A Reunion with Friends in Sweden

I first visited Sweden in 1970. Since that time, I have visited Sweden perhaps fifteen times, including ten years in a row of music tours with the group Mynta. This current trip consists of a single agenda: meeting my old friends, some of whom I met in 1970. I will describe my friends later in this blog. But first, we took an overnight trip by ferry to Helsinki, Finland, in the middle of our week in Sweden. Here’s the quick report of this one-day tourist trip: STOCKHOLM TO HELSINKI Finland is the only Scandinavian country that I had never visited before. I have met Finnish people living in Sweden. Sweden ruled Finland in history, so there is a small percentage of Finns who still have Swedish as their mother tongue. Finnish school children learn English and Swedish. The Finnish language is distantly related to Hungarian. It has more vowels than any language I know of. It sounds completely unintelligible to my American ears. There are ferries, actually full-size cruise ships, that travel daily between Stockholm and Helsinki. We boarded the ship in the late afternoon, sailing overnight, and arrived at 10 am in Helsinki. The weather was cold and windy, too cold to walk around comfortably. After walking through the large train station, we explored the City Center Shopping Mall. We had thought that we might experience “Finnish food.” But the most prominent local food items sold were sandwiches similar to those served in Sweden…buns with salmon, salami, chicken, etc., with veggies and cheese, similar to the smörgås = butter-bread-sandwich, featured on the quintessential Swedish buffet: the smörgåsbordet = the sandwich table. We never expected to find such a diverse collection of international cuisines located in the mall opposite the train station. There were Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern, American, and Thai restaurants. We chose the Thai lunch buffet, which was one of the best Thai lunches we’ve ever had! Since it was too cold to walk, we decided to take a taxi to the National Museum. When we arrived, we found that the museum was closed for renovations. So we chose our second goal: the “stone church.” We had heard of this unique church from our dear friend Dr. Jean Watson, who had led a ceremony in the stone church for Scandinavian nurses. The stone church is certainly unique. Beautiful recorded music was playing, which encouraged us to just sit and relax as we appreciated the feeling of being in that sacred space. Enjoy the photos in the photo gallery with this blog. Click on individual photos to enlarge them. POLITICS IN STOCKHOLM Current events have impacted Sweden greatly. Sweden remained neutral during the two world wars. Indeed, Sweden has not fought a war in two centuries. But it has a robust military industry, producing its own fighter jets and armaments. The attempted annexation of Ukraine by the Russian invasion has provoked fears of potential aggression against other nations bordering Russia, including Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Thus after remaining neutral for so long, both Sweden and Finland joined NATO in opposition to Russian expansionism. According to Wikipedia: Russia, Sweden, and Finland have a long and troubled history. Sweden previously ruled Finland for seven hundred years, from around 1150 to 1809. At that point Finland came under Russian rule. Then Finland became independent in 1917, only to be invaded by Russia in 1941at the beginning of World War II. Finland was allied with Germany. In that war, Finland lost its Karelia territory to Russia. Sweden and Finland are now allies, fearful of Russia. Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Following the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the overthrow of Syria’s Assad regime, Sweden accepted more refugees per capita in recent years than any other country in the world. (Germany accepted a greater number, but Germany’s population is ten times that of Sweden, thus fewer refugees per capita.) The large number of Muslim immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. have not integrated easily into the liberal sexually free Swedish society. Crime levels have increased. Gang violence has increased. The traditionally peaceful Swedish society has been violated, leading to an anti-immigrant backlash. Much of Europe, from France to Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia, have seen a surge in rightwing neo-Nazi racist anti-immigrant political activity. Sweden is not immune. FRIENDS IN SWEDEN My oldest Swedish friends are Thomas, Anders, and Christine. I met them on my first evening in Stockholm in 1970. I had lived previously in Germany for a year when I met the friends with whom I spent last week in Greece. THOMAS Thomas is a brilliant musician who mentored me in my first jazz improvisation efforts when I stopped playing the clarinet for a time, beginning to play the flute by ear and learning to improvise. Thomas taught me the Blues! Thomas said, “It is very strange for me, a Swede, to teach you, an American, the Blues. It would be like your teaching me Spelmans Musik (Swedish traditional folk music).” ANDERS AND CHRISTINE Anders and Christine have been married fifty-seven years. Anders was a Swedish exchange student in Vermont when he met lovely Christine. They got married the year after he graduated from high school. Anders has a career as a world-class mathematician. He worked as a guest professor at MIT and UC Berkeley, as well as being the past president of the Swedish Mathematical Society. I asked Anders to tell me about his work. His answer, “I’m sorry, I can’t. You wouldn’t understand it.” Christine had a career as an in-demand international model as well as working as a Swedish-English translator in Stockholm. They have three children: a recording engineer, a ballet dancer, and a neonatal nurse. CHRISTIAN I had the great fortune to meet Christian in 1984. I had met an American musician at the beginning of that Stockholm visit. I asked him if he could set up a jam session for me to meet Swedish musicians. Christian supposedly was hesitant, saying, “Do I really want to go out tonight to meet some silly visiting American musician?” He attended the jam session. We became great friends, and our lives were changed by that encounter. I toured Sweden and India with Christian’s band Mynta (“mint” in Swedish) for over ten years. Those tours are a high point of my lifelong music career. There are videos on YouTube of Mynta, some with me, and others with Swedish personnel before I joined the band in 2005. MICKY Finally, there’s my friend Micky, whom I met in 1984. We connected on my subsequent visits to Sweden. But only a few years ago did I learn that Micky was a close mutual friend Scot in Reno! (Scot is a musical colleague and co-producer with me (and Scot’s son Graham) in our weekly radio show, Saturday Night Jazz.) Scot and Micky had known each and traveled together in the 1970’s. Only after knowing Scot for several years did he and I share our Swedish experiences and learn that Micky is a close mutual friend to both of us. Small world…Anders could probably tell me the mathematical odds of that mutual friendship occurring. IN CONCLUSION Friendships that span over fifty years mean that these friends have witnessed each other going through good and bad times as we grow old together. We met when we were young with the greater part of our lives ahead of us. Our continued contact with each other through regular visits over the years has been very satisfying. Now we are dealing with our advancing age as best we can. Some of us suffer from serious health challenges. All of us are mindful that we must spend the time we have left on earth as best we can, appreciating our friendships. I invite you, my blog readers, to do the same with your friends.