Alfred Nobel and his Prizes

It's that time of year again, when speculation is rife as to who will receive the prestigious, and lucrative, NobelPrizes, with acclaim or criticism from the media pundits and others once the winners are announced.

Whether Alfred Bernhard Nobel realised what a stir he would create, we cannot know. He was a man of great contrasts. A Swede born in Stockholm in 1833, he spent most of his life abroad. The inventor of dynamite and other explosives, he was even called a 'merchant of death', but aimed to promote world peace. A skilled chemist, he wrote poetry in both Swedish and English, and prose in other languages too. The son of a man who twice went bankrupt, he became one of the wealthiest people in the Western world.

His great wealth did not bring him happiness, however. He never married, suffered from loneliness and was in delicate health from childhood. Only in the last three years of his life did he have a home of his own in Sweden, where he had bought the Bofors (pr. ‘Boo-fosh’) armaments factory. He nevertheless died in the Italian resort town of San Remo on December 10 1896. And December 10 is the day on which the Nobel Prizes are ceremonially awarded each year, the Peace Prize in Oslo, the others at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

His will was written in Swedish without legal guidance, which led to much delay in its implementation as it was disputed. It stipulated that the greater part of his estate should be invested and the income distributed annually in the form of prizes to those conferring the greatest benefit on mankind during the preceding year within the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and what he called ‘brotherhood among nations’, but which we know as the Peace Prize.

Swedish institutions were to award the first four prizes: the Royal Academy of Sciences (physics and chemistry), Royal Caroline Institute (physiology or medicine) and the Swedish Academy (literature). The Peace Prize was to be awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Storting, or Parliament, as Norway was joined to Sweden in a union under the Swedish crown during Nobel's lifetime. A sixth award, the Economics Prize, was added in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden in his memory.

There is no doubt that Nobel had a great interest in each of the fields he mentioned. The Peace Prize is the one that is most intriguing. Nobel believed that when the great power of explosives was understood, nobody would use them for military purposes. He knew from personal experience what devastation they could cause. In 1864 the factory where he had been studying nitroglycerine was blown up killing everyone in it, including his 21-year-old brother Emil. Nevertheless, he maintained his factories could well put an end to wars sooner than all the peace congresses that were held.

He was also influenced by his friendship with the Austrian Baroness von Sutter, a pioneer in the peace movement. She was herself awarded the Peace Prize in 1905. But as with the Literature Prize, some of the laureates selected in Oslo, such as Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, and Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978, have been highly controversial, while others generally considered to deserve the award, such as Mahatma Gandhi, have been unacknowledged. And when the first Literature Prize was awarded to Sully Proudhomme in 1901, Sweden's foremost author August Strindberg, who never received the prize, and more than forty other prominent Swedes wrote a letter of apology to Tolstoy.

The stipulation about conferring the greatest benefit on mankind in the preceding year has been more closely observed for the Peace Prize than for the others, with juries otherwise tending to look back at what candidates have achieved during their careers as a whole and not only in the very recent past.

Unexpected

It's not only in such dramatic circumstances as being stranded abroad and threatened by fire, that the unexpected can catch you unawares. Take what happened to me less than two months ago.

I had been feeling unwell for weeks and put it down to allergic reactions, poor sleep and anything else I could think of to explain it away. However, one of the closest neighbours on the island where I've spent almost all my time since returning to Sweden from enforced exile in California, is a retired district nurse and she and her husband finally persuaded me to see a doctor at the local medical centre, about a fifteen minute boat ride away. Which I did, taking with me my shopping trolley as you can't buy anything on the island and I badly needed to replenish my food supplies. I would go to the supermarket after my appointment. Hmm.

Tests were taken. The doctor looked at the results – and sent for an ambulance! I had a very high level of infection, an even higher level of inflammation and low blood counts. Ten minutes later I was on my way to the hospital, shopping trolley and all.

I'll say this, if you absolutely must go to the hospital A & E, it is much better to arrive in an ambulance than simply to walk in. Your status is definitely higher, though unless you are deemed to be in the most urgent need of attention it doesn't mean you will spend very much less time waiting for someone to come and decide what to do with you. But you won't have to lie among a herd of other poor souls seeking help. At least I didn't.

I arrived in the afternoon. Well after midnight I was wheeled to one of the wards, having first been covid-tested. Without a negative result you won't be placed among non-covid patients. Of course. At about one o'clock in the morning I was given something to eat and later moved into a room with one other person, blissfully snoring in his sleep. By two o'clock I was attempting to join him in slumberland and might just have succeeded an hour or so later when I felt someone groping for my arm, needle at the ready. To take blood. A couple of hours later, maybe less, it was the turn of a young lady wanting to record my blood pressure, temperature etc. “Have you had a good night's sleep?” she asked.

I tried to open my mouth, but words wouldn't come.

(To be continued)

Life has its Contrasts

 

What do you say to forty-four degrees of scorching heat and having to escape from one of California's wildfires, compared to staying in a small timber-built cottage on a tiny, at times ice-bound, island in the Stockholm archipelago – which is where I am now? The pandemic has certainly brought contrasts into my life.

The present problem does not involve checking air quality and the progress made by fire fighters, but keeping a careful eye on the thermometer to know when the taps are likely to dry-, or rather freeze-, up and there is no running water. That has already happened a number of times. A lesson I learned the first time was to fill up everything available as soon as the weather gods relented for a day or two and the taps started to drip, drip and eventually run again. For a while.

There are no municipal supplies on the island so everyone has to make their own arrangements, which inevitably means having a well drilled deep into the post-glacial stone-strewn ground. Mine goes down about forty-five metres, which is far below the frost-free level, but the water has to come up to the surface. I have installed a small heater in the space below the cottage where it comes in, but the weak link is between that and the well outside. Of course, I should have made sure it was sufficiently well insulated long ago, but as I never envisaged staying here in the depths of winter, I never bothered.

But going without running water is by no means the only hazard to be aware of. There can be storm winds at this time of the year, and with them the likelihood of a power failure, like the one that occurred a couple of weeks ago, leaving the indoor warmth to fall alarmingly in the direction of the sub-zero temperatures outside. Fortunately, I was rescued by my kind neighbours, who invited me to sit in front of the efficient wood-fired appliance that spreads its warm glow around their place.

Then stepping outside also has its dangers as there are patches of smooth ice to look out for, sometimes artfully concealed by a thin layer of snow – like the one I fell over on with a nasty bump more than a week ago. It still hurts!

My covid story - expect the unexpected

 

My story begins with a scheduled three-week visit to family members in California. That was early in March last year, 2020. Countless flight cancellations, travel restrictions and ESTA extensions later, instead of being six thousand miles away, I was still there. But life for me was not to be a simple matter of seldom venturing beyond the front door, mask-wearing and social distancing whenever I did step outside, thoroughly washing hands and ordering supplies on line for delivery. Much more drama lay in store.

It began with a heatwave. Where the family live, the temperature rose to thirty-five degrees Celsius, followed by highs of thirty-eight and a couple of days with a scorching forty-two, which is a little over one-hundred-and-seven on the Fahrenheit scale. Then came a prolonged night-time thunderstorm, with not a drop of rain but countless lightning strikes that ignited the tinder-dry terrain. Many of the innumerable small fires soon merged to form large conflagrations spreading their ugly flames and fumes to threaten everything and everyone in sight. And well beyond.

By the morning, grey ash was raining down on us through the increasingly acrid air. An official warning was issued: Be prepared to evacuate! To think, I had come for a short stay, yet here I was five months later, marooned by the pandemic and now, along with everyone else for many miles around, menaced by one of those fearful fires.

What to do? We decided to pack what we could and head initially, the next day, to an in-law's place some fifty miles away. Social distancing within the extended family circle would have to go by the board. “Take only what is of value to you,” the kids were told. “Provided it isn't too bulky.” They silently set about their task. They had seen the ash and smelt the smoke. And were old enough to understand the seriousness of the situation. An uncomfortable, nervous night awaited.

The situation was yet more ominous by the time we finally departed, well aware that the family could have seen the last of their house and home with all but the few belongings we were taking with us. The children were duly deposited with the in-laws while we went to check on somewhere to stay. We were very fortunate. Many evacuees were forced to rely on emergency arrangements made by local authorities or organisations, with covid complicating every step of the way. In our case, a relation of the in-laws had a temporarily empty apartment we could use, not far from San Francisco airport.

We went there, left our things – then drove all the way back to the fire-threatened house to rescue what else we could. The pungent air, thick and tinged with an orange glow, was painful to breathe. Out came our face masks. The virus was not now the only menace to keep at bay. Inside, items were quickly collected, including clothes and food from fridge, freezer and cupboards. And this time, before we left, a mandatory order to vacate was in force. Incredibly, we later learned that some people refused to go and had to be removed. Perhaps they had an exaggerated belief in their ability to protect their property, not only from fire, but the possibility of looters breaking into homes when it was guaranteed that nobody was there. All roads into the area were then closed.

We collected the kids and went back to our small temporary refuge, which we arranged as comfortably as we could. From there we were able to follow the fight against the flames. Press conferences and fire-fighters' briefings from the command and control centre set up in the local park just a few hundred metres from the family's home, were relayed online. We also continually checked air quality on the Purple Air site. Single figures were best, but anything under fifty on the scale used was still shown as acceptable. Where we had come from it was well over four hundred.

But even in our new location the air could be far from good. All depended on the winds, as pollution from other fires, and there were many of them, could easily drift in our direction. It was infinitely better, however, than what we had left behind. Nevertheless, we seldom ventured out during our enforced exile. When we did, we drove to a coastal area for an afternoon or evening walk in air that was indeed fresher, with mask-wearing and keeping a safe distance from other people still the golden rule.

We remained refugees for more than a week. By then the fire – ‘our’ fire – was sufficiently contained for us to be allowed back. It had destroyed more than nine hundred homes in a part of the state not normally afflicted by the notorious wildfires. But in 2020 they were more widespread, numerous and intense than ever, the weather more extreme. At the height of the emergency, the governor urged people who didn't believe in climate change and global warming to come to California. Well, for my part, I was already a firm believer and thanks – or no thanks – to covid, was already there.

However, the immediate area around where the family live was now considered safe. At most, two thousand four hundred people had been battling the blaze, ringing it in, back-burning, denying it fresh fuel. When weather permitted, which wasn't always, helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft joined the fray, dousing from above. When we walked past the park now that we were back, we could see long lines of vehicles marked ‘mobile sleeping trailer’ or ‘mobile shower trailer’ drawn up on the grass. Members of the national guard had joined the fray which, though being slowly won, was by no means over.

Neither was the heat, which briefly rose to an unbearable forty-four degrees, a little more than a hundred-and-eleven Fahrenheit.

In the subsequent months, despite more heat, if nothing like as great as before; rainstorms threatening flash floods, rock- or mudslides; high winds bringing down power lines, leading to outages and starting yet more fires, though they were quickly dealt with; and a four-point-four quake that sent the children under the dining-room table fearing worse was to come (they had been taught what to do at school); we didn't need to abandon ship and seek refuge elsewhere, though by no means everyone in that neck of the woods could say the same.

If there is one thing the pandemic taught me it is that you never can tell if or when you may be caught up in life's great dramas. Suddenly to find myself part of catastrophic events I had only heard or read about, or seen on television from afar, has made me realise there are times and places where you can expect the unexpected.

As a covid castaway, I had found myself in such a place, at such a time.

Sweden in the first world war

 

Sweden in the First World War

War memorials are hard to come by in Sweden as it is more than two centuries since the country last went into battle. That was in 1814, to force an unwanted union under the Swedish crown on neighbouring Norway. Since then, apart from supplying peace-keeping troops to the United Nations, it has managed to keep on the sidelines of the various armed conflicts that have afflicted Europe and the world.

Like its Scandinavian neighbours Denmark and Norway, Sweden declared its neutrality at the outbreak of the first world war. But it was profoundly affected by the embargoes and blockades imposed by the warring parties, although it continued to trade with both sides. Two hundred and eighty Swedish merchant ships were lost, with the death of nearly eight hundred crew members, and the country's territorial waters were repeated violated. Unemployment and food shortages, compounded by failure of the harvest in 1916, led to considerable social unrest, giving rise to hunger marches and demands for social reform that resulted in greater democracy when the war was over.

Public opinion in Sweden as well as sentiment among officers in the armed forces and in the Royal family, was largely sympathetic to the German side. An official ban on the export of armaments was circumvented and Swedish foreign policy has been described as 'far from neutral'.

There was one instance when Sweden did take military action and that was in the Åland Islands after the Russian revolution and civil war. The islands, with their largely Swedish-speaking population, were part of Finland, which Sweden had lost to Tsarist Russia in 1809. They were briefly occupied by Swedish forces, but withdrawal followed protests from Finland, which declared its independence in 1918.

As a non-combatant, Sweden took no part in drawing up the Treaty of Versailles, but joined the League of Nations in January 1920.

Adapted from What You Should Know About Sweden

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Letter to my book club

Letter to the Bookworms book club in Stockholm prior to a discussion of Steven Hawking's A Brief History of time:

Greetings one and all from afar.

I wonder whether you know in which country people read the most? According to an annual survey of reading and literacy, the list is topped by India, with an average of 10.42 hours per person spent reading each week, which is surprising considering so many of its 1.3 billion people live below the poverty line and literacy is probably far from universal. (In the world as a whole, only 86 per cent are said to be literate - 90% for boys, 83% for girls. By comparison, a hundred years ago only 12% could read and write.)

In second place is Thailand with a weekly average of 9.24 hours, while China is third with eight hours. Sweden comes in seventh with 7.06 hours. How these statistics are compiled, I've no idea. China is the country which publishes most books, a staggering 440,000 in a year, but I haven't seen anything to indicate what kind of books they are. One-third of all books published in the world, however, are in the ‘romance genre’, (which the Bookworms have been mercifully spared from.) The average age of people who read ‘romance’ books is 42. The vast majority are women; 16% are men.

The second most prolific book-publishing nation is the United States, with 304,912 in the past year. The UK comes third with 184,000. One table is topped by the Swedes. It is headed ‘News Junkies’. 85% of the population are said to read the news more than once a day. Again, what kind of ‘news’ is not specified. I trust that Facebook pages and Twitter feeds are not included.

Finally, let us all take comfort from the list of benefits claimed for reading. They include reducing stress levels, developing stronger analytical skills, improving memory and concentration, reducing the likelihood of certain diseases, expanding your vocabulary and improving you writing skills. So read away!

Which brings me to Steven Hawking and his Brief History, in trying to read which most of the benefits I am supposed to gain suddenly evaporated. Unable to concentrate on such a vast amount of information for more than half a chapter at a time, unable to remember much of what had come previously (as one who has not studied physics), increasingly stressed as my appalling ignorance became clearer with every page, I eventually gave up for the time being, but have promised myself I will return and try to read at least half a chapter a week, (or perhaps a month), as soon as I have recovered sufficiently to do so.

As so often, however, a majority of the online reviewers are much more at home with the book than I am, but then very many of them are extremely familiar with the subject and at least one of those I have seen admits to being a physics Ph.D. When I looked, both the Amazon US and UK sites had 186 virtually identical ‘global’ reviews with an average rating of 4.7. Goodreads, which counts ratings and reviews separately, had 307,896 ratings and 9,029 reviews.

“Purchased for my son for his birthday,” writes one of the 5-star people. “He is a physics fanatic, and although Stephen Hawking is not his favourite scientist, I figured every budding scientist should have read A Brief History in Time.” Unfortunately, I have never been a budding scientist. “Isn't it amazing,” writes another reviewer, “that a person can read a book like A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and come away feeling both smarter and dumber than before he started?” Where I am concerned, it is definitely not both, just dumber.

“It’s quite short and generally a quick read,” writes a third member of the 5-star brigade. Quick for him maybe, but not the likes of me. “Not every page is filled with mind-blowing/numbing theories and brain-busting equations,” he continues. “Some of it is just history, say on Newton and such. However, there were a few pages worth of passages where my wee brain felt like it was getting sucked into a black hole...mainly during the black hole segment.” I would unfortunately have to replace the words ‘a few...’ with ‘many if not most’.

To put me further to shame someone else states, “This is an absolutely magical book, both objectively and for me specifically. I first read it when I was about 9 or 10.” That was from the gentleman with a Ph.D in physics. I was puzzled by this person though when he wrote, “It's such a concise, understandable introduction to the field that I’m determined to get my girlfriend (a linguist with no real interest in physics) to read it. Not just because I think she’ll understand it, but because I think she will enjoy it!” Can you really enjoy something like that without understanding it?

Come down to the 3-star level and here is someone I can agree with. “...at times it is very clear that the reader needs a certain level of knowledge to understand what he’s talking about. As such, Hawking makes certain assumptions as he shifts from concept to concept which left me a little confused.” And another 3-star reviewer writes, “Stephen Hawking’s book is easy to read, but harder to comprehend. In every chapter came a point where my brain couldn’t hold another permutation of a theory...” Easy to read, but harder to comprehend?

A two-star person wrote, “I probably understood half of what I read, which I’m happy with. If I could fully grasp the whole book I’d probably have a better job and be much richer.”

Someone else pointed out that the book tops the list of ‘bought but not read’.

Now that I can fully understand.

Happy Zooming.

Stanley

Wildfires

It started with a Californian heatwave. Where I was, the temperature rose to thirty-five degrees Celsius, followed by highs of thirty-eight and a couple of days with a scorching forty-two! Then came a prolonged night-time thunderstorm, with countless lightning strikes igniting the tinder-dry vegetation. Many of the innumerable small fires soon merged to form large conflagrations spreading their ugly fumes and flames to threaten everything and everyone in surrounding areas.

By the morning, ash was raining down on us through the increasingly acrid air. An official warning went out: Be prepared to evacuate! To think, I had come for a short family visit in March, yet here I was five months later, marooned by the pandemic and now, along with everyone else, threatened by fire.

What to do? We decided to pack what we could and head initially, the next day, to an in-law's place some fifty miles away. “Take only what is of value to you,” the kids were told. “Provided into doesn't take much room.”

The situation has growing ever more ominous by the time we finally departed, well aware that the family could have seen the last of their house and home with all but the few belongings we were taking with us. The children were deposited with the in-laws while we went to check on somewhere to stay. We were fortunate. Many people had nowhere to go and had to rely on emergency arrangements made by local authorities or organisations, everything complicated by the need for social distancing. In our case, a relation of the in-laws had a temporarily empty flat we could use not far from San Francisco airport. We went there, left some things – then drove back to the fire-threatened house to rescue what else we could. The air, thick and tinged with an orange glow, was painful to breathe. Inside, items were quickly collected, including clothes and food from fridge, freezer and cupboards. This time, before we had left a mandatory order to get out had been issued. Incredibly, we later learned that some people refused to go and had to be forcibly removed. All roads into the area were then closed.

We collected the kids and arranged our temporary refuge as comfortably as we could. From there we were able to follow the fight against the flames. Press conferences and fire-fighters' briefings from the command and control centre set up in the local park just a few hundred metres from the family's home, were shown online. We also continually checked air quality on the Purple Air site. Single figures were best, but anything under fifty on the scale used was still shown as acceptable. Where we had come from it was well over four hundred.

But even in our new location the air wasn't always good. All depended on the winds, as pollution from other fires, and there were many of them, could easily drift in our direction. Compared to what we had left behind, however, it was fine. And three times we drove to a coastal area where the air was fresher, for an evening walk.

We remained refugees for eight days. By then the fire – 'our' fire – was sufficiently contained for us to be allowed back. It had destroyed more than nine hundred homes, but our area was now considered safe. At most, two thousand four hundred people had been fighting the flames, ringing them in, denying them fresh fuel. Weather permitting, helicopters and a fixed-wing plane joined the battle. When we walked past the park now we could see dozens of long vans marked 'mobile sleeping trailer' or 'mobile shower trailer' drawn up on the grass. The fight, though being steadily won, was not yet over.