Dragon Tattoo fever

Okay, I'll admit it....my real excitement for the upcoming Hollywood version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie doesn't have a whole lot to do with my love for the Stieg Larsson book trilogy.  I've only finished the first one so far and thought it was an okay read, aside from the fact that I'm really not a fan of graphic sexual violence.  The real reasons I'm so excited for the movie are: A) I have a huge and not-so-secret crush on the handsome actor Daniel Craig;  B)  I really, really, really want to hear how well a bunch of American and Brit actors pull off fake Swedish accents in English; and C) A good portion of the movie was filmed within a half hour drive of where I live, not only in Stockholm but on our neighboring island of Ingarö.

Last fall I spent an afternoon stalking the set of the movie in Stockholm and even though I don't think I managed to catch Mr. Hottie Craig (unless that's him in the second photo), it was still fun to watch them turning this huge rain machine on and off during filming:

Here's the trailer for the movie...not due to come out until December, but by then I'll most likely be ready to find a babysitter and hit the movie theater for a couple of hours:



In other random Dragon Tattoo trivia, the original Swedish title is Män Som Hatar Kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women.  The original title is much more true to the plot, since the tattooed heroine isn't necessarily the main focus of the story, but my hunch is that in order to earn more money they changed the English title to make it sound titillating and dangerous instead of like a book from the self-help section....

What's in a name day?

A few days ago I opened up my mailbox to find a nice postcard with a picture of roses on it from M's grandparents, congratulating me on my "name day."  Turns out my name day was on May 17th  (I had no idea), and it also turns out that the modern purpose and celebration of name days in Sweden are an utter mystery to me.  The custom of celebrating one day of the year for everyone with the same name originated with the Catholic church to celebrate saints and martyrs, but as far as I can tell (just like all the other churchy traditions here in Sweden) the true meaning has been totally lost and now there's just a lot of extra ink used when printing yearly calendars by adding names at the bottom of each day.

When the big day arrived, I was secretly kind of excited to find out if I was going to get presents or breakfast in bed or a surprise party or some other adorable, unexpected foreign tradition.  Turns out the extent of M's celebration of my name day was fulfilled by looking at the calendar the day before and saying, "Hey, it's your name day tomorrow."  There were two kids at the preschool where I work who ran up and excitedly congratulated me.  That was it.  So, as far as I can figure out, the name day is something that old people and little kids get excited over.  Hm.  I suppose I can't be too disappointed considering the massive parties that are thrown for holidays we don't have in the states, like midsommar and totally insane crayfish parties.  I'll just have to remember not to hold my breath the next time May 17th rolls around.