Fame and Good Fortune

Saturday 16th May – book signing day – the reason for our visit to Sweden. Surprisingly, we weren’t at all nervous. For our signing in W H Smith’s in Cardiff, we were terrified and wanted to cancel. We’re so much more relaxed in a foreign country. We should do all our signings abroad! Also, we didn’t have to do anything other than show up. Christina and Anders had arranged everything. We should employ them as our agents and managers! Pelle came home in the morning with the morning’s newspapers. We were on the front page! It was obviously a slow news day in Söderköping. We had a huge article in the paper. We never get this much attention back home. This may be the pinnacle of our career. Clearly, we’re in the wrong country. Move over, ABBA, Sweden has new icons. We dressed in our finery and arrived at Söderköping Bokhandel at 10:45. We found a sign outside, advertising the signing. A daughter of Christina’s friend collects autographs and wanted ours. She’d printed off a photo of us so we signed that. Christina bought her a copy of Silent Dawn.

We’d barely put our rucksacks down when the first of the customers arrived. We cracked open a Red Bull and were ready to face the world. Fortunately, everyone spoke perfect English, so communicating wasn’t a problem. Everyone was lovely and impressed that we had learned to write our ‘darkest wishes’ signature in Swedish. Our written Swedish is so much better than our spoken Swedish. One woman saw the article in the paper and was curious, so came just to meet us. She bought a book. People seemed very excited to have us there. One man also saw our article and although horror scares him, he wanted to meet us. He was interested in hiking, so we were telling him all about our beautiful mountains in Wales. Everyone was fascinated with our stories about Wales and its mythology, the way we are with Swedish mythology. When we did the signing in Smith’s, only our awesome friends came to it, but here, we met so many new readers. To think, we thought no-one would come! For three hours, we barely stopped. We ended up staying an hour past our allotted time, and we sold more books than we did in Smith’s and way more than we usually do in cons. We bought another book, a beautiful one about myths and monsters, but this one is in Swedish. We’d spent the past two days in a book shop. It would’ve been rude to leave new friends behind. We’re now planning to have some of that artwork tattooed on us to remember our time in Sweden.

We got back and were preparing to go exploring the nearby mountain, Ramunderberget when Christina got a message from Anders. A man named Michael had seen our article, where it says that we want to visit Stegeborgs Slottsruin. He came to the bookshop, but we’d already left. Anders told him that as Pelle’s car was in need of new brakes, we couldn’t go to the castle. He offered to drive us. Christina rang him and he arranged to meet us at the library. Most of our adventures start off like horror films and always turn out well, so we accepted. Meeting a complete stranger and travelling to castle ruins with him is how all good adventures start.

On the way, we saw an unusual sight – two men pushing a small plane. We expected to see new sights in Sweden, but that wasn’t one of them. We also saw horses, cows, calves and alpacas. No elks,  wolves or bears. Duolingo made it seem like they were everywhere. Duolingo is a liar.

It turned out, Michael is a guide at the castle and a descendant of the Vasa Royal family who lived there. We got a special private guided tour. His brother built the herb garden behind the castle. So we were mixing with someone of royal heritage. That’s a first. The castle is beautiful. The oldest part dates back to the 13^th century. The top half of the tower was added in the 15^th century and the king imprisoned his two daughters in it. Unlike Rapunzel, they didn’t have long hair to lure a brave rescuer, so they escaped using ropes from a wooden beam, then made their getaway by horse and cart. But the horses wore their shoes backwards, so it looked like they were going the other way.

There are plenty of interesting stories with the castle, such as King Birger. When King Magnus Ladulås died, his three sons divided the country into three. King Birger got Stegesborg and Östergötland. In 1317, he invited his brothers, Duke Erik and Duke Valdemar to his palace in Nyköping for a banquet he threw in his honour. However, he imprisoned them in the dungeon then tossed the key into the river. They went there expecting a feast and died of starvation. His hospitality clearly needs work. Next time your siblings invite you round for tea, maybe claim you’re busy.

We found vegan sorbet in the gift shop, as well as a model of the castle how it used to look. And we befriended a small black dog. We came to Sweden with a lot of Kronor, as people warned us it would be expensive. So far, all we’d bought was ice cream and books. This is how life should be.

Day: 3 Number of elks seen: 0. Number of alpacas: 2

with Anders, the bookshop owner

Press Gang

press interview

Meeting the press, buying books and not seeing any elk. Day two of our Swedish invasion went well.

We donned our finery, packed our Red Bull and at 10:30, went to the Bokhandel as Anders had arranged for us to meet with the press. We’re not used to this kind of attention! It’s like being famous. Press interviews we’ve done have either been in email or over the phone. We prefer email. It means we can think about what we want to say and not disgrace ourselves. Speaking never goes well. Surprisingly, we weren’t nervous. At home, we would’ve been shaking and wanting to cancel it. In Sweden, we’re relaxed and not at all anxious. Sweden is good for us! Three journalists and a photographer showed up.

Being photographed by the press

They were all lovely and spoke excellent English, which means we didn’t have to embarrass ourselves with our attempts at Swedish. Not sure our Duolingo phrases of ‘the bear likes the vegetarian’ and ‘my parents don’t like that you eat ants’ would have been much use. Anders said they often struggle to get the press, or only one shows up, so the fact that three came was very impressive. They were fascinated with Wales and the different mythologies. Two of the journalists, Patrick from Folkbladet and Elizabeth from the Norrkoping Tidning, then wanted to take us outside and do a mini photoshoot. That was fun. Again, it was like being celebrities. We could get used to this lifestyle! They were all really lovely. And the photos turned out decent. It’s rare we like photos of us.

We succumbed to temptation and bought books. Being in a bookshop, surrounded by beautiful books, there’s only so much self control we can muster. There were some fantasy books in English, written by Swedish authors, so we bought those. The only Swedish author we’ve read is Stieg Larsson, so it will be nice to read more Swedish authors. We were tempted by some of the others, but our Swedish isn’t quite up to standard. Maybe in a year or two we can come back and buy them. We did manage to read some Swedish children’s books, so impressed ourselves with that. We’re easily impressed. We bought our niece a book by Sweden’s famous children’s author, Astrid Lindgren.

one of Lars’s models

Our next stop was the museum. It was small but interesting. The volunteer, Lars, had made a model of Söderköping, complete with tiny lawnmowers, bikes, and a man peeing in the alley. It’s the little things that make it. Lars was lovely and insisted on giving us a postcard and a book for free as memories, so we donated to the museum instead. He seemed surprised that we wanted to take a photo of him with his models. And we discovered that Cat is the same height as a Penny Farthing bicycle.

We visited another church and saw the boat Pelle is making. It’s incredible. He’s very talented. We then stopped at an ice cream shop, where they make their own ice cream and sorbet. They had two vegan sorbets – dark chocolate and blood orange. They were delicious. We managed to succeed at one mission – buying Dave honey with lemon. You can only get it in Sweden, so when he found out we were going, he requested some. That mission was completed successfully. Mission: Elk is not going so well. Maybe they’re not so keen on towns and shops. We’d brought a lot of Krona with us as we heard that Sweden was expensive. So far, all we had really bought was ice cream and books. This is not a bad way to live.

Lars with his model

In the evening, we watched three episodes of the Swedish version of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. However, there were no English subtitles, so we had the Swedish ones on. We can read Swedish better than we can understand speech. We were thrilled when we were able to understand full sentences. Mostly, we’d pick out a couple of words and work out what it said. We finished the evening by listening to some Swedish music.

Day: 2. Number of elks we’ve seen: 0.