Kristina Should Have Known

"In New York"– bi-monthly newsletter of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce – 2/2007

How The Ark made me think about Kristina from Duvemåla

By the end of the Swedish final of the Eurovision Song Contest in March, as the flamboyant glam rockers in The Ark once again went on stage and made their victory performance of “The Worrying Kind”, in front of millions of TV watchers, I felt how my eyes slowly filled with tears.

First, I thought it was because I was so happy that a great band that I care for had indeed won the usually slightly cheesy contest.
Not only do I appreciate The Ark's music, energy, and visual appearance. I've also interviewed some of the band members at various stages of their careers - most recently the infamous event when they performed outside of House of Sweden in Washington DC last year.
How could I not share the charming singer Ola Salo's total joy in the Globe arena in Stockholm – after I had seen their show live, in front of a small and enthusiastic crowd of Swedish and American fans next to the Potomac River in October?
Much of the band's success is their ability to make their audience feel it's part of it all as well. And after interviewing Mr Salo about his unfortunate joke on flying airplanes afterwards, I have had a professional reason to follow the band's endeavors as well.

Then I thought I felt so moved, because I had just seen lots of young, clever artists do what they love: sing, play, and perform.
But it's usually talented amateurs in school shows that I really have a soft spot for – not professionals, like the ones in the Eurovision Song Contest (this is the event that gave the world ABBA, in 1974).

All of a sudden, however, I realized my spontaneous tears most of all had an entirely different reason. Maybe surprisingly, the event made me think of Kristina from Duvemåla, the fictional character in Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg's great epos The Emigrants.

See, I was watching the event not in front of a TV-set a Saturday night in Sweden, like everyone else - but sitting in the pub of the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan, together with other New York-based Swedes. The entire show was streamed via the Internet.
I watch Swedish TV clips and listen to direct transmissions from the Swedish radio all the time, so the benefits of modern technology are no news to me. Whether I am at home or traveling the world, I live and breath the effects of the proverbial shrunk globe daily – and so far during my six years in the United States, my parents in Stockholm have never been able to tell any Swedish news as of politics, business, or entertainment I didn't already know of.

Yet, what this means has never hit home as clearly as it did this Saturday afternoon.
I felt so strongly that by watching The Ark win the Eurovision Song Contest, sitting on a bar stool in Manhattan, I could instantly share an experience that would be the next few days' water cooler topic in most of Sweden. (Maybe Americans watching the Super Bowl in Swedish sport bars feel the same.)

So, my sentimental tears actually came when I thought about how very recent it was that Swedes who made it to New York really had to cut off most ties to The Old Country. The subconscious thought of how Kristina from Duvemåla, a woman maybe my age – who supposedly passed Manhattan on her family's passage from Småland to Minnesota in the 1850's – like so many real emigrants had to leave everything behind made me sad.

Thanks to progress in general and technology in particular, I don't have to make the choice Kristina and her peers were forced to. Now it's actually almost possible to live in two countries simultaneously. Even poor immigrants who come into the United States today can keep in touch with their loved ones back in Guatemala or Guinea-Bissau, thanks to the Internet and low telephone rates. My tears were a tribute to Kristina, who was only 150 years from all this.

The members of The Ark happen to be from the very same part of Sweden as Vilhelm Moberg and Kristina – Småland, and more precisely Rottne, Uråsa, Kosta, and Växjö.
Ola Salo was reportedly surprised when he heard that Söraby Skytteförening, the shooting club in his small home community of Rottne, had arranged a large-screen viewing party of the TV contest in their sports centre. Even though New York is like another hometown for The Ark, I guess he would be even more surprised to learn there was a similar party, albeit smaller, on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

And I guess we will be there again, when the final contest is transmitted from Helsinki in May – with meatballs tapas in one hand and a glass of prosecco in the other. Now we can have it all.

Gunilla Kinn
is a freelance journalist, based in New York and Stockholm
http://gunillakinn2867.sitewelder.com
gunilla@kinn.se