Wars, Particulars, and Sandwiches. Culture and Political Movements in Fiction and Real Life: Culture, Politics, WWII to Now. Den Svenske Nationalsocialisten. And the human side: Food.

Wars and Sandwiches
Stieg Larsson, Author

Cultural frameworks for political and novel acting out.
 Wars and Sandwiches.  
The Novel Escape.

 1.  Wars, museums and novels. A look at food in Stieg Larsson's mystery novels; and references to repressive politics there and in museums.

2.  Stieg Larsson's dark world; politics then and now. Immigration and supremacism, as here and elsewhere in Europe

3.  Food through it all. This is stressful. I think I need a sandwich. Open face. Descriptions and some recipes. Stieg Larsson on sandwiches and snacks.

I.  Wars and museums; then novels.  The neutral country examined, a little.

The air museum near Linkoping shows some stage-setting scenes of life at home and in the air during war.  Living rooms set up, people listening to radios, a mock-up of a plane crash.  We saw little interest in presenting Sweden's experience with Naziism, however, so we are looking that up ourselves.

Our interest in Sweden and Nazism started not with a museum at all, but with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson.

Larrson is the author of the fine series of dark mysteries that abound in people taking showers, enjoying wonderful sandwiches, coffee at all hours, while solving grisly situations.

The Stieg Larsson Girl With the Dragon Tattoo also mentions the Swastika and the WASA Sheaf, a paper by Helene Loow, about symbols adopted by German Nazis and Swedish Nazis.  How could a people who so love good food do terrible things.  Answer.  We all do and do.

Is this it?  A sheaf of wheat. What is the WASA?  Something about National Socialist Worker's Party? Fair use thumbnail from www.uwasa.fin, that looks like Finland's form.  Looking for one for Sweden.

Here:  fair use thumbnail from Wikipedia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Workers%27_Party_%28Sweden%29/  The Vasa Sheaf is the Vasakarven here.

Vasakärven

 

Larsson and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also refers to

• The National Socialist Worker's Party is mentioned at 72; along with 
• A 1933 Lindholm movement  a/k/a NSW that must mean National Socialist Worker's. 
• A Sven Olof Lindholm who formed a party called the NSAP in January of 1933, National Socialist "Arbitare Pariet" (is arbitare "worker??"). Then it changed its name to Svensk Socialistisk Samling (SSS) and that carried on until dissolved in 1950.  See ://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/16675-nsap-sss/  Its flag:  yellow swastika on blue ground.  Click on posts at the site for pictures of events, Lindholm, etc. Wikipedia says it was dissolved by 1945.

The NSW moved away from Hitler's ideas, see the site above, and by 1938 (in 1938 WWII began) had abandoned use of the swastika, and continued on a path stressing anti-capitalism and socialism along a Swedish and not German model. However, it was and (is?) a strong denier of the Holocaust, and some groups known abroad by the "skinhead" description.

In 1945 a group Den Svenske Nationalsocialisten began the holocaust denial movement in Sweden, is that a correct understanding?

Then we ask, from the Stieg Larsson book's character, Was there really a Richard Vanger? The new genre of Nordic Noir lists him at sites but these appear to be all fictional, Dragon Tattoo related, see somebody's blog at ://nordicnoir.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/nazis/



II.  New incarnation of population issues, one asserting supremacism:  Anti-immigration.

Now, the Den Svenske Nationalsocialisten group has accelerated an anti-immigration focus:  Anti immigration party formed of skinhead movement seizes balance of power in Sweden, see March 28, 2011 at ://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1313639/Swedish-election-Anti-immigration-party-formed-skinhead-movement.html

Sounds like the US and just as sinister.  Global fear virus. An expanded lifestyle, more inclusive, is not "loss" of lifestyle, but it looks like half the US is scared stiff of empathy and opportunity for other than those like them, or is that too harsh?  Global discussion needed.

Humanaphobia.  Fear of other human beings, pick the arbitrary attribute of distinction.  Tint, origin, caste.  Not of my tribe! Think the Teas east and west. Nuts.

Other issue is looking up how neutral was Sweden during WWII.

Theorem:  No governmental position ever represents agreement in the entire population, is that so, and commerce and other baser motives, as well as sincerely held ideological positions, pull in high places. So it is not surprising here to find ongoing profitable financial relationships between Sweden and Germany during WWII, see ://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1146462/Revealed-How-neutral-Sweden-secret-loans-Nazi-Germany-WWII.html/   Is this a neutral site?  Need to vet the sources.

There were also sizable numbers of Swedish volunteers in the German armed forces, see ://www.feldgrau.com/sweden.html/  Also to be expected according to the Theorem. There as here in the US, people retain their allegiances, ideologies, hatreds etc.,  even if the national rulers are moving in another direction.

Here is a refresher course on Swedish history, its expansions, at ://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Sweden-HISTORY.html/ Scroll down to Sweden and Neutrality and see the number of ways that Sweden has chosen a path differing from neighboring Norway or across-the-water Denmark.  This takes time to absorb, but omnia scandinavia in tres partes divisa est but each divisa is different.


III.  Food!  War, Crime, Peace

Pass the coffee.  Shall we make a sandwich. Open face.  Buy one in the morning where you are enjoying your pastry and coffee.  It'll keep. Top with caviar, cucumber, dill, dollops delish.

Swedish open-faced sandwiches, Ystad shop (includes bakery-pastry  case, and, yes, coffee. See Ystad post.

See more at Stieg Larsson and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:  There, people under stress and people sorting through it all eat, eat, eat. and wisely. We are enjoying it all immensely -- pages from our library book refer to

• roast hare with currant jelly and potatoes 90,
• ordering or eating sandwiches 113, 139, 231, 320, 347 (that one at a vending machine -- Scandinavian sandwiches and many in Europe's vending machine are indeed delicious, and fresh); 
• sausage and liverwurst (for the cat) 117, 
• more making coffee,
• "big open rye-bread sandwiches with cheese, caviar, and a hard-boiled egg" -- as a nighttime snack 215;  
• boil some potatoes and have "open sandwiches of pickled herring in mustard sauce with chives and egg:  279;
• "sauteed lamb chops in wine sauce" 297-- ooh. A simple reduction sauce perhaps, remove chops, keep warm, drain fat, add butter, swirl in red wine, reduce? 
• Then there are horrid, greedy and dumb product placements all over. Skip those. Any product mentioned in a book or movie we avoid on principle.  Cheap shots, propaganda. Don't want to know the brand.  
• Then, heroine smiles are wry or crooked or lopsided or people curl their lips.  That takes practice

Larsson sandwiches.  The best.

Sandwiches as World Cuisine:

Many people offer favorite recipes for this cool take and go, including some who since emigrated from Sweden, like Marcus Samuelsson here.  Here, he lays out his open-faced salmon sandwich, saying he had that as a child in Sweden often -- see ://www.kitchendaily.com/2010/07/09/open-faced-salmon-sandwich/   Try a mussel and bacon one, at ://www.chow.com/recipes/12769-swedish-open-faced-mussel-and-bacon-sandwiches/  The shrimp one is in most of the best shops, and even some vending machines -- you can trust the freshness -- see ://blogs.sweden.se/photo/2011/03/28/land-of-the-open-faced-smorgas/

The Girl Who Played With Fire has fewer references, so we move on to the last in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

  [and always coffee]

• Breakfast:  "two slices of toast with cheese, orange marmalade, and a sliced avocado" page 19
• Midnight snack:  cheese and liver pate sandwich

That was about it on food. Larsson mysteries seem to have covered that.

Old Wars.

More of interest in Hornet is the accounts of Amazons, women warrior tales, and that Ireland finally passed a law forbidding it, that meant (of course) that they were actively doing it at the time, in 697, as the (ahem amen) gents' Church took over and made edicts against nature.  Amazon, says Larsson, comes from Greek meaning "no breast" but there is no real proof that they removed a protuberance in order to archer better. Linguistic riddle:  is the "a" a prefix meaning without, or meaning With (sizeables).  See 147.