Tag: History

Scandinavian Folklore

I am currently traveling in Scandinavia with my oldest son and his wife. Therefore, my blogging activities are a little bit less than usual. This particular post is not a super-fact, but it features some interesting facts regarding Scandinavian folklore and mythology. Yesterday, we visited a Norwegian Fjord called Sognefjord, which is said to be the dwelling of a number of Huldra, which is their name in Norwegian, or Skogsrå (forest fairy) in Swedish. Sognefjord is also known to be a narrow deep and long fjord. Sognefjord is one mile deep and 45 miles long and it is surrounded by tall mountains.

Me on a boat in Sognefjord Norway.
The beginning (or end) of Sognefjord. Sognefjord is one mile deep and 45 miles long and surrounded by tall mountains.

A Huldra or Skogsrå or Tallemaja in Swedish is a seductive female creature who lures men with her beauty and beautiful singing and then kills the men. It should be noted that I read that if you meet a Huldra in the forest and you treat her with respect she will not kill you. She would just enjoy your company for a while, talk to you, sing to you, show you the beauty of the forest, and then she would let you go. It is only the rude and selfish men who don’t respect her boundaries whom she kills. What do you think is the truth?

Imagining how a Huldra would look like. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2400845203 by Shutterstock AI Generator.

We took a two-hour cruise on Sognefjord and after the cruise we took a train to the top of the surrounding mountains. Along the way we encountered a Huldra by a waterfall. She sang to us in her beautiful voice, and she seduced us all, both men and women, to take photos of her with our phones and posting them on social media.

My photo of the Huldra (in red) by the waterfall in the Norwegian mountains. She seduced us all into taking photos of her for Facebook. Her seductiveness was feared in medieval times, but in modern times we refer to the seductiveness of the Huldra as a “tourist trap”. On Facebook we call it clickbait.
A close up of the Huldra we encountered. Sorry, my phone camera is the best and it was at a distance.

Scandinavian Folklore Creatures:

The Huldra / Skogsrå is not the only creature in Scandinavian folklore. There are many. Below is a list of Scandinavian folklore creatures.

  • Huldra / Skogsrå – the aforementioned female forest spirit who may kill the men she lures with her beauty and beautiful singing.
  • Troll – Trolls are large ugly creatures with magical powers. They typically live in caves and sunlight is dangerous to them. They are typically hostile to humans and may kidnap people, including children, to work in their mines.
  • Näcken – is a male creature who lives by the water, creeks, rivers, ponds and lakes. He lures children and others to their death. In southern Sweden (Scania) he seduces people by skillfully playing a violin thus creating irresistible music.
  • Vittra or Vitterfolk – are supernatural spirits or small invisible people who have a lot in common with people. They own cattle and they sometimes interact with people. Usually, they stay out of your way, but if you hurt them, for example by throwing hot water out the window without warning them first, they may take revenge on you and burn down your house. Vittra are not evil but not friendly either. The belief in Vittra is especially prevalent in northern Sweden.
  • Tomtar – gnomes – nisse – is another type of small magical people related to vittra but unlike vittra they are friendly. They may help you with your projects and duties as long as you are nice to them. They help you with your farm and your animals, warn you of danger, and bring you gifts for Christmas if you in return give them food, such as porridge. The Swedish Santa Claus is not one guy, but a Tomte, and there are many Tomtar, often one Tomte per house. It makes a lot more sense. How could one guy bring presents to all the children around the world? He would have to fly faster than the speed of light. No, it is rather an army of Tomtar who does that work. The Walt Disney Santa Claus invention is not realistic. Ancient superstition makes more sense.
  • Storsjö odjuret – this is a Swedish lake monster like the Loch Ness monster. It resides in a lake in northern Sweden.
  • Kraken – a gigantic octopus that can bring down entire ships.
  • Blodstämmare – this is not a creature but a very common superstition in northern Sweden. There are people, blodstämmare, who can stop the flow of blood by uttering magical phrases while focusing their minds on the person in question. This power is usually used for good to help people who are bleeding. It can also be used for evil, like black magic, to stop the blood flow in someone’s heart. This superstition is based on Sami (indigenous north Scandinavian people) Shamanism and north Swedish Christian fundamentalism (Laestadians). It is respected enough that some north Swedish hospitals has used blodstämmare in emergency situations. The father of a close friend of mine called a blodstämmare when he had a bad nosebleed, and it worked. I know anecdotes are not valid scientific evidence, but maybe someone should do a study.
An illustration of a Tomte. Shutterstock ID: 2060057882 by PLIMPLUM.

Do I believe in the existence of any of these creatures? No, I don’t, but I am curious, what are the mythical creatures in your culture?

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Vasa Museum Stockholm

This is not a Super Fact post, but it features some interesting facts that have to do with the Vasa Museum Stockholm. It is a bit of trivia and not shocking or disputed information. I am currently traveling in Scandinavia with my oldest son and his wife. This is why I have not been active blogging for a while. By the way, today is his birthday.

This post is about the Swedish warship Vasa. Vasa (or Wasa) was built between 1626 and 1628, and it tipped and sank on its maiden voyage. It was the largest war ship in the world at the time. The cold and brackish waters of this part of the Baltic were free from shipworms and the ship was only 32 meters down below. This made it possible to salvage the ship with a largely intact hull, which was done in 1961.

The Vasa Museum with its huge and impressive 400-year-old war ship is open to the public and a visit does not take long. It is one of the easy must-see destinations for visitors to Stockholm. It is an example of how a big fiasco can be turned into a wonder of the world.

The War Ship Vasa sank in 1628 and salvaged in 1961. It is very well preserved and is on display to the public at the Vasa Museum Stockholm. This photo is taken from a distance. It is not my photo.

At the time there was a big war in Europe, the thirty-year war, fought mainly between protestants and catholic regions. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million people died in this war. Sweden got involved in this war on the protestant side and fought Poland and Lithuania. This war served as a motivation for building Vasa. The reason the Vasa ship tipped over was that the center of gravity was too high. There were too many cannons, ornaments, and the large hull, basically too  much stuff, too high up.

An enhanced photo of the Vasa Ship from the museum.
A photo of the Vasa ship from the bottom floor. My son is standing on the right in a green and black shirt.

A note regarding the photos below. I could not find a spot in the museum where I could take an unobstructed photo of the entire ship. So my photos just shows parts of the ship.

A photo of the Vasa ship from the third floor and on the other side (my photo).
A photo of the Vasa ship from the second floor and more from the front. I was walking around the ship and taking photos.
A photo of the Vasa ship from the back. They removed all the ornaments and placed them separately. This was not always the case. This is my photo.
This is just picture hanging in the museum. It shows how the back of the ship once looked like.
A model of the ship showing how it once looked like. This model is part of the museum exhibit (my photo).
An older photo of the Vasa ship (not mine). It is taken from the side so you can see the whole ship.

It should be noted that the conservators learned some lessons as they tried to conserve the ship. They pioneered many new methods and succeeded in solving many difficult problems. However, they found that using the conserving agent PEG was not a good idea. The iron originally concentrated in specific areas in the wood was spread over the entire ship. The consequences of this became apparent decades later.

Other things they found when they salvaged the ship were the anchors and skeletons.

Once when we visited the Vasa Museum, I bought a children’s book that they sold at the museum called The Vasa Piglet. The story was about a pig who was brought onto the ship to be slaughtered and eaten. However, the ship tipped and sank but the pig saved itself by climbing the mast, sitting in the mast platform for a while before swimming to shore. The piglet survived, and no one ever tried to eat him again. Therefore, he lived happily ever after, but no one else did. It seemed like a cute story to me, but my daughter claims she was traumatized by this book. She was fearful of boats for several years afterwards.

Photo of the front cover of the children’s book the Vasa Piglet.

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We are living in relatively peaceful times

Superfact 9 : We are living in relatively peaceful times

Despite all the wars going on, the world was filled with a lot more war and violence in the past. Despite the grim news reports we are living in relatively peaceful times.

If I asked you, what are the two biggest wars going on the world today (as of September 2024), you would probably say that it is the Russia / Ukraine war and the Israel / Gaza war. Well, unless you are really well informed, it would come as a surprise that there are more devastating wars going on in the world. For example, there is currently a big civil war going on in Sudan that began in April 2023.

According to the latest issue of the Economist perhaps 150,000 people have been slaughtered in this civil war, and 10 million people have fled their homes, and a famine is emerging that could kill 2.5 million people by the end of the year. This war is likely to destabilize neighboring countries and is sponsored by Russia and Middle Eastern states. It’s likely the biggest crisis in the world but most likely you’ve never heard of it.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In the recent Tigray war in Ethiopia between 162,000 and 600,000 people were killed according to Wikipedia. The Tigray war is mostly over, but the point I am trying to make is that you probably have never heard of it. You cannot use the impressions given by the amount of media attention a conflict gets to decide on how severe it is. You’ve got to check the statistics and compare, and the statistics might be quite unintuitive if you have relied on media attention as a metric.

What was the most devastating war in the 19th century?

So, to the next question. What was the most devastating war in the 19th century? If you say the American civil war, you are not correct (estimated 650,000+ deaths). A somewhat better answer is the Napoleonic wars (and estimated 4 million deaths). But none of the answers are correct. The Taiping rebellion in China was the worst. Estimates of the conflict’s death toll range between 20 and 30 million people. Some estimates say 100 million, which would make it the most devastating war in human history.

But did you hear about it? Again, you’ve got to check the statistics, and not rely on your impressions. I am saying this because the claim that deaths from wars and violence have declined over the last few decades is a quite unintuitive claim and yet it is true. That’s why it is a super fact.

Taiping Rebels at Shanghai China in 1853-54. ‘Small Swords’ refers to daggers used by warriors or martial artists in close combat. 19th century print. Stock Illustration ID: 237232531 by Everett Collection.

As this article in the Our World In Data states “While every war is a tragedy, the data suggests that fewer people died in conflicts in recent decades than in most of the 20th century. Countries have also built more peaceful relations between and within them.”. It should be noted that even though killing has never been as efficient as it is in the present, in the past a lot of civilians died from famine and disease resulting from the wars.

For example, the Spanish flu following World War I killed between 25 to 50 million people. I should say those numbers are typically not included in the deaths from World War I. The number of deaths from World War I are estimated at 20 million. 10 million combatants and 10 million civilians.

Death rate from wars since 1946. The uptick in 2022 is largely due to the Ethiopian Tigray war with 162,000–600,000 killed and the invasion of Ukraine,  which US and BBC estimates at more than 200,000 deaths (but estimates from most other sources are less).

One problem with this kind of statistics is that the estimates vary, especially with respect to civilian causalities. In addition, very big wars lasting a few years create very bumpy graphs with large spikes making it harder to identify trends.

However, by listing estimated war deaths of the biggest wars, genocides and democides since the 1800’s you can see that deaths from this type of violence have overall been reduced over the last few decades. A note, democides are mass killings of civilians but are not necessarily directed at an ethnic group (democide include genocide).

The links below are mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica, but also from Wikipedia, the Census bureau, and a couple of other sources.

As I said, the numbers are estimates and not hard data, especially with respect to civilian casualties. However, you can see a trend going from several conflicts with numbers in the tens of millions before 1950, then numbers in millions until 2000/2007 and then during the last couple of decades the numbers have been less than a million. This does not cover homicide rates but even in that case we can see a reduction even though it is less distinct.

In this graph we can see that homicide rate worldwide has been reduced somewhat since the mid 1990’s. This graph is also taken from the Our World in Data website and they in turn used various databases from UN, WHO, etc.

Finally, you can also take a look at this post “US Violent Crime Nearly Cut in Half Since 1990” and this article from pew research that includes a graph showing that the US violent crime rate has nearly halved since the 1990’s.

Also remember that in the past there were a lot less people on earth, so relatively speaking a million deaths was a lot bigger number back then. In summary, despite all the wars going on, our world is less violent than it used to be.

To see the other Super Facts click here