Phrack, a kickstarter video and romanticized farewells

As I said in my previous entry, I am taking a course in Ethnology this semester. I felt a need to broaden my perspective of the notion of culture that I hope to make a PhD in archaeology about one day. The course has proved to be very good even though the sort of shallow time frame of the subject has me confused from time to time. If you are used to thinking in a time frame that is often thousands of years, it is definitely a challenge to limit it to the last 200. I still love it though and the literature has given me inspiration for a lot of different blogposts. Unfortunately, it has also given me less time to write them.
Anyway, on 15 September Every Cloud Production, the production company behind Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries started a Kickstarter campaign to finance the upcoming Phryne film Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears. I have to say that I am more excited and positive towards it than I was back in November last year when I wrote a post about my thoughts and feelings about a continuation of the franchise. My worries are still intact, but I have faith in them to make it good, so I did pledge. Not least because seeing Nathan Page talk to Essie Davis in the video they made for the campaign made me realise just how much I miss seeing them together.

The video was awsome. I love how Nathan is both himself, Jack and the fans of the show in it. (And before you say anything: I actually love how he looks! I think he looks like a Viking!) It starts with him looking at the end of Death Do Us Part and then he berates Jack for letting her fly away from him. When Fiona Eager and Deb Cox tells him about their plans for the films including all the foreign lovers, he seems to get a bit offended until Fiona reassures him that Jack will go after her and that Phryne cannot do anything without him.

After explaining about the Kickstarter campaign, Nathan calls the director Tony Tilse who tells him he should really talk to the most important person of them all, so of course Nathan calls Essie too and I love to see them talking to one another. I have seriously missed seeing them together and it put a smile on my face when they said that they missed each other. Yes, I am so in love with both of them. Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is my biggest nerdiness at the time and I am proud of how nerdy I am!

Now you probably wonder what all of this has to do with my Ethnology class. Nothing at all, even though talking about the so famous Folkhemmet concept which the course has made me realise has been more influential to the Swedes than I think we often understand and want to admit, has had me thinking about Phryne and I have felt a need to compare what the course literature says about Sweden in "the Phryne era". However, my thoughts about Folkhemmet and how it all has me thinking about Phryne deserves its own blogpost soon, but not this one.

Instead I want to focus on something I read in one of my course books Kulturanalytiska verktyg by Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren (2012). In chapter 4, they describe an ethnological survey at a train station and brought up how they are often used in films for dramatizing farewells. This has created a romanticized version of those farewells and my mind immediately went to the end scene of Death Do Us Part.

I love how Nathan berates Jack for just letting Phryne fly away and it is very much a typical farewell scene (at an airfield instead of a train station though). However, I feel like there is a twist to the scene that a lot of other, similar ones lack.

"Come after me Jack Robinson!" 

~ Pryne Fisher

I cannot recall that I have talked about how Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries often takes a somewhat cliché subject and twist it a little before, but the last scene of Death Do Us Part belongs in that category. Phryne is about to leave which, from what we know about Phryne, is typical behaviour for her (I have talked about it here.). When Jack turns up to say goodbye however, Phryne immediately jumps out of the plane to run up to him.

To me her asking him to come after her is a testament to just how much her mismatched Melbourne family in general and Jack in particular has come to mean to her. He wants Jack in her life and their kiss seals the deal that he will obey her. The scene and the episode, end with Phryne flying away with her father. However, the scene is not as dramatical and Jack does not shed any tears. Instead he stands calmly on the ground looking at her as she disappears in the plane, a small smile lightening up his face. To me it is proof that he sees it as a beginning and not an end.

The values in the term "Stone Age"

A dolmen from the Stone Age on Tjörn, Sweden

I have written two entries about the popular image of the Stone Age before on this blog, but based on a discussion in the chat of the ethnology class I am taking this semester earlier today I felt a need to write another one.

The popular image of the time period known as the Stone Age was created through colonial interactions with non-Western cultures in the Americas, Africa and Oceania. Like I wrote in the first Savage Stone Age post, this means that the popular image of this time period more than any others tends to bring out Western ethnocentric and evolutionistic contemporary biases both of the past and the present based in an imperialistic worldview. Indigenous groups were seen as the last remains of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies, making the distant present become the distant past. This means that there are more to the term "Stone Age" than just being descriptive of a time period. It comes with a set of values and is often used both degradingly and evolutionistic.

Stone Age fishing-hook,
Skåne, Sweden

The popular picture of today has not really changed so much either. We still think about a less complex society populated by uncivilised beasts that could not speak, lived in caves and hit each other over the head a lot. And of course their lives was different from ours as I talked about in my second Savage Stone Age post. Their society was complex just like ours today are. However, because there are so very little material left from the time period and most of what we do have are artefacts made out of stone. We know next to nothing about their family constellations, their sexuality or their other relations and it is not so easy to use contemporary societies for comparisons and analogies. There is really no reason to think that the same livelihood means that anything else is the same.

Funnelbeaker pot

Comparisons and analogies between a society in the distant past and in the present degrade the latter society because they deny them a past just as adventurous and complex as our own. They also degrade the contemporary societies by implying that they are static and cannot change themselves but need a "more evolved" culture (like the Western one!) to help them. It acts hierarchically, putting the Western society higher than non-industrialised ones. And last but not least, it also puts the industrialised Western society as the norm for what a real society looks like and strive for.

Battle axe

This does not mean that you cannot use the present for analogies and comparisons however. In fact you can certainly find similarities between societies of today and societies in the past. We are, after all the same spieces and basic needs like food, sleep, love etc. is still ever present in our lives. However, we need to be aware of how we are doing it, because we are stuck with a racist evolutionistic and imperialistic past that can seriously hurt non-Western societies even though it is not intended.




All photos are from Wikimedia Commons.

Miss Fisher and the Deathly Maze

I had intended this 100th entry to this blog to be a response to comments I got on my entry The development of Phryne Fisher that was published back in June. However, this summer, my real life has been quite hectic and I have had to work on two PhD applications and I have made some trips. Because of this, the activities on this blog have not been what it usually is and I am full of ideas for blogposts, so do not worry.

A few days ago, the Miss Fisher mobile game that Every Cloud Productions and Tin Man Games have made was finally available for Android and of course I had to download it right away. I have played through the first episode three times and the second only one, because I have not figured out yet how to restart it.

I mostly find it very good and I enjoy it immensely. However there are some aspects of it that do not really work for me. Mostly the characters behave as I expect them to, but the fact that everyone actually calls Jack Robinson "Jack" instead of "The Inspector" is a bit out of character for most of them. He does make the comment to Phryne in Murder on the Ballarat Train that she should call him Jack since everyone else does. However, this is not really true. Besides Phryne no one else actually calls him that besides his former in-laws George and Rosie Sanderson. It is usually "Sir" or "Inspector" and even though I can think of Mac actually calling him Jack, I cannot say the same for aunt Prudence.

The second thing I have issues with is the deduction parts. They are seriously irritating because it is not always obvious which evidences to combine to get a new lead on the case and you often end up spending to much time trying different combinations.

The biggest issue I have though is that, if you miss a clue, you end up needing to restart the whole game because you get stuck and there is no way out of the place you are in. It should be easier to move between previous stages. (There is an option to save the game, but that is not so easy to know if you are a gaming novice.)

The time frame is a bit confusing too. Sometimes it feels like the game takes place after season 3 and at times it feels like it is cannon, but it does not make sense because season 3 ended with Phryne flying away with her father. In the game Dot and Hugh have just married and are having issues and those issues are things they have been dealing with throughout season 3, but I have thought a lot about them actually having once married too. He is conservative and even though Dot is as well, she starts to grow under Phryne's care. I have thought that their relationship through season 3 gets rushed (mostly because of all the focus in that series gives to Phryne and Jack's relationship) and I think it is actually plausible to think they might not have solved it completely when they marry in Death do us Part at the end of the season.

Phryne and Jack's relationship also seems to have moved slowly forward. Based on their conversations it seems like they are dating and one of those dates (When they are holding hands at the opera...) gets interrupted by the murder in episode 1. They also faced with issues that they tackled in season 3, but that I think might actually be a bit of a soar spot between them even if they start dating. She is clear with not being one to settle down and he is a abit jealous when other men are around. It is, however, evident that she is startled at the thought of Jack with another woman. It feels like this ambivalent feelings are things it would take time for both of them to deal with. Of course I would love to see more kissing and cuddling, but the fact that they seem to have been out on some dates already and is talking about rescheduling the opera one that got interrupted because of the murder is comforting.

I absolutely love how involved Dot is in especially the second case. I love her under cover work in the first episode (I also love that Archie Jones makes a return in the second one!) and her participation in the second case is wonderful.

The overarching plot idea also seem plausible and the game is well made. I like a lot how the characters and backgrounds are painted. It has me thinking why they cannot use the same drawings for a comic book. That to me would seriously be amazing.

To be called out on your ignorance

Yesterday I went to a writing workshop with Australian writer Gillian Polack that I might talk about more in a different blogpost. In this one, I would like to focus mainly on one thing she said that has left me feeling a bit uncomfortable all day that I seriously feel I need to comment on. It might make a lot of people uncomfortable, but since Miss Fisher fans in general seems very open-minded I hope you can at least hear me out and reflect on it before you start trolling me.

A lot of fans hang out in a certain chat forum where we discuss just about everything. Most of us there are from The US and Europe and not from Australia. This is important because it plays into why I react so much to this.

Yesterday I learned that Australian readers are used to different types of characters and writing styles to European and American ones. I think it is important to realise that Phryne is actually written into this tradition (probably in the beginning not really intended for non-Australian ones either) by an Australian author. What Gillian Polack also said yesterday, was that, if Australian authors are to be sure to make it outside of Australia, they needs to tone down their "australianess" to please Americans and Europeans (which are the biggest markets for Australian literature outside of Australia).

During discussions among (mostly) American and European fans the differences in Phryne's book and TV persona often comes up. Book-Phryne is shallow, serious and a little spoiled, while TV-Phryne is exuberant, kind and feeling.What has been bothering me all day is not other fans's opinion on the books as much as that I have not seen any comment about the "strangeness" people feel in regard to the books's writing and characters might be attributed to different cultural preferences in fiction. This is, to be honest, rather typical reactions coming from Americans and Europeans to something that is out of their familiar area too.

I really do get the strangeness, I also think the books a bit weird at times. This post is made mostly because I have kind of been called out on my ignorance and it has made me uncomfortable all day. Even more in light of the changes that were made to the characters for the TV show and I wonder how much that really was because of a want to have it work better in other countries than Australia.

I guess Australia can be seen as part of Western culture. What the whole issue really shows is that even if we are all thinking of it as homogenous, we are still quite different. I also wonder what in Swedish litarture that others find strange and if a clue is to be found in the remakes of films Hollywood does.

Returning the pens

We have had some pretty intensive political turbulence in the last couple of days over here in Sweden. I am not even going to try to explain it all to you because I seriously wonder if I have understood it all myself. .

I want to concentrate on a certain non-political aspect of the whole ordeal in this blog entry though. All the ministers that had to leave have on social media posted photos of them returning pens. To the right you can see the former Interior minister Anders Ygeman's photo of this. I chose this one because it was the first one I saw and beause it provided me with important information to research the origins of this peculiar action. Aparently there are some different versions to the story, but I found a blog post (in Swedish) from 2009 from the blog Faktoider which is my main source for the background story to this.

After one of our former prime ministers Tage Erlander had left the Swedish parliament in 1973, his wife Aina apparently felt a need for return all of the pens and pencils marked that they belonged to the estate that had ended up in their home during her husband's long time in office between 1946 and 1969 to the Swedish parliament.

As an archaeologist I always get very excited for stories like this and also about the reactions from people seeing the former ministers's pen-photos on social media. Even in a world that gets more and more digital, materialities effect us even if these pens come in the form of digital photos for most of us. Small anecdotes tied to objects like the one about the Erlanders and the pens and pencils often creates a very symbolic value to similar objects. Ygeman writes in his tweet that he returns the pens with a warm smile thinking about Aina Erlander. He knows the anecdote and the symbolical nature of what he is actually doing. But it is not only the ones who know that that reacts to it. There have been lots of people asking about it on social media since all the photos started to occur. People seem to realise there is some kind of symbolism and/or tradition to this, but it is not common knowledge to someone not involved in the Swedish Social Democratic party. This causes curiosity and from what it seems also a sense of "I need to know what this is all about". Perhaps a little curisosity also comes from the fact that it is such a seemingly insignificant (and rather cheap) object that most of us does not really reflect so much on.

What Aina Erlander thought when she decided to return them to the parliament we will never know (She died in 1990 so it is a bit hard to ask.). Perhaps she had a strong sense of what is mine and what is yours and she could overlook having all of the parliament's pens and pencils in her home when he worked for it (I can imagine a prime minister always having to be ready to head into work if something happens.), but not when he retired. Or perhaps it was purely symbolic to her as well. Her husband had worked in the parliament for such a long time and been a very public figure as the prime minister for 23 years after all and she was relieved that it was all over. Anyway I am really glad that the former ministers invited us all to be part of the symbolism and tradition and I had a lot of fun doing the research for it. You learn something new every day after all.

Historical Women - Eva Ekeblad

Eva Ekeblad was the daughter of count Magnus Julius de la Gardie and his wife Hedvig Catharina Lilje and born on 10 July 1724. In 1741, when she was 16, she married statesman (riksråd) and count Claes Claesson Ekeblad. The castles Mariedal outside of Götene and Lindholmen outside of Lidköping where her husband also owned the mansion Stola herrgård, all of them in the Swedish province Västergötland. In Stockholm, the family owned Ekebladska huset at Arsenalgatan. Together with her husband, Eva had seven children (one son and six daughters) of which six survived into adulthood. Claes died in 1771. As a stateswoman and a friend of queen Lovisa Ulrika, she was present at the birth of the crown prince Gustav (later Gustav III) in 1778.

Because Claes were so often absent, she had to handle the family properties all by herself and also had to step in for him in the local politics where she is said to have been strict, but fair and often defended the peasantry against abuse from the authorities.

Eva was a scientist and made a lot of experiments on potatoes. It had been brought to Sweden and cultivated in the Botanical Garden in Uppsala by Olof Rudbeck in 1658 and was popularised by Jonas Alströmer who lived in the town Alingsås in Västergötland, not too far from Eva. But Eva discovered that potatoes could be used to make bread, starch and powder. However, it was her realisation that the plant could also be used to make alcohol that had her earning a place in Vetenskapsakademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Science) in 1748. She was the first woman to earn the place there, but there are no indications that she was ever invited to be part of the meetings and the memberships seems to have had more of an honourary status. However, the academy did encourage her and other women to continue with inventions and experiments that would benefit the household.

She died on 15 May 1786

Female Archaeologists - Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on this day (14 July) into a wealthy family in Washington New Hall in County Durham, England in 1868. Her mother died in childbirth three years later and Gertrude was very close to her mill-owning father Sir Hugh Bell who had held several government positions.

Her family's wealth gave her access to the universities and she studied at both Queen's College London and Oxford university. Her studied history which was one of the few subjects that was opened to women at the time. In two years she recieved a first class honours degree.

After graduating, she spent a lot of time travelling the world. During this time she developed a passion for archaeology and languages. Beside English, she spoke Arabic, Persian, French and German, Italian and Turkish.

Her heart lay in archaeology, but she was also a linguist, writer and the best woman mountaineer of her age. She gained interest in the Arabic world and its culture and made extensive journeys across the Middle East. Her knowledge about the Arabs also led to a position as a British secret agent during the First World War after first having volontered as a nurse in France.

After the war, she became focused all her research on Mespotamia and supported an independent Iraqi and became active in their politics. She supported Lawrence of Arabia's protege Faisal and used her connections to have him crowned king. After this, she acted as his advisor. In Iraq, she got the nickname Kathun which means fine lady or gentlewoman.

‘I’ll never engage in creating kings again; it’s too great a strain,’ 

 ~ Gertrud Bell in a letter to her father

In 1923, she opened Bagdad Archaeological Museum (later renamed the Iraqi museum). Unfortunately, the museum was plundered during the Iraqi war in 2003.

On 12 July 1926 Gertrud was found dead after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. It is unclear if it was deliberate or not.

Historical Women - Greta Johansson

The Olympics were held in Stockholm in 1912 and for the first time, women were allowed to compete in swimming and diving. Star of the games was 17-year-old Greta Johansson, but lets take it from the beginning.

Anna Theresa Margareta (Greta) Johansson was born in Stockholm on 9 January 1895, the youngest of four siblings in a working class home. Her father was the janitor at the steam-driven mill Eldkvarn (situated where the Stockholm town hall is today). She got her education in Klara folkskola and is said to have been a pretty good student. When she was not in school, she spent a lot of time at the Stockholm muncipal bath Strömbadet where she learned to both swim and dive. 

She won her first competition in 1908 and went on to compete for Sweden in the Stockholm olympics in 1912 where she won the diving competition. With her victory, she became the first ever female Swedish Olympic gold medallist.

Left: Stockholm City Hall; Upper right: Strömbadet;
Lower right:Eldkvarn

In 1912, she also met the Swedish diver Ernst Brandsten. He had emigrated to the US where he was part of a dare devil diver's team called The Flying Vikings. Greta fell in love with him and would join him in America two years later where they married and started training new swimmers and divers at Standford university in California for some years developing the sports to what they are today. They worked side by side, but of course Ernst was the one gaining most fame. (Even though Greta was the only won out of the two who had won the Olympics. Ernst only came on 6th place in Stockholm in 1912.)

In 1923 they started up their own swimmer's paradise, Searsville Lake Park in Searsville Lake in California, USA. Greta's husband was also appointed to train the American swimming and diving team for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics where they won every medal.

Greta was elected into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1973 and died peacefully in her sleep in 1978.





Photos from Wikipedia and Stockholmskällan.

The development of Phryne Fisher

Bort ifrån en stad nå'nstans i Sverige flyr en kvinna.  

Hon har flytt så många gånger förr  

Varje gång är det svårt

Varje gång hon blir bortdriven,

Stänger hon en inre dörr. 

Och där bakom dörren skapar hon sin egen himmel

Svarta silhuetter emot skyn

De är där, hennes folk

Det är vännerna som träder fram 

För hennes inre syn

Svarta silhuetter

Tusen och en nätter

Allt går om och om igen

Skuggorna är långa

Drömmarna så många

Långt ifrån och länge sen

(Away from a town somewhere in Sweden a woman runs. She has fled so many times before. Every time it is hard. Every time she gets driven away, she closes an inner door. And there behind the door she creates her own heaven, black silhouettes against the sky. They are there, her people. It is the friends who appear before her inner sight. Black silhouettes. One thousands and one nights. The shadows are long. The dreams are many. Far away and long ago.)

 ~ Svarta silhuetter, Hjälp sökes; 

Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson

 

The lyrics above is an extract from the song Svarta silhuetter (Black Silhouettes - a link to Sofia Pekkari singing the song can be found here) from the musical Hjälp sökes (Help wanted) written by Swedish writer Kristina Lugn and with music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from ABBA. I had not heard about it until recently, but I will save that story for another entry. The second verse of Svarta silhuetter had me thinking about Phryne Fisher and I realised it is about time that I made an update of the entry I made about 14 months ago as sort of the start up to this blog. After that I have discussed her character a few times, not least in the entries about Blood and Circuses and now it is time to discuss her a little bit more. There are some differences between Phryne's book and television persona and this entry will focus entirely on the TV version. I have not finished all the books yet and TV-Phryne is therefore the one I know best.

A plotline created for the TV show is that Phryne has a little sister called Jane who got kidnapped and murdered by Murdoch Foyle when they were children. He has never confessed to the kidnapping and the only reason why he is in jail is because of a failed kidnapping attempt on another girl. The main reason why she returns to Melbourne is to prevent him from getting out of jail and this is the overarching plotline of the first season.

Jack: "That wouldn't have anything to do with you barging in there like a freight train, would it?"
Phryne: "I was a charming freight train."

~ Death by Miss Adventures

Phryne is not exactly open about her past, neither does she seem to reflect to much upon either that or the future. Her hedonistic, adventurous side makes her live in the here and now and also from time to time a little bit careless of other people's feelings. Especially Detective Inspector Jack Robinson's who calls her a freight train in Death by Miss Adventures. Phryne does not deny this either, just commenting on the fact that she is a charming one. This indicates that she has self-distance and do realise her flaws.

Phryne grew up in the poor neighbourhood of Collingwood in Melbourne, something that she actually seems pretty proud of. She knows where she is coming from and does not shy away from it. Instead she uses it as a strength both in her professional and personal life.

From what I gather, her father inherited money and a title pretty soon after Jane disappeared when Phryne was still a child. They moved to England and I think this is where Phryne's life "on the run" really started. The move both geographically and socially must have felt like a great relief, but I think Phryne also learned that the easiest way out of situations that demand deeper thoughts and feelings is to flee.

Someone I know's first reaction to Phryne was that she was a shallow female James Bond archetype which is a very common comparison, not least from the author Kerry Greenwood and the producers behind Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Every Cloud Productions. I have talked a lot about how I think this is a degradation of Phryne in previous entries (e.g. here) and also that I think the Astrid Lindgren girls (especially Madicken) is a far better comparison (e.g. here). I will not repeat that argument here (you have to read the linked entries if you want to see my thoughts on the subject), but I have for a while thought about if there is anything to the claim that Phryne is a shallow character.

To be honest, my first instinct was to yell a firm no, but the more I thought about it and also did some rewatches of the series, the more I realised that it is not really true, but there is something to it anyway. Phryne does appear shallow at first glance. From time to time she also seems to make herself appear shallow to get what she wants (mainly from men), which is evident for example in her first meeting with Jack.

In a way, I think the whole first season is about her maturing. I would not say that she grows up, because she is totally capable of taking care of herself like an adult. But the Phryne that steps off the ship in Melbourne in Cocaine Blues is not really a mature woman. This is especially evident in the scene from Murder on the Ballarat train when she hangs out from the end of the train. I cannot see her doing that in season 3.

"I haven't taken anything seriously since 1918"

 ~ Phryne Fisher, The Green Mill Murders

How she handles the war and her relationship with René Dubois also indicates her flighty lifestyle before she returns to Melbourne. I also get the feeling that while obviously meeting a lot of people during that time, she does not really form any deeper connections to those people. They more ressembles "black silhouettes". Of course she has her family and there is Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan (I get a feeling that we have not really explored their backstory at all on the show really), but no one that she meets on a daily basis. There is another song from Hjälp sökes called Den jag ville vara (The one I wanted to be - sung again by Sofia Pekkari here).



Människan är skapt för att tänja ytterligheter
Bortesta gränsen 
Dömd att för evigt försöka flytta staketen
För existensen

Den jag ville vara
Hon som vågar språnget
Ut i själva livet
Hon som vet att inget är avgjort och givet
Henne ska jag bli
Någonstans i tiden 
Ska den andra kvinnan bli till
Hon är jag om jag vill
Stark och vig tar hon ett språng
Den jag ville vara
Ska jag bli en gång

(Humans are created to stretch the extreme. She who dares the leap out into life itself. She who knows that nothing is decided and given. She's the one I will become. Somewhere in time the other woman will be created. She is I if I want to. Strong and agile she takes a leap. The one I wanted to be, I will become once. )

 ~ Den jag ville vara, Hjälp sökes; 

Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson

When she returns to Melbourne, she almost immediatelly meets pretty much all of the mis-matched group that will form her new family. She does not let them in easily, but she starts caring enough about them so she keeps them close.

Jack tells her at the end of Blood at the Wheel that he will never try to change her, but in a way he already does. I think that is one of the best signs for a healthy relationship of any kind (not just romantically). The people we attach ourselves to, (un)consiously starts to rub off on us. This so we can actually make room for them in our lives. Phryne is probably not used to this attachment. She contiunes to just move along like "a freight train", not realising that she can actually hurt people until she already has. This is especially true when it comes to Jack who, on the other hand, spend pretty much all of his time in reflective mood.

But it is not only the people in Melbourne who has Phryne stop unning. No, the main reason behind her return is because she is more or less forced to meet her past when Murdoch Foyle is about to be let out of prison.

Guido Lupinacci says in Murder and Mozzarella that there is no future in the past. I can see where he means, but as an archaeologist I cannot totally agree. In fact I would say there is lot of future in the past. Not least for Phryne. My motto is that you cannot move forward unless you look backwards. That is really the main reason why I dig downwards. (För att komma framåt måste man se bakåt. Det är därför jag gräver nedåt). This does not mean that you should live in the past. On the contrary, you always need to start from the present. I can go on and on about the the importance of the past for both the present and the future, but that is a topic for another entry.

Phryne's own actions during the first season of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries also go totally against Guido's quote. During the first season she needs not only to face Foyle and Jane's kidnapping/murder, but also René and she comes out of all of it stronger. I find the moment when Phryne reaches out her hand and Jack grabs it at the site where Jane's body has been buried a prof of how much she has evolved throughout the season in regards to having people around. She's not fleeing. She faces her past, present and future all at once. She lets people in. They are not only black silhouettes. They are there to catch her when she falls.

Swedish Midsummer

Since I blogged about the winter solstice in December, I thought I should talk a little about the summer solstice today. Not least since it is the second largest holiday in Sweden. This is the day when the normally so reserved Swedes really let loose.

I understand that midsummer must seem so unbelievably strange to an outsider. We days around a big phallos singing about frogs, rockets and walking around junipear trees doing our laundry. We eat herring and new potatoes and party all night. We also pick 7 flowers to put underneath our pillow so we should dream about the one we are going to marry.

The way we celebrate is a mix of older and newer traditions. The way we celebrate today mostly dates to the end of the 19th and early 20th century. However, the festivities are far older than that.

The midsummer celebration is mentioned already in the Icelandic Sagas from the 13th century and the midsummer pole (originally called may pole) can be traced back as far as the christianisation. It is decorated with leaves and flowers to celebrate all things that grow.

We do not really know for sure for how long we've celebrated midsummer in Sweden, but it is described in Historia om de nordiska folken (History of the Nordic people) which dates back to the 16th century. Back then it was celebrated on the day of John the baptist (23 June) every year. From 1953 however, it has always been celebrated on the Friday and this year it happens to be on that day.

I do not find it so surprising that our biggest holidays are Christmas and midsummer. Living here you really notice the contrasts between the seasons. The winters are dark and cold and the summers bright and warm. Of course we want to celebrate the turning towards a brighter existence in the darkest of winter and of course we want to celebrate the time when it is the brightest too. I love the fact that Norse mythology deals with these contrasts with the cold and dark and the light and warm. It was created in the special situation we have living up here and I think this is one of the reasons why Christianity has never really been able to claim the midsummer night. It still feel a bit magic.

The Sture costumes

The Sture costumes

I showed you this photo already in my entry about the Sture murders, but they are just so awsome that they deserve to be talked about on their own.

What is the Sture costumes? They are the clothes that were worn by Svante Sture and his two sons Nils and Erik on 24 May 1567. They are said to be the only completely preserved male costumes from the renaissance. I am not sure if this is true, but it is certainly rare to have clothes in general left from that time and even more rare to have them come complete with stabbing wounds and blood stains.

The chest Märta put the clothes in
Photo: Lennart Engström, Upplandsmuseet

After the murder Svante's widow and Nils and Erik's mother Märta Leijonhufvud took care of their clothes and put them in a chest that was placed on top of their grave in the Sture choir in Uppsala cathedral. The chest and some of the clothes can be seen at the exhibition in the Uppsala cathedral's museum in Uppsala. It once contained, among other things the clothes of Svante, Nils and Erik that is now in the museum and a hat that belonged to Svante's and Märta's son Sten who died in a sea battle two years prior to the murders. Two years after the murder, Märta also put down the release protocol for Svante, Nils and Erik.

Svante Sture

The clothes are influenced by Spanish as well as German contemporary fashion.

Svante's costume (the one to the left in the photo above) is of a little older model than the ones belonging to his sons. Based on the form of the clothes, he also seems to have been shorter and a bit more robust than both of his sons who, based on their clothes must have been quite tall and slender.

Svante's jacket is made of black velvet with greyish green decorations and the pluderhosen is of taffeta. Mainly on the right side of the jacket, you can see blood stains.

Nils Sture

Nils Sture's costume (in the middle in the photo above) is a  typical travelling outfit for noble men of the time. The jacket is made in chamois leather and traces show it was originally painted black. In a list of inventory from the Uppsala cathedral from 1780 it is noted that the jacket had 19 silver buttons. Of those, only one is still there today. The stab wounds are evident.

The pluderhosen he wore is of black woollen. The fact that Nils wears a travel costume is not really strange. He was emprisoned as soon as he returned from a trip to Alsace-Lorraine where he proposed to a princess on the Erik XIV's behalf. It is said that the king wanted him to fail so he would get a reason to affront him. In the portrait to the right, Nils wears an earring in his left ear. This might be something he picked up on his trip to England where he also was ordered by Erik XIV to propose to queen Elizabeth I.

Erik Sture

Erik Sture's costume (to the right in the photo above) seems to be the one he is wearing in the portrait to the left. The jacket is made of black velvet with thin yellow braids as ornament. The pluderhosen is in taffeta like his father's and they might have once been purple in colour and not brown like today. Purple was a colour only the royals and higher nobility were allowed to wear at the time. (Disney seems to taken this to their heart in Frozen. They let Elsa throw away her purple cloak in the Let it go sequence after all.)

I do love the Sture costumes. They are prof of what I discussed a little in my entry about the exhibition Göteborgs födelse at Göteborg City Museum. Materialities tend to overbridge time gap and make history and historical people get closer. They also evoke thoughts and feelings inside of us. Märta also seems to have understood how they could be used in general memory. She saved the clothes just to have people remember her husband and sons. Unfortunately, most Swedes have today.

The Sture costume is particularly thought provoking since they actually show you real physical evidence on what seem to be quite gruesome murders. Reconstructions have been made comparing the clothes's stab wounds to the account of the murders from the written sources and they seem to match up quite well. What got me to react the most in this case is that the blood stains have actually rusted. I knew very well that there is iron in blood, but I have never thought that blood stains could rust before.

References:
Rangström, Lena (ed) 2002. Modelejon. Manligt mode, 1500-tal, 1600-tal, 1700-tal

The Sture Murders

The Sture costumes in the cathedral museum in Uppsala.
From left: Svante, Nils and Erik

Allow me to introduce to you Swedish earl, Lord High Constable of Sweden (riksmarsk) and member of the Swedish counsil (riksråd) Svante Sture (1517-1567) and two of his sons Nils (1543-1567) and Erik (1546-1567). They were quite brutaly murdered on this day in 1567 by the Swedish king Erik XIV. But lets not get ahead of ourselves and start looking at what actually happened.

Erik XIV was the oldest son of Gustav Vasa and the only child of Gustav's first wife Katarina av Sachsen-Lauenburg. His mother died when he was only two years old and he got lots of half-siblings from Gustav's second marriage with Margareta Leijonhufvud. One of them was Cecilia Vasa another Duke Johan of Finland who Erik had imprisoned at Gripsholms castle. Margareta also died and Gustav remarried her niece (the daughter of Margareta's sister Brita) Katarina Stenbock. She came to play an important role in this particular event. Gustav died in 1560, leaving the throne to Erik.

Margareta also had another sister named Märta. She was married to Svante Sture. He was the son of Kristina Gyllenstierna and former regent of Sweden Sten Sture the Younger who both fought to get Sweden out of the Kalmar Union in the beginning of the 16th century (The latter part of the Kalmar Union era is in Sweden sometimes called The Sture era). In the end Kristina's nephew Gustav Vasa freed Sweden and took the crown for himself. However, the Vasas from time to time considered the Stures as a threat. Not least Erik XIV who had heard rumours about "Sturen på tronen" (The Sture on the throne) and after interrogating the noble man Gustav Ribbing who had served as a page at the Stures's home, he took Svante, Nils and Erik Sture to his special supreme court Höga nämnden together with a couple of other noble men, Abraham Stenbock, Ivar Liljeörn, Sten Leijonhufuvd and Sten Banér charged with conspiracy and treason. Höga nämnden found them guilty on 19 May and they were first imprisoned at Svartsjö castle on Färingsö in Mälaren outside of Stockholm and was later brought to Uppsala castle where Erik XIV had called for the parliament to gather. Nils Sture had been sent to Alsace-Lorraine to propose to a princess on Erik XIV's behalf and was not imprisoned until he returned home on 21 May.

What happened at Uppsala castle on 24 May 1567 is quite grusome. It started with Erik XIV visiting Svante Sture in his prison cell. He fell to his knees begging Svante to forgive him for what he had done to Nils a year prior when he had insulted him after mistakes made during the Northern-seven-years-war Sweden fought against Denmark. Svante seems to have forgiven him and the king leaves.

Erik XIV

What happened next is hard to understand in lights of this. Erik XIV brought his drabants to Nils's prison and stabbed him in the arm. Later on Märta Leijonhufvud claimed that he also pushed the knife into Nils's eye and up through his skull, but that has never been confirmed. Nils, on the other hand, is said to have pulled the knife out of his arm and apologised to the king, but in vane. Erik and his drabants stabbed Nils to death. On the way from Nils's prison, they met Erik's old teacher Dionysios Bureus. In some sources it is said that he tried to calm down the raging king, but this is not sure. What is sure is that he became the next victim of Erik and his mob of soldiers. They stabbed him to death before Erik ordered the soldiers to kill everyone except "Herr Sten" (Mr Sten). The king then ran out of the castle and was not to be found until three days later at Odensala a bit south of Uppsala.

The drabants followed the orders and Svante and Erik Sture as well as Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Liljeörn were all stabbed to death. And pretty nasty too. Lots of stabs and cuts and prolonged beatings until they died. The soldiers did spare Sten Leijonhufvud and Sten Banér though. But only because they did not know who the "Herr Sten" that the king wished to save was. For three days the castle is completely locked and no one gets in or out. The king had disapperad and no one really knew what had happened. Svante's wife Märta Leijonhufuvd worried. She tried to talk to the king's mistress Karin Månsdotter (who he later married and made queen) and his bastard daughter (by one of his other mistresses) Virginia who told her everything would be fine. Märta then sent up food and clean clothes to her husband and sons without knowing they all lay dead in the basement of the castle.

Katarina Stenbock

On the third day, Gustav Vasa's widow (and Erik XIV's stepmother) Katarina Stenbock had had enough. Together with noble man Per Brahe the older, she went to Uppsala castle demanding to be let in. Inside she found her brother (Abraham Stenbock), her uncle (Svante Sture), two of her cousins (Nils and Erik Sture) and Ivar Liljöhök killed. Their bodies had just been left were they had died three days earlier. (Poor old Dionysios was actually left for eight days until someone took care of him.) Despite of what must have been a pretty terrifying sight for the dowager queen, she decided resolutely that she needed to inform her aunt about what happened.

Both Katarina Stenbock and Märta Leijonhufvud deserve blog entries in my Historical Women and my Meet the Vasa Women series. Therefore I will not tell you all about them here. What I must say is that it seems like Katarina was the one who told Märta about the murders of her husband and sons. Märta was heartbroken and like she opens up about her worries in her correspondence with Karin Månsdotter, she does so in letters she sent in the years to come. Personally I do actually love when you get to read letters and other personal notes where historical characters has really opened up. Time differences from time to time can only give us a little insight into personal traits and emotions, but this really is a wife and mother who first worries immensely about her husband and sons and then is struk with grief when told about their murders. This over-bridge the time gap and make them more human and close.

Katarina returned to Stockholm to meet the newly found king. He fell to his knees before her, begging her to forgive him for what he has done. With one foot among the royals and one among the mobility, Katarina was seen as the ultimate mediator by both sides.

It has been speculated a lot about what happened to Erik XIV and why he went berserk that day in May 1567. What is obvious is that he had some form of mental collapse. He was not considered fit to rule for a few months afterwards. On 13 July he married Karin Månsdotter and made her queen. This together with the Sture murders led to his brothers Johan, Magnus and Karl together with the noble families (not least Märta) removed him from the Swedish throne in 1568. He was put in prison where Johan is said to have killed him in 1577, according to the legend by giving him pea soup spiced with arsenic.

Märta took her husband and sons's clothes (The ones you can see in the first photo.) and put them into a chest that was to rest upon their graves in the Sture choir in Uppsala cathedral, where hers and Svante's other son Sten was waiting after having died in a sea battle against the Danish navy two years prior. Two years later, she opened the chest to put down the document from the parliament, saying they were free from all accusations.

References:
Eriksson, Bo 2017. Sturarna. Makten, morden, missdåden
Eriksson, Bo & Harrison, Dick 2010. Sveriges historia 1350-1600
Larsson, Lars-Olof 2005. Arvet efter Gustav Vasa
Rangström, Lena (ed) 2002. Modelejon. Manligt mode, 1500-tal, 1600-tal, 1700-tal
Tegenborg-Falkdalen, Karin 2015. Vasadrottningen. En biografi över Katarina Stenbock 1535-1621

The pictures of Erik XIV and Katarina Stenbock was borrowed from Wikipedia. The photo of the Sture clothes was taken by me during a visit to the cathedral museum in Uppsala.

Göteborgs födelse - Göteborgs stadsmuseum

Poster of Göteborgs födelse

During my stay in Göteborg recently, I had time to visit Göteborgs stadsmuseum's (Gothenburg City Museum) new exhibition Göteborgs födelse (The Birth of Gothenburg) about life in the new town Göteborg during the 17th century.

Already when I first arrived by train, the day before my museum visit, I saw the poster (seen here to the left) and thought it looked interesting and cool. However, I was a bit sceptical since the museum could have put all the money into the marketing, but I decided to try it out anyway and I was not disappointed.

The symbol of the exhibition is a heart-shaped pendant made out of silver was found in a female grave dating to the first half of the 16th century in one of Göteborg's predecessors, Nya Lödöse. The town is situated in the district today known as Gamlestaden and has been the subject of a massive archaeological excavation in the last couple of years (The project has its own web site which can be found here. The site is in Swedish, but you can use Google translate in the upper left corner.). The excavation has revealed a lot of burials (many more than expected and what the written sources say should be there), but this one particular grave was excavated in 1916 and the skeleton reburied at Östra kyrkogården in Göteborg.

The exhibition catalogue

The heart-pendant has an interesting story which is told in the exhibition and also in the exhibition catalogue. It is decorated with symbols and letters and a coat of arms that might belong to a Dutch family. Inside it was a small packet of several layers of fabric wrapped around parts of plants. Pollen analyses showed that cornflowers and heather were at least part of the packet.

I just love it when museums really emphasizes one or more artefacts from their collections in their exhibitions. Yes, this might be because I am an archaeologist and my main focus is the material culture. We are most of the time unaware of how we are affected by materialities. How symbolical they can be, how we interact with other living beings (even they materialities mostly) through them and how we basically keep ourselves grounded in reality with the help of them. (This is really a subject that deserves its own entry some day, but I cannot help talking a little about it here as well.) Artefacts also often make history come alive in an extremely physical way. It can over-bridge time and both geographical and cultural space and can have us reflect on life both in the past, the present and the future. Emphasizing on one or more objects in an exhibition puts the focus on that particular object and it encourage you to reflect. This is really the case with the heart pendant in the Göteborgsfödelse exhibition.

The first thing that meets you when you walk into the exhibition is the sound of heart beats. It engages you and makes you curious. In the rest of the exhibition, I miss this engaging of other senses than sight. I really have nothing negative to say about the visual aspect of the exhibition. It really is great. The texts are mostly not too long and it is interesting when they tell stories about different inhabitants of the town.

The exhibition stands in stark contrast to the one about the 18th century. It is obvious that they have thought a little about making the material and information fun. Some attempts at interactivities have been made, but it really does not work nearly as well as the new exhibition. This is particularly sad because the material from 18th century Göteborg is just amazing. This was the time of the Swedish East India Trading Company and the museum is even lodged into its house so there are real potentials in the material of the time period. Did you know that the biggest collection of Chinese 18th century china that is known from outside of China is in Göteborg? I cannot find my notes from the lecture about it now, but there are tens of thousands only from the museum's courtyard and than from the East Indiaman Götheborg who sank as it ran aground in the Göteborg archipelago on its way home from its third journey to China 12 September 1745. Based on the knowledge of this and all the other amazing things the museum has in its collections, I do hope they make an exhibition just as amazing as Göteborgs födelse about that century too soon.