Swedish Language Village

That line, which translates to “do you want to know why the house is called that?” appears in one of our favorite songs, the Pippi Longstocking song (pÃ¥ svenska) so we hear it several times each day here at Sjölunden.  Yesterday it occured to me that you might be wondering the same thing about our cabins: why are they called what they’re called?

This week at Sjölunden we have four cabins named Hammarland, Närpes, Zmiyivka and Ã…land.  Never heard of those places?  Well, they all share a very interesting characteristic–they are all places outside of Sweden where Swedish is the primary language spoken.  Each year we choose a different theme for our cabin names and this year we chose places from the Swedish diaspora.  Emilia, who has been a counselor at Sjölunden for 5 years, has been encouraging us to use this theme for many years.  It’s been interesting to learn about more places where Swedish is spoken!  For example, Ã…land is an island between Sweden and Finland where Swedish is the primary language, but it is actually part of Finland.  Hammarland is a small village on Ã…land.  Närpes is a city in mainland Finland and is the largest primarily-Swedish-speaking community in Finland outside of Ã…land.  Närpes also produces a large percentage of Finland’s tomatoes and cucumbers, which the girls from Närpes taught us in their cabin song.  Zmiyivka is the most unique cabin name this week–it is the name of a community in the Ukraine with strong Swedish heritage.  In fact, the name translates into “Gammalsvenskby” (old Swedish village) in Ukranian!  The boys have loved living in a cabin with such a unique name and story.

You may also be wondering “varför ledarna heter sÃ¥” (why the counselors are called that)?  If you’ve been watching the website for previous sessions this summer, you may have noticed that some of the counselors seem to have adopted alter egos this week.  Well, we’re still the same Swedish-speaking staff we’ve been all summer long, but some of us have decided to change names for the last week.  Why?  Well, each new group of villagers gets to choose Swedish names for themselves when they arrive at camp.  It’s always fun to see Emma become Engla and John become Johann.  But sometimes we counselors feel like we’re missing out on the fun!  Also, there are some great Swedish names that always seem to be overlooked, so we wanted to ressurect them.  So this week Kaj has become Hampus and he looks forward to celebrating his namnsdag (name day) on August 29th.  Ã…sa has become Ã…slög (namnsdag Sept 12th) and Ingrid has become My (most well known as a character in Moomin Trolls).  In a nod to the multi-culturalism of modern Sweden, Martin has also changed his name to Zunken, which is a name of Eastern European origin most well known as a character from a Swedish comedy show.   Of course, plenty of us have kept our usual Swedish names: Emilia, Astrid, Alf, Felix and Kajsa, plus our new nurse, Syster Alice.

If you have any ideas of great Swedish names that you would like us to encourage the villagers to choose (Bodil? Majken? Evert? Pontus?) or themes for our cabin names, please leave a comment!

—Kajsa