kanske det mindre konstigt är att dö för kung och land

[iceinyourmusic]

och lever jag tills jag blir stor och fyller femton år
till samma svält, till samma kamp, till samma död jag går
där kulor vina tätast då
där skall man finna mig också
där vill ock jag försöka på
i mina fäders spår!

\o/

Runeberg's Day.

Comments

[karintheswede]

Happy Runeberg's Day.

(I like Främlingens Syn. It's so sad.)

[leksa.livejournal.com]

Thank you, belatedly.

(It is very sad. Actually, you know, I quite like Runeberg in general - he writes beautifully - it's just that, largely thanks to subject matter and other connotations, the expression on my face whenever I read him really is pretty much exactly the same as on the bunny's in my icon. ahem.)

[karintheswede]

hahaha

One thing that kinda bothers me about R is that he wasn't even born in '09. And then he goes and writes what became the definitive '08-'09 war epic. Which is kinda strange, to me.

(is hugely traumatic here, of course, the loss in '09. So traumatic that we do not speak of it. (as is always the case with national trauma and the swedish volksgeist))

[leksa.livejournal.com]

He was too born in '09! He was all of... five years old. ahem.

You know, I've never really thought of it that way, which I think is also curious. I wonder if this is a cross-cultural (our micro version of, etc.) difference-in-frames-of-reference reception/framing thing, actually - Fänrik Stål as depicting the '08-'09 war vs. as using historical events as material for 19th-c.-Romantic-type nation-making. To me, I guess, the latter aspect sort of overshadows the former to such an extent, I don't think I've ever given the former much thought - where by "me" I obviously mean me-as-grounded-in-the-Finnish-tradition-of-interpretation, because I don't really have that much of an intimately personal relationship with the good Mister R. And that aspect (the historical fiction/national spirit/nation building) is/was obviously such an old trick, it's never seemed problematic to me at all, but it would probably be weird if the other aspect (the war-as-such) didn't get foregrounded a little differently in the Swedish readings. I would guess? (Seriously, I'm not a Runeberg scholar, and know nothing factual about his general reception apart from what one learns in school, so I may be entirely in the wrong here, but I would guess.)

Iiinteresting.