The battles between the nordic countries.

This morning was quite cold but when the sun started to shine it became rather nice. This is a picture of my villages center. Not much of a village anymore actully. Lots of houses has been allowed to fall appart when no new owners has come. That´s something I don´t like about this area, if they can´t get the sum of money they want for a house/cottage they just let it fall appart, they don´t lower the prise.

Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finlad are friendly neighbours since long now, but there´s one thing that makes us what to beat the crap out of each other and that is in sports :-) When it comes to football (or as You americans call it, soccer) we have to beat Denmark what ever the cost is :-) If we don´t beat any other country in the world, let us at least beat Denmark. If we do we´re happy :-) When it comes to Norway it´s crosscountry skiing. We have a problem there, I admit that but we have new strong skiers comming up so in a couple of years we might have a chanse. We haven´t had a chanse there for over twenty years, but that has no other country either :-) On the other hand we have the upper hand in Biathlon (crooscountry skiing combiend with rifle shooting) at least our women have :-)

The first cattle in the village this spring. They are still very young, not a year old.

No activities from the frogs yet. When I moved here one could hear thousands of frogs in spring. Since then many small ponds has been filled with plants so there is no water anymore.

Finland is however a bit more important, we want to beat them in everything :-) Might have to do with the fact that Sweden and Finland was the same country for six hundred years or so (we were only in union with Norway for almost a hundred years) We don´t want to loose aginst them in icehockey. The Finns can be lousy during a world cup, but when they meet us they play better than any nation, they really want to beat the crap out of our team, and vice versa. I don´t have to see any other match on the world cup, but if I see that we win over them I´m happy :-) There´s one thing more “Finnkampen” (The Finn battle). Every year we have a competition against each other in track and field athletics. Every second year it´s in Sweden and every second year in Finland. It´s like a small world cup between our nations and it doesn´t matter if the athletes a really bad as long as the finns are worse :-) The important thing isn´t the results (taktics are though), it´s that our three competitors beat as many of the three Finns as possible in every race. Cheating isn´t that unusual. There has been times when all competitors has been disqualified :-) Probably one of the toughest battles between nations to be honest :-)These last years we have won on both the mens and womens competitions I think, but it has been a close call. I rather look at that than the Olympics so You have to understand that this event is very important :-) I think that You can read about this on Wikepedia.

But othervise we are all very peaceful. We never have to have passports when we travel to each others countries (including Iceland) and we do so frequently. Norwegians comes to our westcoast every summer and since Sweden is a cheap country for them they also buy a lot of houses here to have as summer houses. The Danes do the same but in southern Sweden and since long there is a lot of Finns that live in Sweden and people on the eastcoast do travel to Finland. The Finnish language is impossible to understand but fortunally there is a lot of Finns that has swedish as their native language and swedish is also protected by constitution in Finland, but not in Sweden straingly enough. Norway is probably the most beautiful country in the world, can´t be described You have to see it. Denmark is more laid back and they are the most happy pepole in the world according to studies. Finland I´ve never been to but they say it´s very much like Sweden. Lots of forests and lakes.

The White Wagtail. When people see this bird for the first time at spring they call friends to say that it has come :-) I´ve already had several of those phone calls, now it´s my turn to phone others :-) It´s a lovely little bird not especially afraid of humans or animals. Cats might try to catch it, but the bird just laughes at them :-)

This morning was chilly and perfect for a long morning walk with my dogs. I´ve tried to take a picture of how the crows looks in Sweden (and in the countries east of us) but they as well as the raven is impossible to take a picture of :-) They know when I´m going to try :-) But click on CROW and you´ll see a picture from the internet.
Have a great day this last day of easter!