How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

The Scandinavia of my imagination is something like the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi - the light cold and pure and blue, everything really just a set of vast and elegantly minimal rooms opening onto each other, lonely in a way that aches but is quickly remedied by a kiss on the back of the neck - you really must see the actual paintings to understand fully what I mean. It's a vision that I coddle a bit and encourage in myself, and really, I do live in an apartment that is a set of minimal rooms opening onto each other, and on a Saturday in winter, the light is just as cold and pure and blue. I first hit on this feeling of delicious northern loneliness when I was 15, looking from an airplane down into a wilderness of black-green pinetrees against the snow outside Gander in Newfoundland.

Sometimes, I think to myself, this life must surely be just a dream. However did I get here?

The Swedish word for the day is konstnär. It means artist.

- by Francis S.