Gothenburg in Snow
Glimpses from this week's trip – and some weekend listening
“I’ve never seen Gothenburg in the snow,” I tell Lasse. “In the rain, yes…”
“Sounds like you’ve been here a lot?” he says.
The West Coast of Sweden is closer to England. It’s milder and rainier, and they build houses out of brick. Also neo-Gothic churches, I discovered on this trip.
It was nine in the morning and I had Oscar Fredrik’s Church to myself. I was here to record an episode of Darwins Stege, a podcast hosted by a pair of priests, Pontus Nilsen and Maria Bergius. I’d been wandering around the church for ten minutes or so when it struck me that I might be in the wrong place. It turned out we were meant to meet in the 1950s offices around the back, but I’m glad I had a little time in the peace and beauty of the church itself before the caretaker found me and set me right.
Like all the conversations and events on this week’s trip, that podcast was in Swedish. But I have two pieces of listening for you in English at the end of this week.
First, I’m happy to share this interview that
did with me for her podcast, . I’ve been following Rebekah’s writing for a couple of years and felt a good deal of kinship, so it was great to finally have a conversation:
And then, Ed and I are back with our first episode of The Great Humbling for 2024, ‘Make Populism Good Again?’
Finally, here’s a glimpse of another stop on my Gothenburg trip. Annedalshuset is a museum and a meeting place for history, sustainability and development. On Wednesday night my hosts, Lars Jadelius and Birgit Modh, brought together a group of academics, activists and local council workers for a conversation that used the ‘four tasks for an age of endings’ from the closing chapter of At Work in the Ruins to help think through the activities going on in this centre for ‘urban transition’ and across the city.
Thanks for subscribing to Writing Home. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be picking up the threads of the two series I started in 2023: ‘Into the Deep’ and ‘How We Make Good Ruins’. Meanwhile, I’m grateful for all the ways that readers have been sharing and supporting my work.
DH