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Thomas Lindblad

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  1. 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.
  2. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  3. Thomas Lindblad
    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.
  4. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  5. Thomas Lindblad
    You are both very right, I think. A lot can still happen between them.
  6. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  7. Thomas Lindblad
    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.
  8. Thomas Lindblad
    Very true. A lot can still happen to these guys you mention. They are all likely to reapper in various situations.
  9. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  10. Thomas Lindblad
    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.
  11. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  12. Thomas Lindblad
    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.
  13. Thomas Lindblad
    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.
  14. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  15. Thomas Lindblad
    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
  16. Thomas Lindblad

    Chapter 17

    Thomas Lindblad commented on Josh Aterovis's story chapter in Chapter 17

    A beautiful chapter with a lot of authentic emotions! The whole plot is captivating. For me it is the first time I read a Killian Kendall story chapter by chapter rather than in its completed version. A nice experience.
  17. Thomas Lindblad
    Yes, Göran is becoming an adult quicker than one might have expected from how he was as a student in Oxford. I always seek to squeeze in a coming-of-age aspect into my stories of fiction. The fate of the Sinclair brothers will become clear in due course.
  18. Thomas Lindblad
    The change from the old feudal society into what will become our modern society is something that makes the early nineteenth century so interesting. Details about Oscar's life as a teenager are inspired by an authentic source. Maybe Nils's advice to Göran to seek refuge in an arranged marriage within the family was not so bad at all.
  19. Thomas Lindblad
    In 1815, the year I turned twenty-three, I by coincidence got in touch with our royal family. As a member of the peerage, I attended the parliamentary session in Stockholm that year. During the first week of March, virtually at the beginning of the session, the four Estates – nobility, clergy, burghers and farmers – decided to show their gratitude to King and Crown Prince for their efforts in turning war into peace. The contribution by King Carl XIII was negligible but Crown Prince Carl Johan ha
  20. Thomas Lindblad
    Midsummer in Sweden is something you never forget if you have experienced it in your youth. Traditional dress and popular tunes for dancing as described are all authentic, the latter rendered with my amateur translation. Readers have connected Stefan with autism.
  21. Thomas Lindblad
    I had agreed with the Baron it would not be made public that I had said my ‘I do’ to his daughter. Nevertheless, early in the year in which I was to turn twenty-two, rumours were going around about a forthcoming marriage of the young Count with his cousin. By whose doing remained unknown, but I had reasonable doubts about Mother’s discretion. I still did not understand why it was so important for her that I married somebody from the family she came from. ‘The tenants’ boys already joke abou
  22. Thomas Lindblad
    Very much so. Göran badly needed such support considering the conditions for gays at the time (in Sweden homosexuality was only decriminalized in the 1940s) and also with an eye to his position in society. Fortunately, he had informed Nils ahead of time without knowing how soon he would know that kind of advice
  23. Thomas Lindblad
    Very true. The story is not only about gay love (and sex) but also very much about friendship.
  24. Thomas Lindblad
    In the Spring of 1813 I was eagerly looking forward to my twenty-first birthday coming up on 6 June. Since last year I was indeed the Count Hammarcreutz and the owner of the large estate Stora Skena, however still not yet of age according to Swedish law. I stood under joint guardianship of Mother and Birger. My (great-)uncle was particularly useful, not only because he tended to choose my side in conflicts. He had seen my grandfather and my father in action as landholders. He knew what it was al
  25. Thomas Lindblad
    I had been warned that the third and final year of my studies would be demanding. My tutor Dudley required me to write one essay after the other about the most varied topics. Nils’s assistance was of limited use since his knowledge of English was based on conversations with stable boys and local young ladies. ‘How come somebody of your class has any grasp at all of such language?’ Dudley asked in astonishment when I read my essays to him. Eventually, I sought and found assistance from Gran
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