What do you think of Swedish people?

Haven't been to the Scandinavian countries before been further south in Europe. My hubby having ancestors from Norway would love to travel there. maybe once the kids are grown and we have money again for ourselves.

I really hope you can go there.
Where are his ancestors from in Norway?

Oh my, that would be fun. If I do get one last travel binge, I'll be headed for Rome as arrive and departure site (I've done that a few times and am very sentimental about these things) but I could get to other places by train or plane or even bus.

Ah well, I have a lot to take care of before I try for a trip like that.

I would fly.
Once upon a time there were direct trains Copenhagen - Rom. I think it took 36 hours. Now it takes 26 and you have to change 4 or 5 times.

I am not sure --- he would have more details - I love traveling internationally and experiencing other cultures just hard with the kids as they always seem to have things going on.

That reminds me. Sometime like a dozen years ago now, a business partner/landscape contractor and I were asked to help a woman with a completely gorgeous property and marvelous house (I don't always love mansions, this was large but not obnoxious) that still needed some work re the land right near the house.

I'd been in the landscape architect business for many years and seen a lot of homes. My heart likes little ordinary places maybe even more than beautiful houses, but this one was very satisfying to look at and the acreage was beautiful. My point with this ramble is that she, the owner, had some kind of japanese hot tub in the corner of the key bathroom area, facing picture windows with view of a field and, further, trees along the river. No modesty, given such land ownership.

I was a whiz (sort of) at train switching back in 1999, my last time there, but now I'm easier to baffle. I've loved trains since childhood. I know I'm not the only one.
Luckily, I like planes too. Right now, the industry, at least here in the US, is trying to squeeze passengers into inadequate slots in what we call cattle class.

In their current form they are absolute wimps. They are the descendants of Vikings! Oh how Odin must be weeping.

Anyone familiar with Norse mythology knows the gods don't give a damn about humanity. Viking being thrown around also cracks me up. Vikings were just pirates, and most of them were Norse or Danish or Frisian--the Goths, not so much. (Goth is what the Swedes used to call themselves.)

But the Swedes once were a power to be reckoned with in Europe. In 1523, Gustav Vasa became the King of Sweden, by defeating the Danes and liberating most of what today is Sweden. He instituted many reforms in Sweden, many of which favored the bonder, people we would think of as serfs. There were many rebellions against him, but he managed to put them all down, and preserved the Lutheran church in Sweden, established by him, and preserved his social and political reforms. He went to war with Ivan IV of Russia, known to us as Ivan the Terrible, and although the outcome of the war was inconclusive, the Swedes managed to establish themselves in Finland and Karelia.

His youngest son was Karl, whom we call King Charles IX. Charles was only OK, but his son Gustav II Adolf, known to history as Gustavus Adolphus, was the greatest of the Swedish kings. (Peace, Saab, you know what i think of Charles XII.) King John of Sweden had sent Swedish officers to study with Count John of Nassau, then the leading military innovator in Europe (early 17th century). The Dutch were in the middle of their 80+ year war of rebellion against the Spanish, and had already stunned military men in Europe when they had stopped a charge of Spanish heavy cavalry using gunfire alone.

Gustavus Adolphus began his military career fighting the Danes in Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden, then still in the hands of the Danes. Although the Danes held onto Scania for 20 more years, Gustavus Adolphus had learned enough to improve on the Dutch system. The standard formations of the day were based on Spanish tercios, and a full-strength regiment of 1500 men would deploy in a formation 50 men wide and 30 men deep. Gustavus Adolphus deployed his troops in lines one five or six men deep, with musketeers in the front lines, and pikemen behind them help hold off cavalry attacks. Between the battalions he deployed light artillery, much lighter than the common artillery of the day, and cavalry to back up the guns. His army was highly trained, and muskets wereprovided at great expense, and to great effect. All of his troops were crossed-trained--musketeers trained with pikes and trained to serve artillery, as were the pikemen and cavalrymen; pikemen and artillerists were trained in the use of muskets, and so were the cavalry. All soldiers in his army were trained to ride. When the Swedes fought a battle, Gustavus Adolphus wanted no musket and no horse to go unused. His use of light artillery meant that artillery could now take part in the attack, and not simply the defense.

He became king in 1611, at the age of 16, although he was not crowned until 1617. His cousin, Sigismund III Vasa, had briefly been king of Sweden, but had been deposed because the Swedes feared he intended to make them Catholics once more (which, indeed, was his one of his objects). Gustav's father then became King Charles IX. When Gustav II became king, he first invaded Russia, but the new Tsar, Mikhail Romanov, convinced his envoys that Russia was not subject to Poland, and the war ended with Russia excluded from the Baltic Sea. Now Gustav turned his attention to Poland, where he fought the last two of the four Polish-Swedish wars. Although he was not uniformly successful, in 1629, the Swedes signed a veary favorable treaty with Poland, and Sigismund was forced to give up Livonia, basically everything north of Lithuania. The Swedes would hold Livonia, at least nominally, for 80 years.

Gustavus Adolphus now turned his attention to northern Germany. What we call the Thirty Years War, an inaccurate term used only by historians who don't care about precision, seemed to have been won just 11 years after it had begun. The Swedes turned that completely around. In 1630, with a tiny army, the Swedes took many fortified towns, and drove the rest of the Imperialist troops from the Baltic coast. Count Tilly lead an Imperialist army into Saxony, and near Leipzig, at Breitenfeld, his more numerous and experienced army easily drove off Gustav's Saxon allies. That was Tilly's last good news for the day. The constant hail of Swedish musketry caused heavy casualties in the dense Imperialist formations, and wore down their morale, too. Near sunset, the Imperialist broke, and Tilly's army just dissolved, helped on their way by the Swedish cavalry. Now completely unopposed, Gustav marched his army right across Germany to the Rhine. A little over a year later, he was killed in battle at Lützen, near the scene of his great triumph
over Tilly.

Seventy years later, Charles XII threw away the Swedish empire because he underestimated the Russians. If Sweden is smart enough not the repeat that mistake, i'd say it speaks volumes about their good sense. Some people seem to think that a nation's greatness is measured by invasions and war. There's a lot more to it than that.

Well we wouldn't want to crack you up. You might disintegrate.

Why don't you go organize the illegal invasion of a weaker nation somewhere, Finny, that's about all you rightwingnuts are good at.

Wow that was really cutting! You're slipping pooch.

Calling someone pooch, that's the height of your rhetorical skill, huh?

Damn you !

I've been craving Swedish Fish ever since you posted that!



<where can I buy Swedish Fish at 1 a.m.?>

It would be fun for you - my husband also had Norwegian roots.

An aunt and uncle of the missus emigrated to Sweden - we've got quite of lot of relatives now there.

One of my sister-in-law's family spends their holidays every year in Scandinavia (this year touring again through Norway).

The Swedish vikings came from Svealand and were called svear. Or they came from Roslagen and called themselves ruser.
Also called Östfarare = East travellers. There is much less written down about them than the westtravlers as people in the area they went were not so good in writing.
The East travellers went to the Black Sea and also from there over to the Meditiranian.
Bonde in Swedish means farmer and not serf as you said. Sweden never really had serfs.
Gustav Vasa is probably today mostly remember for Vasa loppet
Vasaloppet ((Swedish) for: "The Vasa Race") is an annual long distance cross-country ski race held on the first Sunday of March. The 90 km (56 mi) course starts in the village of Sälen and ends in town of Mora in northwestern Dalarna, Sweden. It is the oldest and longest cross-country ski race in the world as well as the one with the highest number of participants

The race was inspired by a notable journey made by King Gustav Vasa when he was fleeing from Christian II's soldiers in 1520. The modern competition started in 1922 and it has been a part of the Worldloppet events since 1978.

Bonde is a farmer
Bondgård is a farm
Husbonde is head of a farm
Husband comes from old Nordic.
Husfru = Housewife has today a negative meaning but use to mean head of the household. Today the title husfru means a woman who in hotels and restaurants has to organize everything and she also takes care of the budget.

What about thralls? At least, they were something between serfs and slaves.

Thralls were the lowest-class of workers in Scandinavian society. They were Northern Europeans brought into slavery due to debt, the losers of wars, and the children of previous thralls. Thralls in Scandinavia had no rights and their living conditions were variable depending on the master. The thrall trade as the prize of plunder was a key part of the Viking economy. While there are some estimates of as many as thirty slaves per household, most families only owned one or two slaves.

The thrall trade was transformed with the coming of Christianity. While the enslavement of "heathens" was sanctioned by the Catholic Church, the enslavement of Christians was not and was considered a sin, so that with the Christianization of Scandinavia, the demand shifted to non-Christian thralls. By the end of the Viking Age in c. 1100 AD, the thrall population consisted of few Christians and mostly Slavic and Scandinavian pagans. The Christian Scandinavians had a de facto monopoly on the thrall trade because Scandinavia continued to have a large pagan population.