Olaf's Bones

The definition of an old building depends on whom you are asking.
Being from the West Cost of the United States, I tend to define an old building as one built before 1920. Even that seems ancient compared to the circa-1964 architecture of Fairbanks. All of it starkly contrasts with my surroundings on the island of Frösön.
From my bed room window, I can see a hill on top of which are ruins of a fort so old no one remembers what it is called. The entire island is dotted with Viking and early Christian ruins.
If you were to ask some one in the nearby town of Ostersund what is an example of an old building they would point to the old church on Frösön. Services are still held in the church that was built in 1305; in fact it is one of the most popular places to get married in Sweden.
On Sunday, I walked up to the old church. It occupies one of the highest points on the island. The sign at the top says that on a clear day it is possible to see all the way to Trondhime, Norway. However, I couldn’t tell where the soft snow-covered hills of Sweden ended and the frosty mountains of Norway began.
When the church was built Jamtland was a semi-autonomous part of Norway. It didn’t surprise me to discover that the land supporting the church has a history all its own. The church rests upon an Iron Age burial ground. My research turned up a most interesting fact:
“In the place where the earliest high altar is likely to have been located, the charred remains of a wooden stump together with large amounts
Of animal bones, mostly bear were found. These finds have been carbon dated to the Viking Age and this site has thus been seen as ‘incontestable evidence for cult site continuity’ from pre-Christian to Christian times.” (http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/publications/digital/sanmark/Sanmark2004_OPIA34.pdf)
Archeological artifacts are to be expected in light of the island’s history as the trading center of Jamtalnd. What I find more surprising was the willingness of the early Christians to build a church on a top of a highly sacred place. Realizing this, I began to draw connections between the landscape recycling here and other holy places around the world. For example, in the city of Jerusalem, there are places where churches were built by the Crusaders on top of Jewish temples. In turn these churches were replaced by mosques.
The Frösön churchyard is covered with closely set graves. Head stones barely poke though the snow. Older Viking graves in and around the churchyard are visible in the summer. Dominating the church yard is a freestanding belfry. This was erected relatively recently, I’m told, sometime in the 1700s. The elaborate shingle work on the belfry contrasts with the simplicity of the old church.
The church itself is an unimpressive structure. It was built for function more then beauty, perhaps that is why it has withstood the test of time. The walls are made of thick stone white-washed 150 years ago in the wake of a fire. Inside the woodwork is painted Jamtish blue, a color characteristic of this area of Sweden.
Hidden near the altar is a little alcove in the wall that contains a chest. The contents of which is supposedly the holy relics of St Olaf. Namely parts of his hands and feet. I looked him up in Wikipedia (by all accounts a highly unrelable source, so take this next bit of information with a grain of salt). St. Olaf had a turbulent rule that lasted from 1015 to 1030. He is given credit for uniting inland and costal Norway, along with Christianizing its people. St. Olaf had a reputation for being a rash and brutal ruler. (Doesn’t that make his sainthood slightly ironic?) According to a local tour guide, the saint’s body was exhumed from his grave in Norway in the 1950s. When they examined it he still had all of his fingers and toes. If his fingers and toes are still attached, then what is in that chest?

Confusing Cognates

Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. I have read somewhere that it takes the average human 21 days to adjust and adapt to a new situation. I have now been in Sweden for almost a month. This 21-day adjustment period seems to be true. A few days ago I realized that I had become used to not understanding what people around me were saying. I didn’t feel shut out of conversation, rather it seemed as though I had always been out side of the conversation . However, getting used to something doesn’t make it necessary easy. The language barrier isn’t overly problematic until it comes to the purchasing of groceries. It is rather hard to ask an inanimate object such as a block of cheese what exactly it is in English. Also, all the cooking instructions are naturally in Swedish. This makes following directions especially interesting. The following story illustrates the perilous world of grocery shopping in a forging country.
The canola oil story:
Everyone knows what canola oil is - its cooking oil. There isn’t a grocery store in America that doesn’t sell it. Therefore, every grocery store in Sweden should sell it, right? A fellow American exchange student relayed this story to me. When he arrived in Östersund he went on his first trip to the grocery store. He spoke no Swedish. He found the milk, eggs, and cheese; these items, although labeled in Swedish, were pretty self-explanatory. He had everything he needed to make his first meal in Sweden. The only missing ingredient was oil, but not just any oil. He wanted canola oil. He searched the whole store; he found what he assumed to be olive oil (judging by the picture of an olive tree on the label), sesame seed oil, and rap olja, but no canola oil. Like any lost person he decided to ask a store employee. Is his most apologetic English he asked where he might find the canola oil. The employee looked shocked and responded, “What is this canola oil you wish to find?” The student tried to explain, “You know, you use it for cooking. It’s called canola oil.” (As many people do when they don’t know how to explain a simple object, he simply named it again, as if saying it again would perhaps explain the oil better.) . The confused employee called over another employee and explained in Swedish that this person was looking for canola oil. Both the employees looked shocked and embarrassed every time they had to say the word canola. After a few moments of contemplation both employees suggested that perhaps rap olja would work for his cooking purposes rather than canola oil. He obliged and bought rap olja instead. Later, when he returned to his apartment, he told the story to one of his Swedish flat-mates. The flat-mate started to giggle, then laugh. The American student was confused as to why his search for canola oil was so riotously. When the Swedish student’s laughter subsided and he could talk normally he explained to the American, “You have been asking for sex oil! Fuck oil, to be exact. Canola means fuck in Swedish.”
After hearing this story I decided to do some research on the subject of both canola oil and the word that it is easily confused with. The accurate Swedish word is “knulla.” The entry for "knulla" in the online dictionary lexin (http://lexin.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/swe-eng) is stated as the following:
knullar [²kn'ul:ar] knullade knullat knulla(!)
ha samlag (may be taken as offensive)
A knullar (med) B; A och B knullar
English translation: fuck

The reason why rapeseed oil is not to be found in the United States is slightly more interesting then one might expect. According to Wikipedia, “Canola is a type of edible oil initially bred in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson in the 1970s. It is a trademarked quality description of a group of cultivars of rapeseed variants from which low erucic acid rapeseed oil and low glucosinolate meal are obtained. The word ‘canola’ was derived from ‘Canadian oil, low acid’ in 1978.” I have been told, but have not confirmed the truth, that at one point canola oil was called rapeseed oil in the states, however, no one would buy it because of the negative connotation associated with the word “rape”. As a result, the name was quickly changed to canola oil.