Thomas Lindblad

Nice to hear. In fact this episode was inspired by something I experienced myself in the 1990s in Australia. You are very right. Some things do not change fundamentally over time.

I entered the fourth decade of my life at an unlikely location. I was sitting in a German ale house in Hanover. Rutger raised his tankard of beer high above his head. ‘Cheers Göran,’ he shouted. ‘Hoe does it feel not to be young anymore?’ ‘It’s not so bad at all. Thirty is not the end of life.’ By conventional measure I was firmly settled as an estate owner, a husband and a father. Yet inside me, youthful cravings for genuine love were burning. For Rutger, it was easy talking; he stil

Yes, it is quite idyllic both at the estate and in the area of Lindesberg in the western part of the province of Västmanland, at the time at least as long as nobody knows exactly what is going on. Very nice to get thorough local knowledge about the location of much of the story. I grow up in Västerås, the largest town i Västmanland, located in the eastern part of the province.

A lot happened in my immediate surroundings during the Spring of 1821, the year in which I for the last time could pass for somebody still in his twenties. In March, Sofia gave birth to a daughter who was named Svea, the female personification of Sweden that recently had been popularized in patriotic poetry. The obvious godfathers were Carl Filip and Stefan, whereas two young ladies of a neighbouring estate served as godmothers. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the baptism. In April, v

You are both very right, I think. A lot can still happen between them.

I received his first letter at the beginning of the year in which I would turn twenty-eight – and Carl Oscar two. It was not the contents that surprised me. The extraordinary thing was that he was writing a letter to me in the first place. Since our brief encounter in Uppsala last autumn, no day had passed by without me thinking about him, also when taking my nightly bath before entering the marital bed. Stefan told me about the preparations for Sören’s defense of his PhD dissertation in U

The ambitious scholar Sören Sinclair is undoubtedly a highly innovative and imaginative PhD candidate, not in the least worrying about what his autistic brother is doing in the meantime. Crown Prince Oscar (future Oscar I) did in fact spend a term at Uppsala University. The celebration of his name-day is authentic, including the inscription on the image of Wotan.

Very true. A lot can still happen to these guys you mention. They are all likely to reapper in various situations.

In the year Carl Oscar celebrated his first birthday, I was summoned to be away from home for several months. I reluctantly left my little boy, who had just taken his first hesitant steps. I could and did not wish to refuse Oscar's request. The Crown Prince had to complete his training by spending one term as a student at the University of Uppsala of which he, incidentally, was titular head. He invited me to join him as a kind of intellectual adjutant. “Your education at Oxford makes you mo

Interesting to learn about the fate of the Lång estate of the Löwenhielm family. Different from most other estates mentioned in my story, Lång is not fictitious. Yes, fatherhood may not be the first aspect one expects in the life story of a gay man, but in Göran's situation it fits in perfectly.

Well ahead of time, I knew I would become a father before turning twenty-six. Already one month after our wedding, Magdalena told me she did not have her period anymore. It did not take long before she frequently had to throw up in the morning. Our physician in Lindesberg examined her, old women at the estate pried into the matter. A quack was even engaged, who from the colour and smell of her urine determined she was pregnant. She was due in mid-April 1818. This did not have far-reaching c

The wedding was in July 1817. The earliest possible appearance of a result is likely to be in April 1818. As I am sure you have noted, the story is strictly chronological with one chapter per year during the protagonist's lifetime.

Very nice to get endorsement from local expert knowledge! I did take note of the fact the church was quite new at the time my story is played out. How important is such an old famly feud to the young generation? Time will tell.

The year I was going to get married began on a somber note. Mattias Tofte at Toftegave in the western province of Värmland had passed away after a long illness at the age of sixty. Birger and I travelled to the funeral in awful weather. With my presence, I wished to express the long-standing relationship between the families Hammarcreutz and Tofte. An added benefit was that this journey offered an opportunity to see Carl Filip and Sofia again. All the past years we had only kept in contact by co

The cold and wet weather continued into the year 1816. Gradually, the cause of the global cooling became known. In April 1815, a volcanic eruption had occurred in the mountain Tambora on the island Sumbawa in the distant colony the Netherlands East Indies. Enormous quantities of ash and sulphur were spewed into the atmosphere, which led to less sunlight reaching earth. There was talk of harvest failures all around, although the tenants at my estate were relatively spared. Spring brought co