kanske det mindre konstigt är att dö för kung och land

[leksa]

och lever jag tills jag blir stor och fyller femton år
till samma svält, till samma kamp, till samma död jag går
där kulor vina tätast då
där skall man finna mig också
där vill ock jag försöka på
i mina fäders spår!

\o/

Runeberg's Day.

Comments

[leksa]

Thank you, belatedly.

(It is very sad. Actually, you know, I quite like Runeberg in general - he writes beautifully - it's just that, largely thanks to subject matter and other connotations, the expression on my face whenever I read him really is pretty much exactly the same as on the bunny's in my icon. ahem.)

[leksa]

He was too born in '09! He was all of... five years old. ahem.

You know, I've never really thought of it that way, which I think is also curious. I wonder if this is a cross-cultural (our micro version of, etc.) difference-in-frames-of-reference reception/framing thing, actually - Fänrik Stål as depicting the '08-'09 war vs. as using historical events as material for 19th-c.-Romantic-type nation-making. To me, I guess, the latter aspect sort of overshadows the former to such an extent, I don't think I've ever given the former much thought - where by "me" I obviously mean me-as-grounded-in-the-Finnish-tradition-of-interpretation, because I don't really have that much of an intimately personal relationship with the good Mister R. And that aspect (the historical fiction/national spirit/nation building) is/was obviously such an old trick, it's never seemed problematic to me at all, but it would probably be weird if the other aspect (the war-as-such) didn't get foregrounded a little differently in the Swedish readings. I would guess? (