Detective Inspector Jack Robinson

"You might as well call me Jack. Everyone else does."

~ Jack Robinson, Murder on the Ballarat Train, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Vemod is a Swedish word that is not exactly easy to translate into English. It can best be described as an underlying, longing sadness. A sadness that is actually rather positive how strangely as that sounds. The concept might not have an equivalent in English, but I still think it summarize the character of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson perfectly.

I have talked a little about Jack in most of my previous entries about Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and the Phryne Fisher books. However, I have long felt a need to give him an entry totally on his own.

To this date I have only read four of Kerry Greenwood's books about Phryne Fisher and even though I enjoy the books just fine, I really miss the Jack of the TV series while reading. In the latest one, Death at Victoria Dock he only gets a few mentions and, unlike in the TV series, has remained pretty much in the background in the other three as well.

From Murder on the Ballarat train

There are also som major differences between the TV and book characters as well. Book-Jack is happily married with children and has much easier time accepting Phryne's meddling in police work from the very beginning. TV-Jack is far more reserved and at first thinks Phryne is a stupid socialite in need of a hobby. However, as they continue to meet at different crime scenes, he starts to respect her more. This is as far as I will take the comparison between the two. This entry will henceforth be entirely about TV-Jack because he was the one I fell in love with in the first place.

"I see a very careful man, who professes to be cynical in the face of mysteries he can't explain, and claims to have no passion in spite of a heart that runs as deep as the Pacific Ocean"

~ Phryne Fisher, Death Comes Knocking, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Jack is a very private man. Therefore we do not know much about his personal life or his background and we have never visited his home.The little we do know is that he was married to the Deputy Commisioner's daughter Rosie, but that their marriage got destroyed by his participation in the First World War and he tells Phryne that Rosie has been living with her sister for "quite some time". They get a divorce at the end of season one.
There is a lot to say about Rosie and Jack's relationship to the other women in his life, Concetta and last, but certainly not least Phryne. However I have noticed a tendency in the fandom on the internet to view Jack only through those relationships (Especially the one he has to Phryne.) and I do not think that is entirely fair to the character. Because of this, I will focus on him in this entry and only briefly go into his relationships.

"It'd be a tactical error to think you had me pegged just yet, Miss Fisher"

~ Jack Robinson, Death at Victoria Dock, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

From Murder and the Maiden

In June this year, I wrote an entry in which I discussed the similarities between Phryne and the girls Astrid Lindgren (She would have turned 109 yesterday, 14th of November, by the way.) wrote about. The Astrid Lindgren parallel actually fits very well for Jack as well. He is more or less like a typical "Astrid boy". He is somewhat lonely, introverted and brooding and like them he needs to show himself worthy of the super hero title Phryne (and the "Astrid girls") have from the very beginning. The series is also extremely good at not showing all of him at once. This might be because the show is so focused on Phryne (Which it should be. It is her show!) and we get to know the other characters through her.

At first I thought he would be like so many male detectives in murder mystery franchises. Aloof and haughty and having trouble with their bosses and their women and using violence as a mean to enhance their position. But Jack is not at all like that. I actually appreciate how the series depicts him. He deals with his experiences both from his life as a policeman and from the war in a way that is quite unusual in pop-culture of today. Especially for a male character. He desperately wants to hide his emotions, but they more or less run straight off of him anyway. Nathan Page is also extremely good at showing them without saying a word. You see it in his face, usually in less than a second so you miss it if you blink. (Essie Davis, who plays Phryne, is just as good at this.)

From Dead Air

While Phryne is the super hero, Jack is totally human. He really feels compassion for both the victims and the criminals, not least shown through his special relationship with Elsie Tizzard that is revealed in Blood and Circuses. His way of dealing with violence is similarly refreshing. He does not, like for example the character Gunvald Larsson from the Swedish police film series Beck, do it to enhance his position at all. He limits it to when it is inevitable to use it to save himself or someone else and even then he seems to be unwilling to use it to kill someone.

From what I have gathered from fan discussions and fanfictions on the Internet, Jack is generally understood as "broken", but I do not really see that. I think he might have been broken when he got back to Australia after the war. He says the war changed him and he probably has suffered depression and/or PTSD. However, he is not broken when we meet him and this is actually where I think the vemod comes in because there really is a sad longing to him which is positive in nature and makes him a rather unique character. He is definitely the best depiction of how someone who has gone through a depression really is. There will always be a sadness left, but that sadness is not exactly negative and does not prevent you from having fun. I know. I have suffered from depression myself. Besides, the word vemod itself is poetic and beautiful. Just like Jack!

Jack and Phryne

Kerry Greenwood - Death at Victoria Dock

The fourth book about lady detective Phryne Fisher is called Death at Victoria dock. In this one Phryne first gets involved in a shooting as she is passing through the dock late one evening. A couple of anarchists have shot a young one of their own and he dies in Phryne's arms. Her other case is a domestic one as usual. The books start to feel a little formulaic to be honest. This one is also with a young girl who has been abused sexualy. Anyway Phryne is also hired to find Alicia Waddington-Forsythe who has gone missing. In this case Phryne gets help from her adopted daughters Jane and Ruth who go to the same school as Alicia.

There are sadly just a few mentions of Jack Robinson in this book, but we get introduced to Constaple Hugh Collins and Dot already from the start takes a fancy to him.

'That nice young constable is coming at eleven, Miss, and I thought you'd prefer rolls and marmalade today.' 
'Phryne thought she detected a blush on her maid's cheek, but it might have been the sun. (---)
'What is his name Dot? The constable, I mean.'
'Hugh, Miss... I mean Constable Collins Miss.'
It definitely was a blush, no doubt of it.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Death at Victoria Dock

Like I said in the entry about comparison between the TV episode and the book of Murder on the Ballarat Train I am a huge fan of Hottie. They both are so unbelieveably sweet together in the TV series and, unlike Phrack, this seems to be pretty much comes straight from the book.

Since this is one of my least favourite episodes of the TV series, I did not really expect to get into it so much as I did. I enjoyed Phryne showing a more vunerable side of herself. She seems really humble in the face of death this time and I cannot help loving her even more than I did before because of it. I know a lot of people want her to be totally unapologetic and do whatever she wants, but to me a really strong character is one who still can be humble, emotional and admit that she is wrong and apologise if she hurts someone. In light of recent event I think showing compassion is more important than ever. It is not that she hasn't shown compassion before, but she has never been so emotional. Getting shot at while driving seems to have really shocked her and I like it that she can be, but how she does not let it scare her off. It just adds to her strengths. It makes her human!

I must be going mad, she chided herself. I've seen lots of dead men. And I do not smell of blood. It is washed off me and I am wearing different clothes.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Death at Victoria Dock

As a Swede I couldn't help but smile at the telling of the colonial interest Sweden has had in Latvia, a part of history most Swedes do not know anything about at all. Yes, Sweden did have colonies as well. We were actually the big super power in Europe during the 17th century, but we mostly focused on colonising our neighbours.

 The second image was borrowed from here.

Disney - Zootopia

I recently watched Disney's animated film Zootopia and I can seriously not understand why it has not got more publicity, not least over here in Sweden. The film is seriously very good and extremely thoughtprovoking. It is an interesting take on "multiculturalism" and go against "racist" stereotypes.

The film centers around Judy Hopps who becomes Zootopia's first rabbit cop. Zootopia is a city where all types of animals (predators and pray) live in harmony. Or should I say, pretend to live in harmony... On a closer look, however, things are not as harmonious as they first appears. Predators are kidnapped all over the city and Judy teams up with the nice, somewhat criminal fox Nick Wilde to solve the case. They both also need to face the prejudices others have about their spieces and the villain might just be a wolf in sheep clothing...

The theme of the film is a really interesting and fits extremely well into the politics of today. Not least questions about biological differences in spieces that are living together. It is all about fighting racism and living together in peace even though you are very different. It is also about how outcast "people" might be made prejudice just because they feel left out and powerless. The film also shows that it is a choice how we deal with this powerlessness.

I really wonder why it has not got any more publicity and I think the reason is the over-exposure of Frozen, which the film actually jokes about quite a bit. I like Frozen just fine, but this film deserves to be acknowledged and praised, not least because it deals with topics that we really need to discuss more. This is why I can overlook the (too common) use of Stone Age as something savage.


Image borrowed from here.

Playground, Etnografiska museet

Today I visited Etnografiska museet in Stockholm with a friend. They have a new temporary exhibition called Playground which was about norms and about questioning them. I had been looking forward to it. I was at the museum only a couple of days before it opened and it looked promising. Therefore I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed. Not that it was a bad exhibition per see. It was just that I had expected a little bit more.

So, what was good about it? I really liked that it explained what a norm is and how it is used in society both in the past and present. I liked how it showed that not everyone will be able to live up to the norms and that it is nothing wrong with that. I also enjoyed how it got you to question norms and asked you how privileged you are. It was also good that they had made signs telling about norms and norm breakers in their permanent exhibitions.

Despite all this I never got engaged in the exhibition for real. It was interesting, not least to read about HBTQ people in Vietnam and see the photos of the colour scheme of people's skin and everything. However, there were just so many longer texts. I would have loved to read people's stories and all that, but there were just so many of them. I think it would have been better if they had made shorter texts and refered to a website for more studies. Some of the interactive "tests" were also a little hard to understand.

The exhibition was not bad. I think I just had hoped it would be more. I love questioning norms and my own worldview! Maybe it was because I had read the opening sign (shown in the photo above) beforehand or maybe it was because I liked the Vodou exhibition they had a couple of years ago so much. I just got the feeling that the exhibition could have been so much more.

Johanne Hildebrandt - Estrid, Sagan om Valhalla

The fifth installment in the Sagan om Valhalla series is Estrid. I had the great honour of reading it in advance thanks to the author Johanne Hildebrandt.

Estrid is the daughter of Sigrid and Svend (Tveskæg) although everyone except for Sigrid think she is the daughter of Erik (Segersäll). She is also twin sister of Olof (Skötkonung) who will be king of the Swedes. Estrid gets kidnapped, and struggles to get back to her mother.

In the beginning of the book, Estrid belongs to the death goddess Hel (just like Freja eventually did in the first trilogy). I have sort of thought about having death as a theme for one of these entries about the series, because it is an over-arching, ever-present theme throughout all of the books. However, again there is a theme I thought more about as I was reading Estrid, so I will have to postpone it again. It seems fitting also, since Estrid is said to choose life over death as she converts to Christianity.

I somehow find Johanne Hildebrandt's depiction of the convertion in line with all the other supernatural things in the world she builds up and it certainly is quite imaginative. For real, however I think faith had extremely little to do with why people in Scandinavia became Christian. My MA thesis in Archaeology was about how the Christianisation can be shown in burials from the time ca AD 800-1200 in the Mälaren region in easternmost Sweden. (It is in Swedish, but can be found here if someone wants to read it, because much of my thoughts that I will write bellow is further developed there.)

To me the time period had much more to do with changing power structures and identities. It is the time of the centralisation of power, of town establishment and really also the time from which we get our first power figures that can be named and at least to some extent fleshed out from written sources. Traditionally this time period is often thought of as the time of the foundation of the Swedish (and Norwegian and Danish) nation states, but I will say that it is not. That concept was not made up until the 19th century (first and foremost to get the citizens's loyalty) and historical and archaeological research about the past was an important part of the creation of the concept.

So what did really happen then at the end of the time period those same scholars named the Viking Age? There are certainly a change towards a much more centralised power. The picture of this is also coloured by the 19th century and not least by the theory of the male conqueror (which I will probably have the opportunity to get back to in some entry later), but we can say that the power changed from being more localy based to more centralised.

The other major thing that happened  during this time period that we actually can say for certain happened: the Christian (Catholic) church was established with clergy, parish organisation and everything. This is really the aspect of the period which I find so interesting. There are actually great differences in what the different types of resources tell us about the Christianisation. Everyone who has gone to school in Sweden have to have heard the name of the German monk Ansgar. He is said to have been sent to Scandinavia as a missionary and there is a biography written by another German monk called Rimbert about him. This and the history of the Hamburg-Bremen archbishopric written by Adam of Bremen has been very influential on the research perspective of the Christianisation. The archaeological material from this period does not show a cut between the older and the newer traditions as clear as the written sources want. Instead the borders are fluid and there is no clear indication as to what is Christian or Pagan. The discussion, especially in the Contract archaeological sector, tends to end up in more or less stereotypical interpretations. The problem I think is that there seldom are any stereotypes in real life. It is easy to write about them and make life black and white, but the truth is that it really is not. Everything is put in the grey area in between the extremes and that is really what the archaeological material show us. As for who was Christian or Pagan, I think it was based on the social context. If one needed to be Christian, one was, and if one needed to be Pagan, one was. Knud den store (the great) is actually a very good example of this. He ruled as a Christian among the Englishmen and as a Pagan among the Danes. Sigrid Storråda is interesting in this aspect, because she seems to have been content in her Pagan faith. I wrote about her probably having a great political mind in my entry about Sigrid and this might seem to contradict it, but maybe it says more about what power she had. Maybe her power was so well-founded in society that she did not have to turn her coat depending of who she spoke with?

Olof's coin

The historical Olof Skötkonung is mostly famous for having been baptist by the English missionary Saint Sigfrid in Husaby in Västergötland, Sweden and for being the first to mint coins in Sweden with the help of English mint masters at the end of the 10th century. It is most likely that the name Skötkonung means Skattkonung (treasure king) and derives from his minting activities.

Because of the minting happening in my home town Sigtuna and the plot actually involving Olof, the choice for this entry's archaeological find was pretty easy. The text on the coin says OLOF REX SVEVORUM, which means Olof, king of the Swedes on the other side can be read SIDEI which has been interpreted as either a spelling variation of the name Sigtuna or an abbraviation of Situne Dei meaning God's Sigtuna.

Since I read it as a script directly from the author, the cover was borrowed from here and the picture of Olof Skötkonung's coin from here.

International Day of Archaeology

Apparently it is International Day of Archaeology today. I had absolutely no idea until I saw it around the Internet. I have to admit I have a lot of questions about this holiday. How did it come about? How are you supposed to celebrate it? Are you supposed to have cake?!

I have celebrated it by handing in a grad school application. I do not know if I have any chance at getting it, but I hope to at least get some response on my project plan this time. The picture to the right show some of the books I have been using.

As might have become evident by many of the entries in this blog, my greatest interests are Vikings, cultures and colonialism. So of course I am trying to mix them together into one research project, trying to discuss how the Vikings viewed the concept and how the research tradition being caught up in nationalism of the 19th century having applied to the period making it more of a Viking version of the 19th centry than anything.

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.

My Heroines: Rory Gilmore

Today's birthday girl is Lorelai "Rory" Gilmore (Alexis Bledel). She was born 4:03 AM on October 8 1984 and is the daughter of Lorelai Gilmore and Christopher Hayden and together with her mother the main character of the TV series Gilmore Girls and one of my biggest Heroines!

Rory is very close to her mother. Lorelai was only 16 when she had her and the two of them are therefore often more friends than mother and daughter. She often has a much more difficult relationship with her father. Christopher has never rejected his daughter, but Lorelai has spent most of the time raising Rory alone. Later on, Christopher gets to try single parenting himself, when his partner Sherry abandons him and their baby girl Georgia, called Gigi (A nickname also being a tribute to the series itself - GG.).

Rory and her mother Lorelai

Rory is kind, clever and in the beginning of the series, her biggest dream is to go to Harvard and study journalism and political science. To achieve her goals, she gets into Chilton Academy. It costs a small fortune and Lorelai at last goes to her estranged parents, asking for a loan. They demand a weekly dinner with their daughter and granddaughter.

Rory lives in the small town Stars Hollow where everyone knows each other. When asked about her lack of social activities, she tells the principal of Chilton that living in Stars Hollow itself is kind of a social activity. She is much beloved, by the other townspeople and in the first few seasons quite sheltered.

She graduates from Chilton at the end of season 3 and decides, after a lot of thinking and pro-/con-list writing to go to Yale, her grandfather's alma mater, where other aspects of life than books and studying, sort of starts to sip into her world in a way they have not done before.

Rory is a very special character to me. Not only because she was born only two days before me (My date of birth is October 10 1984.), but because she was the first fictional character I could really relate to. Just like me Rory is sort of nerdy and takes a great interest in school and learning. she is very smart and proud of that.  And the greatest thing about it is that neither the other characters nor the show itself looks down upon her because of it. Because she had Rory so early, Lorelai did not get to go to college, but it is evident that she still reads a lot and no one beats either Gilmore Girls in knowledge about pop-culture.

Rory and Jess

Neither of the Gilmore girls are dependent on men either. They have men in their life from time to time and also goes through some heartache, but they are still independent character with their own lives and free will both in and out of relationship with men.

Another reason why I connected on a quite deeply level with Rory has to do with her relationship to books. We both read just about everything we come over and things she did (like bringing many different types of non-school-related-books to school just because she does not know which one she wants to read during lunch or bring books to parties no matter that there will not likely be any down-time) I thought I was the only one doing.


Gifs from Tumblr. Pictures from here, here, here and here.

Murder on the Ballarat Train - TV vs Book

Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis)

Where to start with this one? There are actually some major differences between the book and the film adaptation here. There are some new characters like Mr Tobias Butler (Richard Bligh), Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and, because they play such a big part in the story: Phryne's house Wardlow and her Hispano Suiza car probably should be mentioned in there as well. They are important parts of the show and nearly characters in their own right.

Two characters from the books are left out, or does not play such a big part in the show as in the books. Mrs Butler is the wife of Mr Butler. Both of them, together with Wardlow are introduced already in Flying too High and Ruth (Lara Robinson) plays a much greater part in the book than in the TV episode. Phryne (Essie Davis) even adopts her together with Jane and she is the one with no family, where in the TV version, she has a grandma, who Jack later on finds. I can understand the need to simplify it to just one girl, but I still thought it strange that we do not see or hear more of Ruth in the show's later episodes. She and Jane seem just as close as they are described to be in the book, but after this episode, she just vanish all together from their lives.


It is in this episode that Bert (Travis McMahon) and Cec (Anthony Sharpe) also come to work for Phryne for real if a little reluctantly in the beginning. She also gives them a new taxi, which they buy by themselves in Flying too High.

"I didn't invite you along to be useful Dot. I invited you so we could have some fun!"

~ Phryne Fisher, Murder on the Ballarat Train (TV)

Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson (Nathan Page)

The premise of the plot is the same in both book and TV-series: Phryne and Dot (Ashleigh Cummings) are taking the train to Ballarat. In the book, she and Dot are going to there to visit some of her relatives, while in the TV episode, they are going to pick up the Hispano Suiza. The narratives in the different mediums are different as well. In the TV episode it is straight forward: First we see Phryne and Dot at the station, boarding the train and then we follow them throughtout the train ride. In the book, on the other hand, we only get to experience the train ride first hand while Phryne, Dot and some of the other passangers are being chloroformed. The rest of the journey is retold to us as the victims of the chloroform incident, which has afflicted more people in the book than on TV, (mainly Phryne herself) are interviewed by the police. The investigation is also to a larger extent accompliched on the train itself and Phryne takes part in the search for the murdered victim. The scene when she, dressed in high heels (!), more or less runs away from the police men along the train tracks is hilarious. I also cannot help but laugh when Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) sees through Phryne's small lie about opening the compartment of Mrs Henderson (Abbe Holmes) and her daughter Eunice (Maeve Dermody) with her golden pistol.

Dorothy "Dot" Williams (Ashleigh Cummings)
and Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt)

Aboard the train, we also get our first indications of both Hottie and Phrack. The former is the name for the pairing Dot Williams with Constaple Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) (Sadly, the latter is not in the book.) and the latter is the pairing of Phryne and Jack. Both names were made up by the fandom of the show and I love how both Phryne and Jack seem to ship Dot and Hugh just as much as the fans of the show do.

I have not talked so much about Hottie (nor Dot or Hugh as characters) on here and it will for certain be more in the future, but I just have to say that they are among the cutest couples I have seen on TV.

When you have watched all the existing three seasons of the show and you go back to these first few episodes, you really realise how much Dot's character evolves throughout the show. I will probably write an entire post about her at some point, because I love her. I have talked about this topic in many other entries to this blog (Not least in the one about Phryne in my My Heroines series, but mostly in my entry about Johanne Hildebrandt's book Idun. Sagan om Valhalla.), but I think it is so wonderful that neither Phryne nor the show judge Dot because of her conservatism and the fact that she shows characteristics traditionally ascribed to women. Instead, Phryne actually encourage her to find her confidence no matter what her beliefs are.

Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and Phryne Fisher.

Phrack is a different love story that I will most definitely come back to in later entries since it is just a small embryo in this episode. In fact, Jack seems very firm to not let Phryne in on the investigation at first and she is also thwarted by the other police men that first arrived at the train. (Hugh seems to like her, even though he, just like in the TV version of Cocaine Blues, he has no idea how to handle her.) However, this is also the episode where Jack and Phryne really start to cooperate on the case. At the end of the episode he, however, comes over and the routine of the nightcap is put in place.

Jack plays a bigger part in both the TV episode and the book. His character is quite different between both mediums. Even though there is nothing wrong with him in the books, I cannot help but miss the TV-version while reading.

In the beginning of the episode a little boy runs around on the platform and Phryne tells Dot that she cannot stand children. When the police later on catches a teenage girl with the murdered Mrs Henderson's missing jewelry, she is very reluctant to help out at first. Jane's story is quite different in the TV series to the one in the book, where she has lost her memory and it turns out later that she is hypnotized by Mr Merton (Jacek Koman). In the book he, and who I think is Jane's real aunt, Miss Gay are more or less exploiting teenage girls (and young women?), molesting them and/or sending them off to brothels, which is where Jane is going on the train. In the TV episode, Jane comes from a situation much similar to Oliver Twist, where Mr Merton is a Fagin-type of character, collecting what the girls have managed to steal.

Phryne: "Sorry I forgot to telephone ahead about my extra guests. We've all been somewhat distracted by Eunice's mother's murder."
Mr Butler: "A murder miss?"
Phryne: "I do hope they chloroformed her first, but hanging is never pleasant. Keep your eye on this one. She's a stowaway, a thief and probably needs delousing. I expect the police will come looking for her, but you can just refer them to me. Oh, and while I remember; careful with the hand luggage. My pistol's in there somewhere, and it may still be loaded."

Another character that is different between book and TV episode is Eunice Henderson. Not least regarding her involvement in the plot. In both she has a boyfriend called Alastair (David Berry), but whereas Lindsay (Dale March) is just his friend in the book, he is Eunice's cousin in the TV episode. The plot kind of differs more when it comes to her. In the TV episode, she plots together with Alastair to steal her mother's jewlery on the train, while in the book, he works totally on his own. In neither plot line is she the one who kills her mother, but she sort of lets it happen in the TV episode. Alastair's motive of the murder is also somewhat different. In the TV series, he seems to just wants Lindsay's inheritance, while in the book he thinks he is a superman, getting rid of unwanting people (and getting rich at the same time). I find the latter plotline much more thrilling, while I like Eunice better in the book. In the book, she becomes a writer to support her mother, who has lost all her money in a scam. This gives her a similarity to Lydia Andrews in Cocaine Blues and I find the idea of women having to provide for other family members lack of economical sense intriguing. It makes up for an interesting plotpoint and shows something about upper class women too. (Women of the lower classes ha always had to work.)

On the train, Phryne is reading a book. And not just any book, but Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. The book most have been very new at the time , because it was published in 1928 and has a rather interesting story, especially in Australia according to Wikipedia. It was banned from many countries and was subject of a trial in the United Kingdom in 1960 and a book describing this trial was also banned in Australia. However, in both cases it, by extention, led to the censorship actually being loosen. The book is a perfect fit for Phryne, but I cannot help thinking about the creator of the show giving the audience something to look up.

The pictures and gifs in this entry were found on Tumblr except the last one of Jack, which is a screen cap I made, because he was set so beautifully. (And before you ask, I do have a "small" collection of pictures from the show on my computer. I am totally nerdy about this show if you have not noticed it before.)

Pettson and Findus

Covers of Pannkakstårtan, Rävjakten, Stackars Pettson,
Pettson får julbesök and Kackel i Grönsakslandet.

Facebook reminded me that I met Swedish children's author Sven Nordqvist at the Göteborg Book Fair this day in 2009. Therefore I thought I would write about his books about Pettson and Findus. I absolutely love those books! Yes, I still love them as an adult. There is nothing wrong with enjoying good children's books as adult and the books about Pettson and Findus belong to the best.

"Du ska inte vara rädd för hönsen Pettson. De är inte så farliga som de ser ut." (Pettson, you don't have to be scared of the hens. They aren't as dangerous as they look.)

~ Gumman Andersson, Pettson tältar

The books (generally picture books, but there are some exceptions) tell shorter tales about Pettson. He lives alone with his cat Findus and a couple of hens. There are also some mucklor that live underneath the floor and only Findus can see, but they steal things from Pettson.

Covers of Tomtemaskinen, Pettson tältar, Tuppens minut,
När Findus var liten och försvann and Findus flyttar ut.

The books are beautifully illustrated and there are so much details in every picture that you can look at them all the time and still find new things you have never seen before. The first book Pannkakstårtan (Translated as Birthday Cake in English apparently.) was published in 1984 and the latest picture book, Findus flyttar ut (Findus moves out) in 2012. There have been some other picture books for younger children published later: Känner du Pettson och Findus? (Do you know Pettson and Findus?) from 2014 and Var är Pettson? (Where is Pettson?) from 2015. In later years, there has also been some cartoons made of the stories. This might be a little because I do not belong to the intended audience (being an adult when they were made), but I do not think they are as good. Not least since the drawings are not as detailed as the ones in the books. The only screen adaptation of any of the books I do like is the Christmas calender, Tomtemaskinen (The mechanical Santa) from 1993 made by SVT.

"Pettson, du säger så konstiga saker. Har du inte fått i dig något kaffe idag?" (Pettson, you say such weird things. Haven't you drank any coffee today?)

~ Findus, Tomtemaskinen

Ingvar Hirdwall played Pettson and Ika Nord played Findus. I thought I should save talking about my favourite Christmas calenders until December, but I might as well tell you about it now. I think it is one of the more underrated and forgotten about SVT:s christmas calenders I think. Mostly since Mysteriet på Greveholm was shown only a couple of years later (1996). That calender is generally the one people remember from "the era", but there were some other great ones made during the 1990's.

Tomtemaskinen tells the story of how Pettson promises Findus that Santa Claus will come to them this year, so he starts building a mechanical Santa in secret.

The book was published at about the same time as the christmas calender was shown on TV and is the only multi-chapter books in the series. There is no real action in it, but it is still very funny and imaginative and both Hirdwall and Nord are doing a really good job. I still think it holds up, over twenty years later.

Sven Nordqvist's signature in one of my books

Pictures were borrowed from Opal Bokförlag and from here.

Kerry Greenwood - Murder on the Ballarat Train

This, the third book about the Honourable Phryne Fisher (and the last of the three books in my omnibus volume). She and Dot takes a train ride to Ballarat. However, they never reaches their destination. Chloroform are leaking into the wagon making everyone drowsy and an older, wealthy woman is kidnapped and later found dead. Then a teenage girl turns up. She has lost her memory, but Phryne takes her in, calls her Jane and tries to find out what has happened to her. There are some differences to the TV episodes, but I do not want to dwell on those topics here. I save them for a later entry.
The three first of the the Phryne Fisher books worked great, combined into one volume. There are some over-arching themes in them that makes them fit together. There are some overlapping themes in two or all of the books. For example, the pedophilia theme that was introduced in Flying too High is sort of eplored further in the third book. To be fair I have no idea what age it is legal to have sex in Australia either today or during the 1920's, but some of the girls involved seem to be barely teenagers and therefore probably considered too young. That subplot actually also bring me to the second of the recurrent themes from the first three of the books about Phryne Fisher: all three of them somewhat involve women in different types of destructive sexual relationships and how they are affected by them.

In Cocaine Blues there is Lydia Andrews who's sexuality is really destroyed by her husband (probably) forcing himself on her. Amelia McNaughton in Flying too High is molested by her own father (who also seem to have raped her mother from time to time) and her fiancé Paolo says he has sort of drawn her sexuality out of her again. In the same book, there is also an indication to Phryne herself having had bad experiences with sexual relationship and if the books are anything like the TV series, this will be furthered discussed in later ones. In Murder on the Ballarat Train, this theme is very prominent in the subplot with Jane and later on also Gabrielle Hart who has been lured and hypnotized into prostitution (by Henry Burton and Miss Gay?).

All of these female characters react to it somewhat differently. Paolo's comment about how careful and tender he had to be with Amelia, indicates that she too was scared at first. Being treated tenderly by Paolo probably encouraged her to explore her sexuality. Likewise Gabrielle Hart and Jane are sort of hypnotized during the whole thing, but still, they are scared as they wake up from the trance. However, Jane finds Phryne. Dot and the Butlers and Gabrielle Hart has (at least) her father who are there for them. Lydia Andrews is in this sense probably worse off. She seems to have no one there to catch her as she falls. Her parents are on the other side of the world and even though they are apparently worried, they are not there for her in the same sense and she does not seem to confide in them in the same way. It is pretty sad actually when you think about it and might be her motivator for turning "bad".

The first picture are my own, but the other book covers borrowed from here and here. 

Ötzi, the Iceman

Ötzi

25 years ago today (19 September 1991) the body of a man turned up in the Alps. He was dated to c. 3 300 BC (The Chalcolithic period) and had been mummified in the ice of a glacier. Today he can be seen at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy.

This find was actually one of the reasons for why I chose my profession. I was seven at the time they found him and he was one of my first real nerdy subjects. The finding of him was led to a massive interest from the media and one of my school teacher brought lots of them with her and we looked at the pictures and read all about him and talked about him and the Stone Age. He really made history come to life from me.

He seemed to have had a hard life, his body having many healed fractures. Isotope analysis of his tooth showed that he came from there area of either Eisacktal or Pustertal. Among other things he carried a copper axe and an unfinished bow. His tattoos have been discussed a lot. I, myself wait for the day someone comes up with the idea that he made them while he was drunk...


Picture from Wikipedia.

The Ark

And that's just how it is

And how it's always been

It's where my reason stops

And something else comes in

I know it doesn't make sense, but still...

~ Calleth you, Cometh I; the Ark

Five years ago today, I took farewell of my favourite music band ever. It was really a magical night. I still love them just much as I did back then. They have been in my life since I was 16 and I miss them. Of course I listen to their music a lot still, but I really wish for a reunion.

Picture from here

Some thoughts about Cultural Heritage

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Monument of the Vendel Age boat burials in
Vendel, Uppland

This blog post might be containing quite a lot of rambling. I read an interview with the Swedish riksantikvarie (National Antiquarian) Lars Amréus, about the usage of the Cultural Heritage in Sweden. It is a topic I think about daily in my work. Therefore I thought I should shared with you some of my thoughts on the matter. The interview is in Swedish, but I intend to write this post in English as always. The focus will be mainly on Sweden though, since that is the cultural heritage I have most of my experiences from both as a professional archaeologist and as a visitor to different cultural heritage sites throughout my home country. All the photos except the last one in this entry are taken by me on trips to more or less famous cultural heritage sites throughout Sweden.

Gamla Uppsala, Uppland

To define the term cultural heritage is not as easy as one might think. The definition varies a lot between people and also throughout time. A general definition would probably be that it involves everything that humans have shaped throughout time but which in turn also shape us. It can be buildings, places and other types of milieus, but also traditions, crafts, artefacts, folklore, music, literature, art and oral stories. The common thread between all these categories is the stories they can tell about us both in the present and in the past.

Stern of the Vasa ship

Contrary to popular beliefs, a cultural heritage is never static nor is it powerless. It can be extremely political and be used both to include and exclude. The traditional view of a nationalistic cultural heritage has been seriously questioned and challenged in recent years. Recently even more so, due to the uprising of racism in many countries throughout the world, not least in Europe.

I have talked about my view on the term culture in many previous entries to this blog (most notably in this and this) and I don't intend to repeat myself too much in this one. However I want to state that my definition of the term culture is that it is entirely a social construction. It is never finished and it is under continous negotiations. It has all to do with what is socially acceptable in different social contexts.

St Olof's church ruin,
Sigtuna, Uppland

The traditional view of cultural heritage is just as much a product of the Romantic nationalism of the 19th century as the term culture and also the Nation state. The thought of a monocultural nation with one collective culture and history has been strong since then and is still fundamental in our view of the world. In its construction, the museums's (and bascially also the rest of the cultural heritage research) main task was to reflect this monoculturalism.

In my entry about the Stone Age I talked about how European encounters with other social groups through the Western colonialization of the last few centuries pretty much created the whole time period. Analogies was used to the contemporary "hunter-gatherer" societies to show that they belonged to a stage of development the European countries had left behind a long time ago. Just like the Stone Age was created based on a focus of difference, so was the Nation state created through focusing of what it was not.

Rune stone U161, Risbyle
Uppland

The creation of a glorious past was a very important part of the nation building process and therefore ancient monuments (in Sweden for example the mounds of Gamla Uppsala, seen in the second picture in this entry, or the rune stone like the one in the picture to the left) became important.

However, this perspective was very excluding. It excluded certain groups of people (in Sweden for example the Samis) but also parts of the past that was not glorious at all. For example, the Age of the Swedish Empire (Stormaktstiden) during the 17th and the 18th centuries was portrayed as bellicose, heroic and not least masculine. One did not talk about the rather catastrophic results of those war and values: Sweden itself was about to destruct due to the wars and a lot of people, both in Sweden and abroad, suffered greatly because of them. (Sweden would totally have been destroyed if it had not been for the women, but that is a story for another time.)

This is not so much a thing of the past either. We still tend to view our history through "romantic nationalistic glasses". To take the example of the Age of the Swedish Empire again, the Swedish newspaper Expressen as late as last year had a magazine about Sweden's "bloody history" in which one could read:

"Karl XII ärvde en stormakt från pappa Karl XI och de andra lyckosamma regenterna från 1600-talets krigiska epok." (Karl XII inherited a super power from his father Karl XI and the other successful rulers of the bellicose epoch of the 17th century.)

I didn't really know what to think about this quote and the fact that they this summer had a similar magazine devoted to the Swedish war kings made me realise even more how important investments in public outreach really is.

Microlithic flint blade, dated to the
Mesolithic that I found at Kanaljorden,
Motala, Östergötland in 2013

Not everything is bad though. Another Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter had a series of articles about the skull collection of Anders and Gustaf Retzius last year. This is actually really what I think we need to talk about more. Not many Swedes today know that Sweden sort of invented scientific racism (Statens rasbiologiska institut opened in Uppsala in 1922, the first of its kind in the world) This also at the same time as we had the Folkhemmet ideology which managed to be both open and including (the part mainly focused upon) and racist and elitist (the part mainly forgotten)...

There is another example, which might sound even more strange and I realised just how strange it is that we emphasize it because I went to a show by the American ventriloquist Jeff Dunham in Copenhagen a couple of years ago.

He came directly from Stockholm where he had visited one of the major tourist attraction of the Swedish capital and by far the most visited museum of the country: the Vasa museum.

Vasa is a Swedish warship (The stern of it can be seen on the second picture in this entry.) which is mostly famous because it sank after barely having left the harbour in Stockholm on its first journey in 1628 and because it was salvaged 1956-61.

The DC-3, Flygvapenmuseum, Linköping

In his show, Jeff Dunham joked about the fact that the Vasa ship is really a big failure and why do we make a museum of a failure? It really got me to realise that the Vasa museum is kind of brilliant just because of that. It is something that went totally wrong, but still we are proud of it. We really should be proud of both our tragedies and our triumphs. They both make us part of who we are and I think it is really important that our cultural heritage actually portrays both.

Why do we need a cultural heritage then? Well, I think mostly because it seems like a basic instinct inside of us all to seek our history, but also to be able to orientate ourself in time as well as in place wherever we are really. The important thing is that it needs to be including. We need to focus more on what makes our own cultural heritage similar to anyone else's than differences.

Last, but not least I want to show you a photo I found on Tumblr called “Globalization is beautiful sometimes”. It was taken in the Stockholm underground by Ninni Andersson in 2015.

The girls seem different at first, but once you start to really look at them they have very much in common all the same: they have the same colours in red and black, they sit in a similar manner and they both are looking at their phones. I find the picture to be a beautiful illustration that we all are both different and similar at the same time.

PS. Om Ninni Andersson eller någon av flickorna på bilden ser detta: Det är en underbar bild! Jag hoppas det är okej att jag lånade den. Tack!