purpose of this rule leads to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman shall be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The purpose of the above-mentioned rule is to make it clear that the Nobel Prize shall not deliberately be awarded posthumously. However, the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Ralph Steinman was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true – though not at the time of the decision – only a day or so previously. The Nobel Foundation thus believes that what has occurred is more reminiscent of the example in the statutes concerning a person who has been named as a Nobel Laureate and has died before the actual Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.

The decision made by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet thus remains unchanged.

UPDATE!

Press release: It is with deep sadness and regret that the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has learned that Professor Ralph Steinman, one of this year´s three Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, passed away on September 30. This message was conveyed by The President of The Rockefeller University, where Professor Steinman worked, at 2.30 pm (CET), Monday October 3, 2011, after the decision and announcement about this year´s Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. Our thoughts are with Ralph Steinman´s family and colleagues.

The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.

BBC reports: In 1931, Erik Axel Karlfeldt was posthumously awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but the rules were changed in 1974. The Nobel Foundation states: “Work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered for an award. If, however, a prizewinner dies before he has received the prize, then the prize may be presented.” This happened in 1996 when William Vickrey died between the announcement and the prize ceremony.

The issue is being discussed at the moment and a decision should be made by Tuesday.

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This morning Ralph M. Steinman was one of 3 scientists awarded the Nobel prize for medicine ”for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity“.

Swedish Radio has just announced that Prof. Steinman apparently passed away last Friday and the Nobel Awards committee was not aware of this when they announced the awards today. He died of cancer which he had been suffering from for the last 4 years. He passed away without knowing he had been awarded the prize.

The Nobel rules do not allow for posthumous awards and there is now some confusion as to whether Steinman will be a Nobel laureate or not.

Ralph M. Steinman was born in 1943 in Montreal, Canada, where he studied biology and chemistry at McGill University. After studying medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, USA, he received his MD in 1968. He has been affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York since 1970, has been professor of immunology at this institution since 1988, and is also director of its Center for Immunology and Immune Diseases.

Portrait of Professor Ralph M. Steinman

Professor Ralph M. Steinman 1943 - 2011

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Posted in Medicine, Nobel Prize, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded – half to Beutler and Hoffman and half to Steinman

October 3, 2011

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded today and the 3 winners are in the field of immunology.

The prize was divided, one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity” and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman “for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity“.

The Thomson Reuter predictions – this time – missed the mark.

Official press release here. 

Summary

This year’s Nobel Laureates have revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation.

Scientists have long been searching for the gatekeepers of the immune response by which man and other animals defend themselves against attack by bacteria and other microorganisms. Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann discovered receptor proteins that can recognize such microorganisms and activate innate immunity, the first step in the body’s immune response. Ralph Steinman discovered the dendritic cells of the immune system and their unique capacity to activate and regulate adaptive immunity, the later stage of the immune response during which microorganisms are cleared from the body.

The discoveries of the three Nobel Laureates have revealed how the innate and adaptive phases of the immune response are activated and thereby provided novel insights into disease mechanisms. Their work has opened up new avenues for the development of prevention and therapy against infections, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.

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Posted in Medicine, Nobel Prize, Science, Sweden | 3 Comments »

Time for the 2011 Nobel prize announcements: Medicine today

October 3, 2011

UPDATE!

The Literature Nobel will be announced on Thursday 6th October.

Starting today with the prize for physiology or medicine the Nobel prize winners for 2011 will be announced over the next 10 days.

The schedule for the announcements is:

  • October 3rd: Physiology or medicine
  • October 4th: Physics
  • October 5th: Chemistry
  • ??October 13th??  October 6th : Literature (According to tradition, the Swedish Academy has not yet set the date for its announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
  • October 7th: Peace
  • October 10th: Economic sciences (Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
The Thomson-Reuters predictions for the possible winners of the medicine /physiology prize to be announced today are:
  • Robert L. Coffman Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Dynavax Technologies, Berkeley, CA USA 
    WHY: with Timothy R. Mosmann, for their discovery of two types of T lymphocytes, TH1 and TH2, and their role in regulating host immune response
  • Brian J. Druker JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research, and Director, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland OR USA 
    WHY: with Nicholas B. Lydon and Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Robert S. Langer David H. Koch Institute Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA 
    WHY: with Joseph P. Vacanti, for their pioneering research in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
  • Nicholas B. Lydon Founder, Granite Biopharma, LLC, Jackson Hole, WY USA; Co-founder and Director, AnaptysBio, San Diego, CA USA; and Co-founder and Director, Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, MA USA 
    WHY: with Brian J. Druker and Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Jacques F. A. P. Miller Emeritus Professor, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and the University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia 
    WHY: for his discovery of the function of the thymus and the identification of T cells and B cells in mammalian species
  • Timothy R. Mosmann Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Michael and Angela Pichichero Director in the David H. Smith Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY USA 
    WHY: with Robert L. Coffman, for their discovery of two types of T lymphocytes, TH1 and TH2, and their role in regulating host immune response
  • Charles L. Sawyers Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair in Human Oncology and Pathogenesis, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY USA. Also, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator 
    WHY: with Brian J. Druker and Nicholas B. Lydon Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Joseph P. Vacanti John Homans Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Surgeon-in-Chief and Chief of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Director of the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA USA 
    WHY: with Robert S. Langer, for their pioneering research in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

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Posted in Science, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Hellesö apologises – sort of – and only further antagonises his Flashback nemesis

September 13, 2011

UPDATE! Hellesö says on his website that he has removed 96 pictures – presumably all manipulated. 93 were pictures of lynxes, 2 of badgers and one of a raccoon dog. 

Terje Hellesö, an award winning nature photographer, has been revealed to be  a massive fraud and a cheat. Many of his photographs have been manipulated with stock images of wildlife from the internet having been inserted into landscapes with many “artistic” effects. The skilful detective work in finding his manipulations and the source of the original images  has come from the on-line community of the Swedish Flashback forum. They have also put together a web site where all the manipulations discovered have been posted.  At least some 20 pictures have been manipulated and another 10 or so are suspicious. But Hellesö has removed all his old images from his web-site and it is unclear how many images he may have manipulated  and when he first started his fraudulent career. It seems to go back at least 3 or 4 years and it could be that the start of his manipulations coincided with his use of  digital images or perhaps with his learning how to use Photoshop. A new vocabulary has emerged for the fraudulent manipulation of images and based on his name as an adjective –  a “terjade” picture has now become an accepted  word-form!!!

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency which had named him as the Nature Photographer of the Year 2010 has now withdrawn their award since their jury have now come to the conclusion that some of his his photographs even before 2010 were probably manipulated. Their press release (in Swedish) is here. However they are not asking him to return the prize money (about 15,000 kronor or $2,500) because they have no regulations about what to do when a prize is withdrawn. But, as some of the Flashback readers have pointed out, there should then be no hindrance in asking for the prize money to be returned precisely because there are no governing regulations.

But now Hellesö has posted a long, rambling, self-serving, self-pitying sort of apology on his website – which seems to be no apology at all but instead a form of damage control and an attempt to take charge of the narrative and to resurrect himself. He does not reveal how many pictures he has manipulated – perhaps thousands – and when he started his nefarious career. He does not offer to recompense the thousands who paid the expensive fees he charged for attending his photography courses. He does not offer to compensate the organisations who paid him dearly for including his images in exhibitions and publications and often lost money in their enterprises. He does not apologise for the heart-rending stories he invented from thin air about the circumstances surrounding his encounters with the imaginary wildlife that he was supposed to have photographed.

His “apology” is much too long, too badly written and much too self-serving to be reproduced or translated in full. But there are some sections which reveal his intentions quite clearly and that his remorse is no more than a micron or two deep.

I ask for pardon because I made a number of photomontages in which I gave you all 
a very different picture than the reality I was trying to convey. This I will never ever repeat in the same way. If in the future I manipulate images, I will reveal exactly how I do so. I never ever again will have a desire to cheat anyone. Or of having to lie to hide the truth. …. I hope with all my heart that you can forgive me, and that maybe I will come to get a second chance from you. …

It begs the question if he is admitting that his previous manipulations were intended to cheat people (as they did).

I will come to speak publicly about this in different places, in ways you will discover later. I will share much of that here in this blog as well. 

Indeed!! A new “show and tell” career perhaps.

I would also say sorry to the Environmental Protection Agency who gave me the award 
“Nature Photographer 2010”. The pressure that you had to endure in this, is not something I would have wished for you. I know you did not know anything about my current lynx project when you gave me this award, and I have read your reasoning 
numerous times. I understand that you now choose to withdraw the award from me, , but I will keep in mind your justification (for the award) for myself so that I can draw some strength for tomorrow. Over time, I hope that my pictures – including here on this blog – will be some form of redress for the choice you originally made.

He promises that his future pictures will be available for scrutiny and for expert comments which will be published on his blog. It seems to be just an attempt to create a way for his fan club to post nice things about him.

He clearly sees his resurrection – phoenix-like – from the ashes of his present career. He has been accused of being a narcissist, an ego-maniac, and much worse. But his “apology” has only served to anatagonise the on-line community even further and they are now mobilised and energised to scrutinise everything he has ever done.

But to me he sounds like Tricky Dicky did in 1974 – and I am old enough to remember his self-serving TV performances! An attempt to control the narrative of his own demise.

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Posted in Behaviour, Fraud, Sweden | 4 Comments »

Internet forum unveils the compulsive photoshopping of an award-winning nature photographer

September 9, 2011

It started on August 26th when Gunnar Glöersen, a wildlife management expert for the Swedish Hunting Association (Svenska Jägareförbundet) received a call from a journalist – Jan Henricson of  Svensk Jakt – asking him to comment on the authenticity of a suspicious photograph of a lynx taken by Terje Hellesö. Hellesö is a well-known nature photographer who received the 2010 Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s Nature Photographer of the Year award.

On the 26th Glöersen wrote in his blog about his suspicions not only about this photograph but also of other wildlife photographs by Hellesö. His blog post was taken up in the on-line Flashback forum which exploded with all Hellesö’s photographs being investigated by the on-line community (and the knowledge and expertise and ingenuity with the amateur investigators is truly impressive). In the 2 weeks since Glöersen’s blog post the Flashback forum post has had over 800,000 readers.

Last Monday (5th September) The Local reported:

Photographer Terje Hellesö, recipient of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s Nature Photographer of the Year award, has been reported to police after admitting that he manipulated a number of his pictures of predatory animals. …

“Doesn’t this lynx in the July greenery have a winter furr? How about the lynx that’s reflected in the pool, is it walking in the air or on land, and can you really see the paws in that angle?”, Glöersen wrote in a blog post dated August 26th. Glöersen also questioned the authenticity of the picture, and decided to examine more of Hellesö’s work. Based on his wildlife expertise, he began to suspect that Hellesö’s alleged accomplishments were simply too good to be true.

Among Hellesö’s claims called into question by Glöersen are reports that the nature photographer had seen 150 lynx in nine months, when Glöersen himself had only seen 15 in 52 years. Glöersen also questioned Hellesö’s claim to have photographed a raccoon dog from a meter away, in an area where they’re not even supposed to exist.

In a debate between Glöersen and Hellesö on Sveriges Radio (SR) on August 30th, Hellesö at first denied the allegations that he had doctored his images. “No no no, of course not. Not under any circumstances,” he said. However, four days later, on September 3rd, he changed admitted the forgeries to his wife. “I didn’t know about this myself. I’m still in shock,” Malin Hellesö told SR. …..

On Monday, Tommy Berglund, an inspector and wildlife tracker at the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland, reported Hellesö to the police for fraud.
While he filed the report as a private citizen, rather than as a part of his official duties, Berglund is nevertheless concerned about the affect Hellesö’s claims have meant for local wildlife management efforts. “Raccoon dogs are among the worst carriers of rabies,” Berglund told newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN). “Tons of resources have been used in vain to find wildcats and raccoon dogs that don’t exist.”

Because of the time and money they’ve spent, and the fact that numerous concerned people have called the Administrative Board, Berglund thinks this is an important issue, and certainly a matter for the police.

But what is truly impressive is the speed and skill with which the investigative work was done by the on-line community and in a way which I think the main stream media would not dare to do. The depth of knowledge and skill available on-line is now beyond the ability and the competence of the main stream media.  In general Hellesö seems to have used stock pictures of wildlife from the internet, flipped them, resized them and then inserted them into forest landscapes which he presumably had photographed himself. The following are animations of how just some of the pictures were manipulated by Hellesö:

The award winning Lynx picture

Another lynx in the woods

And Lynx No.3

A raccoon dog in the wild

Update: The latest count gives at least 19 manipulated (Terjade) photographs.

Hellesö’s career as a wild-life photographer is over but he probably has a new book and a new career in the field of “How I fooled the world”!

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Posted in Ethics, Fraud, Media, Sweden | 3 Comments »

Where are Muller’s Saab shares going?

August 22, 2011

The end-game for Saab is being played out and I can’t help feeling that – unlike for Gaddafi – this end-game is still one designed by Vladimir Antonov and implemented by Victor Muller. Svenska Dagbladet reports today:

Confidence in Saab is faltering as two major car dealers have stopped selling Saab in Sweden and also in the U.S. 

Meanwhile Victor Muller is “lending” his private shares to the fund that recently bought newly issued and discounted Saab shares to raise cash to pay salaries. And  it seems that to avoid the dilution of shares a complicated deal is being done with Muller’s shares

Saab (actually the parent company Swedish Automobile) in August, in a last desperate measure, used cash from GEM fund to pay salaries. GEM’s business is to buy newly printed shares at a discount and then sell them at a profit on the open market. This provided Saab with a needed cash injection, but was also a dangerous dilution with the risk that the stock price would go down.

The Dutch financial agency AFM, has said that now Victor Muller has got rid of almost half of his shares, 3.3 million and converted them into stock options along with 2.5 million unlisted class A shares.

“I sold zero shares, but lent my shares to GEM to allow them to sell them. I get non-listed A shares of the Company as compensation” Muller said in a an SMS text message. According to the AFM, it means at this time that Muller’s influence has decreased from 8.5 million to 3.6 million voting shares. According to Muller, the options are now directly convertible into A shares. “There is an instant convert to A shares and there are no conditions associated with stock options” he writes in his SMS.

Worker’s wages are due on Thursday and white-collar employees should be paid on Friday. Saab itself has been emptied of cash and assets and this may be another ploy. Of course money Muller raises by lending his own shares is cash to his private account. It can only get into Saab’s coffers if he provides a secure loan of some kind to Saab and I am sure he will not lose out as other creditors will in the event of an insolvency.

In the meantime Swedish authorities – the Swedish Enforcement Administration, or Kronofogden – have launched an official debt collection probe of  Saab where unpaid bills have been piling up for months as a first step in what could end in bankruptcy. Kronofogden’s Hans Ryberg announced last week that the probe results from the unpaid bills of  Sweden’s Infotiv, owed 224,000 kronor, and of Norway’s Kongsberg, owed 145,000 kronor.

Production has been at a standstill since April.

Related: Saab being plundered by Victor Muller and his friends

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Posted in Automobiles, Business, Ethics, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Saab being plundered by Victor Muller and his friends

August 18, 2011

Travelling for a few days and have to be brief.

I am pretty sure that Saab has already been plundered by Victor Muller and his friends and has been left with with very little in the way of assets or cash. It looks like the board members of Saab’s owners increased their directors fees by obscene amounts while Saab has been struggling for cash.

Dagens Industri 

Svenska Dagbladet  

Related:

Victor Muller’s games continue: Are the new Saab shares ending up in Russian hands?


 

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Posted in Automobiles, Business, Ethics, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Victor Muller’s games continue: Are the new Saab shares ending up in Russian hands?

August 16, 2011

Victor Muller is at his games again even as Saab’s cash crunch continues. He has delayed payments to employees, suppliers, creditors and even the tax-man. The China card seems to be played out. Suppliers who start proceedings for bankruptcy get priority in getting paid. Workers get priority in getting their wages before white-collar employees. The trade unions are desperate and go along with anything as they hope for some miraculous solution. Russian “black” money – which needs to be laundered somewhere – is waiting to swoop through the back-door even if it has been barred entrance through the front-door. My own opinion is that even the initial liquidity crisis was engineered by Victor Muller by shifting cash out of Saab.

He is now engaged in the final desperate end-game at Saab (but of course without risking any of his own personal wealth). The question is whether it is his own end-game or one where he is just a proxy for his Russian masters.

Svenska Dagbladet reports:

Saab is issuing freshly printed shares at a loss to the U.S. investment fund GEM (Global Yield Fund Limited), which then sell them on at a profit. An arrangement made for the short term to pay salaries and debts. Saab is now selling four million new shares for just under 40 million Swedish kronor. GEM also purchased shares in a new issue on 3rd August – when 5 million new shares were sold in a desperate move to pay the salaries of Saab employees.

Not only are GEM well paid (because they are taking a big risk), they are also diluting the ownership of Saab’s other shareholders. In fact, these 10 million shares conveyed in a short time to GEM represents almost a third of the total shares. GEM acts only as intermediary and who is actually buying is a mystery.

GEM Yield Funds Ltd. buys shares for 90 percent of their value and then sells them on. These shares are then traded in Amsterdam. Using GEM is considered a very expensive way for Saab to raise cash but there are few options left. Issuing just another 10 million new shares could dilute the ownership sufficiently for a single owner of just the new shares to have a majority stake. And that for less than a total of 80 million kronor (about $13 million). Whether production will ever restart is looking increasingly unlikely – at least for Saab in its present form. What would happen to Saab if it ever came fully under the control of Vladimir Antonov is anybody’s guess. I suspect that Saab’s fate would then be connected more to being a money-laundering centre than to the production of quality cars. I would not be in the least surprised to find that the newly issued shares are ending up in Russian hands. The mark-up that GEM charges is probably worthwhile and represents an acceptable discount for the laundering of “funny” money.

Related: Let Saab die with some dignity

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Posted in Automobiles, Behaviour, Business, Sweden | 3 Comments »

Let Saab die with some dignity

June 24, 2011

Victor Muller continues pimping Saab around the world and dragging it through the mud to a slow and undignified demise — all just to satisfy his own inflated ego. He continues jetting around the world ostensibly to find new money to rescue Saab but he has never addressed the fundamentals. Saab now cannot pay its workers  (but Muller took out a fat bonus on the grounds that Saab had achieved 80% of its business plan!!!!!).

There are demands from the unions that the government should step in — one wonders why and to what purpose? Or that the government should allow Russian dirty money into the company. But these are both incredibly  short-sighted suggestions and little more than the empty posturings of an obsolete and  decadent trade union.

The fundamentals don’t work and subsidising Saab with taxpayer money is no solution. For 12 years I always drove a Saab (a Saab 9000 and later Saab 9.5’s) and I admire the car and the brand which is still strong. But the cars are no longer competitive and it is time to end the agony and call it a day.

From the FT:

Labour unions have threatened legal action after the owners of Saab, the struggling Swedish carmaker, said it could no longer pay employees’ wages.

Netherlands-based Swedish Automobile – which used to be known as Spyker Cars – said that Saab Automobile, which it owns, would be unable to pay employees’ wages because it had not yet obtained the short-term funding that it was seeking.

The news will fuel doubts about the survival of Saab. Production at its plant in Trollhättan, north of Gothenburg, has been closed for most of the past two months because of a dispute with suppliers over unpaid bills.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1a78c26-9d68-11e0-9a70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QAFzI4Y7

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Posted in Automobiles, Business, Ethics, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Longest Day

June 21, 2011

The Summer Solstice is today (at about 1800 local time).

At this latitude (58° 43′ 0″ N), sunrise is at 0346 and sunset is at 2211 giving us the longest day of the year – even though the official Midsommar holiday in Sweden will be celebrated on Friday and Saturday (when the day will be about a minute shorter).

But we are expecting a good deal of rain and the number of hours of sunshine and temperatures – maximums of about 18 °C – will not break any records.

from eclipsetraveler.com

Wikipedia: In modern Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve and Midsummer’s Day celebration are held on the Friday and Saturday between 19 June and 26 June. It is one of the most important holidays of the year in Sweden, and probably the most uniquely Swedish in the way it is celebrated. The main celebrations take place on the Friday, and the traditional events include raising and dancing around a huge maypole. Before the maypole is raised, greens and flowers are collected and used to cover the entire pole.

Hoisting and dancing around a maypole  (majstång or midsommarstång) is an activity that attracts families and many others. People dancing around the pole listen to traditional music and some even wear traditional folk costumes. In addition, many wear crowns made of wild springs and wildflowers on their heads. The year’s first potatoes, Sour herring, Chives, Sour Cream, Beer, Snaps and the first strawberries of the season are on the menu. Drinking songs (Snapsvisor) are also important at this feast, and many drink heavily. When Sweden got its National day (6 June), discussions were held about making Midsummer the Swedish national day because of the strong civil celebration on this day.

Because Midsummer was thought to be one of the times of the year when magic was strongest, it was considered a good night to perform rituals to look into the future. Traditionally, young people pick bouquets of seven or nine different flowers and put them under their pillow in the hope of dreaming about their future spouse. In the past it was believed that herbs picked at Midsummer were highly potent, and water from springs could bring good health. Greenery placed over houses and barns were supposed to bring good fortune and health to people and livestock; this old tradition of decorating with greens continues, even though most don’t take it seriously. To decorate with greens was called att maja (to may) and may be the origin of the word majstång, maja coming originally from the month May. Other researchers say the term came from German merchants who raised the maypole in June because the Swedish climate made it impossible to find the necessary greens and flowers in May, and continued to call it a maypole. Today, however, it is most commonly called  a “midsommarstång”  (literally midsummer’s pole).

In earlier times, small spires wrapped in greens were erected; this probably predates the maypole tradition, which is believed by many to have come from the continent in the Middle Ages. Others argue that some form of Midsummer pole occurred in Sweden during the pre-Christian times, and was a phallic fertility symbol, meant to impregnate the earth, but as there were no records from those times it cannot be proven, and this idea might just be a modern interpretation of the pole’s form. The earliest historical mention of the maypole in Sweden is from the Middle Ages. Midsummer was, however, linked to an ancient fertility festival which was adapted into St. John’s Day by the church, even though it retained many pagan traditions, as the Swedes were slow to give up the old heathen customs. The connection to fertility is naturally linked to the time of year. Many young people became passionate at Midsummer, and this was accepted, probably because it resulted in more childbirths in March which was a good time for children to be born.

Midsommarstång on Gålö, Sweden: image Wikipedia

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Posted in Sweden, Trivia | 1 Comment »

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