Jacob Christensen

Today, we’re off to Jordaan. That’s the old working-class neighbourhood to the west of the Grachtengordel.

The photo shows a monument celebrating some famous Dutch singers and musicians from the Jordaan, first and foremost Johnny Jordaan (real name: Johannes Hendricus van Musscher) and Tante Leen (Helena Kok-Polder)

But wait, there is more: Johnny Jordaan was the cousin of Carel Verbrugge, aka Willy Alberti and Alberti’s daughter Willeke, an entertainer in her own right, was married to … drum-roll … S�ren Lerby in the 1980s. Through an earlier marriage, Willeke was also linked to TV-magnate John de Mol of Endemol and BigBrother-fame.

Reading Swedish crime novels is not my favourite way of procrastinating but if you belong to the Danish Stieg Larsson fan club, Line Petersen from Blogbogstaver suggests that instead of waiting in agony until the Danish translation is published you might want to get hold of a Swedish copy of Luftslottet som spr�ngdes and read that.

The point here is that a) written Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are still pretty close and b) in the age of supposed internationalisation Scandinavians are increasingly losing the competence to read the other Scandinavian languages. After all, we’re international now and international of cause means English.

Well, my touch of nostalgia – or general grouchiness – is linked to the fact that the first book, I read at university (Copenhagen, in case you wonder) was a history of philosophy – in New-Norwegian. The second book was an introduction to the philosophy of knowledge – in Swedish. The textbook for the statistics course was in English.

I’m afraid that would be beyond today’s students competences to read Norwegian and Swedish or Danish, respectively. And politicians and bureaucrats would dearly like to kill off the national languages in education as well. In the end, we will be speechless.

PS: So – is it ironic that this blog is in English? No, it is aimed at an audience of five people of which two do not read Danish.

Somehow staying on the subject of football, the clich� I hate the most is “Brazilian Samba Football”.

In my not so humble opinion, sports commentators who use this, the lamest of clich�s, should be taken out, tortured in the most humiliating and painful ways for 24 hours and then be left at a desert roadside with only a recording of a random selection of recordings of transmissions of Brazilian international matches as company.

Anyway, what I really wanted to do was to direct you at some non-samba Brazilian themed posts over at Ezra Klein. First, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrid Gilberto and – last but definitively not least – Caetano Veloso.

Then, in an attempt to outdo the first post, a helping of Milton Nascimento, Elis Regina and Lenine.

Enjoy.

And in case a sports reporter reads this: Veloso, Nascimento, Regina and Lenine are not Bossa Nova artists.

Manchester City 1 – 0 Manchester United.

No, I haven’t forgotten about the sickness benefits story which has been in the headlines for the last week – I’ll get back to that one. Later.

In Sweden, SIFO’s August poll doesn’t show any big moves among the parties or between the political blocs: The three opposition parties are still in a clear lead.

The really interesting piece of information, though, is that the Sweden Democrats are getting ever closer to the 4% of the votes needed nationally to enter parliament. Svenska Dagbladet doesn’t offer a full regional break-down of the numbers, but we are told that the Sweden Democrats are at 7,7% in Sk�ne. 12% of the vote in a constituency gives a party representation in parliament.

Meanwhile, Fredrik Reinfeldt seems to blame the media.

HE’LL LOSE!

NO, HE’LL WIN!!

Well, if there is such a thing as statistical truth, then it in all likelihood is that it’s a close call – it’s too close to call, actually – between the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Danish People’s Party on the one hand and the other parties on the other hand when you look at the Danish opinion right now.

I think this is funny. And as the comment says, what would democracy be without Jon Stewart (or Mikael Bertelsen … hmm, Sweden has a problem)

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