Swedish News:

Joel Kinnaman to play Lancelot in Hollywood production. Sjöwall and Wahlöö become a French comic book. Doctor’s habits decide his advice. Stasi names to be published? Train left an hour early. 

  • Joel Kinnaman to play Lancelot in Hollywood production
    Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman's Hollywood career continues spiraling upward. Kinnaman will play the role of Lancelot in the upcoming fantasy "Arthur & Lancelot" by director David Dobkin. It’ll be a big budget film ($90 million) that will take the classic figures of history and rework them into contemporary re-imaging. Who will play Arthur is not yet clear. The shooting of the film will take place in 2012, and the release has already been slated for March 15, 2013. King Arthur is of course the legendary British leader of the 5th and 6th centuries, who headed the famed Round Table. Lancelot was his most trusted knight, as important a figure as Arthur himself in the legend.

  • Sjowall and Wahloo become a French comic book
    Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were a Swedish husband and wife detective team who together conceived and wrote a successful series of ten novels. Sjöwall/Wahlöö's classic “Den skrattande polisen” (“The Laughing Policeman”) has been turned into a French comic book. The original story has been revised by Roger Setier and is drawn by Martin Viot. Both Setier and Viot have certainly done their research; a few years ago, they contacted Spårvägsmuset to see the sketches of the kind of double-decker bus (referred to as Leyland) that the main character uses for transportation. Only one thing, though: Police Åke Stenström has gotten the un-Swedish name Äke in the French comic book. Eh bien!

  • Doctor's habits decide his advice
    Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Goteborg University have performed polls in order to examine how a doctor's own alcohol habits influence the advice he gives his patients. The study shows that advice differs depending on whether the doctor himself drinks. The advice also depends on whether the patient is male or female. Women who sought care for the same issues as men and had similar drinking habits, more often received the advice to cut out alcohol completely, whereas men were just asked to drink less. “Doctors who drink more alcohol have a more liberal view of alcohol,” says Magnus Geirsson, doctoral candidate at the Sahlgrenska Academy’s Social Medicine, himself a doctor at Norrmalm’s VC in Skövde. “But their view is also influenced by the fact that a high male consumption of alcohol is part of the social norm.”

  • Stasi names to be published?
    A majority of the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament) now wants Sapo's secret Stasi archives to be opened for the public. "It's good to know what went on," says Sven-Erik Österberg (a Social Democrat). In the beginning of the 1990’s, Säpo (the Swedish Security Service), was informed about some 50 Swedes who were suspected for having worked for Stasi, the official state security service of former East Germany. At a debate earlier this year, Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask (the Moderate Party) said that the government had no plans to not preserve secrecy. But now, the Sweden Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party, and the Social Democrats are all in favor of opening the archives, which means they have majority in the Riksdag. It is still unclear whether they will make a proposal for the Riksdag to vote about it. “Time is ripe, I think,” Österberg continues. “We are all for openness and to say no to the opening the archives, now that the gun smoke has dissolved, is like defending closeness instead.” But Österberg also stresses the fact that the names on the archive must be treated with care. “There might be Swedes there who never had anything to do with Stasi. They risk getting into an impossible situation, 20 to 30 years after they were written in there, and they might not be able to prove their innocence.”

  • Train left an hour early
    The passengers who were to leave with the 09:35 train to Stockholm were met by an empty platform at Malmö Central. When they asked, they were informed that the train had already departed – an hour early. “There were problems with the switches in Lund, so we chose an earlier departure,” Urban Olsson at VeoliaTransport’s press center. So the Veolia train left a little too early, but forgot to inform the passengers. “We’re looking over the routines to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”