As a mother, my maternal Grandmother felt obliged to maintain a certain degree of dignity in front of her acquaintances in the urban middle class of Helsingborg – a mid-sized Swedish market town which faces Hamlet’s Helsingør across the Öresund. As a grandmother, however, she threw all these inhibiting ambitions aside and adopted her role as a family senior whole-heartedly. I remember her as a fun and intelligent person who always granted our wishes for Christmas and birthdays.
Eva Huldt, as she was called, was born into another Sweden – an somewhat stiff but extremely tidy and reliable Sweden, and she never had to see it wither into what we see before us today. She would have been very confused by the ignorance of the media, the indifference among people and the cynical and exhibitionistic sides of our internet based culture. She would also be worried that the world disasters of her early life are in the process of being neglected or reinterpreted by the young.
Look into her beautiful eyes – there is an innocence and trustworthiness there which may teach us something.
