It's Midsummer ...
... or it was
Quote of the week
‘Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun.’
– Kahlil Gibran
Hello,
June has been a very busy month and therefore I had no time to write my regular newsletter. I have been stressed, tired and worked out … yes, even if I am retired. From tomorrow, Friday 28, everything will calm down, I hope. We are aiming to take our van for a tour around the big lakes in Sweden. Somewhat late due to the busy schedule in June. We hope to have three weeks of quietly going around, swimming, relaxing and sightseeing. There should be time also for some walks in the national parks we will pass by. We did take three days over midsummer to go to a nearby camping.
Midsummer
Midsummer is a time where we find the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a celebration of the solstice festivals of European origin, but mainly, I think, celebrated in the Nordic countries. The longest day will be on 20, 21 or 22 June up here in the north, and a few days later in the rest of Europe. In Sweden where we celebrate this festival in special ways, modern governments have decided that the holiday as such always occur on the Friday, Midsummer eve, closest to these dates.
People meet outside, collects leaves and flowers and dresses a ‘midsommarstång’ which I think is called a May pole in English. We dance around it and are singing silly songs. For young women it is said that if you collect seven different flowers and put them under your pillow, you will dream of your future husband. Who knows?
There was not so much dancing for us, but our neighbours at the camping, a German couple with kids, went to the nearby home of former UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, where the local scout group had organised festivities. The family much appreciated the tradition.
We just took it easy. Walked on the beach, rested in the shade with something to read. We were lucky with the weather on Midsummer eve, but the next day it rained, more or less the whole day. A very good excuse to indulge in a good book or two. It was nevertheless a nice break for us.
Vintage wine
I can’t say we drank any vintage wines this weekend. And, maybe, the oldest wine found is not that enjoyable anymore. I read in the SVT News that a Spanish team of archeologists have found what they think is the oldest wine ever found. It is around 2.000 years old, and dates back to the Roman empire. It was found at a house renovation, in an underground chamber whose entrance had been very well sealed, so there were perfect conditions for preserving organic material such as amber and also liquids that usually break down. This circumstance meant that the wine was preserved. Now they will try to find out which grapes are used, and which modern wine could be a ‘relative’ of the original one. It does not say whether they actually tasted the wine or just found everything out by chemical analyses. My guess is that it might not be very drinkable, in spite of perfect conditions.
The Expedition
Some years ago I read the excellent book “Expeditionen” (The Expedition) by Bea Uusma. The Expedition refers to the Andrée expedition of 1897 where three scientists headed to find the North pole by air balloon. The expedition did not come back and it was only 30 years later that people found their last camp.
“Bea Uusma attended a boring party in the middle of the 1990s. She choose a random book from the hosts book shelf and found herself with a book about the Andrée expedition. She left the party with the book, read it and her destiny was made. The book and the story has been part of her life ever since. She educated herself as a doctor to be able to see for herself the reasons for the death of the members of the expedition, she studied archives, old letters, other researchers, all the documents she could lay her hands on. The result we see in this very interesting and loveable book. It is like she says in the title: "My love story".” From my book blog (link above).
I read (Boktugg/TT) that Uusma will continue her investigations concerning the destiny of the Andrée expedition. At the end of the summer she travels to Vitön, where the group was found, for another scientific excavation together with archaeologist, an osteologist and two archeology dogs. It sounds really exiting and I am eager to hear what the results will be.
The group hopes to find out how the members of the expedition died. When they were found in 1930 they took remains which was then cremated. Bea Uusman says in a press release:
“However, the camp was never excavated and I have now realized that more than 200 skeletal parts were left on the island. A third of the Andrée expedition can thus still remain on Vitön. Now we have to find those bones."
She continues to say that this will be her life’s biggest project. Vitön is accessible only a few weeks during the summer, since it is prone to snow, storms and ice during the other seasons. Uusman hopes to put forward the new research in a book, due in the autumn of 2025. I can hardly wait for it.
I have read other books about the expedition and it is both an exciting and tragic story.
On my blog
Not much time for the blog either, but there are two posts since my last newsletter.
I wish you all the best for your tour around Sweden, it must be wonderful.
Nice that you re-read Bea Uusma's book, you know I read it earlier this year. How exciting that she plans to carry on investigating, I'm looking forward to hearing what happened.