How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

I'm not a meta kind of guy, although I am occasionally a sucker for metablogging. I'm interested in it mostly when people get cranky and start in on the bitch-slapping, which seems to be happening for the first time in the Swedish blogosphere as far as I can tell. Although for all I know, this happens all the time because I don't read nearly as many blogs in Swedish as I should.

What's happened is that Observer, a Swedish company that monitors media (press-clipping service, etc.) has announced it has begun monitoring blogs. A short item on this appeared yesterday in the Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Included was a list of the ten blogs Observer monitors, because they are "the most important," which is not explained further, leaving the public - that is, the Swedish blogosphere, mostly - to speculate on the criteria for what makes a blog, er, important.

There are no women on the list, and the majority of those on the list are "right-wing" in their politics according to Observer and many of these have ties to think tanks. But Erik Stattin was No. 1 on the list, so by my accounting they got at least one thing right.

Nothing creates a round of feisty sniping and introspection like publishing a list of the popular kids. (Sorry, most of the links are in Swedish. If you want to know what they say, just e-mail me and I'll do my best to translate.)

All of which has gotten me all hot and bothered.

Well, not really. But I must be the least influential Swedish blogger with the most technorati source-authority (um, I don't think that's a real term, source-authority. Or maybe it is by now.)

Sniping aside, what this really means is that the Swedish blogosphere has passed a new milestone: it is literally worth being paid attention to, and I'm talking money here.

Long live the Swedish blogosphere.

The Swedish word for the day is uppmärksamhet. It means attention.

- by Francis S.