#he likes his swedes but lars was such a good personality to have in the locker room :((

[ratatatastic]

"Aaron Ekblad, our guest, Stanley Cup Champion from the Florida Panthers. One of your teammates, who you won a cup with, Oliver Ekman-Larsson—signing with the Maple Leafs. Can you give us a scouting report on OEL?" "Yeah, OEL's one of those perfect Swedes, right? You always hear that. You know, one of the best guys in the room always. Never really has a bad day, always smiling, always fun to chat with. You're getting a really poised, great puck-moving defenceman who can skate, and under pressure and big moments—can score. He does it all. It was a blessing to play with him for a year, and [I'm] happy for him moving forward."

First Up (TSN) | 7.23.24 (x)

[gardenofedenuniverse]

Alexander Skarsgård: ‘There’s a politeness to Swedes. It’s a facade. Deep down we’re animals’

The actor talks about his new film, the explicit sci-fi horror Infinity Pool, why he gave up acting for eight years – and why he likes playing darker, more twisted characters.

Alexander Skarsgård: ‘I’m quite mellow in my disposition.’ Photograph: Charlie Clift

Alexander Skarsgård is an embarrassing creep who tries to coerce women into partying naked with him in hotel suites. Or so it would seem from the version of himself that he played last year in Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. “I’m not saying that I dance around in a leopard-print thong in front of girls I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m also not saying that I don’t. That kind of thing works really well when there’s a kernel of truth in it.”

This twinkling, teasing playfulness represents the default setting of the 46-year-old actor. His natural self-deprecation is what makes it so startling when he turns up on screen as another of the brutes and bastards that have become his speciality over the years. There was the violently abusive husband in the HBO series Big Little Lies and the violently abusive cop in War on Everyone; a racist in Passing and a rapist in the Straw Dogs remake, as well as a sad, moustachioed sleazeball who sleeps with his partner’s underage daughter in The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Eric, the vampire he played across all seven series of True Blood, was an absolute catch by comparison.

It could even be argued that Skarsgård looks lost or vague in those roles that don’t supply some darkness to temper his natural sheen. He was ferocious as a mud-caked proto-Hamlet in Robert Eggers’s wild Viking epic The Northman, but as the yodelling vine-swinger in The Legend of Tarzan, there was none of the usual depth present behind his beauty. Whereas his character in the new satirical horror Infinity Pool – directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David – is up to his disbelieving eyes in vanity, amorality and rancid privilege.

Skarsgård plays a novelist called James living off the wealth of his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), and struggling to write a second book six years after his debut. In search of inspiration, he and Em visit a luxurious resort in an unnamed country. What begins as a taunting comedy about the awfulness of the 1% veers off into extremity when the couple fall in with the hedonistic Gabi (Mia Goth) and her partner, Alban (Jalil Lespert). All it takes for the impressionable James to be hooked by these reprobates is a few compliments from Gabi followed by a sex act shown in graphic detail. “My job is so hard,” the actor says with a smirk.

Cronenberg and Skarsgård are both the sons of talented men. (Skarsgård’s father is Stellan Skarsgård who, like him, is part of the Lars von Trier Cinematic Universe.) Director and actor also have a certain placid temperament in common. “There’s a politeness to Canadians and Swedes,” says Skarsgård. “But it’s all just a fucking facade. Deep down we’re animals. We’re just very good at concealing it.” He gestures at me. “Brits too. It’s all down there, though. You can just open the tap and let it out. That’s what this movie does.”

Even as the film descends into gruesome horror, Skarsgård remains committed to the idea of his character as a show pony with delusions of being a stallion. “James is arm candy. His wife buys him all these expensive clothes. The two of them look like something out of a travel brochure: the perfect couple on vacation. And he’s trying to play that part while wanting also to be this serious author. But he’s not a Charles Bukowski, he’s not tormented and twisted. He isn’t in touch with the darker side of his personality.”That changes when James finds himself facing the death penalty after accidentally killing a local farmer. He is assured by the police that there is a way out: for a hefty price, a clone of him can be created to take the fall on his behalf. This is no dumb beast, however; the sacrificial lamb will possess all his memories and feelings. It will, in effect, be indistinguishable from him. In a film featuring explicit sex and violence, there is still nothing quite as unnerving as the moment James encounters his own double as it wakes with a shocked gasp in a vat of red goo.

“The film company gave me a prosthetic of the clone’s face with all that goo round it,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s incredibly disturbing. What am I meant to do with it? Should I just hang it on the wall? Put it in the fridge?” He decided to go down the practical joke route. “When I have guests over, I’ll hide it in different places around the house.”

Would he take the clone option himself, I wonder? “One hundred per cent! I don’t blame James for going to the ATM. But it opens up other questions. If the clone retains all his memories, then how will he ever know that he is not the clone? Maybe they’re killing the real James. That fascinated me, and I love that there’s no answer in the movie. To throw another wrench in the works: maybe James has even been to the island already. Maybe he’s done this sort of thing before.”

These questions of authenticity, dilution and duplication are especially intriguing for an actor who proposed that twisted alternate version of himself in Atlanta, and who claims to suffer even now from impostor syndrome. Had you been present in 2008 on the set of Generation Kill, the HBO Iraq war mini-series written by the creators of The Wire and shot in Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa, you might have noticed him sitting off to one side between takes, quietly totting up figures with a pen and paper. “It was my first big job,” he explains. “I was so convinced they were going to fire me that I started calculating the cost of recasting the role once they realised I wasn’t good enough. A month or two in, I was still convinced that every time the phone rang, it was my agent saying: ‘Pack your bags, you’re not cutting it.’ It was only when we’d done some big battle scenes that I knew it would be too expensive to replace me.”

It wasn’t as if he has a history of flunking, though there was the job in the Stockholm bakery that he was sacked from at the age of 16. “We were dipping little biscuits in chocolate for six hours a day in a basement and that was the only thing we got to do,” he says pleadingly, as though mounting the case for his defence. “When you get chocolate on your fingers, it’s tempting to put little stains on your buddy’s white robes. That turned into a bit of a food fight.” He smiles bashfully. Chocolate wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

A few years earlier, he had abandoned a childhood acting career after feeling freaked out by all the attention he received. “When people recognised me, or I thought they did, it made me very uncomfortable. I also believed everything I heard about who I was. Most people at 13 have no idea who they are. I was going from a boy to a man, which is a crazy transformation anyway, but to do it while being in the spotlight was not healthy. That’s why I didn’t work for eight years.” What could he learn now as an actor from his younger self? “There was a lot of joy,” he says. “That makes me sound bitter now! But there was something innocent and lovely and wide-eyed. It’s worth remembering that it can still be a big silly game.”

On Becoming a God in Central Florida. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

His continuing appetite for comedy bears this out. He was a riot in the opening episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida, where he played a dope who gets involved with a pyramid scheme before being eaten by an alligator. (His on-screen wife was Kirsten Dunst. For further proof that their marriages never end well, see Von Trier’s apocalyptic Melancholia.) He also goofs around gloriously in the new season of Documentary Now!, in which he stars as a Werner Herzog-esque director shooting an epic in the Urals while simultaneously showrunning a US network comedy pilot called Bachelor Nanny. “I’ve met Herzog a few times over the years, but I don’t know if he’s seen this yet,” he says, slightly sheepishly. “I’m curious to hear what he thinks.”

It was in fact comedy that tempted Skarsgård back to acting again after all those years away. He was on holiday in Los Angeles in the early 00s when his father’s agent suggested he try out for an audition. Six weeks later, he was pootling around New York in the back of a Jeep with Ben Stiller, pouting away happily as gormless Swedish model Meekus in Zoolander. Getting that job was such a breeze that he was crestfallen to be knocked back repeatedly in other Hollywood auditions. He returned to Sweden to continue acting; another six years elapsed before Generation Kill kickstarted his US career.

These days, he seems somehow both ubiquitous and judicious. He is getting ready to make his directorial debut with The Pack, in which he and Florence Pugh star as documentary makers in Alaska. And he will return this month in the fourth and final season of Succession, which reportedly places even greater emphasis on Skarsgård’s character, the tech bro Lukas Matsson. Another bad boy of sorts.

With Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin in Succession. Photograph: Graeme Hunter

“Quite a few of the projects I’ve chosen deal with the juxtaposition of someone trying to function in modern society while also dealing with that atavistic primal question of who he is deep down and what happens when that flares up and can’t be suppressed any longer,” he says. “It’s incredibly cathartic to play those roles. Maybe because I’m quite mellow in my disposition. These darker, more twisted characters give me an opportunity to howl that primal scream and let it out, which I rarely do in everyday life.”

James in Infinity Pool has his head turned by the tiniest compliment; Skarsgård knows that, for all his own protestations about refusing to read what is written about him, he is just as susceptible to praise. “I really don’t read reviews,” he says. “That said, it’s so nice when people enjoy your work enough to come say something or take a photo. I’d prefer that to the alternative, which is crawling around in the mud for seven months and giving it everything and then it’s just … crickets. I like people appreciating what I’ve done. I’m a vain motherfucker!”

[skarsjoy]

NEW interview with The Guardian: Alexander Skarsgård: ‘There’s a politeness to Swedes. It’s a facade. Deep down we’re animals’

by Ryan Gilbey, March 27, 2023

The actor talks about his new film, the explicit sci-fi horror Infinity Pool, why he gave up acting for eight years – and why he likes playing darker, more twisted characters

Alexander Skarsgård is an embarrassing creep who tries to coerce women into partying naked with him in hotel suites. Or so it would seem from the version of himself that he played last year in Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. “I’m not saying that I dance around in a leopard-print thong in front of girls I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m also not saying that I don’t. That kind of thing works really well when there’s a kernel of truth in it.

”This twinkling, teasing playfulness represents the default setting of the 46-year-old actor. His natural self-deprecation is what makes it so startling when he turns up on screen as another of the brutes and bastards that have become his speciality over the years. There was the violently abusive husband in the HBO series Big Little Lies and the violently abusive cop in War on Everyone; a racist in Passing and a rapist in the Straw Dogs remake, as well as a sad, moustachioed sleazeball who sleeps with his partner’s underage daughter in The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Eric, the vampire he played across all seven series of True Blood, was an absolute catch by comparison.

It could even be argued that Skarsgård looks lost or vague in those roles that don’t supply some darkness to temper his natural sheen. He was ferocious as a mud-caked proto-Hamlet in Robert Eggers’s wild Viking epic The Northman, but as the yodelling vine-swinger in The Legend of Tarzan, there was none of the usual depth present behind his beauty. Whereas his character in the new satirical horror Infinity Pool – directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David – is up to his disbelieving eyes in vanity, amorality and rancid privilege.

Skarsgård plays a novelist called James living off the wealth of his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), and struggling to write a second book six years after his debut. In search of inspiration, he and Em visit a luxurious resort in an unnamed country. What begins as a taunting comedy about the awfulness of the 1% veers off into extremity when the couple fall in with the hedonistic Gabi (Mia Goth) and her partner, Alban (Jalil Lespert). All it takes for the impressionable James to be hooked by these reprobates is a few compliments from Gabi followed by a sex act shown in graphic detail. “My job is so hard,” the actor says with a smirk.

Cronenberg and Skarsgård are both the sons of talented men. (Skarsgård’s father is Stellan Skarsgård who, like him, is part of the Lars von Trier Cinematic Universe.) Director and actor also have a certain placid temperament in common. “There’s a politeness to Canadians and Swedes,” says Skarsgård. “But it’s all just a fucking facade. Deep down we’re animals. We’re just very good at concealing it.” He gestures at me. “Brits too. It’s all down there, though. You can just open the tap and let it out. That’s what this movie does.”

Even as the film descends into gruesome horror, Skarsgård remains committed to the idea of his character as a show pony with delusions of being a stallion. “James is arm candy. His wife buys him all these expensive clothes. The two of them look like something out of a travel brochure: the perfect couple on vacation. And he’s trying to play that part while wanting also to be this serious author. But he’s not a Charles Bukowski, he’s not tormented and twisted. He isn’t in touch with the darker side of his personality.”

That changes when James finds himself facing the death penalty after accidentally killing a local farmer. He is assured by the police that there is a way out: for a hefty price, a clone of him can be created to take the fall on his behalf. This is no dumb beast, however; the sacrificial lamb will possess all his memories and feelings. It will, in effect, be indistinguishable from him. In a film featuring explicit sex and violence, there is still nothing quite as unnerving as the moment James encounters his own double as it wakes with a shocked gasp in a vat of red goo.

“The film company gave me a prosthetic of the clone’s face with all that goo round it,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s incredibly disturbing. What am I meant to do with it? Should I just hang it on the wall? Put it in the fridge?” He decided to go down the practical joke route. “When I have guests over, I’ll hide it in different places around the house.”

Would he take the clone option himself, I wonder? “One hundred per cent! I don’t blame James for going to the ATM. But it opens up other questions. If the clone retains all his memories, then how will he ever know that he is not the clone? Maybe they’re killing the real James. That fascinated me, and I love that there’s no answer in the movie. To throw another wrench in the works: maybe James has even been to the island already. Maybe he’s done this sort of thing before.”

These questions of authenticity, dilution and duplication are especially intriguing for an actor who proposed that twisted alternate version of himself in Atlanta, and who claims to suffer even now from impostor syndrome. Had you been present in 2008 on the set of Generation Kill, the HBO Iraq war mini-series written by the creators of The Wire and shot in Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa, you might have noticed him sitting off to one side between takes, quietly totting up figures with a pen and paper. “It was my first big job,” he explains. “I was so convinced they were going to fire me that I started calculating the cost of recasting the role once they realised I wasn’t good enough. A month or two in, I was still convinced that every time the phone rang, it was my agent saying: ‘Pack your bags, you’re not cutting it.’ It was only when we’d done some big battle scenes that I knew it would be too expensive to replace me.”

It wasn’t as if he has a history of flunking, though there was the job in the Stockholm bakery that he was sacked from at the age of 16. “We were dipping little biscuits in chocolate for six hours a day in a basement and that was the only thing we got to do,” he says pleadingly, as though mounting the case for his defence. “When you get chocolate on your fingers, it’s tempting to put little stains on your buddy’s white robes. That turned into a bit of a food fight.” He smiles bashfully. Chocolate wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

A few years earlier, he had abandoned a childhood acting career after feeling freaked out by all the attention he received. “When people recognised me, or I thought they did, it made me very uncomfortable. I also believed everything I heard about who I was. Most people at 13 have no idea who they are. I was going from a boy to a man, which is a crazy transformation anyway, but to do it while being in the spotlight was not healthy. That’s why I didn’t work for eight years.” What could he learn now as an actor from his younger self? “There was a lot of joy,” he says. “That makes me sound bitter now! But there was something innocent and lovely and wide-eyed. It’s worth remembering that it can still be a big silly game.”

His continuing appetite for comedy bears this out. He was a riot in the opening episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida, where he played a dope who gets involved with a pyramid scheme before being eaten by an alligator. (His on-screen wife was Kirsten Dunst. For further proof that their marriages never end well, see Von Trier’s apocalyptic Melancholia.) He also goofs around gloriously in the new season of Documentary Now!, in which he stars as a Werner Herzog-esque director shooting an epic in the Urals while simultaneously showrunning a US network comedy pilot called Bachelor Nanny. “I’ve met Herzog a few times over the years, but I don’t know if he’s seen this yet,” he says, slightly sheepishly. “I’m curious to hear what he thinks.”

It was in fact comedy that tempted Skarsgård back to acting again after all those years away. He was on holiday in Los Angeles in the early 00s when his father’s agent suggested he try out for an audition. Six weeks later, he was pootling around New York in the back of a Jeep with Ben Stiller, pouting away happily as gormless Swedish model Meekus in Zoolander. Getting that job was such a breeze that he was crestfallen to be knocked back repeatedly in other Hollywood auditions. He returned to Sweden to continue acting; another six years elapsed before Generation Kill kickstarted his US career.

These days, he seems somehow both ubiquitous and judicious. He is getting ready to make his directorial debut with The Pack, in which he and Florence Pugh star as documentary makers in Alaska. And he will return this month in the fourth and final season of Succession, which reportedly places even greater emphasis on Skarsgård’s character, the tech bro Lukas Matsson. Another bad boy of sorts.

“Quite a few of the projects I’ve chosen deal with the juxtaposition of someone trying to function in modern society while also dealing with that atavistic primal question of who he is deep down and what happens when that flares up and can’t be suppressed any longer,” he says. “It’s incredibly cathartic to play those roles. Maybe because I’m quite mellow in my disposition. These darker, more twisted characters give me an opportunity to howl that primal scream and let it out, which I rarely do in everyday life.”

James in Infinity Pool has his head turned by the tiniest compliment; Skarsgård knows that, for all his own protestations about refusing to read what is written about him, he is just as susceptible to praise. “I really don’t read reviews,” he says. “That said, it’s so nice when people enjoy your work enough to come say something or take a photo. I’d prefer that to the alternative, which is crawling around in the mud for seven months and giving it everything and then it’s just … crickets. I like people appreciating what I’ve done. I’m a vain motherfucker!”

Infinity Pool is released on 24 March. The new series of Succession is on Sky Atlantic and NOW on 27 March.

Photos credited to Charlie Clift (in 2022 for The Northman promotion in The Guardian), Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy (True Blood), Everett Collection Inc/Alamy (On Becoming a God in Central Florida), and Graeme Hunter/HBO (Succession). theguardian.com; cover updated from guardiang2 on Instagram, 3/17/23 (my edit)

[thornescratch]

SHARE THE FORBIDDEN MURDER SWEDE KNOWLEDGE.

Please.

I feel like most of this info is already scattered through my tumblr  because I never fucking shut up about him so apologies for the self links but here are some of my favorite Backstrom trivia off the top of my head.

It’s objectively hilarious that his full name really is Lars Nicklas Backstrom

In his rookie season with the Caps, he finished with 69 points (14 goals and 55 assists) so, NICE.

When asked for his favorite author at one of his first official Capitals interviews in 2007, he said "I don't read." x

In addition to his one NHL All Star Game, he was named to and scored two goals, including the game-winner, in the 2008 NHL YoungStar game, which was... definitely a thing the NHL used to do in conjunction with the ASG! He was named to the 2009 one as well and didn’t play, and after that the NHL discontinued the YoungStar game altogether, so it’s not impossible to theorize Nicklas Backstorm personally killed the YoungStar games himself. x

Doesn’t like/is afraid of dogs, which is why he always gets assigned puppies for the Caps Canine Calendar shoots. x

He bought ex-teammate Jose Theodore’s house in 2010. Apparently it has six bedrooms, eight baths, a fitness room, a wine cellar, a theater, and, uh, an Irish pub. x

In their first season, he and Ovechkin became roadie roommates when Alex Semin had an ankle injury for two months, though later Ovechkin went back to rooming with Semin, and Backstrom settled down with Mike Green as his permanent roadie roommate. x

He possibly has magical powers because of the Swedish product dunder honung, AKA “thunder honey”, (AKA title of his sex tape). x

Caps trainers thought he was too heavy when he came in as a rookie and he’d be more mobile if he dropped weight, so they had him wear a weighted vest to show him how he could improve with less weight, and instead of being too slow he was the best player on the ice and their plan completely backfired, which was hilarious. Thicklas Backstrom don’t give a shit about your weight vest. x

In fact, Mike Babcock, despite being a shit human being, has one of the more astute observations of Backstrom’s size with: “As much as you pressure Backstrom, he puts his big ass into you and he holds you off and he makes those (elite) plays.” x

He didn’t get his hair cut during his rookie season because he had his own hair designer back home and he didn’t trust the hair salons in America. x

In the pregame hype videos he’s been known as both “Mr Cool” (Super Friends intro) and “Super Swede” (the other weird superhero intro, Caps did a lot of those) xx

The only time he’s been suspended in the NHL was in 2012. He got a match penalty after Game Three against Boston (so that one doesn't really count as a penalty so much as a public service) for pushing his stick into Peverley’s face after time expired and got Shanabanned for-- hang on, lemme quote: “Even though Backstrom might have felt threatened by Peverley’s stick, the fact is Peverley is in a defensive stance and it is Backstrom who is approaching him. Backstrom’s reaction is excessive and reckless.“

(Additional fun fact: Of note, three of the four Young Guns-- Ovechkin, Backstorm, Green, and Semin-- all got suspended for various reasons that season and, as usual, Sasha Semin was the lone slacker.)

He bought bespoke hats for the entire team in the 2008-2009 season. x

He bought ipads for the entire team when he signed his new contract in 2010. x

He and Ovi used to to do this special goal celly thing with each other where they would skate together and then jump up and bump chests or shoulders and it was ADORABLE. x

I know I reblog it at least once a year but when he and Ovi and Mike Green were babies, they used to sleep over at each other’s houses and go to football games the next day in each other’s clothes. ALSO ADORABLE. x

In 2010 he was stopped for “failure to obtain a county decal within 30 days.” Charges were eventually dropped. x

There was a 2009 Cabbie Presents segment where he taught Cabbie how to say Swedish pick up lines and I am absolutely furious my link to it no longer works. He also had a Caps video segment where he berated various Caps fans on Swedish pronunciation of other tourist phrases, so here’s that. x

HE ALWAYS HAS SNUS IN HIS LOWER LIP OR JAMMED IN HIS POCKET please be careful Nicky that stuff is not good for you. x.

Per Isabelle Kurshudyan, the previous Caps beat writer, he’s quiet but not shy-- she describes him as sarcastic and super smart. x

This could seriously go on and on, I have way too much brain space devoted to him.

[shinymooncolor]

hey! you don’t have to answer this, but i know close to nothing about hockey and my family and i have never really watched it and i’m starting to get very interested, but i have no idea where to start 😅 what do you think i should focus on first, as a newbie? what should i absolutely know as a fan? what teams are pretty good in your opinion? again, thanks for your help if ever you see this p.s: i really love your posts and they bring a smile to me face, so thank you for your hard work! <3

Hi!

Ohhh well. First of all. Welcome to the nerve wracking, nail biting, jaw clenching, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and utterly incredible world of (ice) hockey. Angry muscle machines on skates chasing a tiny rubber puck in the nhl and their goddess equivalents in wnhl - what’s not to love?

You’ve decided on a hell of a year to join. Due to Covid, the normal system was paused and a recent bubble playoffs series played and later won by Tampa Bay Lightning a few weeks ago. The new season would’ve begun last week but is currently expected to start around December.

I’d say the best starting point would be to watch some games - YouTube has a lot of highlights, game compilations etc. and browse hockey tumblr. Hockey tumblr is a great combination of hockey gossip, game reviews, fans sharing their love, passion and (hateful) opinions about players, clubs and the sport in general.

My personal team faves are a handful - you see, the league is “split” into two conferences - east and west and within here a few other divisions dictating who the teams will play on a more recent basis. The clubs in the nhl being split over North America and Canada means a lot of ground to cover and therefore it’s split like this - time zones, distance and whatever. So maybe decide on a conference first? East or west.

I’m an eastern conference gal meself, but the west sure has its merits too.

So. Teams. You’re about to start a rumble here 😂

I am a personal fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins 🐧 they play good hockey, in spite of their idiot general manager (I’ve got posts detailing why he’s an ass hat extraordinarie). They’re captained by Canada’s hockey savior, Sidney Crosby: hockey robot, yellow crocs enthusiast , triple gold member (youngest captain to get all three?) and the goodest boy in the league. He’s been heralded as the next great one yada yada since he was about 5? And shot pucks into a dryer back in Canada - with that came a lot of shit for the poor guy who, in his own words, just wants to play hockey. And he’s good. He’s got his team of French Canadian d-men (letang, dumo), a whole lot of goalie drama which seems to be a pattern and his Russian (husband) assistant captain Evgeni Malkin who’s got the cutest kid, a really cool wifey (seriously her insta is 10000 better than geno’s own) and a wicked sense of humor which he conviently hides behind his “English big bad today” excuse to avoid media on a daily basis (he’s played this card since his wild escape and temporary defection from Russia back in 2006) seriously google it. It’s wild. They’ve won three cups since 2009, they’re contenders in the playoffs most years and their pr department provides some hilarious videos of captain Canada and his Russian (husband) A. It’s a true love story. Sue me. We’ve got an intense rivalry with philly and the caps. Seriously. That orange flyers jersey is intense - even if philly’s mascot is the next president.

Funnily enough, my strange obsession with Russian hockey players have led to the most disturbing but developing club crush on the Washington capitals who are the penguins’ nemesis.

I mean, this club led by the one and only gr8 8 mr Alexander Ovechkin is a rollercoaster of emotion and hot daddies in skates armed with sticks and a murder Swede.

So. Washington caps used to be a joke in the league until they went and drafted mr ovechkin first overall, brought him to the capital and let him do his thing. He’s got a rep for being a hell of a lot of fun on the ice (if you’re on his team) and one of those players that people love to hate (even if they can’t take away how freakishly good he is at hockey) - look up his impossible goal(s)! He’s an exuberant, fun loving Russian with a heart of gold and a missing tooth. In 2007, the caps went shopping for a center just for ovi who needed a playmaker and a slap shot feeeder - they went and drafted the Swedish angel (maybe assassin) (Lars) Nicklas Backstrom - and the purest hockey marriage was forged. The actual words (we needed a center for ovi and ovi wanted backstrom) have been said. Yes, these two Are now famously the mama and papa of the caps and they have a roster of unruly (and handsome) hockey babies with the fighting menace Tom Wilson, bird impersonator and Russian cat Evgeni Kuznetzov and a whole army of other adorable (albeit hockey playing menaces) babies. Most recently they had the leagues daddiest daddy goalie Mr Holtbeast as the fun and handsome canadien cowboy uncle but he’s ventured to Vancouver to adopt a new group of hockey babies. To compensate, the caps went shopping in New York and brought the one and only king Henrik from the crease in msg to be the goalie mentor for baby Russian caps goalie and to keep the daddy energy flowing.

(Seriously why are Swedish players part time models? Their national team strategy is to be so handsome the other teams are distracted. It’s a thing. Look it up)

I also love a handful of other players on other teams (I really don’t dislike any team in particular - but you’ll meet some dedicated and strong minded fans here)

Erik Horse Johnson, Cale Makar and Nikita Zadorov (Colorado Avs - zad have recently been traded to the blackhawks (not sure how I feel about that). Phwucking fun team. Who needs teeth anyways.

Marc Andre Fleury (Vegas now but hell always be a penguin to me)

The Russian gang in Tampa - and giant Swede victor Hedman (seriously he’s massive)

The canes (Carolina) and their collective of Finnish and Russian babies (aho, svech) with chaotic Marty and former penguin Baby Staal as captain

And a whole lot of others too. It’s hard to choose.

The Dallas stars and the most precious bean of them all (Russian) dobby - Anton khudobin their backup goalie turned playoffs hero and fashion icon. The man said we’re not going home and threw the entire team on his back and dragged them to the final. And their homoerotically charged captain and his alt captain and their Hollywood epic soap worthy relationship. Stallions, people, Stallions...

Btw we like to project our brash queerness onto this league. You’ll learn why quickly. There’s only so much talks about hot hands, slick moves, eternal love for teammates and quite frankly obscene (sexy) amounts of kneeling, roughing (let’s face its it’s just aggressive cuddling) and teammates honorably defending teammates.

Anyways. I love hockey. He. Sorry.

Fun fact I’ve dragged @canesinthecrease kicking and screaming into the hellhole that is the caps and I’m working on convincing @dontpuckwithme about the incredibly sexy thing that is Russians and Canadians being secretly married in Pittsburgh.

Great, sexy, amazing, cool, smart and wonderful hockey ladies to follow for even more amazing content on more clubs (the hurricanes - also a team I’m starting to love). They’re my queer sherpas and emotional support network.

Hope you can use this dear (new) hockey friend and mutual 💖🐧

[daddyoshie]

It's Not the End, It Just Feels Like It

Rating: T Relationships: Marcus Johansson & Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom & Andre Burakovsky & Marcus Johansson Characters: Marcus Johansson, Nicklas Backstrom, Andre Burakovsky, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Christian Djoos, Alex Ovechkin, TJ Oshie, Washington Capitals Ensemble, mentions of many New Jersey Devils Words: 2k Summary: Marcus is traded to the Devils, and no one is happy about it, least of all Marcus himself. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do after being ripped away from the organization he’s played with his entire career. He’s having trouble adjusting; after all, this team isn’t his family.

This is my first real attempt at writing fic. I’ve got ideas for longer works, but I’ve completed something shorter just to see how it is. This hasn’t been beta’d, as I don’t really have people to do that, so forgive me for that. Let me know what you think and I can work on some improvements. Also, this story is not a happy one, it’s barely even heartwarming. Enjoy!

Some trades just worked out for the better of everyone. Sometimes, you just clicked. When TJ was traded to the Capitals, it was like he’d been in Washington his entire career. He got along with the players, made quick friends, and fit in nicely and carved out his role on the ice. Whatever combination of people and personalities just worked, and everyone was happy.

The same couldn’t be said for Marcus.

He was sleeping when he was traded. When he woke up, the face of his phone was an endless stream of texts and notifications; the Internet had had hours to brew about this before he saw it for himself.

The hardest part was telling Amelia; she had been getting so comfortable, she’d made so many friends, and he knew she enjoyed it here, like he did. She wasn’t going to be happy. She took it remarkably well, and Marcus made sure to thank her for that; even if Marcus wasn’t showing it on the outside, he was torn to shreds on the inside.

The Washington Capitals were all he’d ever known. Seven years he’d spent in a Caps uniform, working through the Caps organization. And now all of that was gone. Washington had always been his home in America. Now he’d have to move to a new city (Jersey, of all places), learn a new system, and, worst of all, play with different teammates. That was the part he was dreading the most. After spending seven years with the same organization, he’d grown up and played with the same guys. And they were so close. They felt like his family. And now he wouldn’t be seeing them anymore.

The entire thing shook him, to say the least. Marcus wasn’t one to toot his own horn, but he’d felt like an important part of the team, somewhat. He’d just recently signed a new deal, he’d had a career year, and life was looking good. And then the rug was yanked out from under him. Logically, he knew that it was all a part of the business, but he couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t important, that he didn’t matter, that they didn’t care.

He didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to any of his teammates. It was the offseason, he was in Sweden, and everyone was spread out all over the world. Teammates flooded his phone with messages. Some of them were already gone, like Schmidty in the expansion draft and Alzy, Stick, Winnie and Shatty to free agency, and they’d already said their farewells, but everyone else had a lot to say to him. Some were polite and gave him a general, “This sucks, but I wish you the best” (Nisky, Lars, Carly, etc.), some were more tearful (Burky), and some swore vengeance and made plans to kidnap him from Jersey (Kuzy, Whip). Marcus accepted their sentiments with gratitude, and he said his goodbyes the best he could, but he didn’t know if he was saying the proper things. What in the world do you even say to your teammates when you’re traded? “I’m leaving, even though I really don’t want to, and I hope I beat you guys the next time I see you”? It didn’t feel right, all these goodbyes. He didn’t want it to be the end.

He texted Nicky almost endlessly. Nicky had always been one of his rocks, and now he needed him more than ever. He assured Marcus that this wasn’t his fault, and that everything would be okay. If nothing else, it was still just hockey. Marcus appreciated Nicky’s calming words, but they didn’t calm him as much as they should have. No offense to Nicky, but he’d never been traded. He didn’t speak from experience.

TJ, on the other hand, did. Marcus started texting him a bunch, too, asking for advice on dealing with the trade, moving to a new city, and meeting new teammates. And TJ was very helpful. Albeit, TJ was a lot more extroverted and much less awkward than Marcus, so this was probably all a breeze for him, but it helped Marcus. One of TJ’s pieces of advice stuck with him: “The other guys will know you’re coming, and they will reach out to you like Ovi and Carly did for me. Let them help you, and just go with the flow.” He wanted to wholeheartedly trust TJ, but he knew that not everyone was Ovi.

The Devils were nice and everything. Before training camp, he’d gotten texts from Andy Greene and Adam Henrique welcoming him to the team and saying how excited they were to meet him and work with him. But even as camp got started, he didn’t really feel like he fit in. There was no one he really gelled with. In Washington, Nicky had always been there to guide him, and Ovi had been like a big giant mama bear. But this wasn’t Washington. He had to throw everything he’d ever known out the window.

The guys were nice. Greene, Henrique, Schneider, Zajac, and even Taylor Hall all tried their best to make him feel welcome and a part of the team. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t belong. Putting on the Devils jersey still felt wrong. It didn’t help his acclimation that New Jersey didn’t have a single Swede on their roster. He’d lived in the States for a long time, it wasn’t like he didn’t know English, but it would have helped him just a little if there was someone he could speak Swedish to. A fellow countryman, to help him feel just a little bit at home.

He almost cried when a young Swede made the team out of training camp. In an ideal world, Marcus would have loved for a Swede closer to his age to help him in the transition to a new team, but at that point Marcus would have taken anything. The kid was nineteen - younger than fucking Burky. Marcus took Bratt under his wing, of course; even if he was almost ten years older than him, he desperately wanted another Swede around. But he wasn’t the same as Burky - no one was the same as Burky.

They faced the Capitals within the first two weeks of the season. Part of Marcus wished it wasn’t until later so he could be more settled before seeing the whole team again, but part of him just wanted to get it out of the way so he could move on from those emotions (though he knew the real emotional turmoil would come in December, when he’d go to DC the first time as a visitor). But, in his heart, all he really wanted was to see the guys from the team - the guys he’d come to know as his family until he was ripped away.

The night before the game, he arranged to have dinner with a bunch of the guys. He was texting back and forth with Nicky - there were going to be a lot of them, they all wanted to see him again.

At the restaurant, Nicky and Burky arrived first, and they brought along the new Swede they’d adopted, a blueline rookie named Christian Djoos (a rookie who was somehow older than Burky); Marcus remembered seeing him at a couple of training camps, and their past interactions were brief at most. Nicky and Burky insisted on bringing him along, wanting him to meet Marcus and for them to become a “proper Swedish family,” according to Burky. Those particular words pulled tightly at Marcus’s heartstrings.

The rest of the guys piled in quickly after that. Ovi was there, of course, enveloping Marcus in a bone-crushing hug radiating all the warmth and joy that had been absent from Marcus’s life since July. Kuzy was there too, absolutely overjoyed to see his longtime liney. Marcus would have been lying if he said he hadn’t been severely missing that smile and the patented Kuzy humor. And it was just like Kuzy to greet him by loudly kissing both of his cheeks.

Completing the group was Braden, Dima, Carly, TJ, Nisky, Whip, and Beags. So many of these guys had shared the ice with him for his entire career, up until now. He refused to admit that there were any sort of tears coming to his eyes.

The night went on, they ate and laughed and caught up, and for awhile, it was like Marcus had never left and nothing had changed. He felt a sense of comfort and camaraderie he had not felt even for a moment since he’d donned a Devils uniform.

All too soon, a bunch of the guys had to go. Braden, Carly, TJ, Nisky, Whip, and Beags left en masse, giving Marcus big hugs and fist bumps and promising to check him when they saw him on the ice tomorrow. Ovi and Dima left shortly after, the two Russians giving him warm salutations as they left.

Just the five of them remained. The young Djoos, who had been fairly quiet for the majority of the meal, still looked awkward, as if he wasn’t sure what he should be saying or doing. Marcus couldn’t really talk, he knew that he had been the same when he was a rookie, but he did want to try to get Djoos to talk to him eventually. It was only when Marcus turned to him and asked him a question in Swedish that he finally relaxed and cracked what might have been a smile. Though the Swedish did elicit a hurt lament from Kuzy, claiming that they’d forgotten about him.

Marcus laughed and said a few more nonsense sentences to the others in Swedish before Kuzy threw a roll at him, demanding, “Did all my assists mean nothing, Jojo?” Marcus caved for his favorite liney and reverted back to English.

Eventually, though, Kuzy had to leave. Marcus really hated to see him go. Kuzy pulled him into an embrace that was surprisingly tender, saying to him softly, “Miss you lots, Jojo. Nothing like playing hockey with you on my wing.”

This time, Marcus couldn’t hold back the tears. He didn’t care. “Miss my favorite center, Kuz.”

They pulled away, and Kuzy cracked a joke about how he was going to dangle on Marcus tomorrow, but Marcus could see that he was getting emotional. He wiped the tears away from his eyes as Kuzy left the restaurant.

He sat back down, and Burky pulled Marcus close and held him there, as he was oft to do. The mood in the room was a lot more somber than it was just thirty minutes ago.

Nicky, with that soft yet calculating gaze of his, looked Marcus up and down. “Are you really doing okay, Jojo?” he asked, the conversation reverting back to Swedish for the remainder of the night.

Marcus sighed. “I’m not going to lie to you, Nicky...it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been in the same place my entire career. And then overnight, it’s a new city, a new organization, new people...it’s a lot to adjust to. The guys are nice, but it’s been hard to really connect with them. I know I’ll get there, but it hasn’t happened yet and it’s frustrating. And it shakes your confidence. You sign a new deal, and then the next year, you’re traded...it kind of makes it seem like they don’t want you.”

“Management doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing,” Nicky said bluntly. “Shelling out all that money. Not that those guys aren’t worth it, but it was a disaster waiting to happen. I didn’t think you were going to be the consequence, though.”

Marcus had thought about this a lot. Clearly he wasn’t cut out to be a GM, because he had no idea what he would have done. The part of him that’s crippled by self-doubt believed that trading him was the only option, but he knew there were other things that could have been done to avoid taking him away from his family. Too late to change any of that now, though.

“Burky cried when you were sent away,” Nicky said, causing Burky to turn a shade of deep red. “He called me and he cried, wondering why they were taking his big brother away from him.”

“I did not!” Burky protested.

“Glad to know you love me so much,” Marcus teased, jabbing the bit of elbow that wasn’t trapped in Burky’s cuddle into Burky’s ribs.

“Of course I love you, Mackan. We’re family.”

“He talks about you a lot,” Djoos finally piped in. “I’ve heard so much about the great, wonderful Jojo, who is funny and kind and mean and smart and was the best brother and had the world’s greatest beard.”

Marcus didn’t know how to respond. That’s high praise, even from Burky. He was finding that his eyes were having trouble staying dry.

“I think he’s overselling me, I don’t think I’m quite all that.”

“I would never tell a lie about you, Jojo. It’s all true,” Burky said, that big, dorky smile on his face.

Marcus didn’t have a rational thought for the rest of the night. He was pretty sure he cried, but that was yet to be confirmed. He remembered a group hug, even Djoos joined in. He vaguely remembered leaving the restaurant and walking the Swedes back to their hotel; Nicky gave him some kind of uplifting “We’re still here, we’re still family, it’ll all be okay,” Burky gave him a hug like he never wanted to let him go, and Djoos gave him an awkward yet polite “It was very nice to meet you, I hope to see you again sometime.” But again, Marcus couldn’t really remember; it was like his brain gave out and his emotions took control, and he couldn’t clearly remember what happened for the life of him.

They lost really badly to his old team. They didn’t play well, and frankly it was quite messy. Marcus’s heart stopped when Dima was hit like that, and he almost fought his own teammates himself, but nothing could have prepared him for fucking Burky stepping in and fighting. Complete and utter shock. Guess things had changed since he’d last rocked the red. But then Whip stepped in and pounded the original offender once he left the box, so the world wasn’t completely out of whack.

Marcus knew it would take a long time to truly become comfortable with his new team. Probably longer than it would for most people, given his specific circumstances. But he had to hold out hope that he would get there. Because the thought of playing out his tenure with his new team never truly being comfortable and never truly feeling like he belonged...the thought was unbearable.

[hockeyswede]

Article on Nicklas Bäckström

Since his name was called to the stage of General Motors Place in Vancouver by Alex Ovechkin, it was very clear what type of player Nicklas Backstrom would become.

Ovechkin was always the exuberant one, never afraid to jump in front of a microphone and spout off whatever came to mind, generally leading to everyone collectively laughing with his antics. Backstrom, on the other hand, was quiet, reserved, and maybe at times even a little bit awkward.

That contrast in personalities has always worked well in Backstrom’s favor. Always one to stay out of the spotlight (something this site has made light of in the past), the Washington Capitals have never been considered his team, Backstrom’s team in the sense that the franchise revolves around him.

As Ovechkin began to stack 50-goal seasons year after year, often highlighted by unthinkable displays of skill and raw, passionate celebrations, Backstrom quietly performed in the background with a workman-like attitude. Three-point night? It’s his job to score. 60-assist season? It’s what is expected from him.

But if he truly likes to play behind the scenes, it has become impossible for him to hide behind the curtain. With 86 total points on the year, his most in his last seven seasons, Backstrom finished fourth in the league in the respective category. Just a few seasons ago, Backstrom was harmoniously hailed as the NHL’s most underrated player (a moniker he is surely pleased with), but that status has begun to quiet. Truth of the matter is, more and more people are beginning to realize just how talented Backstrom truly is.

According to The Hockey News, Nolan Patrick, the center for the Brandon Wheat Kings that is projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NHL draft, claims that he watches highlights of three different players to further craft his game: Anze Kopitar, Jamie Benn and Backstrom. He dissects Kopitar’s game for his elite two-way play. He observes Benn’s goal scoring prowess and his ability to drive towards the net. He follows Backstrom for his keen vision and playmaking ability. In reality, Patrick could watch Backstrom to learn about all three qualities.

Much is known and made of Backstrom’s ability, but there’s a sense of unfamiliarity among the league about how talented Backstrom is in his defensive zone.

Since entering the league in 2007, Backstrom has never finished higher than 10th in the Selke Trophy voting, where he finished with one first place vote, three second place votes, one third place vote, four fourth place votes and three fifth place votes in the 2009-10 season. Prior to Barry Trotz’s arrival and excluding the 2009-10 season, Backstrom received four total votes in six seasons, just one for first place.

But Backstrom has begun to get some credit since he’s had Trotz in his corner. Over the last two seasons, Backstrom has finished 11th and 12th in voting, and it’s entirely possible he finishes a bit higher up the list this season. It comes for good reason. Backstrom is generally entrusted with going toe-to-toe against opponent’s top lines, and, more times than not, Backstrom ends up with the upper hand.

The best example of his success comes in his matchup against Sidney Crosby. Including the playoffs, Backstrom played against Crosby for 62:46 minutes this season. Backstrom allowed just 44.9 shot attempts per 60 minutes of play in the matchup when the two were on the ice together, while Backstrom and his linemates generated 63.1 shot attempts per 60 minutes against Crosby.

You don’t have to tell all this to the Capitals, particularly Andre Burakovsky. The fellow Swede has battled issues with consistency for the entirety of his young career. But Backstrom has taken him under his wing, both on and off the ice. Off the ice, Backstrom is Burakovky’s mentor, a person he feels comfortable with dissecting any part of his game with. On the ice, Backstrom is his calming presence.

After failing to score a goal in the playoffs, Burakovsky was bumped up to Backstrom’s line, and he proceeded to score three goals in his first two games with the move. In total during the regular season, Backstrom assisted on two of Burakovsky’s 12 goals this season. Both came in the same game against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first game of the season.

Burakovsky and Backstrom played together for just 127:40 minutes of 5v5 this season, scoring seven-total goals, and Burakovsky tallied four of them. With Lars Eller, Burakovsky’s primary center for much of the year, Burakovsky scored just nine goals in 553:32 minutes. That’s 1.88 goals per 60 minutes of 5v5 with Backstrom versus 0.98 with Eller.

“Obviously he’s a world-class player,” Burakovsky said. “He’s for sure one of the best in this league. Every day when he’s out there, he shows off how good he is. For me to play with him and just be around him is really, really good for me. To just hang out and see how he prepares and everything, for a young guy, it’s really good to watch older guys to [see] how they prepare and what they do to be successful. I’ve learned a lot from Nicky from on the ice and off the ice. How to act, how to get ready, everything. He’s been a huge impact for me.”

But Backstrom’s impact extends beyond just prospects and promising young players. Following a 6-2 dismantling Game 2 loss against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Backstrom reportedly got vocal in the locker room. For most players in the league, whether it be Ovechkin, Drew Doughty, Ryan Getzlaf or even Phil Kessel, leading a speech in a dressing room seems ordinary. But it’s a bit unusual for Backstrom.

His willingness to speak his mind shows a new level of Backstrom as a hockey player. Backstrom admitted that even just a few years ago, he would have kept his thoughts to himself. He had players like Viktor Kozlov, Mike Knuble and Matt Bradley in the room, veteran leaders, and Backstrom’s one that respects experience. But Backstrom has suddenly become a senior voice in the room. At 29, Backstrom is now the sixth-oldest forward on the team. Beyond this season, Backstrom is the fifth-oldest player rostered on the entire team. He’s the second-longest tenured Capital behind Ovechkin. And perhaps at the realization, Backstrom became a bit more assured that his voice had meaning.

“At this point, I don’t really care anymore,” Backstrom said during breakdown day. “I’m just going to be honest [about] what I think. Maybe I’ve been talking a little bit more than previous years, but….”

But then his voice began to trail off. Stating his opinion for all to hear is still awkward for Backstrom to do. But the fact that it makes him nervous makes his voice all the more respected.

“He’s a soft spoken, polite guy, right? So it’s uncomfortable for him to say things that are uncomfortable,” Matt Niskanen said. “But sometimes that’s what you need to do, you need to step out of your skin, I think. He had some words for us as a group, and then he backed it up. And I have a ton of respect for him, the way he handled himself in this series.”

And while Backstrom says he doesn’t really care anymore, make no mistake, he’s referring to his willingness to speak up. Few care more about the Capitals than Backstrom.

“When things need to be said, and Nick speaks, you listen, because he cares,” T.J. Oshie said. “He thinks about what he says and he says the right things at a lot of the right moments. It’s not very often, but when something needs to be said, Nick does a good job of saying it, and people listen.”

“Man does he care,” Niskanen said. “He’s a guy that just, he wants so bad to have more success, and he cares about the right things. I just have the most respect for Backy in the way he responded this year. When times got uncomfortable and tough, he got better. That was fantastic by him.”

That’s what makes Backstrom such a significant leader. Not only has Backstrom become a vocal leader, he has the ability to lead by example. With the game on the line, count on No. 19 to make the play.

During the playoffs, Backstrom led the team in goals (six) and points (13). Five of those goals and eight of those points came when the Capitals were trailing in a series. Backstrom was the true force for the vast majority of the series, and if his Game 7 performance wasn’t up to par, it may have been because he already gave all he could.

“I thought he was outstanding. Outstanding,” Niskanen said. “Games 5 and 6, [the] most dominant player in the series. Just stepped up his game, dominated. I thought he showed a ton of character there, and I think he kind of ran out of gas maybe in Game 7. He played well. He played really well. That guy laid in on the line, and that’s what you need to see from your top players, and he was fantastic.”

The outcome of the season stung Backstrom, you could see it all over his face. He feels awful. He said he feels like the team missed out on a great opportunity and that they had what it took to go all the way. He’s bummed that his team may lose guys like T.J. Oshie, Justin Williams, Daniel Winnik and Karl Alzner to free agency. He’s sick to his stomach over the disappointment of the fans, who he calls the best fans in the NHL.

But as Backstrom stood at the podium for the conclusion of another discouraging season, he offered some words of encouragement. He says he trusts management to put the Capitals in a position to vie for a championship again, but that it is just up to he and his teammates to get the job done.

Even through those optimistic words, Backstrom couldn’t hide his disappointment. He was quietly fuming at recognizing that breakdown day was the conclusion of another significant regular season followed by an underwhelming postseason, and he wanted everyone else in the organization to be equally annoyed.

“I hope so,” Backstrom said on whether or not everybody else was upset as he was. “I don’t know, I haven’t really talked to anyone, but I hope so. They should be, should be angry, should be mad about it. That’s just me, sorry.”

In true Backstrom fashion, he apologized for unveiling his opinion. He’s not completely comfortable yet, but one of the most complete, quiet players in the NHL is on his way to comfortably becoming a premier voice in the room.

Source http://www.japersrink.com/2017/5/18/15657756/backstroms-actions-speak-loud-but-so-do-his-words

[eliottdemauries]

This might be unusual of me to ask but can you post the song list of Tarjei's playlist if it's not too much bc Spotify doesn't work in my country and i can't see all the songs rip 😔😑

it’s a lot of songs and the playlist is literally so mixed when it comes to genre (loads of classics though) but yeah here is the list:

my name is - eminem

the real slim shady - eminem

the birmingham ho - morten abel

wonderwall - oasis

everybody hurts - r.e.m.

too close - alex clare

bitter sweet symphony - the verve

friday i’m in love - the cure

hjerteknuser - kaizers orcestra

butterfly, butterfly (the lasy hurrah) - a-ha

losing my religion - r.e.m.

stop for a minute - keane k’naan

everybody’s changing - keane

se på meg - delillos

yellow - coldplay

in the backseat - jonas alaska

take on me - a-ha

sail - awolnation

do i wanna know? - arctic monkey 

human - the killers

pump it - the black eyed peas

just can’t get enough - the black eyed peas

rather be - clean bandit feat. jess glynne

somebody told me - the killers

where is the love? - the black eyed peas

i see fire - ed sheeran

can’t stop loving you - phil collins

never let me down again (remastered) - depeche mode

personal jesus (remastered) - depeche mode

open up your eyes - tom hugo

spiralling - keane

you’re beautiful - james blunt

moves like jagger - maroon 5 feat- christina aguilera 

bonfire heart - james blunt

ampersand - stephen walking soulero

love me again - john newman

puttin’ on the ritz - fred astaire 

daybreak (gopro hero3 edit) - overwerk

with or without you - u2

there she goes - the la’s

from nowhere - dan croll

paper planes - m.i.a.

april come she will - simon & garfunkel

seven nation army - the white stripes

pretty fly (for a white guy) - the offspring

i got you (i feel good) - james brown

one - mary j. blige feat. u2

our house - madness

baggy trousers - madness

your song - elton john

changes - butterfly boucher feat. david bowie

the logical song - supertramp

‘74-’75 - the connells

nothing compares 2 u - sinéad o’connor

the one i love - r.e.m.

i’m too sexy - right said fred (literally why tarjei??)

livin’ la vida loca - ricky martin (he basically have the entire shrek 2 soundtrack in this playlist,, i hate him)

hurt - johnny cash

can’t help falling in love - elvis presley 

supermassive black hole - muse (i got way to exicted when i saw that he listens to muse)

fell in love with a girl - the white stripes 

every breath you take - the police

roxanne - the police 

wannabe - spice girls

don’t look back in anger (remastered) - oasis

basket case - green day (bae listens to green day,, day is made)

good riddance (time of your life) - green day (tHIS SONG THOUGH)

don’t stop me now (remastered) - queen

tears in heaven - eric clapton 

young and beautiful - lana del rey

summertime sadness - lana del rey

feel good inc - gorillaz

on melancholy hill - gorillaz

clint eastwood - gorillaz (he seems to like gorillaz)

far from any road - the handsome family

man on the moon - r.e.m. (also seems to be a fav of his)

pokemon theme - pokémon (fucking hate this guy..)

homecoming - kanye west feat. chris martin

i wanna be sedated (remastered) - ramones

stuck in the middle with you - stealers wheel

lay all your love on me (from mamma mia) - dominic cooper & amanda seyfried (this musical is everything)

the sound of silence - simon & garfunkel

i need a hero - andrew spencer (blue nature mix edit) (again with the songs from shrek 2,,,,)

rock the casbah (remastered) - the clash

you can call me al - paul simon

shout - bernhoft

styggen på ryggen - onklp & de fjerne slektingene 

don’t you (forget about me) - simple minds (the breakfast club

wicked games - chris isaak 

everybody wants to rule the world - lorde (this boy seriously listens to all my favs??!!)

dragostea din tei (original romanian version) - o-zone

tusen bitar - laleh (favvvvvvv)

outside - calvin harris feat. ellie goulding)

i’m an albatroz - aronchupa

lie to me - chris isaak

the scientist - coldplay 

halo - ane brun & linnea olsson

man in black - johnny cash

ave maria - beyoncé

little green bag - george baker selection

always on my mind - pet shop boys

a little less conversation - elvis presley (jxl radio edit)

hooked on a feeling - blue swede

unchained melody - the righteous brothers

go your own way - fleetwood mac

i will survive - gloria gaynor

hotel california - eagles

september - earth, wind & fire

cheerleader (felix jaehn remix) - omi

livet er for kjipt - lars kilevold

gdfr - flo rida feat. sage the gemini & lookas

blue velvet - lana del rey

one of us - joan osborne

glemte minner - delillos

eple - röyksopp

monument - röyksopp feat. robyn

this love - maroon 5

mad world - gary jules feat. michael andrews

old thing back - matoma & the notorious b.i.g. feat. ja rule and ralph tresvant

pumped up kicks - foster the people

i’m on fire - awolnation

creep - radiohead

karma police - radiohead (he listens to radiohead,,what more can you ask for)

hypnotize - the notorious b.i.g.

ghetto gospel - 2pac

this summer - maroon 5

tandtråd - tjuvjakt

you don’t own me - grace feat. g-ezy

i get around - the beach boys

ms.jackson - outkast

no surprises - radiohead

big in japan - alphaville

save tonight - eagle-eye cherry

hero - family of the year

iris - the goo goo dolls

kast alle papirene - delillos (this translates to “throw away all paper”,, i’m looking at you even)

wuthering heights - kate bush

starman - david bowie

spis din syvende sans - karpe diem

tusen tegninger - karpe diem (”thousand drawings”,, why all the s3 references)

like a stone - audioslave

california dremin’ - the mamas & the papas

bridge over troubled water - simon & garfunkel

ave maria - johann sebastian bach & charles gounod (’cause he seems to need ave maria twice)

evig forelsket da - delillos 

forelsket - delillos

hemingway 2016 - ganic & johnny whitehouse

sugar - robin schulz feat. francesco yates

suser avgårde alle man - delillos 

mindre alvorlige ting - delillos (this dude and delillos….)

the hardest part - coldplay

swedish television - bigbang

sike 2016 - mehiko & n.o. beats (russ music deluxe)

relax, take it easy - mika

hjernen er alene - delillos (skam soundtrack yay)

varsko - klovner i kamp

glade dager - klovner i kamp

du og jeg og livet - lars lillo-stenberg

finns de en kvinne - delillos (i think i have found his fav band)

the penetrators 2016 - hanzee (skam soundtrack yay pt.2)

gå hjem - delillos (surprise it’s delillos again)

didn’t i (blow your mind this time) - the delfonics

girls just want to have fun (demo) - greg laswell

mine peannøtter er ikke gode - delillos (i get it tarjei,, u like ‘em)

i’d rather dance with you - kings of convenience 

ikke gå - delillos (……)

the pop kids (radio edit) - pet shop boys

go west - pet shop boys

forever young - alphaville (skam soundtrack yay pt.3)

boat behind - kings of convenience 

24-25 - kings of convenience 

love to hate you - erasure

a little respect - erasure 

running out - matoma feat. astrid s

trendsetter - morten abel

i don’t want to be - gavin degraw 

if only as a ghost - jonas alaska

lonely - akon (this boy is just a parody on himself really) 

i believe in a thing called love - the darkness

this list is so random but i think that we can get quite a good idea of how tarjei is through it (,, which seems to be a fucking dork). note that this playlist hasn’t been updated since july so it’s a bit outdated.

[footballghana]

Sierra Leone coach John Keister targets rebuilding of squad

Newly appointed Sierra Leone coach John Keister says his immediate goal is to build a new national team.

The former Sierra Leonean international was named coach of Leone Stars for a second time on Monday on a deal until 2023.

The 49-year-old replaces former Ghana and Rwanda coach Sellas Tetteh, who resigned in March citing personal reasons.

"It feels great to be back. I think what we're going to look at now is transition which is my immediate goal," Keister told BBC Sport Africa.

"We had a national team that have done well, but obviously ageing. So we're bringing in a fresh group of players, that's not to say I'm going to get rid of everyone in the last national team.

"But we need to fresh up things a little bit more compare to the last time I was in charge.

"Building a new national team is part of a massive transition Sierra Leone is going through."

The Manchester-born former Walsall and Shrewsbury Town had a sometimes strained relationship with the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) during his first stint as national coach.

Three months after his appointment in May 2017 he was suspended by the SLFA following a leaked recording of him apparently criticising its president Isha Johansen.

He was later reinstated and was only in charge of two official games in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations before Sierra Leone was suspended from international football by Fifa.

The former midfielder, who was capped 16 times by Sierra Leone, says those issues are over and he has an unfinished job.

"I have a good relationship with the FA and president...things happen sometimes but we are good again," he insisted.

"To be honest I think when I was there the first time I started a job that wasn't probably quite finish.

"I have had an opportunity again to come in for the second time to try and see where we can get the country together.

"So again it's a different feeling, the environment is better, we are all working together."

He'll be assisted by another former Sierra Leone international Amidu Karim, who was part of Leone Stars' squads at both the 1994 and 1996 Nations Cup tournaments in Tunisia and South Africa respectively.

Keister is expected to quit his current coaching job with East End Lions, who he led to the 2019 Sierra Leone Premier League title without losing a game, as soon as he signs his contract with the SLFA.

The duo will already be looking to replace two veterans of the squad with Julius Gibrilla Woobay and former Norwich City forward Kei Kamara, who now plays for MLS side Colorado Rapids, as both have retired from the national team to pave way for younger players.

No pressure for Afcon 2022

Sierra Leone are already out of the 2022 World Cup race so Keister will now focus on the qualifying matches for the next Nations Cup in Cameroon.

"I think qualification is part of my mandate but the main goal, for now, is about developing the transition," he explained.

"I know we haven't qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations for a long time. We'll give it ago you never know what will happen. You never say never in football.

"If it doesn't happen in 2022 in Cameroon then we look forward to 2023. I think it'll be the appropriate time for us to achieve what we want in terms our transition.

"For me, transition is going to be my mandate, that's what we going to focus on, that's what we going to look at."

The general secretary of the SLFA Christopher Kamara said they would like to see Keister building a sound team.

"We want to see us qualify for the Nations Cup in Cameroon but we're not putting Keister under pressure," said Kamara.

"He has a three-year mandate, so we want him to build a sound team. We're taking the development approach than participation approach.

"We want to build the same system of play for all the categories of national team, It's part of a five-year strategic plan."

Sierra Leone are in Group L of the 2021 qualifiers alongside Nigeria, Lesotho, and Benin.

They've already played two matches, drew with Lesotho at home 1-1 in an empty stadium, and lost away to Benin 1-0 and are third in the group.

Keister's first game will be against the three times African champions Nigeria in Freetown, the match was supposed to have taken place since March but was postponed because of the outbreak the Covid-19 pandemic.

He has served as assistant coach to Leone Stars' last three foreign managers- the Swede Lars Olof Mattson, Northern Irishman Johny McKinstry, and Sellas Tetteh.

He had previously served as head coach of the Leone Stars home-based team as well as the Sierra Leone under-17 and under-23 national teams.

Source: bbc.com

source: https://footballghana.com/

[gardenofedenuniverse]

Interview Magazine: Bill Skarsgard.

Of the eight Skarsgård siblings, four of them—Valter, Bill, Gustaf and Alexander—are professional actors, each blessed with the good looks and distinctly rakish swagger of their father, Stellan. So the odds of 26-year-old Bill finding his footing in the industry weren't exactly stacked against him. More unexpected is the path he's chosen: neither through the mainstream (such as Alexander, a leading man since his star turn on HBO's True Blood) nor through auteur-driven projects (such as Stellan, who has appeared in six films by the Danish provocateur Lars von Trier), but rather through a series of unexpected, résumé-confounding detours. Take his biggest American role to date, as Pennywise, the demonic child-eating clown, in the upcoming remake of It, out thisSeptember. As the blood-curdling creature originally played by Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries of the same name, Skarsgård spends the entire film hidden beneath layers of garish and grotesque makeup—a daring choice for any young actor with matinee idol features. But Skarsgård has been in the business long enough to know what he's doing. He spent much of his youth traveling the world with his father, from film set to film set, and his first role came at the age of 9, as the younger brother to Alexander's character in the Swedish thriller White Water Fury (2000). After being cast in a handful of roles, both big and small, back home—including an award-winning turn as a young man with Asperger's syndrome in Simple Simon (2010)—his first major appearance on Stateside screens was in the Netflix fantasy series Hemlock Grove. This July, he will begin his play for international stardom alongside Charlize Theron and James McAvoy in Atomic Blonde, a high-octane spy thriller set in a simmering East Berlin. After that, he'll appear in Assassination Nation, alongside cool-kids Hari Nef and Suki Waterhouse.   But first: breakfast. Over a meal at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Skarsgård submits to some words of wisdom—and a little gentle bullying—from his older brother Alexander. ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: Did you take out the trash this morning? BILL SKARSGÅRD: No. Why? ALEXANDER: Well, as your older brother, I think I should make sure you do that. Routines, or lack thereof, are a pretty good way to get to know someone. So what have you done today? What time did you wake up? BILL: You were at my house last night. ALEXANDER: But I tapped out early, because I'm a responsible journalist. BILL: But being the gracious host that I am, I had to entertain my houseguests. People left around 1 a.m. and I went to bed, so it wasn't super-late by my standards. I woke up around 10. I had a cup of coffee; that's the first thing I do in the morning. ALEXANDER: How do you take it? BILL: Black.   ALEXANDER: Like your soul? BILL: Like my soul. [laughs] And then I've been doing some really uneventful things. I worked on an audition that I have tomorrow and answered some e-mails, and now I'm here for this interview. ALEXANDER: I suddenly feel like maybe it was a mistake, as a journalist, to fraternize the night before with the person I'm going to interview. BILL: Everything that happened last night was on the record—is that what you're saying? Did you take notes? ALEXANDER: It was officially off the record, but as a serious journalist, I feel like maybe I shouldn't have done that.   BILL: Well, that's on you. ALEXANDER: It is on me. But let's move on. You said 10 a.m. is not particularly late for you. It sounds pretty late to me. It's a Tuesday—shit, I even got that wrong. It's a Monday. BILL: Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. is usually when I get up. I've always been a night person. There's a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person. But as I've gotten a bit older, now I'm completely okay with it. That's just who I am. ALEXANDER: Because you feel like you get a lot of shit done at night when other people are sleeping? BILL: Yeah, or I just don't like mornings. The day feels way too long for me. ALEXANDER: Do you also feel that life is too long? Do you wish that life were a bit shorter? BILL: Just the day. ALEXANDER: What would be ideal for you, a four-hour day? [laughs] BILL: Stockholm is a good place for it, in the winter. ALEXANDER: What do you miss about Sweden, other than friends and family and all that? Is there anything specific that you miss when you're abroad? BILL: I miss being in my home country; here, I'm always a foreigner. America is, of course, built of people who are not from here. But going home, even just landing at Arlanda, the Stockholm airport, I think, "This is where I'm from. These people are my people." ALEXANDER: Does it make you even more proud of Sweden because you have that distance? BILL: It's not about being proud of Sweden; it's just a sense of belonging. Even if you've lived in a place for a long time, those first formative years are going to be a part of you forever, and it's something you can't replace. ALEXANDER: Why don't you have a home? BILL: I think it's a commitment issue for me. I have a hard time committing to stuff. ALEXANDER: What's wrong with us? I'm also homeless. Maybe it's a fear of missing out. Like, if I commit to one city and get a place there, then maybe there is something else out there. But wouldn't it be nice to have somewhere where you can at least drop your bag and unpack? BILL: 100 percent. I've been living like this for the past five or six years, so I'm looking for an apartment in Stockholm. Just like a two-bedroom thing. Every apartment I look at is so nice and tastefully renovated. ALEXANDER: Great furniture and beautifully done, but they all look identical. I think that kind of sums up the Swedish mentality in a way. It's all beautiful midcentury modern furniture, and they all have that Moroccan rug. You won't find originality. Swedes are very safe that way. So, what's your first memory from a film set other than with Dad when you were a kid? BILL: Well, my first film was with you. ALEXANDER: Oh, yeah. I didn't want to say it, but I got you into this business. I can take you out of it. [laughs] BILL: I would never have been here if it wasn't for the role of Klasse in White Water Fury. I was the only kid on set, and I remember I got upset for some reason. Do you remember the story? I ran away from set or something? ALEXANDER: Oh, I remember what it was. The fruit basket in your trailer wasn't fresh enough. And they got Evian instead of Perrier, so you stormed off and called your agent. BILL: [laughs] At 9 years old. ALEXANDER: You called your agent-slash-kindergarten teacher. I don't remember you being upset, but I do have a very vivid memory where you wrapped early one day, and they took you back to the hotel, and I had another scene. When I got back, you were just standing outside in the parking lot, waiting for me, and it broke my heart. It was just the two of us. We obviously come from a big family back in Stockholm. I never felt needed. It was always chaos with Mom, Dad, uncles, you know, we all lived in the same building. Dinner parties with 25 people every night. And for the first time, you and I went away together, and suddenly I wasn't just a big brother. I felt paternal. You were just standing in the parking lot waiting for your big brother to come home, because you didn't know anyone and you didn't know what to do. If I ever need a little sense memory for a scene, that vision of coming around the corner and seeing you standing there, this little boy in this massive parking lot, is really beautiful and heartbreaking. It was the first time I ever felt needed. BILL: That's a lovely story. ALEXANDER: We come from a family of musicians, artists, authors, creative people, and the only exception is our mom and one of our brothers—they're doctors. How often do you brag about them at dinner parties? BILL: There's definitely a sense of embarrassment about what it is artists really do, at least for me in terms of acting. We have a mom and a brother who literally save lives. ALEXANDER: He works at an ICU so he, on a daily basis, saves lives. Do you have a sense of guilt because he works his ass off and makes less money than you? BILL: Yeah, of course. It's not fair. I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate. I think you have to feel guilty about it. I think it makes you a better person to keep reminding yourself. ALEXANDER: Your becoming an actor—was that the path of least resistance or was it a calling? BILL: All thanks to you for blessing me with the part of Klasse in White Water Fury. ALEXANDER: You're welcome. You might want to remind yourself of that more often, but I do appreciate it. BILL: I started acting when I was 9. I did smaller parts here and there as a kid, and then as I grew older I started resisting it, because I didn't like the idea of being, at the time, number four of the Skarsgård actors—Dad, you, and our brother Gustaf. So in high school I majored in science and was like, "Maybe I'll do something rebellious and become a doctor." [laughs] ALEXANDER: Did you seriously entertain that idea? BILL: I don't think I would ever be a doctor, but the reason I majored in science was because you could become a civil engineer, you could become a biologist, you could become a computer scientist—that was the point of it. I had no idea what I wanted to do. In my last two years of high school—because they would still reach out to me for auditions and I would read scripts—there happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to. One in particular that I read, I was like, "Oh, this is a real character. This is amazing." I was like, "I really, really want to do this." It was Hannes Holm's film, and I saw him at a premiere—I was, like, 19 at the time, I had probably been to three or four auditions, but I wasn't cast or anything—and I went up to him and was like, "I don't know what I need to do, but I need to be in your film." Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me. ALEXANDER: Do you believe you're a good actor? Do you think you deserve to be here because of your talent? BILL: 100 percent. ALEXANDER: Do you ever feel like a shit actor? BILL: 100 percent. I feel like I'm the best actor on the planet and I also feel like I'm a fraud. ALEXANDER: Simultaneously, or does it fluctuate? BILL: They're kind of simultaneous. I think hubris comes from insecurity. Confidence comes in a more rooted sense; part of being confident is being able to say, "I can be really shitty," and to accept that. But also not to crumble under it. ALEXANDER: So, the official It trailer has been viewed over 197 million times. It set a record for the most online views in a single day, when it launched. Why? Do we just fear clowns that much? BILL: I think it's huge for an older generation. Do you remember the original? ALEXANDER: I never saw the original. BILL: But did people talk about it in school? ALEXANDER: Yeah. BILL: I remember It being the scariest thing that existed for a kid. There were other horror films, like Friday the 13th or Halloween, but this was the really scary one because it was children and a clown. So many people go, "That film really destroyed my childhood," or, "I hated clowns after that." Hopefully, there will be a lot of 10-year-olds who will be traumatized forever based on my performance. [laughs] ALEXANDER: Is it R-rated? BILL: It probably will be, yeah. ALEXANDER: So those 10-year-old kids won't be able to see it then. BILL: Well, no, but— ALEXANDER: They'll still be traumatized by the poster. BILL: But not even that. The movies that they're not allowed to see are the movies that they're going to really want to see. ALEXANDER: Does it feel good knowing that kids around the world for decades to come will have nightmares about you? BILL: It's a really weird thing to go, "If I succeed at doing what I'm trying to do with this character, I'll traumatize kids." On set, I wasn't very friendly or goofy. I tried to maintain some sort of weirdness about the character, at least when I was in all the makeup. At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids—young, normal kids—I saw the reaction that they had. Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking. This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, "Action!" And when they say "action," I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, "Holy shit. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible." ALEXANDER: Was this your first interaction with a child where you realized how terrifying it would be for them? BILL: Yeah. But then we cut, and obviously I was all, "Hey, I'm sorry. This is pretend." [laughs]   ALEXANDER: Last question: Have you called Mom? BILL: Um, I haven't called her today, no. ALEXANDER: No? Call Mom.

[samanthasroberts]

One Swede Will Kill Cash ForeverUnless His Foe Saves It From Extinction

This new activism by the banks, along with the support of Ulvaeus, transformed Swedish society in just a few years. In 2010, 40 percent of Swedish retail transactions were made using cash; by 2014 that amount had fallen to about 20 percent. More than half of bank offices no longer deal in cash. To his claim that going cashless is the “biggest crime-preventing scheme ever,” Ulvaeus now has some statistics to back it up. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention counted only 23 bank robberies in 2014, down 70 percent from a decade earlier. In the same period, muggings dropped 10 percent. While it’s unclear the extent to which the transition to cashless has affected the rate of street crime, police point out that there’s a lot less incentive to rob a bus driver, cabbie, or shopkeeper if they don’t accept cash. Many workers say they now feel much safer.

Still, Ulvaeus is not satisfied. He’s annoyed there’s any cash left in Sweden at all. “Why would you pay for things with paper symbols that can be forged, that can be used in the black economy? It’s so unmodern,” he says. “It’s so out of touch.”

Unmodern: It’s one of Ulvaeus’ favorite, most biting insults. In some ways he has spent his whole life chasing modernity. In his earlier years, he wanted to be an engineer and taught himself to code on his Atari. Musical superstardom derailed those dreams, but Ulvaeus never abandoned that side of himself. “Pop music has always been driven by technology,” he says. “Every new sound, we were like, what are the Bee Gees doing there? We have to get that!” He’s never been someone who romanticizes the old way of doing things; retro is lame. He idolizes modern-day boundary-pushers such as Elon Musk and professional atheist Richard Dawkins.

Ulvaeus believes, with a conviction bordering on zealotry, that once the world sees Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia transform into a cashless, crimeless utopia, with tax revenues soaring, it will have no other choice but to follow suit. Take Greece, a country Ulvaeus has a special connection to (see: Mamma Mia!). “My God, what good it would do that country to be cashless,” he says. Corruption, tax evasion, the black economy: They could vanish. “I know it’s going to happen. I’m impatient. I want to see it!”

Lunch is over. Ulvaeus pays for his fish with a black elite MasterCard and drives off in his Tesla.

Overturning a centuries-old system so quickly is not without its challenges. Weird things start to happen at every level of society. To wit:

Sweden held its first major cashless music festival in the summer of 2014, and organizers provided attendees with special high tech wristbands for in-festival purchases. On the first day, the electronic payment system crashed, leaving thousands of thirsty festivalgoers unable to buy beer and forcing some vendors, one newspaper reported, to use a rather unmodern form of payment: paper IOUs.

In a curious case of an “e-mugging” on the Swedish island of Gotland last July, the victim told police he’d been forced to Swish money to a thief. The accused was easily identified—Swish requires a name and phone number—but when police found him, he said the transaction was just a friendly payment for beer. The police didn’t have enough evidence to bring the man to court, so the alleged e-mugger walked free.

Over the holidays, two young Russian tourists tried to board a bus and pay on board. The driver refused to take their bills. “We took out all this kronor when we got here,” one of them said as she walked back to the station, dejected. “It’s all still with us.”

In Överlida, a small town in western Sweden, a third-party ATM wasn’t hitting the minimum number of transactions, so the operator threatened to charge the bank extra fees. To prevent that from happening, bank employees stood next to the machine, paying 100 kronor (about $12) to anyone who would use it.

In Skoghall, a rural town north of Stockholm, the locals campaigned for an ATM to be installed at their grocery store after all the others in town were decommissioned. When they finally got one, they threw what may have been the world’s first ATM party. A live band performed a Swedish rendition of Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” singing, “Weee haaave a neeeew ATM,” while people cheered and a man on the roof showered celebrants with candy.

Making a cash deposit is now cause for suspicion—even if you’re a priest. New anti-money-laundering laws force tellers to ask detailed questions about where the cash comes from, and some banks enforce strict limits on maximum deposits. This means tithes often leave churches with more cash than they can handle, especially after big hauls during Christmas and Easter.

The Swedish government’s supposedly impenetrable mainframe was infiltrated in 2012 by a hacker who stole citizens’ personal data and used it to gain access to private accounts at Nordea, Sweden’s largest bank. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Sweden’s most famous cybercriminal and a cofounder of Pirate Bay, was convicted of the crime and served a year in jail.

In 2014, a security researcher discovered a major flaw in Swish’s design that gave him instant access to any user’s transaction history. He alerted the banks, which fixed the bug right away. Nobody noticed—until the good hacker posted about it on his blog a few weeks later.

Björn Ulvaeus, of Abba fame, wants to abolish physical currency in Sweden.Olaf Blecker

Crime is the single most important consideration in the global transition to cashless. That’s why Björn Ulvaeus is constantly talking about public safety. So you might think the former president of Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization—would be on Ulvaeus’ side. He is not. Meet Björn number two, the leader of Kontantupproret, or Sweden’s Cash Uprising.

Björn Eriksson is a big man, with winged eyebrows and fluffy gray hair. When he sits down, he seems to do so reluctantly, as though he would much rather stay standing, or have a walking meeting in which he would walk very fast.

He and Ulvaeus share more than a first name. They were both born in 1945 and so turn 71 this year. But if time has radicalized Ulvaeus, it has hardened Eriksson.

In the early ’80s, when Eriksson was working in Swedish customs, he sniffed out a covert police operation to smuggle illegal bugging equipment through the country. The police commissioner resigned soon after, and Eriksson was tapped to take his place. He remained in law enforcement for the rest of his career, spending time as head of the Swedish police before his appointment to the Interpol presidency. Although he’s technically retired now, it never occurred to him to stop working. Of the many causes he’s still involved in, the “cash problem,” as he calls it, is where he invests most of his energy. He sees corruption, deceit, and security risks everywhere.

Consumers are not shaping Ulvaeus’ utopianist dream of a cashless future, Eriksson says; the banks and credit card companies are. After all, it was the banks that pushed people to use cards in the first place; and it was the banks, not some independent tech startup, that created Swish. The cost-benefit is obvious: Cards, with their hidden costs and fees, make banks money, whereas vaults of bills and coins do not. In fact, cash costs banks money. It must be handled, counted, transported, guarded, and counted again. As Niklas Arvidsson, an economist at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, puts it: “It’s clear the banks have a business incentive to reduce the use of cash.” Time is money, and money takes time.

True bank robberies and muggings have declined, but fraud and identity theft have gone up.

But for the most part, Swedes are not a cynical people. They like technology and trust their government and institutions. As the numbers show, most of them have been perfectly happy to renounce cash. In fact, many hardly seem to notice what’s happening at all, so convenient the changeover has been. That’s what concerns Eriksson most: not so much the opportunism on the part of the banks, which seems inevitable, but the thoughtlessness with which so many Swedes seem to have flung themselves—as though to the merry tune of “Dancing Queen”—into an uncertain, possibly unsafe future.

So last year, Eriksson started Cash Uprising, an organization whose core mission is to save the paper krona from extinction. Its members are mostly people from rural areas, small-business owners, and retirees—the ones, in other words, for whom the sudden departure of cash has been inconvenient enough to force them to stop, take notice, and worry.

Camilla Kristensson and Lars-Erik Olsson live in Gärdslöv, a cluster of houses in southern Sweden too small to be called a village. (Olsson estimates the population “in town” is about 22.) Kristensson and Olsson are treasurer and president, respectively, of the Gärdslöv cultural council, which hosts events like mushroom foraging and charcoal making. After one such event last summer, Kristensson had about 20,000 kronor to deposit in the council’s account. But when she went to the local bank, a 10-minute drive away, it refused her cash for the first time ever. So she had to start driving 40 minutes into the city every month to deposit as much money as she was allowed, storing the remainder in various hiding spots. What makes her and Olsson angry isn’t just that the bank stopped taking their cash—it’s that it happened so quickly, without regard for how it would affect people like them. “They changed it almost overnight,” Olsson says. “We need time to change.”

Now Olsson’s council is part of Eriksson’s coalition of cash activists, who hold meetings, circulate petitions, and generally make noise about cash access. Ulvaeus, who has little patience for Eriksson’s views, describes the uprising as “Eriksson and a vanguard of geriatrics,” which is not altogether untrue, but they are some of the only voices speaking up for the consumer in this massive economic shift. The Swedish government has held several hearings on how to regulate the future of cash that were largely prompted by the work of Cash Uprising, and this September the parliament could vote on a bill that might require banks to provide cash services. (In a surprising victory for the movement, the head of Sweden’s central bank recently lent his support to such a proposal.)

Eriksson does have another role in all this: He’s the chair of a major private-security lobby, an industry that a recent economic study called one of the “biggest losers” in a cash-free world. Among other things, security personnel guard vaults and protect cash. No physical cash equals no more jobs. Everyone has an interest, Eriksson says, but he believes his are at least aligned with those of the consumer.

Cash is security, he says. You can hold it in your hands; it can be protected. Spending it does not entail sharing personal information with credit card companies, app creators, or banks. It is true that bank robberies and muggings have declined in Sweden in the past few years. But according to crime statistics from the same national organizations, cases of fraud, usually involving identity theft, have more than doubled. And that stat is based only on cases reported to the police. Most banks won’t publicly share how often their customers’ card information is stolen or their systems breached.

It’s a good bet that the numbers are higher than consumers would like them to be. While Swedes swipe and Swish their money away, they open themselves up to new risks—cybercriminals who would either trick them into divulging sensitive information or exploit security flaws to steal their identity outright. “We see that cybercrime is becoming more aggressive,” says Ulrika Sundling, chief inspector of the Swedish police’s cyber-investigations unit. And she says consumers, generally unaware of the threat and therefore unmotivated to take extra steps to protect themselves, are the “weakest link.”

Eriksson has been hounding Sweden’s banks for years, convinced they’re hiding exorbitant sums of lost money for fear of bad publicity. He even bought single shares of stock in different banks so he could go to shareholder meetings and try to get his questions answered. “They don’t like me,” he says, grinning. For their part, the banks say they keep this information close for customer security. According to Gunilla Garpås, a senior business developer at Nordea and one of the creators of Swish, more transparency about cases of cyberattacks, fraud, and the banks’ defenses against them “would really be putting ourselves and our customers at risk.”

Eriksson’s suspicions don’t stop at the banks. He believes MasterCard’s sponsorship of the Abba museum is the reason Ulvaeus is such a dedicated anticash advocate—but Ulvaeus wrote his first articles on the subject long before the museum opened. That is not to say MasterCard isn’t capitalizing on this moment, though. The card company also heavily sponsors iZettle, the most popular mobile card reader in Sweden.

Björn Eriksson, leader of Sweden’s Cash Uprising, thinks abolishing physical currency is a dangerous mistake. Olaf Blecker

Last October, American retailers made the switch to chip readers. (Well, they were supposed to, but the rollout has been uneven, and some stores still allow the old swipe-and-sign method.) You likely received new chip-enabled cards from your bank as a result. The upgrade came after a year of high-profile hacks: 56 million credit and debit card numbers stolen from Home Depot, 40 million from Target, another million from Neiman Marcus. The “new” chip technology—which has been standard in the European Union for more than a decade—is intended to make electronic transactions safer and more secure.

Then, this March, several major US banks announced a new digital payment platform called clearXchange. (A better name is reportedly in the works.) It is, finally, the US equivalent of Swish: a bank-backed service that lets people transfer money from their bank account directly into someone else’s.

These moves will help speed up the decline of cash use in the US, which hasn’t seen significant change in the past few years; electronic payments have hovered around 50 percent of all transactions. Americans tend to be less trusting of their institutions than their Swedish counterparts—and for good reason. Strict privacy laws safeguard Swedes from unwanted invasions, but consumer protections in the US are considerably flimsier. As Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, puts it: “We have a hurricane of data, and we’re living in a shack.” Plus, many Americans simply don’t want banks or the government to know what they’re spending their money on (thus the appeal of cryptocurrency like bitcoin).

But don’t be fooled: Economists have been predicting the end of physical currency for decades, and Sweden’s transformation signals the time is nigh for the rest of the world. Americans may cling to their bills and coins with greater tenacity than Swedes do, but in that reluctance is an opportunity to proceed cautiously and look to Sweden for guidance.

Ultimately, Sweden’s two Björns want the same thing: a safer society. The world is going cashless, as Ulvaeus says, but consumers have to feel more secure in this new order, per Eriksson. They’re not so much rivals as complements.

Not that they see themselves that way, set as they are in their inflexible views. Offered the opportunity to get dinner with Eriksson and maybe hash out differences over schnapps, Ulvaeus thought about it for a few seconds before saying, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I might get angry.”

Which is probably just as well. Imagine them fighting over the check.

Mallory Pickett (@mallorylpickett) is a journalist based in Berkeley, California. This is her first feature for WIRED.

This story appears in the May 2016 issue.

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/one-swede-will-kill-cash-foreverunless-his-foe-saves-it-from-extinction/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/11/10/one-swede-will-kill-cash-foreverunless-his-foe-saves-it-from-extinction/

[adambstingus]

One Swede Will Kill Cash ForeverUnless His Foe Saves It From Extinction

This new activism by the banks, along with the support of Ulvaeus, transformed Swedish society in just a few years. In 2010, 40 percent of Swedish retail transactions were made using cash; by 2014 that amount had fallen to about 20 percent. More than half of bank offices no longer deal in cash. To his claim that going cashless is the “biggest crime-preventing scheme ever,” Ulvaeus now has some statistics to back it up. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention counted only 23 bank robberies in 2014, down 70 percent from a decade earlier. In the same period, muggings dropped 10 percent. While it’s unclear the extent to which the transition to cashless has affected the rate of street crime, police point out that there’s a lot less incentive to rob a bus driver, cabbie, or shopkeeper if they don’t accept cash. Many workers say they now feel much safer.

Still, Ulvaeus is not satisfied. He’s annoyed there’s any cash left in Sweden at all. “Why would you pay for things with paper symbols that can be forged, that can be used in the black economy? It’s so unmodern,” he says. “It’s so out of touch.”

Unmodern: It’s one of Ulvaeus’ favorite, most biting insults. In some ways he has spent his whole life chasing modernity. In his earlier years, he wanted to be an engineer and taught himself to code on his Atari. Musical superstardom derailed those dreams, but Ulvaeus never abandoned that side of himself. “Pop music has always been driven by technology,” he says. “Every new sound, we were like, what are the Bee Gees doing there? We have to get that!” He’s never been someone who romanticizes the old way of doing things; retro is lame. He idolizes modern-day boundary-pushers such as Elon Musk and professional atheist Richard Dawkins.

Ulvaeus believes, with a conviction bordering on zealotry, that once the world sees Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia transform into a cashless, crimeless utopia, with tax revenues soaring, it will have no other choice but to follow suit. Take Greece, a country Ulvaeus has a special connection to (see: Mamma Mia!). “My God, what good it would do that country to be cashless,” he says. Corruption, tax evasion, the black economy: They could vanish. “I know it’s going to happen. I’m impatient. I want to see it!”

Lunch is over. Ulvaeus pays for his fish with a black elite MasterCard and drives off in his Tesla.

Overturning a centuries-old system so quickly is not without its challenges. Weird things start to happen at every level of society. To wit:

Sweden held its first major cashless music festival in the summer of 2014, and organizers provided attendees with special high tech wristbands for in-festival purchases. On the first day, the electronic payment system crashed, leaving thousands of thirsty festivalgoers unable to buy beer and forcing some vendors, one newspaper reported, to use a rather unmodern form of payment: paper IOUs.

In a curious case of an “e-mugging” on the Swedish island of Gotland last July, the victim told police he’d been forced to Swish money to a thief. The accused was easily identified—Swish requires a name and phone number—but when police found him, he said the transaction was just a friendly payment for beer. The police didn’t have enough evidence to bring the man to court, so the alleged e-mugger walked free.

Over the holidays, two young Russian tourists tried to board a bus and pay on board. The driver refused to take their bills. “We took out all this kronor when we got here,” one of them said as she walked back to the station, dejected. “It’s all still with us.”

In Överlida, a small town in western Sweden, a third-party ATM wasn’t hitting the minimum number of transactions, so the operator threatened to charge the bank extra fees. To prevent that from happening, bank employees stood next to the machine, paying 100 kronor (about $12) to anyone who would use it.

In Skoghall, a rural town north of Stockholm, the locals campaigned for an ATM to be installed at their grocery store after all the others in town were decommissioned. When they finally got one, they threw what may have been the world’s first ATM party. A live band performed a Swedish rendition of Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” singing, “Weee haaave a neeeew ATM,” while people cheered and a man on the roof showered celebrants with candy.

Making a cash deposit is now cause for suspicion—even if you’re a priest. New anti-money-laundering laws force tellers to ask detailed questions about where the cash comes from, and some banks enforce strict limits on maximum deposits. This means tithes often leave churches with more cash than they can handle, especially after big hauls during Christmas and Easter.

The Swedish government’s supposedly impenetrable mainframe was infiltrated in 2012 by a hacker who stole citizens’ personal data and used it to gain access to private accounts at Nordea, Sweden’s largest bank. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Sweden’s most famous cybercriminal and a cofounder of Pirate Bay, was convicted of the crime and served a year in jail.

In 2014, a security researcher discovered a major flaw in Swish’s design that gave him instant access to any user’s transaction history. He alerted the banks, which fixed the bug right away. Nobody noticed—until the good hacker posted about it on his blog a few weeks later.

Björn Ulvaeus, of Abba fame, wants to abolish physical currency in Sweden.Olaf Blecker

Crime is the single most important consideration in the global transition to cashless. That’s why Björn Ulvaeus is constantly talking about public safety. So you might think the former president of Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization—would be on Ulvaeus’ side. He is not. Meet Björn number two, the leader of Kontantupproret, or Sweden’s Cash Uprising.

Björn Eriksson is a big man, with winged eyebrows and fluffy gray hair. When he sits down, he seems to do so reluctantly, as though he would much rather stay standing, or have a walking meeting in which he would walk very fast.

He and Ulvaeus share more than a first name. They were both born in 1945 and so turn 71 this year. But if time has radicalized Ulvaeus, it has hardened Eriksson.

In the early ’80s, when Eriksson was working in Swedish customs, he sniffed out a covert police operation to smuggle illegal bugging equipment through the country. The police commissioner resigned soon after, and Eriksson was tapped to take his place. He remained in law enforcement for the rest of his career, spending time as head of the Swedish police before his appointment to the Interpol presidency. Although he’s technically retired now, it never occurred to him to stop working. Of the many causes he’s still involved in, the “cash problem,” as he calls it, is where he invests most of his energy. He sees corruption, deceit, and security risks everywhere.

Consumers are not shaping Ulvaeus’ utopianist dream of a cashless future, Eriksson says; the banks and credit card companies are. After all, it was the banks that pushed people to use cards in the first place; and it was the banks, not some independent tech startup, that created Swish. The cost-benefit is obvious: Cards, with their hidden costs and fees, make banks money, whereas vaults of bills and coins do not. In fact, cash costs banks money. It must be handled, counted, transported, guarded, and counted again. As Niklas Arvidsson, an economist at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, puts it: “It’s clear the banks have a business incentive to reduce the use of cash.” Time is money, and money takes time.

True bank robberies and muggings have declined, but fraud and identity theft have gone up.

But for the most part, Swedes are not a cynical people. They like technology and trust their government and institutions. As the numbers show, most of them have been perfectly happy to renounce cash. In fact, many hardly seem to notice what’s happening at all, so convenient the changeover has been. That’s what concerns Eriksson most: not so much the opportunism on the part of the banks, which seems inevitable, but the thoughtlessness with which so many Swedes seem to have flung themselves—as though to the merry tune of “Dancing Queen”—into an uncertain, possibly unsafe future.

So last year, Eriksson started Cash Uprising, an organization whose core mission is to save the paper krona from extinction. Its members are mostly people from rural areas, small-business owners, and retirees—the ones, in other words, for whom the sudden departure of cash has been inconvenient enough to force them to stop, take notice, and worry.

Camilla Kristensson and Lars-Erik Olsson live in Gärdslöv, a cluster of houses in southern Sweden too small to be called a village. (Olsson estimates the population “in town” is about 22.) Kristensson and Olsson are treasurer and president, respectively, of the Gärdslöv cultural council, which hosts events like mushroom foraging and charcoal making. After one such event last summer, Kristensson had about 20,000 kronor to deposit in the council’s account. But when she went to the local bank, a 10-minute drive away, it refused her cash for the first time ever. So she had to start driving 40 minutes into the city every month to deposit as much money as she was allowed, storing the remainder in various hiding spots. What makes her and Olsson angry isn’t just that the bank stopped taking their cash—it’s that it happened so quickly, without regard for how it would affect people like them. “They changed it almost overnight,” Olsson says. “We need time to change.”

Now Olsson’s council is part of Eriksson’s coalition of cash activists, who hold meetings, circulate petitions, and generally make noise about cash access. Ulvaeus, who has little patience for Eriksson’s views, describes the uprising as “Eriksson and a vanguard of geriatrics,” which is not altogether untrue, but they are some of the only voices speaking up for the consumer in this massive economic shift. The Swedish government has held several hearings on how to regulate the future of cash that were largely prompted by the work of Cash Uprising, and this September the parliament could vote on a bill that might require banks to provide cash services. (In a surprising victory for the movement, the head of Sweden’s central bank recently lent his support to such a proposal.)

Eriksson does have another role in all this: He’s the chair of a major private-security lobby, an industry that a recent economic study called one of the “biggest losers” in a cash-free world. Among other things, security personnel guard vaults and protect cash. No physical cash equals no more jobs. Everyone has an interest, Eriksson says, but he believes his are at least aligned with those of the consumer.

Cash is security, he says. You can hold it in your hands; it can be protected. Spending it does not entail sharing personal information with credit card companies, app creators, or banks. It is true that bank robberies and muggings have declined in Sweden in the past few years. But according to crime statistics from the same national organizations, cases of fraud, usually involving identity theft, have more than doubled. And that stat is based only on cases reported to the police. Most banks won’t publicly share how often their customers’ card information is stolen or their systems breached.

It’s a good bet that the numbers are higher than consumers would like them to be. While Swedes swipe and Swish their money away, they open themselves up to new risks—cybercriminals who would either trick them into divulging sensitive information or exploit security flaws to steal their identity outright. “We see that cybercrime is becoming more aggressive,” says Ulrika Sundling, chief inspector of the Swedish police’s cyber-investigations unit. And she says consumers, generally unaware of the threat and therefore unmotivated to take extra steps to protect themselves, are the “weakest link.”

Eriksson has been hounding Sweden’s banks for years, convinced they’re hiding exorbitant sums of lost money for fear of bad publicity. He even bought single shares of stock in different banks so he could go to shareholder meetings and try to get his questions answered. “They don’t like me,” he says, grinning. For their part, the banks say they keep this information close for customer security. According to Gunilla Garpås, a senior business developer at Nordea and one of the creators of Swish, more transparency about cases of cyberattacks, fraud, and the banks’ defenses against them “would really be putting ourselves and our customers at risk.”

Eriksson’s suspicions don’t stop at the banks. He believes MasterCard’s sponsorship of the Abba museum is the reason Ulvaeus is such a dedicated anticash advocate—but Ulvaeus wrote his first articles on the subject long before the museum opened. That is not to say MasterCard isn’t capitalizing on this moment, though. The card company also heavily sponsors iZettle, the most popular mobile card reader in Sweden.

Björn Eriksson, leader of Sweden’s Cash Uprising, thinks abolishing physical currency is a dangerous mistake. Olaf Blecker

Last October, American retailers made the switch to chip readers. (Well, they were supposed to, but the rollout has been uneven, and some stores still allow the old swipe-and-sign method.) You likely received new chip-enabled cards from your bank as a result. The upgrade came after a year of high-profile hacks: 56 million credit and debit card numbers stolen from Home Depot, 40 million from Target, another million from Neiman Marcus. The “new” chip technology—which has been standard in the European Union for more than a decade—is intended to make electronic transactions safer and more secure.

Then, this March, several major US banks announced a new digital payment platform called clearXchange. (A better name is reportedly in the works.) It is, finally, the US equivalent of Swish: a bank-backed service that lets people transfer money from their bank account directly into someone else’s.

These moves will help speed up the decline of cash use in the US, which hasn’t seen significant change in the past few years; electronic payments have hovered around 50 percent of all transactions. Americans tend to be less trusting of their institutions than their Swedish counterparts—and for good reason. Strict privacy laws safeguard Swedes from unwanted invasions, but consumer protections in the US are considerably flimsier. As Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, puts it: “We have a hurricane of data, and we’re living in a shack.” Plus, many Americans simply don’t want banks or the government to know what they’re spending their money on (thus the appeal of cryptocurrency like bitcoin).

But don’t be fooled: Economists have been predicting the end of physical currency for decades, and Sweden’s transformation signals the time is nigh for the rest of the world. Americans may cling to their bills and coins with greater tenacity than Swedes do, but in that reluctance is an opportunity to proceed cautiously and look to Sweden for guidance.

Ultimately, Sweden’s two Björns want the same thing: a safer society. The world is going cashless, as Ulvaeus says, but consumers have to feel more secure in this new order, per Eriksson. They’re not so much rivals as complements.

Not that they see themselves that way, set as they are in their inflexible views. Offered the opportunity to get dinner with Eriksson and maybe hash out differences over schnapps, Ulvaeus thought about it for a few seconds before saying, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I might get angry.”

Which is probably just as well. Imagine them fighting over the check.

Mallory Pickett (@mallorylpickett) is a journalist based in Berkeley, California. This is her first feature for WIRED.

This story appears in the May 2016 issue.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/one-swede-will-kill-cash-foreverunless-his-foe-saves-it-from-extinction/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/179957886817