York Anglo-Scan

Volume 16, Issue 4/2010

Scandinavian News

A newsletter for York Anglo-Scandinavian Society

Denmark

Soap opera ... work with soap. The Comany Schous had, in 1926, over 900 soap houses through-out Denmark with not only soaps but also hygiene and cleaning products. One of these soap houses was situated in Stoholm, a little town in central Jutland. This soap house has now been relocated to the Old Town in Aarhus, an open air village museum comprising historical
buildings collected from all over Denmark.
http://www.cphpost.dk/culture/culture/50438-old-town-opens-new-neighbourhood.html

Tycho turned in his grave. An internatio-nal scientific team has open-ed the grave of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) in the Tyn church of Prague. (Tycho Brahe was working in Prague for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II of the Habsburg dynasty.) The examination was initiated by Danish scientists who are trying to find out the real cause of Brahe's death. According to textbooks he died from problems with renal stones - and a legend has it that Brahe died after his urinary bladder burst when he could not leave a feast before the Emperor. There were, however signs pointing to poisoning found by the Danish toxicologist Bent Kampe who analysed Brahe's beard when the tomb was opened in 1901. Therefore samples will be taken from the bones for further analyses. There are also plans to re-create the astrono-mer's face, using the same technique that was used for the cranium of Grauballemanden (the early Iron Age man discovered in a bog near the village of Grauballe in Jutland).
After the examination of the bones, these will be returned to their original place and a mass held in honour of the great man.
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/zpravy/brahe-s-grave-in-prague-opened-to-find-whether-he-was-killed/556754 15.11.10, http://politiken.dk/videnskab

Finland

Finland

Santaland. Rovaniemi has hijacked Christmas.
This small town in northern Finland offers a Christmas experience every day all the year around. This is of course only fair since 'Santa Claus has declared Rovaniemi his hometown. In order to retain the privacy of his secret location, the Elf folk decided to build a place where Santa could meet people from near and far at the Northern Arctic Circle throughout the year.' Nearly half a million people (also including Brits) visit Rovaniemi every year. The business - or rather businesses as there are two companies, each with a Santa - employs about 1500 people, so from every (Finnish) point of view, the 25 years' work on establishing Rovaniemi as Santa's home has been successful.
Rovaniemi was burnt down when the Russians withdrew from Lapland in 1944. A new town plan was made by the Alvar Aalto. The Santa Claus Village is located 8 km north of Rovaniemi, right on the Arctic Circle.
Dagens Nyheter 22.12.09, http://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/In_English.iw3

Iceland

No entry in this issue.

Norway

Why Oleanna? The two-character thrilling power-play Oleanna by Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet is on stage at Theatre Royal in York. Your editor was there and saw it. Now, the programme says that the title is taken from a Norwegian folk-song. That piece of information left question marks in my mind. Wikipedia explains that the title of the song refers to a 19th century escapist vision of utopia. Question marks remain, but here follows some more information.
The song is a critique of Ole Bull's vision of a perfect society in America (yes, the Ole Bull remembered in our October newsletter!). Bull visited the United States several times where his concerts a great success. In 1852, he obtained a large tract of land in Pennsylvania and founded a colony, which was called New Norway but which is commonly referred to as Ole Bull Colony. The land consisted of four communities: New Bergen (now known as Carter Camp), Oleanna, named after himself and his mother, New Norway, and Valhalla. His society failed, and all of the immigrants moved away since the dense forest made it hard to settle there, while Bull went back to giving concerts.
The lyrics (written in 1852) concern the singer's desire to leave Norway and escape to Oleanna, a land where 'wheat and corn just plant themselves / then grow a good four feet a day / while on your bed you rest yourself'.
Does that clarify the choice of title for the play??

Sweden

The Nobel Prizes for 2010 with recipients based in the UK.

Physics. Andre Geim and Konstantin No-voselov,
both professors at the University of Manchester, 'for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene'.
Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new - not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.
Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom.
A vast variety of practical applications now appears possible, including the creation of new materials and the manufacture of innovative electronics.

Physiology or Medicine. Robert Edwards was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of all couples worldwide.
As early as the 1950s, Edwards had the vision that IVF could be useful as a treatment for infertility. His efforts were finally crowned by success on 25 July, 1978, when the world's first 'test tube baby' was born. During the following years, Edwards and his co-workers refined IVF technology and shared it with colleagues around the world.
Robert G. Edwards was born in 1925 in Batley, England. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge.

Economics. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2010 went to Christopher A. Pissarides (London School of Economics and Political Science), together with Peter Diamond
(USA) and Dale Mortensen (also USA) 'for their analysis of markets with search frictions'.
Why are so many people unemployed at the same time that there are a large number of job openings? How can economic policy affect unemployment? This year's Laureates have developed a theory which can be used to answer these questions. The theory is also applicable to markets other than the labour market.
http://nobelprize.org