Word: aquavit
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Whooping Swedes swarmed toward Johansson, Birgit sobbed prettily at ringside, and in Sweden happy millions poured into the streets to pour victory toasts of aquavit by the dawn's early light. For Johansson, the victory was especially sweet: it erased forever the disgrace he suffered at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki when he was disqualified in the heavyweight finals for "not trying." More important, Johansson needed no manager to tell him the value of the world's richest boxing title-or how to exploit it. The son of a stonecutter, he was a gifted street brawler...
Life among the Swedish Lapps who roam the tundras above the Arctic Circle was a dolorous affair a century ago. As a result, the Lapps drowned their sorrows in barrels of aquavit. Then into the Laplanders' midst came Lars Levi Laestadius, famed botanist and Lutheran minister, with a message of hellfire and brimstone of such urgency that it sobered up Laplanders by the hundreds, set off a revivalist movement that is still a major force for morality and sobriety...
...from the Laplanders of the north, Sculptor Hjorth won admiration. As the central teakwood altarpiece for Jukkasjarvi Church, Hjorth carved a looming Christ with heavy Gauguin overtones, surrounded by the Far North's flowers. On the left stands Laestadius preaching hellfire, while one Lapp smashes a keg of aquavit, another returns a stolen reindeer. On the right, Laestadius begs mercy from a Virgin Mary, while a Lapp lay priest, Raatma the Mild, listens. Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's largest daily, called it "a masterpiece . . . everything is dissolved and recreated in the same breath...
...favorites (Summertime, A Foggy Day) and new numbers (Fedja, composed by rising Swedish Jazzman Gullin himself). The numbers get a lift from the free-swinging drumming of Nils-Bertil Dahlander (known as Bert Dale when he toured the U.S.), generally show Swedish jazz to be as cool as iced aquavit...
...party, the ambassador invited the painters, plasterers and carpenters who had remodeled her house (90 in all, including wives). Dressed in their Sunday best, the guests flocked in, shook hands with the American diplomat and her husband, Artist John Anderson, tackled the smörgåsbord, Cokes and aquavit, sang folk songs around the grand piano in the salon, watched documentary movies about New York, baseball and Hawaii. It was 2 a.m. when the party broke up. As the happy guests filed out, each received from hostess and host a pound of American-brand coffee, a rationed and prized...