Spelträff i Grillby

By lydia | Published: September 23, 2012

On Sunday I had my first spelträff (play date) with Alice, the buttonbox player we met at the Byss-Calle stämman last month. She is, it turns out, the only woman riksspelman on durspel (two-row button accordion) today. When someone asked me recently what’s been the most fun thing that’s happened since I got to Sweden, this day with Alice was what popped to mind.

Grillby is a tiny town near Enköping, so to get there I took the train to Uppsala, then changed to a bus, and she scooped me up from the nearest bus stop and drove the last 10 minutes. (During my half-hour of changing vehicles in Uppsala, I high-tailed it for the Apoteket and bought myself a hot water bottle, yaay!)

Alice introduced me to her husband Lars and showed me around their lovely home. I was entertained to see that the music room is so full of accordions that one now needs to play in the living room instead. We had both wondered a little beforehand whether we’d have much common repertoire, but it turns out we have a lot of shared musical interests. When I had a tune she didn’t know, she could usually trade me for a story about its composer, and sometimes vice versa. But more importantly, she’s a deeply musical player with a strong sense of what it means to play for dancing, and we had a fabulous time getting started with playing together.

(Obscure point of interest, for those few of you who also learned Emil Olsson’s tune Fiolbacken from Stefhan, or from me: it’s named for the street where Emil lived in Uppsala.)

We also spent quite a lot of time talking — about tunes, players current and past, philosophies,… I was ever so pleased to discover that I could actually make it through the entire day in Swedish — with of course occasional explanations or translations, but only a very few lapses into English. It’s great to have friends who can help beginning language speakers! Plus, great food, sharing of CDs and music books and YouTube videos of favorite players,… it was a lovely day.

Also this past week:

  • Leif invited Andrea and me to a session Tuesday at his friend Arne’s house in Tobo, so we walked over there and joined them and a couple of their regular fiddle buddies for some tunes. Plus, Andrea made friends with a cute new dog.
  • Wednesday was our first class with Mia, and it was way fun. 5-string fiddles, woo hoo!
  • We had an intimate but festive birthday party for Ursula. There were even blueberries, because Alma had just picked lots. We discussed the finer points of singing to wish someone another 100 years when they are already 97. (Not Ursula, she’s only 6.)
  • The sauna in the main house is now in season, lack of snow notwithstanding.
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Settling in

By lydia | Published: September 16, 2012

Who should appear for the weekend but our friends Thomas and Ingrid from Borås! I knew Thomas was coming for some course weekends, and that there was a course happening this weekend, but I hadn’t put those bits together.

Successes:

  • Phone bill deciphered! Ingrid made the whole thing behave. It turns out there is detail if you scroll down to find the subtle paging links within the popup display. It further turns out that if you get to the bill from a different path, you gain an arrow icon that yields a pdf download, so you can see the whole doc. Now the only remaining surprise is the 250kr startup fee for the acct — did I know about that??
  • Phone bill paid! Less important that I can’t have a bank account to wire funds if I can just hand over cash directly.
  • Fun shopping excursion! I went with Ingrid on her errand to the computers-&c store in Uppsala, and she augmented the trip to take us to the giant loppis (~flea-market) in Vendel. Where we didn’t find a computer desk for me, but I got a nice book of folk songs and a new mug of pleasing form and dimension, and she picked up a few things too.
  • Acquired a computer desk!! Found through the classifieds on Blocket.se (~craigslist). There was a period of dismay after I learned that rather than being in Tierp (15 min away), the desk was living in Skärplinge (more like 35 min, hence the theory that Vendel might be more convenient). But Anni kindly loaned me her car for an hour+, and Andrea came along as navigator. VERY excited to have a usable work environment, so I don’t have to do all my computing while hunkered on my bed.

Also there was a tea-and-scones party (thanks to Andrea for yummy scones), followed by watching part of the BBC Pride and Prejudice. I am not sure why we are having English parties, but I am always in favor of scones. Oh, and Andrea also made a big pan of mac-and-cheese with leftover pizza-cheese. Because she is awesome.

my spiffy new workspace

my spiffy new workspace

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Week 37

By lydia | Published: September 15, 2012

Noteworthy this week:

  • Surprise visit from Genticorum on Monday afternoon, which of course entailed their all trying their hands at nyckelharpa.
  • Hasse Gille came in as our guest teacher on Wednesday. His playing manages to be both rough and polished, somehow, and full of joy.
  • Banking report: it turns out we aren’t eligible to open bank accounts here after all. Which is to say, we are allowed to have a savings account, and even to have a dumbed-down version of a debit card usually used for teenagers, but not to do any internet banking. And since transferring funds to other people’s accounts is how people pay for pretty much everything here, we are relegated to a cash economy, plus our US credit cards. Argh.
  • First music theory class, fortunately with extracurricular projects (starting with a Bodapolska transcription and its inherent philosophical questions) since otherwise the higher-level group is starting out with reading simple rhythms and melodies. Great vocabulary builder, though.
  • First song class: we all now have a common repertoire of three schottis songs. The catchiest goes,

    Grannens bastu har vält omkull, och våran står och lutar.
    Bättre ha en krokig en, än att va’ alldeles utan.
    (The neighbors’ sauna has overturned, and ours is leaning.
    Better to have a crooked one than to go entirely without.)

  • First private lesson, with Ditte. Working on my bow hold. I am hoping that after I spend some more time watching videos, I will graduate to the stage where I can at least form the desired hand shape, and then I can work on trying to keep it that way while I play. On the bright side, I was pleased to discover that the beautiful tune Ditte played with Olov at the Uppsala concert and then here at our orientation is one of her own.
  • We each filmed ourselves playing a couple of tunes. This is the “before” picture, for our possible amusement/edification at the end of the school year.
  • Class pizza party on Friday evening. We all make pizzas (collaborative prep of dough and toppings, pairs/trios decorate individual pies), we scrounge for more tables and chairs to make one long festive dining table. There are singing and tuning of beer/soda bottles and (briefly) speechifying and multiple desserts and dancing of many sorts in the not-so-big space.
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Karlholmsbruk & Jernbergs

By lydia | Published: September 9, 2012

Two sets of adventures on Sunday:

Leif was planning a trip to visit Harry (who built my nyckelharpa) on Sunday morning, and I had a couple of repair requests for Harry too, so Andrea and I joined the party for the ride up to Karlholmsbruk. We had a nice visit, of course including fika. I now have a fully functional A string — and if possible even more excitingly, I also have all of my sympathetic strings resonating happily, because Harry carved out the backs of my second row of tangents so they leave more room for their neighboring string to move freely. Yaaay! Also we had a convoluted and interesting discussion about the three top tangents that Olov had pronounced in need of replacement: turns out the new string solves 2 of them, and the 3rd has a little bit of a wolf on it that none of the assembled experts had a solution for. But I am fine with that, and extremely pleased to have my harpa in tip-top working order.

In the afternoon, we had a fun lesson/session/visit with our new friend P-G (Per-Gustaf), whom we met in Uppsala when we were marching next to him in the parade during the Eric-birthday celebration. He lives in the next town over, Örbyhus, and is the current tradition bearer of the Jernberg family of fiddlers (he is a riksspelman on nyckelharpa). The ESI library has a copy of the comprehensive scholarly volume of Jernbergslåtar (Jernbergs’ tunes), with lots of great historical photos and text and transcriptions galore. We looked through photos, we played/learned some tunes, we listened to more tunes, we had fika, we watched a video of Ceylon Wallin. Now we’ve got more great tunes to learn! And a song.

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Kulturnatten

By lydia | Published: September 9, 2012

On Saturday, Andrea and I went into Uppsala for Culture Night, which is kind of like having a First Night celebration on the first weekend of school (in a university town) instead of on New Year’s Eve, and wasn’t as much warmer as one might have hoped. Lots of street food vendors (more candy than we are used to), performance locations throughout the city, shops open with enticing sales. There was a densely printed program that we didn’t even try to read through much of, since it seemed like we’d be pretty well able to find something interesting to do wherever we were.

A few highlights:

  • Used books! A good day to find folks peddling books at sidewalk booths. I now have several more lovely children’s books in Swedish (don’t ask if I’ve actually found time to read them yet), including a copy of Nalle Puhs hörna (The House on Pooh Corner), and also a nice book of wristwarmer knitting designs.
  • Princess grodorna! I misremembered them as monsters, although they are clearly labeled as frogs, but the bakery where Mills and I found princesstorta critters in 2007 is right where we left it. We shared one to celebrate.
  • Fire show! Well, OK, this would have been a highlight if we had gotten there in time to see over people’s heads, but Elin assures us it was fun if you got there in time to sit.
  • Organ concert! The last event of our evening was a short organ concert in the enormous and majestic domkyrka (cathedral).
  • Home by 3am! OK, this wasn’t exactly a highlight either, but it was certainly noteworthy. A few minutes after we hopped on the 12:19 train, before it had even gotten out town, we hit a person on the tracks. She was pronounced still alive at the hospital. The rest of us sat for another couple of hours before the train moved again. Looooong day.
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Lighted trail in Tobo

By lydia | Published: September 6, 2012

Do we have these in the US? Sweden has illuminated woodland trails (elljusspår is short for elektriskt ljus spår) where you can go jogging (or walking or skiing) safely when it’s dark out. Which I am assured it will often be. Ours is an evidently standard 2.5 km loop. And the electric bulbs weren’t on when Andrea and I went out for a pre-dinner walk in dramatic evening light.

I made Andrea this little collage from our walk. (Click to enlarge, click again to zoom.)

early September walk

early September walk

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