Svenska Äfternamner: Pynch No Fool!

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	calbert at pop.tiac.net

>I'll take that. Pynch f.s up on page 272. Describing the portraits of 
>swedes he lists the names "Oxenstjerna, Gyllenstjerna, Gyllenborg".
>Got no beef with the last one, but those two others should have an 
>"a"  with like a double umlaut  instead of the the "e" in "stjerna" 
>(star). Any idiot would know THAT!
>
>....or is he using some kind of dated convention.... perhaps no 
>double um's available in that font?
>cfa, anxiously awaiting the heated debate

O, komm nu då! Är du klockt? Bibliotek-mäster från lilla stan!

I swear to Jesus, Buddha and the Wizard of Oz, if the fahrfergnügen
Internet ain't the coolest gee-dee thing to come along EVER, I'm gonna
eat this trilby I've been wearing perched rakishly on three pubic hairs.
(Mine.)

Charles' confident assertion that the Swedish surnames above are
incorrectly rendered sent me  scurrying to Infoseek, which, as it turns
out, has a Swedish outpost. Where it sez, "Skriv in en specifik fråga,
fras eller ett namn" I skriv'd in the namn "Oxenstjerna" and got several
hits, one of which was a Swedish genealogy site that lists a Christina
Oxenstjerna
(http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-13626/roots/names1.htm#Oxenstjerna)> Her
info:

Husband: Lars* Gyllencreutz   Born: 31 JUL 1576      at: Östra Ryd (E)
Married:                  at:      Died: 1 MAY 1623       at:
Father:Tyke Larsson-Gyllencreutz Mother:Kjerstin* Marbo        Other
Spouses:    Wife: Christina Oxenstjerna   Born: ?? ... ????      at:
 Died: ?? ... ????      at:    Father:Christjern Gabrielsson
Mother:Beata Gera

(Excuse me for a minute or two while I close my eyes and enjoy my
reverie of Lars and Christina, holding hands and gamboling through a
gloriously sunlit late-16th-century rye-field near Östra Ryd, ecstatic
in love.... There lurks nearby a dour figure, trenchcoat lapels up and
cigarette dangling from bleached lips--Bergman is his name, and he wants
it in Black and White.... Gyllencreutz and Oxenstjerna are dead...and
yet, O Death, where is Thy sting when we live on in Eternal ASCII!)

BUT THEN, and here's the bestest part, I noticed another link Infoseek
Sverige had found, something called "Project Runeberg" (plainly inspired
by Project Gutenberg), a collection of out-of-copyright Scandahoovian
texts. "Karolinerna," a work by Verner von Heidenstam (1859 - 1940)
(http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/karolin/03.html) contains the
following passage:

- En furste skall offra alla små betänkligheter, samla all makten hos
sig, bli sitt folks urbild och vilja.... Rådsherrarna och adeln kivas nu
endast om sin andel i makten efter ers majestäts höge herr fader. Och
Oxenstjerna och Gyllenstjerna och... Nåja... Man lyss!

(This Swedish is way out of my league. Anybody care to take a crack at
it?)

Carl Gustav Verner von Heidenstam was the 1916 Nobel Laureate. Most of
the Web stuff on him is in rock-ribbed Swedish, but I'm able to dope out
that he was a pal of August Strindberg's. I couldn't find a synopsis of
"Karolinerna," or of the significance of O&G in the text; this is left
as an exercise for the student.

And since Oxenstjerna and Gyllenstjerna turn out to be characters from
early 20th Cent. Swedish lit., (and ain't it mebbe just the _teensiest_
bit significant that Gyllenstjerna is a direct one-to-one analog of
"Guildenstern"?) should it surprise us any that "Gyllenborg" also pops
up in Project Runeberg, this time in the poem "En afton hos fru
Lenngren: Vid Svenska Akademiens hundraårsfest" by the immortal Carl
Snoilsky (1841 - 1903)
(http://www.lysator.liu.se/(nobg)/runeberg/svbilder/26.html)?

I laget Gyllenborg är ålderman, En äldre skolas vördnadsvärda minne. 

Total ignorance of Swedish realist humppa-poesy is confessed, and Carl
Snoilsky is sadly lacking in biographical detail on the Internet.

Harrison "Mmmmm...trilby!" Sherwood