Lars Winnerbäck, don't make me cry! OR Jag längta efter Sverige

I am having a unexpected wave of nostalgia for/ längtar efter Sverige. Which is not to say that I don't like Denmark or don't feel already like I belong here because I feel very warmly towards all things Danish and I always have. I actually don't know what it is. I felt like a stranger in Sweden for a lot of the time, and it wasn't until we read "The Emmigrants" by Wilhelm Moberg that I felt significance in my family connection - reading that book about people just like my relatives (Moberg spent a lot of time researching and interviewing emmigrants in America and their diaries of the trip) was like some kind of solidifying agent that made it possible either A) for me to feel overly emotional or B) like my connection to the Swedish-American identity we practiced at home was real and something that really belonged to me.

Today we had a "song night" after dinner where the two music teachers at the school introduced the hojskole song book, talked about its history, its use historically in framing the hojskole movement as it evolved, and its continued use today in many settings as a way to frame meetings, become focused and so on. We also talked about our purpose in singing from it every day at morning assembly and in the afternoon and usually at night too. Its about togetherness, and remembering the past melodies and the past history through these songs, and also to help us non Danish speakers with inflection. There have been many editions of this book, but the effort to compile old Danish folk melodies was started quite late (I guess?) and so many were lost or almost lost, BUT luckily, said the teachers, in Sweden there is a strong long tradition of keeping and recording and singing folk melodies, at schnapps drinking parties probably ;) and so there are Swedish and Norweigan and some German songs in our books too.

Today we sang one such song, which I can't recall the name of right now, except that I was written in the cold war era and the first line was something like "If you have a song to sing, sing it now" (implication being "there might not be a tomorrow") - it was kind of sweet and sad. I actually understood most of what I was singing, and singing in Swedish while the Danes stumbled on the pronunciation of a couple words, like göra with a "g" sound instead of a "y" sound, I was very excited to be seeing Swedish again and understanding it and well, its not even like I have great pronunciation in Swedish either, but for some reason I was feeling really emotional about it.

And then I came home and listened to Lars Winnerbäck, and the song "Innan Mörkret Faller" especially was making me miss Sweden - again, who knows why! I suppose because of all the Swedes I met that were great, and who accepted me as one of their own, even though I'm about as Swedish as blond hair (It's not like people AREN'T blond in Sweden, its just not unique, you know).

Youtube the song, maybe it will make you längta efter Sverige as well!