I love music! As long as I can remember music has been an essential part of life in my family. I have been told that my grand uncle on my mothers side was a composer. My eldest brother is a professional musician (church organist). My personal relation to music finds its expression in composition (on a very modest level) and listening/enjoying. I like to see myself as a person with a wide range of music tastes, but since nobody agrees with me on that I'll give a few hints about them:
Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, Clannad, Jethro Tull, XTC, Yes, Madness, 10cc, Camel, Marillion, Kayak, Alan Parsons Project, Lilac Time (and Stephen Duffy), Kansas, Gentle Giant, Jellyfish, Strawbs, Lloyd Cole, Joni Mitchell, Mike Oldfield etc.

What would man be without a language? This is the one thing that separates us from the animals, and a vital prerequisite for civilization in any form. I have had a fascination for it since childhood. My native language is Swedish, but I can converse in English, get by in German, survive in French and Italian, and make short comments in Dutch...

My favourite language of all is English, a comparatively simple language, grammatically, but with an inexplicable beauty in sound and appearance.

Read your maps often, and know that the world exists! Maps are beautiful. Make me want to travel. Also a practically indispensible adjunct to a good fantasy story.

Pictures of all kinds hold a special place in my life and always have. I have always liked drawing and at one time I went to art class for two years. Nowadays I mostly make pictures on the computer and you can see some of my attempts on this website.

My favourite artists include
Alphonse Mucha, Czech, later living in Paris and New York, a master in Art Nouveau
Carl Larsson, one of the greatest Swedish artists
John Constable, British landscape-painter
Dennis Flanders, another Brit who has captured the British landscape in hundreds of drawings and water-colours
Patrick Woodroffe, also British, who paints fantastic, imaginative pictures, and writes very poetic books to accompany his art
Roger Dean, wellknown to anyone who likes the rock group Yes, for which he has painted practically all their album covers
James C. Christensen, American who excels in his multicoloured images of people in rich Renaissance attires in imaginative scenes
Jaroslav Šetelík, another Czech artist whose water-colours in amazing colours I discovered through a bundle of old postcards in a second hand bookshop in Prague.

Going to the movies is another thing that I love (see link to movie reviews on my links page), and I try to see all the new movies that attract my attention. Since I live in a small town with a limited choice of cinemas (there is only one which shows one or maybe two films a week), that usually means I wait until they're available on video. When I travel I try to see at least one film per trip. I like films that make me think. The film I have until recently mentioned as a favourite is Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python. The first time I saw it, it was superb. I saw it again recently, and it seems to have lost some of its greatness, even though it is still a good movie. I would mention the following films, being on my favourite list right now, without any relative order of ranking:
The Lord of the Rings, Shrek, The Remains of the Day, Leaving Normal, Emma, Heart and Souls, Only You, Chaplin, French Kiss, Phenomenon, While You Were Sleeping, Office Space, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Crossing Delancey, Cold Comfort Farm, Enchanted April, Shakespeare in Love, Sleepless in Seattle, Singles, The Truman Show, EdTV, Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Ghost, Time Bandits, Groundhog Day, You've got Mail...

What I don't appreciate is the Seagal or Stallone action style.

There is nothing like entering a bookshop, especially a second-hand one. I have always loved the smell of books. The books I mostly read are such about facts, like encyclopaedias, thesauri, and the like, but I also love fiction, of which I prefer science fiction and fantasy. My favourite among the books of facts is David Parlett's "A History of Card Games". Among fiction I would have to say "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien, although the choice is not self-evident. I also love fairy-tales, of which "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is a favourite.

To lovers of books I can recommend a trip to the little town Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh-English border. There you can find no less than 33 second-hand bookshops, and that in a town with a population of 1,600!

I think my love for travelling has to do with my occasional restlessness. I find it hard to stay at home when I have time off in the summer. My favourite place to visit is England. During 1998/99/2000 I've made four trips there and travelled all over the country by train, which was a great experience. I have no irresistable desire to see far off countries and other cultures, which of course doesn't mean I have anything against them. I just don't see any enticement in that. I've visited most countries in northwestern Europe (Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Britain, Ireland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Italy), the USA (Western New York State, and Pittsburgh, PA) and Canada (Toronto). There's nowhere like Fair Albion, Ol' Blighty, Merry Old England, though...

Top!

In spite of its origin in the despicable affairs of warfare, heraldry (or, to be more correct, armory, since heraldry as a science, properly speaking, includes everything within the duties of a herald, like regulations of ceremonials and matters of pedigree as well as the rules of appearance and display of coats of arms) and its sister science vexillology (of flags and banners) are art forms that are as alive today as they once were in their heyday in the Middle ages, although the use may differ.

Any man or woman can assume a coat of arms, but contrary to a very common conception the fact that you have a certain surname does not automatically give you the right to use the coat of arms of someone else who happens to carry the same surname. So, don't get fooled by all those people who say that they can find your coat of arms (probably for a considerable fee) just by knowing your last name!

Building places to live is not a unique action by man alone. Many animals do the same, like ants and birds. What man does, though, is creating houses that are not only practical, but also beautiful to look at. Mostly. Sometimes architects bend themselves over backwards trying to create something new, but it's my personal opininon that nothing much truly new of beauty value has been created since the turn of the last century, when Art Nouveau had its heyday. Architects like Victor Horta and Henry van der Velde, in Belgium, were among those who created an original style, inspired by natural forms like stems, flowers and leaves. The style was adapted and further developed by Hector Guimard in Paris, while Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow found his own expressive style in stretched geometrical shapes.

Apart from Art Nouveau the old halftimbered houses of England are close to my heart. Walking through central Chester is a treat for the eyes.

I've always liked card games. When I was younger I always pestered my friends by trying to get them to learn and play new (for us) and unusual card games. The games that actually made it and became popular in my circle of friends included Kille and Skat. Around 1994 I first came in contact with the game of Tarock. I had heard of Tarot cards before that, and a picture of some of the cards in a book had caught my attention, but like most people in this country I thought they were made for fortune telling only. Then by chance I came upon an entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica where, for some reason, the Czech version of the game was vaguely described. This started my hunt for those special cards that are used for the game. Through Piatnik in Vienna I could order decks and also books with rules of the various versions of the game. But this didn't satisfy me. Once the spark had lit the fire I started looking for other versions of the deck, then on to Tarot and further on to German-suited decks. The urge to buy new decks has waned a bit since then, but the cards still fascinate me.