This month is not quite finished, but already the amount of traffic on this blog is more than double my previous monthly record. Checking the blog stats, I find that essentially all of this new traffic is from Sweden!
I thought maybe I had been linked to by some site that's super popular in Sweden, but if so it's not showing up on the "top referrers" stats, which are dominated by "Other."
So, Swedes, welcome! Would any of you care to explain why you all suddenly started reading this blog?
10 comments:
Hours after posting this, I was on the street and saw someone with a backpack that said "Fjällräven Kånken" and had a picture of a fox. I thought the combination of a fox and a word that looks like raven was interesting because it syncs with Fox in Socks and Slow Joe Crow.
At first I thought in my ignorance that the words looked Danish (forgetting that Danish doesn't use umlauts!). When I looked them up later, I found that they were -- of course -- Swedish. (Fjällräven means "arctic fox," and Kånken is derived from the Swedish for "schlep.")
To kånka is to carry a wearisome burden. Normally the definite article of the verb kånka is kånkan, but the manufacturer would appear to have used a certain poetic license here. The definite article In Swedish is often used in strange ways. As a nickname for both people or things. For example: one could easily imagine a farm laborer or any other beast of burden being nicknamed Kånkan. He who carries the heavy burden burden. Thesame principal would also apply to an object, like a truck or rucksack.
The fjällräven kånken has the status of a cultural icon here in Sweden and is a classic. It’s been around for decades. Never gone out of fashion.
I’m English myself but find myself living in Sweden. I can’t even begin to speculate as to why you have received such an inordinate amount of traffic from here. Maybe the Swedish central scrutinizer is on your case.
The Swedes generally make a great effort to be helpful, polite and accommodating towards representatives of the anglosphere. So if you don’t receive at least ten replies to your question, you should regard these 11,000 hits with a fair degree of suspicion.
I doubt that many Swedes would be able to make head nor tail of most of what appears on these pages.
It may or may not be interesting to add that the dictionary states that to kånka is to carry a heavy burden with” möda”. Which comes from old Norse, meaning to make weary, or to plague in the verb form. The root form of the verb and the noun in Swedish are oftentimes the same. Which is the case with möda.
Thanks for the Swedish lesson, Sean. I remember from my D&D days a beast of burden called a "kank." Given that a disproportionate number of D&D developers have been Mormons of Scandinavian extraction, one suspects an etymological link.
As for "möda," wouldn't that be pronounced more or less as "murder"? Corvids again!
I share your skepticism about the thousands of hits from Sweden. That zero Swedes have commented on this post is extremely suspicious. Looking more closely at my stats, I see that roughly 100% of these supposed Swedes are using Firefox on a Mac operating system, which strongly suggests that these are "Biden votes," so to speak, rather than actual visits by actual people.
Perhaps they are all you, Sean? Do you use Firefox on a Mac? Could some strange bug be causing each of your visits to be counted hundreds of times?
"I doubt that many Swedes would be able to make head nor tail of most of what appears on these pages." Grounded, level-headed chaps, those Swedes!
Yes Wm möda to the English speaking ear sounds very much like murder. Interesting how the kank made its way across the Atlantic.
Oh and I missed the most important detail. The Swedish word for crow is kråka, definite article = kråkan. So räven/raven, kånkan/kråkan. Stone the corvids, they are everywhere! Not sure if it might be of interest, or of help in interpreting future Nordic encounters of the corvid kind,but although fjällräv means artic fox, fjäll actually means mountain.
No I don’t have a Mac. Although I do use an iPad, but never Firefox. I have had my mail hacked by someone using a Mac recently. ”Biden votes “ indeed.
I’m with you now! A möda of crows. A bunch of raven lunatics. 11,000 of the buggers!
Haha, release the kråkan!
Swedes using Firefox -- Eldräven?
E. Draven is the name of the Brandon Lee character in the film "The Crow."
Release the kråkan:-) Love that. E. Draven eldräven. Thats too ludicrous a coincidence to be a coincidence. Or is it?
Not wishing to labor the point, but continuing our Firefox hacker theme. The verb hacka is used in 3 contexts that I can think of off the top of my head. 1: to bully, nag constantly or persecute. 2: to hack a computer. 3: it’s whata bird does when it pecks. Woody woodpecker is known as Hacke Hackspett.
For me the Swedish translation of the peck, hackan, would serve to encapsulate the whole concept even better than the peck does. You’ve got the 24/7 nagging propaganda. The bullying and persecution. The hacking feeding from cadavers of carrion and the invasive penetration of our defenses right down to the dna, with the intent to do harm, manipulate, of surveillance, control, exploitation and the creation of chaos. A signature is also known as a kråka. It’s slang and they use it casually to make written consent seem less serious. Evil requiring that we succumb of our own volition. You even have a snott kråka. Snorkråka. Nasal swabbing?
The peck in a nötskal. 🥜.
Hey we could probably go on like this all day. Surely we can introduce Hugin and Mugin into the equation.
I don’t know if you are familiar with certain interpretations of bible prophecies concerning the destiny of the lost tribes in the last days, nor if you give credence to them. Not sure if I do either, but recently, on listening to a podcast concerning the destiny of the Naphtali my mind was blown by the accuracy with which the modern Swedish woman was described. Also my knowledge Swedish and the mentality of their women, lead me to make connections that the NZ podcaster could never have made. Not one to be overly interested in the workings of the synchronicity fairies, but that slapped me right round the face and hit me like a truck. Still that’s one for another day if you are interested. Just crow
Good morning.
I stopped by here on a link from Bruce Charlton's blog. I, too have had a huge surge of page views from Sweden on my blogger account. Someone must be running a bot, or something.
JWM
Me too - e.g. more than eight thousand from Sweden in the past week. Certainly fake. Shows yet again the meaninglessness of page views...
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