sweden

Plan? What plan?

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As I mentioned a while back, when I visited Sweden in 2023, my cousin (my mom’s second cousin’s son, so my third cousin?) asked me, “What’s your Swedish plan?” As in, did I plan to continue studying Swedish? If so, why?

Cue me freezing, because I didn’t have a “Swedish plan.” I mumbled something about “possibly living in Sweden at some point,” which got me a talk about how it’s impossible to find an apartment in Stockholm. And that was that.

But the question followed me back home to the US. Why was I learning Swedish? Beyond wanting to improve, what was my goal?

Yesterday, I picked up The Inquiring Mind by Cyril O. Houle from my gym’s little free library. It’s a short collection of talks about “adults who continue to learn” and their motivations. The author grouped them into three categories: those who learn to reach a goal, those who learn for the associated benefits (such as taking a class in order to have a social group–the subject may not matter so much), and those who learn for the pleasure of learning. I overlap somewhat with the second group, but I’m squarely in the middle of the third.

It was a relief to know that I’m not the only one who doesn’t necessarily have a goal or plan for their learning. At the same time, it makes me wonder about the source of this motivation. Maybe it’s a result of the long-delayed gratification of being in school. If your long-term goal is “to get into a good college,” you’ve got to find some way to make all that time studying bearable. For me, solving complicated math problems and translating sentences were like solving puzzles. Once you finish one, on to the next! There is no real “goal” to reach. Each puzzle is a reward in itself.

But what about people who do have a particular motivation for their learning? I was struck recently by an episode of Lätt svenska med Oskar in which the host discussed the statistics of people listening to his podcast. I assumed (because I am in this group) that the largest group of his listeners would be from countries without daily exposure to Swedish. However, he said that 41% of the people listening were living in Sweden. Similarly, the language the most people in the US are studying on Duolingo is English (according to Duolingo’s 2025 report). Needing a particular skill for day-to-day life can be highly motivating.

At the moment, being a language nerd is motivation enough for me. I’m enjoying learning about Swedish grammar from Peter SFI’s YouTube channel. SFI is “svenska för invandrare,” or “Swedish for immigrants.” Because immigrants have a range of native languages, all of the lessons are in Swedish. It tickles me to be learning in another language about grammar, especially since much of what I’ve learned about grammar I’ve learned from studying other languages.

I suppose I do have another motivation–maybe even a plan: applying to a program that would let me try out the idea of living in Sweden for a few weeks while learning more about Swedish language and culture. For now, I’m cramming my brain full of Swedish to make the most of my time there. I’m also trying to learn to be less judgmental about my own mistakes as I’m speaking, so I can avoid freezing like I did on and off the last time I visited. (The Dr Languages YouTube channel has a lovely video about this: Why your brain freezes mid-sentence in a foreign language (and how to fix it fast).)

In summary? Indulge your desire to learn. You never know where it will lead you.

Devant vos yeux

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A few months back, I dove headfirst into Duolingo French. I had been invited on a trip, and that provided the motivation to start learning. However, I dropped the daily French activities when it started interfering with my Swedish. But what I found is that I had already been exposed to enough to start understanding bits and pieces of French that I saw in everyday life.

For example, on the website for the trip, I saw a photo of the tombstones of Vincent van Gogh and his brother, which had “ICI REPOSE” inscribed above their names. I’d already learned that “ici” means “here,” and with context, it wasn’t much of a leap to translate it as “Here lies…”

A few months later, in the new Universal Studios “Epic Universe” park, I was able to pick out words and phrases on signs and posters in the Wizarding World section, which focused on Newt Scamander’s time in France. (I don’t remember which movie that is. I ended up with a terrible migraine halfway through the second and gave the rest of the series a pass.) For example, “et fils” (“and sons”), “Biereaubeurre” (“Butterbeer”), “devant vos yeux” (“before your eyes”), and “Une Nuit Avec la Mort” (“A Night with Death”).

I’ve been taking in a lot of media related to language learning, lately, and one of the videos I watched stressed the importance of curiosity. Seeing what I can read now makes me wonder what I could read if I just learned a little more. I’m currently looking at taking an in-person French class, if only to get a better foundation in pronunciation before I try speaking in public.

I’m currently reading Salima om de sina by Salad Hilowle in Swedish, though I haven’t found a good way to translate the title. Hilowle is a Swedish artist, and the book recounts the story of his family coming to Sweden from Somalia, told from his grandmother’s perspective. The book was recommended by the two teachers running the Swedish immersion day at ASI, after we saw some of the exhibition of Hilowle’s sculptures and video at the museum. Minnesota also has a large population of Somali immigrants, so reading it is making me think about the families whose kids come to Homework Help at the library as well as my mom’s grandparents’ experience of immigrating to the US from Sweden in the late 1800s.

My niece is very into Japanese manga, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in learning the language. After all, can’t your phone translate everything for you? But learning another language isn’t just about translating the words. It’s also about understanding other people and their cultures. And Google Translate isn’t going to help you with that.

Spring-Winter

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Each year in December, Swedish television runs a new julkalender, or Advent calendar, with new episodes daily through Christmas. This year’s story followed a family running a ski resort that had, mysteriously, not gotten any snowfall, while the areas/resorts all around them had. (Magic may have been involved.)

Though I chose not to follow the daily episodes, I did feel a kindship with the family and their woes. Last year was the first time in my lifetime–going on half a century–where we didn’t have a proper winter in MN. In the past, I would cringe at how brown everything was when visiting family in Texas over the holidays. Yet in winter 2023-2024, they received snow and we didn’t. In fact, most of our winter temperatures were in the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit, too warm for snow, so we were in a world of tan-beige for months. We had two snow spats (too wimpy to be considered storms), one in October and one in April. The former didn’t last, and the latter was too little, too late.

This winter, we did manage to get a decent coating of snow before Christmas (enough for some lovely snowshoeing), but rain and high temps had erased it by early January. Poling the folks in our online Swedish class, we determined that there was no snow in central Minnesota, the flatlands of Colorado, or in Pennsylvania, but there had been snow south of all of us. Eventually, we did get another dusting in MN that stuck, but it’s melting this week.

Back when the last round of snow melted in mid-January, I heard an out-of-place sound: the beginning of the arboreal chorus of toads and frogs. They experience brumation rather than hibernation, which is a slowing (torpor) rather than a sleeping. But stirring early because of abnormally high temperatures, as many frogs, toads, and bats did last year, can lead to starvation, as there are no bugs for them to eat. This year, the chorus did eventually quiet when temperatures dipped back down (and eventually became downright frigid), but I’ve been listening for it to start up again.

I’m not against warm temperatures; I’m just against them arriving out of season. One of the reasons I didn’t stay in California after college was the lack of seasons. It just feels wrong on a gut level.

The Swedes (especially in the far north, likely borrowed from the Sami), often separate out the seasons beyond the usual four. There’s summer, fall-summer, fall, fall-winter, winter, spring-winter, spring, and spring-summer. I’m all for the hopefulness of spring-winter (vårvinter), but it’s too early. I’ve been trying to make friends with the cold and snow via snowshoeing, or even more extreme practices like a winter dip/ice bath in one of the local lakes (checked off my bucket list last year), but the unpredictable, fluctuating temperatures make it difficult to fully engage.

I’m not ready for spring, or even spring-winter. I’m reading Root Beer Lady by Bob Cary, a biography of Dorothy Molter, the last resident of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. Though the winters the book describes are often brutal, they make more sense to me as winter than the brown I’m seeing out my window. The worst part is the uncertainty. There might be more snow, or there might not. Who knows? (Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow this year, but I believe he’s right less than 50% of the time.)

Stockholm is a bit further north than where I am in MN–about 60 degrees north to my 45. As a result, their summer days stretch into the late hours (not quite the land of the midnight sun, but close), and their winter nights are longer and darker. The Swedes appreciate snow not only as a sign of winter but also because of its ability to reflect light. Winter nights–and even days–are brighter with a coating of snow on the ground.

Some people in MN say that we don’t have much of a spring here, that we often go from winter directly into summer. But I’d prefer that to going directly from fall to spring, or even to spring-winter (which if feels like it might be at this point). “A long and lustrous winter” (to quote Bob Murray in Groundhog Day) is part of our identity as Minnesotans. Its loss is felt in our bones.

Have you gotten snow this year? Is it expected or not? What part does winter play in your life?