Anna Lihammer - Medan mörkret faller

Today is my birthday and even though I have other things I really need to do, I spent all morning reading.

I have long thought about reading the mystery books by Anna Lihammer because people say that they are good and Medan mörkret faller (While the darkness falls) was elected best mystery debute of 2014. Beside, Anna is a colleague of mine, being a Swedish archaeologist and Medan mörkret faller is set in 1934.

The time setting in the 1930's made me draw lots of parallels to the books and TV series about the Honourable Phryne Fisher. Mostly the episode The Blood of Juana the Mad, because Lihammer's book is about somewhat the same themes and is also about a gruesome murders among medical staff in a university milieu.

The story is a reaction to Lihammer gaining the knowledge about skull collections in Sweden, but also the fact that in 1934 the Swedish parliament voted for a law about compulsory sterilization of people who weren't considered fit enough for "carrying on the Swedish race". The law remained in place until 1976.

I really enjoy this book and I think it is very evident that Lihammer is an archaeologist. She dwells into the time period, making it come alive just like in the books/TV series about Phryne Fisher.
She also talks about how human bodies (both alive and dead) are treated like objects. Of course this is something archaeology deals with all the time and which I think we need to discuss more than we do.

Det var inte första gången någon reagerade på hans utseende, det hände ofta och det var inte alltid negativt. Men intresset brukade inte så tydligt göra honom till ett samlingsvärt objekt, uppmätt och liksom klart för sortering (Not for the first time, did someone react to his appearance, it happend often and not always in a negative way. But the interest seldom so obviously made him into a collectable, measured and ready to be sorted.)

~ Anna Lihammer, Medan mörkret faller

The book also reminded me of an episode of History Cold Case. It also dealt with human bodies as collectables and study objects and discovered a story about a child who probably was killed because of human bodies being coveted for the study of medicine. It is a terrible, dark side to the more recent past of Sweden and many other Western countries. Evil done in the name of science. One might wonder how people can become so cold blooded, but I do not think it is so strange somehow. It all has to do with who you define as human.

Den nya tiden. Den moderna tiden. Han undrade hur många av besökarna som skulle passa in där. Och vad som skulle hända med dem som inte gjorde det, för visioner brukade förr eller senare leda till att de som inte kunde uppfylla dem sorterades bort. Ju storslagnare visioner, desto hårdare sortering.  (The new time. The modern time. He wondered how many of the visitors would fit in there. And what would happen to the ones who did not, because visions sooner or later used to led to the ones who could not fulfill them being sorted out. Greater visions led to harder sorting)

~ Anna Lihammer, Medan mörkret faller

The Swedish law of compulsory sterilization is actually one expression of this sorting, scientific racism another and Lihammer builds up the book plot surrounding this question of who are defined as humans. It is dark and gruesome and really horrible. A dark past that is poking on the present still.

Johanne Hildebrandt - Sigrid, Sagan om Valhalla

Sigrid is the fourth book in Johanne Hildebrandt's Sagan om Valhalla series and the first one to take place in the Viking Age. The name of the main character to me is rather special since one of my two middle names is Sigrid. The book does not have anything to do with me though. The Sigrid it is supposed to portray is the "Swedish" queen Sigrid Storråda (Sigrid the Haughty according to Wikipedia) who first married the "Swedish" king Erik Segersäll (Erik Victorious), but who later divorced him and remarried Danish king Svend Tveskæg (Sweyn Forkbeard). The book is about Sigrid Tostesdotter who is forced to marry Erik, but falls in love with Svend instead. The connection to Freja is not entirely clear, but it is said that Sigrid is related to her and there is also talk about what happened to Saga and the geneaology in between the book about Saga (The post was updated 1 september 2016.) and the one about Sigrid.

At first I thought the topic for this book would be, the Christianisation of Scandinavia and/or the changing power structures which that entailed. It is my favourite research topic and I think I have something to say about it. However, as I thought more about the historical Sigrid Storråda I found a more interesting topic would be her power and her marriages. Actually I think you can find out a lot about her character (and also the role of the Viking woman) from how she handled her relationships. This sounds perhaps very much like "a woman is nothing without a man", but I do intend this to be something completly different.

In a time when marriages were much more a matter of politics (Especially in the higher end of the social ladder that Sigrid belonged to.) her choices of husbands do not seem so strange. I think the historical Sigrid was much more practical in this than Hildebrandt's Sigrid. For short I do not think she hated one (Erik) and loved the other (Svend). Instead I think she had a very strict view of both her power and the politics of Scandinavia during this time.

In a way this gives her a connection to what is probably one of the most famous female rulers throughout history: Cleopatra VII of Egypt. I am sure everyone have heard all about her love life, but because of my love for the British children's show Horrible Histories, I will leave a link to their Lady Gaga inspired song so they can tell you the short version:

Cleopatra also had two pretty famous relationships: Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) for which she is actually most famous. It has been pretty easy to rally about Cleopatra and her relationships and lots of people (mostly men) have done so both in the past and in the present. However, I want to put her and Sigrid Storråda together and see if I can say something about them as people beyond their husbands by looking at their relationships to them.

We have already established that marriages for the Viking elite was more about politics than love and the same is true for Ptolemaic/Roman Egypt. Looking at Sigrid's and Cleopatra's relationships they actually both seem to have been pretty politically consious women. Establishing allies with the most powerful men in their world (Erik Segersäll and Svend Tveskæg respectively Caesar and Mark Antony) they seem to both had thought about what would give them most power. They also happened to establish this power by bearing everyone of these four men's children. This was probably the only means women in upper class families could gain influence and power (if their husbands didn't die). What I think is interesting too about this is the fact that Sigrid actually manages to get a divorce from Erik (The Norse written sources are not clear as to why, so I will leave it at that.) and manages to get some power status for herself while "between marriages" (so to speak). When she divorced Erik, she also took away all the new allies she had brought into the marriage.

In my last entry about chess I talked about how the change from vizir to queen in the European version of chess was an excellent way of showing the importance of women in Early Medieval Europe and Sigrid's story supports this. The women seem to have been very important in the political structures of the time and also free to move as they pleased. Sigrid's marriages to both Erik and Svend and her divorce from Erik show to me that she was a very politically consious woman and her children ended up on both the Swedish and Danish thrones at the time. I also think the Christian church's negative attitude towards divorces might have originated from this power that the women had in divorces.

Detail of the Oseberg ship

The story of Cleopatra is far more tragic, but I do not think her society was as open to female power as the Viking one was. Her relationships to two of the most powerful political leaders show, just like Sigrid's that she had a political mind. It was not her fault that she ended up on the losing side.

Last but not least, the Scandinavian archaeological artefact I have chosen for this entry is a picture showing how beautifully decorated the Norwegian Oseberg ship is. The ship burial belongs to my favourites. It was found in Oseberg in Vestfold in Norway and excavated in 1904-05 by Norwegian Haakon Shetelig and Swedish Gabriel Gustafson. It was a burial of two women and included lots of precious artefacts. More information can be found here.


I read the hardcover verison of Sigrid, since that is the one I own myself (and it is really nice), but I think the papercover edition is so wonderfully beautiful, that I just had to include a picture of it. The picture was borrowed from here.
The Youtube clip is owned by CBBC. 
The picture of the Oseberg ship was taken from Wikipedia.

Jennifer Kent - The Babadook

Essie Davis in The Babadook

The Babadook is an Australian horror film by Jennifer Kent and was also the first time I (consciously) saw Essie Davis who plays the main character Amelia.

Amelia is a single mother and has a six year old son named Samuel (Noah Wiseman). She was widowed when her husband died in a car crash while they were on the way to the hospital when Samuel was born. Samuel is quite difficult and gets expelled from school for bringing his homemade weapons. One day the mother and son find a book about the Babadook and start reading it. This is when you can say that all hell breaks loose for them.

Like so many others have done, I really enjoyed this film. I enjoyed that it left a lot to the imagination of the audience and did not use jump scares so much. I also enjoyed how psychological it was. I found the film scary from time to time, but the main feeling I had was sadness. I felt so sorry for Amelia and her son. They were pretty much isolated from the rest of the world and most people were quite mean to both of them. It is also a very beautiful film.

Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman in The Babadook

I can go on and on about how much I love Essie Davis as an actress (but I will not). I think she is amazing and as I said before, this was the film where I discovered her talents. If I had not read it I would not have thought that she was the same actress as is playing Phryne Fisher who I discovered because of this film, but who I today love even more. Noah Wisman is also wonderful! At first you get really angry and irritated since Samuel is very annoying, but as the film moves on and Amelia starts to get more and more insane, you start feel sorry for him.

I see the film more symbolically than literally and this might be why I was more sad than scared. To me it is a very good exploration of depression and repressed feelings. It shows a single parents struggle with life and a difficult child while suffering from sleep deprivation. I myself, grew up with a single mother and I can guarantee I have had many ups and downs throughout my life.

The film also reminded me of an episode in my hometown a couple of years back: A depressed single mother lost welfare help and first kept her two young sons home from school and then drowned them in the lake.

Essie Davis in The Babadook

Depression is really terrible. It changes everything inside you to an extent that is not entirely obvious to someone who has never been affected by it. Most often, you do not realise that you are depressed until it is too late. It is a hard condition and takes a long time to get better. The Babadook strives towards the light though. The ending is quite happy even though it also shows that the monsters do not go away all together.


I borrowed the pictures in this entry from the official Babadook site and I hope that was okay.