I watched Frost Nixon the other night on DVD with Swedish subtitles of course.

I can’t say I was that impressed. Yes Michael Sheen played David Frost very well but there was nothing new in this for me. I have read extensively on Nixon and watched the actual debates previously so I was left a little bit disappointed that after all these years nothing new had come out.

As some of you know, Richard Nixon is one of my political heroes.  Controversial I know but he achieved some great things, most of which the media conveniently forget about.

I dont really know much about Nixon and his relationship with Sweden so I decided to surf around and see what was out there.

Apparently Olof Palme became the unofficial ‘leader’ of the opposition against the Vietnam war and was very critical of the US. Palme wanted Sweden to be seen as a ‘beacon in a dark world’ as they took in lots of Leftist leaders from Chile, SA etc.

Nixon allegedly  called him a ‘Swedish asshole’ and suspended diplomatic relations with Sweden for a few years. I will write to the guys at the Nixon Foundation and see what the truth was regarding this.

According to Wikipedia:

The period between 1968 and 1976 marked a cold period in the political relations between Sweden and the U.S., mainly due to the Swedish government’s vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. In February 1968, the U.S. recalled its Ambassador from Sweden after the Swedish Minister of Education Olof Palme had participated in a protest in Stockholm against the war together with the North Vietnamese Ambassador to the Soviet Union Nguyen Tho Chan.^[2] The post of U.S. Ambassador to Sweden remained vacant until February 1970. In December 1972, Olof Palme (then Prime Minister) made a speech in Swedish national radio where he compared the ongoing U.S. bombings of Hanoi to some of the worst atrocities committed by the nazis. The U.S. government called the comparison a “gross insult” and once again decided to freeze its diplomatic relations with Sweden (this time the freeze lasted for over a year).^[2]

Following Olof Palme’s death in 1986 and the succession of Ingvar Carlsson as new Prime Minister, Swedish-American relations significantly improved. For the first time since Erlander’s visit to Kennedy in 1961 a Swedish Prime Minister was invited to the White House when Ingvar Carlsson met with President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

Interesting stuff. I wasn’t aware of this bit of history. Not wishing to be too partisan but you cant blame the Yanks for getting upset. Protesting with the North Vietnamese Ambassador  would demonstrate more support for the Vietcong than against war.

Although it appears Olof Palme did in fact meet President Nixon at the White House on October 24th, 1970. I would not have minded being a fly on the wall then…although there could be a taped conversation of this meeting

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Its not just the Swedish Royal Family  (thanks Sarah!) who are devolved from the French.  There are actually a lot of Swedish words which are heavily influenced by the French.

I read that a lot of words came in at the start of the Bernadotte rule in 1818. Though a lot of previous rulers and aristocracy from the 1600′s spoke French and used it as the court language.

So how come a there is a French royal line?

Basically, the Swedes lost Finland and it sent the Swedish state into turmoil. The locals revolted and put Charles XIII on the throne. The snag here is that he remained childless. The Swedes then put a Dane on the throne (they must have been desperate!   Charles August died the same year.  The Swedes were not having much regal luck.

Napoleon was ruling much of contintental Europe at that stage so the Swedes wanted to pick a King who would be acceptable to him. So they decided on Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte who was then Marshall of France and he managed to stick around long enough to have heirs and the present King and his family are his descendants.

Thats the short version anyway!

But I digress. This new King had a big effect on the language as he did not both learning Swedish and many of the Swedish aristocracy either learnt or knew French. Swedish is heavily Germanic but there was certainly a shift and many of the ‘loan’ words came from French rather then low German. Military words in particular took on a very Gallic slant.

I am reminded of this by two words which have been prevalent this week.

Paraply for instance is Swedish for umbrella, very similar to the French word for it parapluie.

Påsk – Swedish for Easter is very similar to Pâques the French word for Easter. In the same way that Easter is very close to the Germanic word for it Ostern. Isnt language fascinating!

Any more French influenced Swedish words you can think of?

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