Book: Letters to the Chief

Book

True stories of loss, heartache, happiness and reconciliation – Letters to the Chief by Judi Lifton

By Peter Berlin

In her memoir Letters to the Chief, author Judi Lifton succeeds brilliantly in recapturing her childhood mindset. Her recollections are documented as a set of letters to a family friend, Chief White Feather of the Sioux and Chippewa Nations. (The reader may find this confusing at first, because although Chief White Feather did exist, the letters did not; they are merely the literary device the author has used to format her memoirs.) She recounts her adventures and reflections while growing up in a small Swedish immigrant community in Minnesota in the 1950s. She is quite a feisty little redhead and gets herself into hilariously funny situations. Life is full of shocking surprises, like being told about cremation or how babies are made. Boys are goofballs at best, until one day she begins to find them interesting. At a midsummer fair in the Swedish tradition, she and her best friend shun the usual children’s games in favor of scary side shows

that their parents disapprove of. The constant banter between little Judi and her three siblings irks their parents and leaves the reader chuckling.

In the following resumé of her childhood, Judi Lifton sets the scene for her memoir:

Minnesota was a haven for Swedes. The climate was just like in the old country. There was lots of fishing, and the Kaffee Fest was an annual midsummer event. Vetted by other relatives or friends, Swedish immigrants arrived in droves to settle on Swede Hill in Willmar, Minnesota where I lived for the first thirteen years of my life. Other immigrants came from Norway and Denmark, resulting in fifteen different flavors of European Protestant churches plus one Catholic and one Unitarian.

The relatives who emigrated from Sweden were my maternal grandfather Oscar Anderson, his wife Anna, and my paternal great grandfather August with wife Sofia. Their son, Nathaniel Franklin, my grandpa,

became a good friend of Oscar’s. Grandpa Nathaniel and Grandpa Oscar shared three things: church affiliations, fishing, and holding a sugar lump between their bottom lip and gum while drinking coffee. I was very close to Grandpa Oscar. He was my buddy, took me fishing and on errands, and always offered an orange candy slice that sat in a bag between us on the front seat of his car. He died when I was young. I sorely missed him, and his influence is noticed in numerous chapters of my memoir.

When my family had to leave my town, I was devastated and really missed Grandpa because I knew how he must have felt leaving Sweden. To work through my emotions I wrote letters. They were not written to Grandpa because he was gone (although my closing words are to him). Instead, my memoir is presented as letters written by my fourteen-year-old-self to Chief White Feather, a terminally ill family friend who frequently travelled to my home town. He was an American Indian and storyteller/ singer and advocate for Indian rights.

Thus, the idea of

Letters to the Chief

was born. In reality, they were “letters of the heart” and never written down until published now in my memoir – stories of loss, heartache, happiness and reconciliation.

“Letters to the Chief ” by Judi Lifton, Wisdom Edition 2020. ISBN 978-1-950743-24-7. Available from www.calumeteditions.com and Amazon.

Hemma hos

The Perspective of Hans Strand – Landscape Photographer

By Kristi Robinson

Above: The streams of silt and iron oxide flow into surreal turquoise water in the River Delta. Bottom right: An aerial photograph of the River Delta in Iceland.

The abstractness and colors of his images take you to a place of awe and incredulity. From up to four hundred meters in the air, photographer Hans Strand captures aerial shots of landscapes with his Hasselblad camera that defy our understanding of scale, and our common perception of what the world looks like at ground level. Sitting in a small plane or helicopter, he photographs chromatic rivers, icy mountain ranges and glacial waterfalls. Yet his images taken at ground level are equally captivating, showing nature’s raw splendour. Even though he is a master in aerial photography, Hans says his favorite thing to photograph is the forest, and he feels this is where

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his connection to nature is most intense. It doesn’t matter where the forest is, but in Sweden Hans is particularly drawn to the forests in Jämtland.

Hans’ passion for landscape photography was ignited during a trip to Yosemite National Park when he was a student at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He explained that when looking through the viewfinder he found some kind of magic. Now, almost forty years later, it appears that this magic is still with him and is channeled into his photographs for all to experience.

Much of Hans’ work through the years has been focused on Iceland. He began going there in 1995 before Iceland became the popular tourist destination it is today. Making a number of trips every year, he photographs and runs photography workshops in locations off the beaten

‘Highland Gully’ captures the sombre mood of the early summer rain in one of Iceland’s highland valleys.

track. His work in Iceland has culminated in two books, ‘Above and Below’, and ‘Island’ (German for ‘Iceland’). Hans has also had a number of other books published, one of which was last year in collaboration with Swedish film producer Bo Landin titled ‘Fotavtryck” (‘Footprints’). ‘Fotavtryck’ is about the environmental footprint we are all making and discusses the obstacles we have to overcome to make the world sustainable.

All through his years of aerial photography, Hans has tried to avoid manmade elements and only capture natural environments. After witnessing what was happening to the ground below – the destruction of plants and animals and manipulation of the wilderness into manmade land – it became virtually impossible for him to ignore it. In 2017, he began a project photographing the Rio Tinto River draining from the mine of the same name in Andalusia, Spain. His shocking and oddly stunning aerial images show toxic water making its way through the landscape, polluting everything in its path before draining into the Atlantic Ocean.

Hans has also started working on a manmade land project in Spain where he photographs areas that were once so biodiverse. These have either been taken over by mono- cultural farming, or have become densely built up, as in Almería where the city’s peninsula has been trans- formed into hundreds of square miles of plastic greenhouses.

Hans’ manmade project will be turned into a book, and an exhibition in Spain in 2021. Once travel becomes a possibility Hans plans to run photography workshops in Iceland, Greenland, Sweden, Norway, and the Alps. To see more of Hans’ stunning landscape photography visit www.hansstrand.se instagram.com/hansstrandofficial/

Top right: ‘Colors of Poison VII’, the most polluted river in the world, the Rio Tinto, displays its toxicity in a rainbow of colors. Bottom right: ‘Highland Colors’. An aerial shot of the Icelandic Highlands in the early summer.

All photos © Hans Strand

Hemma hos

Hemma hos

A close look at Surströmming, Sweden’s (in)famous fermented herring

By Peter Berlin

In the early 1960s, a crate of surströmming arrived at the Port of New York onboard a Swedish freighter. Left on the dock in the summer heat for a few hours, the contents exploded – not just with a deafening bang, but also with a nose-numbing pong. The authorities promptly banned any further importation of Swedish surströmming.

The following quote is taken from a Swedish cookbook published in 1896: “Surströmming is an ancient dish which nature itself has been preparing since the beginning of time. Our earliest ancestors caught a whiff of it outside the Gates of Paradise. […] Only true connoisseurs know how to appreciate surströmming, to be consumed with no other sauce than the mouth’s own saliva. They consider it to be a most exquisite delicacy; but it will never become a party food unless the host chooses to eat alone, or else to invite guests devoid of noses.”

Whether Adam and Eve really caught a whiff of surströmming outside the Gates of Paradise is up for debate. In its present form, surströmming has been around since the 15th century. Only herring caught in the Baltic Sea is suited to undergo the characteristic fermentation process which takes several months. The herrings are caught during April and May as they are getting ready for spawning.

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Traditionally, surströmming is consumed in the fall. To be precise, the annual “premiere” falls on the third Thursday in August.

In Sweden, fermentation replaced salt as the primary means of conserving herring, when salt became scarce after King Gustav Vasa went to war in Europe. During the fermentation process, various odoriferous chemicals are formed naturally, notably propionic, butyric and acetic acids. Please note that fermentation is not the same as rotting (although the borderline between the two is thin).

Cans containing surströmming tend to bulge due to the internal pressure caused by fermentation. This ominous symptom has prompted several airlines to ban surströmming in any shape or form onboard for fear of explosion at high altitudes.

What visitors to Sweden often neglect to mention when reporting on their surströmming experience is that (a) the cans are usually opened in the great outdoors; (b) the surrounding vegetation does not wilt; (c) the herring filets are

Photo: Arla.se promptly subdued in a mix of raw onion, chives and sour cream before being wrapped in soft tunnbröd (bread the size and consistency of a basset’s ears); and (d) the consumer of the tunnbröd, thus enriched, is anaesthetized with ample quantities of high-octane aquavit. Atonal singing often follows, and almost everybody is having a jolly good time.

To round off the subject of surströmming, here is another anecdote. A mischievous tenant in a German apartment block left a trail of pungent surströmming brine down the stairwell. The landlord evicted the tenant who, in turn, took the landlord to court for unfair eviction. The judge initially seemed to side with the tenant. When the landlord’s lawyer opened a can of surströmming inside the courtroom, the judge immediately endorsed the eviction.

Mind you, Sweden is not the only country producing malodorous foodstuff. For example, take Korean hongeohoe, Japanese kusaya, Egyptian fesikh, Icelandic hákarl … the list goes on and on. Although that, by itself, is no excuse.