It has been suggested to me on several occasions that perhaps if my blog posts were just a tiny bit less, well, masters-thesis length, that perhaps I could finish and thus post them a bit more regularly. Although I have only 18 full days left in Sweden (eeep! So much to do!!) I am going to have a shot a short post anyway – think of it as part writing exercise, part Christmas bonus-post, part test-run to see if I could keep something like this on a more regular basis. Assuming I could think of something interesting to write about, of course...
And so, it being that time of year, I will share with you some of my thoughts and experiences of Uppsala in December: the onset of winter, the winding up of the year, and the Swedish wintertime celebrations of Advent, Lucia and Jul.
December was rung in noisily with a spectacular fireworks display over the Botanical Gardens. This being Sweden in December, the show was conducted in the deep darkness of 4.30pm. Lucy and I watched from the foot of Slottsbacken – the castle hill – Uppsala Slott rising pink and ponderous behind us as the sky was filled with sparkling, shimmering, bursting colour and light and noise. A low fog had rolled in over the city, but rather than detracting from the show, it rather added to it, the colours from the fireworks lighting up the low-lying cloud from the inside with white, red, green, yellow and purple. The show seemed to go on for hours as we watched, excited as small children by the sheer splendour of a brightness we hadn't seen for months, and concluded with an explosion of white light which lit the whole sky around like a summer's day for perhaps thirty seconds or more. To see brightness in the sky after such a long dreariness was cheering to a degree I hadn't anticipated, and left me both buzzing with excitement and suddenly longing to feel the heat and brightness of an Australian sun on my skin.
The darkness has only got longer and darker in the month since those fireworks – the winter solstice just four nights ago saw sunset at about 2.30pm and no real sun until around 9am – but the Swedes have been doing this for some time, and know a little something about the value of light, warmth and good cheer at this end of the year. For cheer and warmth, it is hard to go past warm spicy Glögg (the Swedish version of mulled wine) from the riverside Julmarket, or indeed from any nation-related event, where it becomes a staple at this time of the year. Uppsala's Julmarket was unfortunately rather lacking (although a few little things may have been purchased there...) but those we saw in Helsinki and Tallinn* were much improved. Not enough to impress the Germans, of course, but no-one does a Xmas market like Germans. And when the freezing cobblestones became too much and even watching the lamplighters setting their candles in the niches along Fyrisån proved inadequate for cheer, good old reliable Kalmar Nation provided an Advent Fika fit for not one, but three Kings. Or one Icky Matt. Those eat more.
The first days of December disappeared in the frantic whirl of travel preparations*, rehearsing for Jul concert with the ManChoir, and exams and assessment in Politics and Swedish, but a heavy frost on the 2nd prompted a spontaneous trip to Gamla (Old) Uppsala, a crucial site for Swedish history and identity. From prehistory until the Middle ages, this was the seat of the court/parliament/assembly called the 'Thing of all Swedes', the location of the foundation royal estates and the great pagan Temple at Uppsala. With the Christianization of northern Europe in the 12th century it became the seat of the Archbishopric of Sweden, and the choir and central tower of the old cathedral remain. The site is dominated by three huge grave mounds, containing the remains of Swedish kings and queens from the 5th century AD. The whole site, coated in thick white frost and sparkling in the unusually strong midday sunlight, was eerie and beautiful and serene in equal measure, at least until Lucy got sick of me hanging around taking photos and shoved ice down the back of my shirt.
We returned from our Baltic adventures* on the 10th of December, just in time to celebrate the quintessential Swedish holiday – Lucia, on December 13th. Ostensibly the feast day for Saint Lucia, a 3rd century Sicilian martyr, this (officially) Lutheran country is in fact celebrating a far more ancient pagan tradition. Back into prehistory the pagan peoples of Scandinavia had celebrated the longest, darkest night of the year with variations on the theme of a woman in white bearing light into the darkness. When the church arrived, they initially tried to stamp out this practice, but it proved rather too tenacious (understandably, given the depressing darkness) and so they took advantage of the similar imagery of the Sicilian Saint Lucia, and the timing of her feast day (13th December) to co-opt the old tradition into a new, more respectable Christian format.
Over the course of the weekend we had Lucia Gasque at Västgöta, Lucia Fika at Kalmar, and a Lucia service in the magnificent Domkyrkan. All were very different events, but the thread tying them together is the Lucia procession: led by a girl in white wearing a crown of candles, a choir in white robes – the women and girls with green wreaths on their heads and the men in tall pointy white hats – enter in a slow procession, singing the haunting 'Sankta Lucia', which describes how Lucia brings light and hope into the darkness. In Västgöta nation's elegant dining hall alongside the magnificent spread of the Julbord, it was touching, over the sweet treats of Fika at Kalmars, it was enjoyable...but in the setting of Domkyrkan, with the scalloped stone columns towering above us towards the darkness of the vaulted ceiling, the huge bronze candelabras swaying above the crowd, the flicker of candlelight in the aisles, the hush of thousands of people crammed into every pew and side-chapel and the sudden sound of the choir as they emerged from out of the darkness, filling the enormous space with their voices...it was breathtaking. And, despite being called 'St Lucia', despite the cathedral setting, despite the Christmas songs that filled the gap between the entrance and exit processions, this felt as un-religious as could be, and I understood why in this nation of agnostics, this huge cathedral could be filled twice over on one day in December. Lucia is about keeping hope, and remembering the better times that will come. And when you have this much darkness to endure, it makes an awful lot of sense.
Less than two weeks passed between Lucia and Jul (Christmas, which Swedes celebrate on Julafton – Christmas Eve), and yet it is hard to imagine a busier time. I sung a solo in Swedish at Västgöta Nation's combined Jul concert with all three choirs (sadly my last performance with the wonderful VGMK), and took a wintry trip to Stockholm with Eric – a visiting friend of Lucy's – who we took to the Vasa Museum, the Absolut Ice Bar (carved from real ice!!) and our personal favourite, the fried herring wagon at Slussen. We saw the sights of Uppsala and ate far too much Fika at Cafe Linné. We hosted had a Jul corridor party in our corridor, after which I finally got a chance to try a Bastu or Sauna followed by a naked roll in the snow (did I mention it snowed?!!) on our rooftop. And sadly I said farewell to Mike, Simon, Jonas P, Aaron, Elle and Lucy, amongst many other friends. But Mike, Simon and Jonas' collective farewell could hardly have gone any better. A great party in itself, which only got better when Mike's Swedish corridor-mate Björn turned up in his psychedelic dressing gown and played incredible Swedish folk fiddle for us right there is Mike's room. But the best was yet to come. As we wrapped up around 2am, Jonas (who'd already left) sent a message that said simply “Look outside.”
And when we drew back Mike's curtains, there it was...a thick, clean, pristine, beautiful, white blanket of snow covering Kantorsgatan and still falling. The little flurries we'd seen in the weeks before, or the thick wet flakes which had plastered themselves to our faces in Tallinn, were nothing on this...even the beautiful frost on the grave mounds at Gamla Uppsala paled into insignificance. I doubt that any of us had ever put gloves and coats on so quickly. We ran dangerously fast down Mike's spiral staircase and pushed open the front door. Lucy and I stood gobsmacked and laughing on the doorstep, but Simon just hurtled past us, yelling “Quick, you Australians, follow my lead!” as he dived head-first into the nearest snowdrift. Waggling his arms and legs and spitting out snow he cried “Snow Angels!” And in a second Lucy and I were in the snow on either side of him, waggling our arms and legs about and grinning like idiots at the perfect angel prints we had made.
The next half-hour or so are a blur of happiness and face-snow. Snowballs and indeed just handfuls of snow played a big part in both of those. I remember the snow was unbelievably light and fluffy...not at all how I had imagined it. We threw snowballs at Jonas' window until he and his sister (who was visiting) came out and played with us. Thanks to an unstoppable alliance of the ruthless English and the cunning Germans, Lucy and I were helpless, and both ended up with snow caked to our faces, mine all the worse for my glasses. At last we really did have to say goodbye to Mike and Jonas, and Simon, Lucy and I brushed the snow out of our clothing and our bicycles and started the long slow cycle back to Flogsta. Cycling in snow is (predictably) slippery as hell and would have been scary if there was any other traffic anywhere in the city, but of course the sensible Swedes were all asleep. Simon was effusive and joyous on our ride back home, singing the wonders of snow and (perhaps for the first time we could recall) praising something about Sweden which was better than the UK :-P
Passing a hillside covered with snow, he yelled “Ditch the bikes and follow me!” We ran up the hill beside him, the thick, fresh snow clinging at our calves, and hurled ourselves down the pristine slope at a dangerous speed. “My God, there's nothing like fresh snow” Simon declared expansively from his bicycle as we resumed our trek, “it's so white and perfect and smooth and beautiful, and then you can just destroy it, it's fucking amazing.” Lucy and I could do little but laugh, try not to fall off our bikes, and marvel at the sight of so many familiar sights so deeply buried in white powder, in a 3am city seemingly abandoned to just us three. It really was a magic land that night. Simon had to leave at 5am, and as it was 4am by the time we arrived at Flogsta he elected to join us in my corridor for hot chocolate, banana slice with freshly made caramel icing, and cheese & vegemite toasted sandwiches. Wrapped in my mohair blanket, Simon grinned like a schoolboy into his mug and ate his toasty without so much as a mention of Marmite. I can't imagine a better way to have spent our last night together.
And before I was really aware of it, I was standing on the platform at Uppsala Centralstation at 5.30am in 18 below, watching the showers of sparks recede into the dark distance as the pantograph on Lucy's train scraped the icicles from the overhead wires, and suddenly it was just Jonas Cool, Icky Matt and I, together in Uppsala for Christmas. After a couple of slack days watching bad movies (Worst bad movie: Pluto Nash with Eddie Murphy – DO NOT WATCH! Best bad movie: Død Snø (Dead Snow) – what about 'Nazi Zombies attack hot Norwegian university students at a secluded cabin in the mountains' doesn't sound awesome?) we picked up our game, and joining up with a couple of friends, cooked up a delicious Julbord for our Christmas Eve dinner. Jonas made a tomato/pesto/mozzarella pasta bake, I roasted potatoes, pumpkin and carrots, made gravy and cooked peas in an attempt to add some green. Icky made a vat of very tasty apple sauce, and the two of us filled two bacon explosions with some of the larger apple chucks to make 'Christmas Explosion'. We had red wine and spirits and Baileys and bread & butter, and a platter of cheeses (including real Roquefort), and for dessert Jonas and Matt made Chocolate fondue and Matt dipped whole mini-Kanelbullar in it. For five students at about 120kr a head with plenty of leftovers, it was epic. Afterwards I talked to my family on Skype for Christmas morning before joingin the others for A Muppet Christmas Carol. The next morning, after Skyping with more family at the other end of Christmas Day in Australia, I spent the morning in bed eating home-baked Cheese & Vegemite scrolls and watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother. For brunch, Matt cooked us French Toast and I've spent most of the afternoon writing this, eating leftovers and planning my travels for January and February.
Only 18 days left...what a time it's been. I still have two half-finished posts to go up here before I leave, and after that there's 30 days of travels in Europe to report on, so don't stop checking this just yet...if only to find out if I survive the -21 that's forecast for Monday ;-)
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*more to come soon on this, I promise! It's been half-written for a while now...
PS: 2200 words...undergraduate essay length. I'm getting better!
