Anders Nyberg's blog

När jag var 11 år spenderade jag mesta tiden mellan påsk och midsommar på Mora Lasarett. Ett fall i skidbacken orsakade en spricka i lårbenet som uppdagade en cysta som fylldes igen med ben från höftkammen. Fastän jag egentligen var för ung för det hamnade jag på vuxenavdelningen efter operationen. Tiden på lasarettet blev en slags initiationsrit in i vuxenlivet. Jag minns den som en mestadels ljus tid, ett helande som också var ett växande. Sen dess har jag aldrig opererats. Förrän nu. Fastän jag bor bara ett par km från länets största sjukhus i Falun skulle jag åter åka till Mora, den här gången för att få mitt ljumskbråck lagat. Jag tyckte att det var litet kul att det blev Mora igen. Skulle jag känna igen mig? Vad är det som förändrats, i mig, i sjukvården, i tiden? Jag följde instruktionerna innan så samvetsömt jag kunde. Enligt systern jag pratade med inför besöket så var det OK att komma med bussen som gick 6.30 från Falun även om jag skulle komma ca en halvtimme ...

Today it is exactly 50 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  50 years ago His death has been described as the first global news event. I remember it   very clearly as a morning when my small and peaceful world was given a severe blow. A family in a small village, in a small country in the periphery of geography and history was sha ken to its foundation by the news from Dallas. We sat shocked and saddened at breakfast around the radio, before I hurried away to school anxious and overcome. It could have been a little boy anywhere around the globe, the world was united in its grief. I remember it "as if yesterday". Or rather; Within yourself you car ry  a child's strong impressions "as if today" everyday.   75 years ago But earlier in november we also remembered another historical event; it was 75 years since the "Crystal Night", when the first ghastly convulsion of the Holocaust raged across Germany in 1938.  Did w...

Our seminary leaders Caroline Kyhlbäck, Ifrah Hassan och Anna Lundstedt walk through the gate to the Vadstena Abbey Cemetary. /  We have arrived at the monastery in Vadstena. We walk with happy feet through the gates of tradition following in the steps of radical feminism. 700 years later, Saint Bridget still stands out among radicals in this country. Such courage, such perseverance, such visions! Visions, like aspiring gothic vaults, that still hold the strength and viability to lift a big cathedral. Vadstena church is not a ruin like many other in the vicinity but a living organism. The seminary on the theme ”Integeration” was led by three other young, radical and gifted ladies: one newly ordained priest, one Muslim pedagogue with roots in Somalia and one ethnologist. It was fun, thought-provoking and transcending. Like when Ifrah talked about how she as a Muslim applied for the Swedish Church ”parish-pedagogue” education. And would not be accepted despite the fact...

This picture is taken in Vauldalen, just a few km from the Swedish border. There you can find well-cared for and seemingly thriving farms all the way up to the tree-limit. Norway holds in high esteem that the countryside should be viable and gives support for small farming. How far will I have to walk on the Swedish side before I find a similar farm? 200 km? 300 km? Despite the fact that  42% of EU:s budget is allocated to farming and rural development  there are no corresponding farms on the Swedish side of the border. It makes a big difference in the landscape you walk through. Animals and people can survive here in spite of harsh conditions. And the landscape is kept open and alive. It creates a beauty and balance in both the geography of the landscape and the demography of the nation. One of many small farms is Kirkvollen in Tydal. The farm has passed from father to son since the beginning of the eighteenhundreds.  Ingebrikt Kirkvold runs the  ...

The hunter-gatherer... In this weeks issue of Science Magazine there is an article on "Origins and Genetic Legacy of Neolithic Farmers and Hunter-Gatherers in Europe" . Based on DNA evidence it shows that agriculture in Europe has not spread from human to human via word of mouth but rather been introduced across the continent by people moving from its point of origin in the Middle East 11000 years ago to Northern Europe where it was introduced about 6000 years ago. The farmers lived side by side with the hunter-gatherers for thousands of years before an assimilation took place and the two ways of life and peoples became one. But still today you find more hunter-gatherer genes the further North in Europe you go and more farmer genes in the South.  When you are out walking like we are here in the North you cannot but make the reflexion that all this sounds very plausible. "The path" surely brings out a hunter-gatherer in you… . Of course we as manki...

I cannot stop looking at this picture that has been floating around on facebook. 'And suddenly, I looked at the bull. He had this innocence that all animals have in their eyes, and he looked at me with this pleading. It was like a cry for justice, deep down inside of me. I describe it as being like a prayer - because if one confesses, it is hoped, that one is forgiven. I felt like the worst shit on earth." Regardless of this commentary from the toreador is authentic or not it doesn't takeaway anything from the picture which shows the collapse of Torrero Alvaro Munera, as he realized in the middle of his last fight the injustice to the animal. From that day forward he became an opponent of bullfights. An epic meeting between man and beast. Man forgiven by beast and by accepting the forgiveness becoming more than mere beast himself, becoming a true man! One who does not let his supposedly superior intellect and consciousness separate him from his oneness with creation a...

English below Det har dykt upp en sida på facebook: ” Vi som minns Falun Folkmusik Festival ” där människor som drabbades av den festivalens kraft berättar litet minnen. Minnen är till för att förstå nuet bättre, endast därför känns det meningsfullt med en liten tillbakablick.   Första m innesbilden : Massajerna vid Stångtjärn, men det är inte bara en bild, det är mycket ljud också, och doft och känsla… De ståtliga massaj-männen sjunger och dansar i en cirkel vända inåt, och vi andra står tätt, tätt runt om. Trycker oss mot, vill vara delaktiga, förstå och känna den afrikanska magin som på något sätt bubblar fram från cirkelns mitt. Intensiteten i sången och de rytmiska hoppen växer och trans-dansen går mot ett klimax. De atletiska männens hårslingor, inbakade med kodynga, slår mot mitt ansikte ibland när de hoppar; en doft av afrikansk jord, en konkret känsla  av Afrikas mystik  mot min kind. Som om jag aldrig varit så nära Afrika ...