Swedish

Yeah.

Then you have Swedish and Danish, where it's like they're just speaking silly English.

Yeah.

[laughs]

You know what I mean?

You, you had Sabrina learn Swedish for your wedding.

I know.

That's...

And that was so nice of her.

That's pretty cool.

It was, like, really nice of her to do that, because I didn't know that it was Swedish.

[laughs] Really?

I celebrate.

What kind of massage? Are we talking Swedish? Are we talking shiatsu, hot rock?

Hot.

[laughs]

Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

We had, throughout the 1980s at least, regular submarine incursions in the Swedish archipelagos, which were, in fact, rehearsals for an attack on Sweden.

[dramatic music] For decades, ordinary Swedes secretly prepared for the day Soviet forces might occupy their country.

Farmers, factory workers, gamekeepers, and traveling salesmen were recruited into a clandestine resistance network, trained to operate radios, use dead drops, scout escape routes, and if necessary, sabotage an invading army.

But in fact, Sweden was very much exposed to the Soviet invasion threat throughout the Cold War, but certainly in the '50s and '60s.

In the late '70s, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, the invasion scenario that was anticipated in Sweden looked very much like those invasions and also what we saw in Ukraine in February 2022, with a preceding wave of infiltration and sabotage and murders by, uh, Spetsnaz forces and Russian illegals, followed by a full-on land invasion.

And indeed, we had, throughout the 1980s at least, regular submarine incursions in the Swedish archipelagos, which were, in fact, rehearsals for an attack on Sweden.

And those in the know, some of whom I interview in the book, certainly anticipated this happening as late as the 1980s, and one of them says in the book that we were simply saved by the bell, saved by the end, the sudden end of the Cold War, without the worst thing having happened.

And what is it, what's it like having Alfons also coming over here this year for you?

Yeah, I mean, uh, it's, uh, it's good to have someone to speak Swedish with so as well.

[laughs] Uh, we have a, you have a couple more here, but, uh, that's a guy I know from before, so it's kind of nice to have someone that if you want to talk about something, that, yeah, you have someone.

What did you notice skating with the, with the main Jets guys last week? Have you noticed, did you notice the level of, of, of skill in that, uh, in those skates?

did it like it was like really basic like basically building blocks kind of coding stuff it was still like really funny to look at like yep it was like coding swedish english something else and i was like yeah but that's a fucking school day huh

wait swedish

yeah brother Why are we learning Swedish in Finnish schools instead of Finnish? Because this is a fucked up country where we used to be fucking colonized by Sweden, and we still have to learn that shit in school.

Okay, I mean, I'm sorry to admit I only know two Finnish words, and I probably shouldn't say them on a live podcast.

I figured.

Yeah.

But eventually he is persuaded to use the funds, which, you know, were immense to establish the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.

Oh, OK.

So specifically to fund translations of Swedish literature into English.

Right.

He viewed it as throwing a life belt to Swedish authors struggling to reach a global audience.

So a very principled intellectual use of the funds.

But then let's jump forward to 1938.

We don't use the word discotheque.

You sound like a Swedish person speaking English.

We say a club.

It's a club.

I think I'll play the other piece during our break while we switch out the studio.

So this one is Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 from Alfven.

Yeah, Hugo Alfven, and it's Midsommarvakka.

Okay, so that's how you actually...

¦ ¦ Thank you.

All right, folks, we're back.

That was Alfven's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, Op.

19.