My wife plays (among many instruments) the Swedish nyckelharpa (literally “key harp,” a folk instrument bowed like a violin, with a set of resonant strings whose pitch is alterable by keys).

Fark took the unfamiliar form of the antique nyckelharpa in the photo above as an occasion for attempts at identification via Photoshop. Karen and I both found the results hilarious.

The Frösö Runestone

British newspapers are quoting Swedish reports that Sweden’s version of the Loch Ness monster was recently filmed in Storsjön, Sweden’s fifth largest lake.

Telegraph:

SWEDEN’S own version of the Loch Ness monster, the Storsjoe or Great Lake monster, has been caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras says.

The legend of the Swedish beast has swirled for nearly four centuries, with about 200 sightings reported in the lake in central Sweden.

“On Thursday at 12.21pm, we filmed the movements of a live being. And it was not a pike, nor a perch, we’re sure of that,” said Gunnar Nilsson, the head of a shopkeepers’ association in Svenstavik.

The association, together with the Jaemtland province and local municipality of Berg, installed six surveillance cameras in the lake in June, including two underwater devices.

The project, which has so far cost about 400,000 kronor ($73,400), is aimed at resolving the mystery of the Swedish Nessie.

The first sighting dates back to 1635 and the most recent to July 2007, with most speaking of a long, serpent-like beast with humps, a small cat or dog-like head, and ears or fins pressed against the neck.

The association employs one person full-time to review the recorded video footage each day.
In the images filmed yesterday and posted on a website dedicated to the Storsjoe monster, a long serpent-like being is seen swimming in the murky waters.

“A highly-advanced system on one of the cameras detected heat produced by the cells,” indicating that it was a live being, Mr Nilsson said.

The Sun has a slideshow and a video.

The creature is actually known in Swedish as Storsjöodjuret.
Cryptomundo

London Times:

The proud motto of northern Europe’s crack rapid-reaction force is ad omnia paratus. Prepared for everything, everywhere. But the heraldic lion above the Latin tag now sends a less plucky message – he has just been digitally emasculated and, though technically still a lion rampant, he does not seem to be ready for anything, anywhere.

The change was implemented after a group of women Swedish soldiers protested that they could not identify with such an ostentatiously male lion on their army crest. A complaint of sex discrimination was then lodged with the European Court of Justice.

“We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,” Christian Braunstein, from the Tradition Commission of the Swedish Army, said.

Now the Nordic Battlegroup, a force of 2,400 soldiers, is looking deeply embarrassed. For sceptics who already consider the Nordic Battlegroup to be something of an oxymoron – it is led by the Swedes, who were last in battle in 1809 – the operation on the lion is not an auspicious omen.

“A castrated lion – the perfect symbol for European defence policy,” an American military blogger sneered.

There are 18 battle groups in the European Union and the Nordic one, comprising Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia and Ireland, goes on standby on January 1, 2008.

Most upset, though, was Vladimir Sagerlund, the designer of the crest from the National Archives. “A heraldic lion is a powerful and stately figure with its genitalia intact and I cannot approve an edited image,” he told öteborgs-Posten, a Swedish daily.

“The Army lacks knowledge about heraldry. Coats of arms containing lions without genitalia were given to those who betrayed the Crown.”

Hat tip to Englishman’s Castle via Bird dog.

This kind of thing comes up all the time in relation to the arms of particular Swiss cantons featuring bears whose equipment is not only intact, but even more flamboyantly erect and displayed gules, (i.e. red). Attempts to censor the overly-explicit Swiss charges always result in absolute uproar with lots of coarse Swiss comments about refusing to be represented by female bears.

So artist Aron Falk is educating frogs to prepare them for survival.

3:20 video

Interview

The BBC reports that the Swedish delicacy Surströmming (Sour herring) has been banned from several major airlines as a potential explosive.

Wikipedia indicates that this is old news.