Ahhh, Minnesota (and Moberg)

[mrissa]

As we were putting our coats on at Caribou, I was raving to Ginger about how wonderful Vilhelm Moberg's two-volume History of the Swedish People is, how he assumes you can tell Sten Sture the Elder from Sten Sture the Younger in a dark alley and goes on from there to sink his teeth into Swedish history, such that secret history fantasy novels practically write themselves from it and I might as well just sit back and do my nails and watch it happening.

I turned to leave, and I noticed that the three people (man, woman, child) at the next table were all staring at us. "What's your name?" asked the little girl. I said, "Marissa, what's yours?" "Siri." "That's a very pretty name," I said, "a very pretty Norwegian name, if I'm not mistaken." "That's right," said her mom, and then her dad chimed in sheepishly, "I couldn't help hearing you talk about Moberg. I love Moberg. I'm in the middle of rereading his tetralogy, you know, the --" "Emigrant books," I said with him. He grinned: "Yeah. I think it's really neat what you're doing, the stories you were telling her." "Oh, wow, thanks!" I said.

It was good.

(And seriously, I know matociquala says all history is like this, but come on! These people have last names like Night-and-Day and Sun-on-the-Water! They differentiate between branches of a family with alchemical symbols! They go around making peasant treaties regardless of what their lords think! It's just so fabulous. They make my job so much fun.) (Well, maybe I have a little something to do with that. Still: fun!)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ethnic Norwegian is Siri.

Ethnic Finn -- either Finnish national or Kven, which is ethnic Finn, Norwegian national -- is Siiri. Not everyone who spells it Siiri is ethnic Finn, but they've definitely been influenced by it.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Ah. The lab tech I worked with a couple years ago was named Siiri, and I always thought it was an impossible name to write, but a wonderful name otherwise. Nifty.