Winter in Örsåsa village

Småland, in Sweden, lies covered by a thick blanket of snow. The village of Örsåsa, near the town of Vimmerby, in the north-eastern corner of the province, is made up of four farms around a crossroads and two more farms, “North” and “South”, which lie a few hundred yards away in opposite directions. Matters of common interest, such as the well, road maintenance, fishing rights and snow clearance, are all still decided today by the village assembly, as they have been for centuries past. A few miles away is the manor of Ålhult, seat in the 18th century of the terrible general Peschlin who, along with Anckarström and a group of conspirators, planned the murder of Gustav III. The present owner, Karl-Heinz from Germany, is more peaceful.

A Swedish winter can be hard for those who have come from afar. The last journey of the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was to Sweden, at the invitation of Queen Kristina. One winter three hundred years ago he fell sick and never recovered. He died in 1650, one of many Frenchmen to fall victim to the harsh, damp cold of a Swedish winter. The present Swedish royal family has its origins in the city of Pau in the sunny French region of Gascony. The young general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was persuaded to take the Swedish throne in 1810, taking the name Karl XIV Johan. His wife Désirée, formerly Napoleon’s fiancée, had enough of the Swedish cold after just one winter and headed south again five months after her arrival in the country. It was to be twelve years before she returned – she had been Sweden’s Queen for five years without ever setting foot on Swedish territory.

My grandfather broke stones and built stone walls and wooden fences around the parcels of poor land which make up the farm where I was born. Under the snow lies the red earth, called “ör”, which gave its name to the village of Örsåsa. Along the ridge on which the village is sited, from where you can see for miles, ran the old Viking road linking Linköping to Kalmar. It was here that the rebel leader Dacke passed on his way from southern Småland to the town of Kisa, 20 kilometres to the north, where his peasant army defeated Gustav Vasa’s troops in 1542. But a year later the tables were turned. The king’s army advanced along the road from Kisa by Vimmerby to Virserum. Dacke was badly wounded in the fighting, and the north’s greatest peasant revolt was over.