Swedish Blues: The Phenomenal Louise Hoffsten

Summers are short in Sweden. Maybe that is why Swedish poets and filmmakers are always so preoccupied with the brevity of life.

“Is there anything more gorgeous than the white, Nordic sky of June! How many June mornings are there in a human life? They are not hard to count- and least of all those that one really encountered!”

(Vilhelm Ekelund, from “On the Ocean Shore” 1922; tr. Lennart Bruce, “The Second Light”, 1986).

I caught something of this sombre Nordic mood and feeling myself, when living in Sweden. I wrote this in May 2001…

Not Yet Midsummer

“I´d forgotten the Forget-Me-Nots.
The fields are full of them
This early Swedish summer,
The copses, the clearings,
The churchyards. How
Beautiful they look, that life-enhancing blue,
All around the headstones”.

A powerful antidote to all this is a wonderful song called “Make the Most of It” by Swedish blues singer Louise Hoffsten (album: “From Linköping to Memphis”). Even in the depths of winter, the Swedes know how to enjoy and encounter a rare and all-too-brief sunny day in the freshly-fallen snow. The song celebrates just such an ecstatic encounter.

A perfect album

From other albums:

Listen to Louise's version of "Warm and Tender Love"
and, if you can take the heat, her version of a Muddy Waters classic