Happy March 1, everyone! As you can see from the picture, spring is nearly here. (The bright spots of color are some of the horses — even the fuzziest of them have blankets on these days.)
We’ve plenty of snowfall, and a cold snap with temps well under -5C most days for at least a week now, dipping down to scary numbers like -18C at night.
It was -13C when I was out about about yesterday, which made me over-prepare a bit perhaps for today’s ride to the University for lunch-in-Swedish with my peeps. Only -8C or so, but I was perfectly content to have on all my cold-weather gear, including the pack boots, which didn’t get worn even once last winter.
I’ve decided to name this level of cold “it’s cold, yaaap, no foolin’ about.” Not quite cold enough for “I’m staying inside even if it’s sunny.” The normal cold-weather cold clothes are enough; there’s no need to take drastic measures like putting heating packs in your boots. (At least not for short excursions.)
I asked one of my lunchmates, the native Swedish speaker among us, whether this level of cold counts as “svinkallt” (literally ‘pig cold’, metaphorically akin to ‘fucking cold’ but you can still say it in front of your mother). She wrinkled her nose and said, “Uppsalabor skulle kanske kalla det för svinkallt.” (’People who live in Uppsala probably would say this is svinkallt.’)
She is from Östersund (further north and west). I asked what she would call this level of cold. “Jaaa, det är kallt.” (’Yeah, it’s cold.’)
At my incredulous look (clearly accusing her of exaggerating for us poor southerners), she admitted “Kanske är det ganska kallt.” (’Maybe it’s quite cold.’) Or maybe she was trying to make me feel better.