Oh, the Story I Found: Pelle Svanslös in America

My morfar (grandfather on my mother’s side) hunted alligators by a lake in Småland. If this sounds strange to you, imagine how my mother must have felt when as a child in the 1940’s in Sweden she read Pelle Svanslös i Amerika. Or for that matter, how strange and incredulous a journey to America Gösta…

"Welcome to Sweden": American and Swedish Bathos?

In order for something to be funny–In Sweden or the United States–it must first be funny. The challenge with being funny is that being deliberately funny is not very funny. No, I am not talking about the entire episode of the new NBC show Welcome to Sweden. I am referring to the opening scene in…