Poetic justice: Gustaf Fröding, Sweden When an English couple signed up to host some visiting Swedish families in the 1970s, they had no idea that it would lead to a newfound passion and change of country. Anna Maria Espsäter interviews a leading English light of Swedish poetry.

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Poetic justice: Gustaf Fröding, Sweden

When an English couple signed up to host some visiting Swedish families in the 1970s, they had no idea that it would lead to a newfound passion and change of country. Anna Maria Espsäter interviews a leading English light of Swedish poetry.

Mike and Pat McArthur’s falling in love with Sweden was unexpected but perhaps, looking back, inevitable. After hosting several Swedish families keen to bone up on English in situ, one thankful guest presented a book of Swedish poetry. It was a spark that ignited a long-lasting interest in the world of Swedish poets and a relationship with the Nordic nation

that spans three decades, including the last four years as residents.

The book was by Gustaf Fröding. “I thought ‘Why has nobody heard of this guy when he’s writing poems like this,’” says Mike, who quickly decided to take up Swedish to get a better understanding of the culture and regions depicted in Gustaf’s work. He invested in tapes, books and dictionaries, teaching himself Swedish from scratch at home in Scarborough, north-east England, where both he and Pat worked as teachers.

Now nearing 70 years of age, Mike is regarded very much as a pioneer in keeping the Fröding legacy alive and has over the past eleven years managed to get the author’s complete works translated and printed in English. His work has been met with praise in Sweden with the Gustaf Fröding Society making him a lifelong member and awarding him a medal of honour for the translation of Fröding’s 600-odd poems.

Mike and Pat now live in the tiny outpost of Brunskog, in Värmland, not far from where Fröding himself used to live, their house overlooking the lake and church featured in the poet’s work.

Fröding was born in 1860 in Alster, near Karlstad, Värmland’s largest town and is one of Sweden’s best known poets, publishing a series of poems from 1891 until his death in 1911 after prolonged

mental illness. Although some translations were in existence already, Mike found that they often sacrificed rhythm, instead focusing on meaning.

Mike believes that previous translations were a bit of “a cop out”, particularly as a large chunk of Swedish poems are set to music and supposed to be sung. So he reworked the poems keeping rhythm intact, his translations uncovering that they could work equally well as songs in English if rhythm was maintained.

Värmland is renowned for its extraordinarily creative soil, with many of the country’s best-known and loved poets and authors hailing from its towns and hamlets, including Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and poet Nils Ferlin. Music is equally important and many of the poems from the area have been popularised as songs. Crafts also go hand in hand with arts, manual labour combining with intellectual pursuits in unique ways. Being close to Norway, the local dialect in which many poems were written presented a further challenge for Mike. Friends and modern day poets have assisted, Mike professing to having to

“borrow from [the knowledge of] old ladies in the neighbourhood” when he comes across a particularly tricky part of vernacular.

For Mike there remain endless opportunities to discover and explore more Swedish poetic culture and he has dedicated the best part of a decade to translating and promoting a great variety of poets other than Fröding, including Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795), Dan Andersson (1888-1920) and Anna Maria Lenngren (1754-1817). He has also translated contemporary treasures such as Urban Andersson, a poet who is still very active in the region today.

Having just finished his nineteenth book of poetry in translation, Mike says he is already working on the twentieth. “It’s purely for love,” he says of his work. “If you were waiting for the money to come in you’d starve. I think we’ve got some of the greatest poets in the world here, but they made the awful mistake of writing in the wrong language,” he says tongue-in-cheek.

It’s been a long love affair. As Pat (with Mike, pictured left) puts it: “I live with two men, Mike and Gustaf Fröding.”

With Fröding’s portrait looking down from the wall of the McArthur’s cosy living room, you get do the feeling that they’re all living rather well together, though.

Gustaf Fröding in translation, with kind permission from Mike McArthur:

Vackert väder

Klar låg himlen över viken,
solen stekte hett,
och vid Haga ringde Hagas
gälla vällingklocka ett.
Brunnskogs kyrka stod och lyste
som en bondbrud, grann och ny.
Över björkarne vid Berga
som ett hattflor på en herrgårdsfröken
svävade en sky.

Beautiful weather

O’er the creek lay clear the heavens,
roasting was the sun,
from the farmyard bell at Haga
clanged a piercing ring, just one.
Brunnskog’s church stood grand and gleaming
like a new bride, fine and proud.
O’er the tall birch trees at Berga
like a gauze veil on a lady’s bonnet
floated there a cloud.

Strövtåg i hembygden

Och här är dungen, där göken gol,
små tösor sprungo här
med bara fötter och trasig kjol
att plocka dungens bär,
och här var det skugga och här var sol
och här var det gott om nattviol,
den dungen är mig kär,
min barndom susar där,

Roving in my home district

And here’s the grove, where the cuckoo sang,
small lasses ran there free,
a barefoot and ragged-skirted gang
plucked berries round each tree,
and here there was sunshine and here was shade
and butterfly orchids in the glade,
I love that grove so fair,
my childhood whispers there.

DETAILS

For more information on Mike McArthur’s work: www.lansbiblioteket.se/forfattare/mcarthur_mike.htm (in Swedish)

For more information on the area: www.arvika.se/index_en.php?siteVersion=3 (the nearest town) and www.varmland.org/index.asp?fu_id=115 (the county).

For information on Sweden: www.visitsweden.com

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