Compass Needle Points North

Second anniversary post plus a short Swedish travelogue

Bright winter sun and dark clouds set off beautifully by traditional red Swedish house paint, last week near Uppsala.

I began this piece sitting at Stockholm Airport, about to make my last international journey of the year. Greetings to you wherever you find yourselves, I hope you are somewhat less tired than me, just now. The cause of my sleepy eyes?

Dougald Hine

‘s birthday meal last night. Any lack of sleep is my own fault entirely and I have no regrets apart from the usual one including volumes of liquids.

Uncivil Savant is two years old this week. I joined Substack long before that, to read work by friends who’d started writing here. I subsequently got into reading what they were recommending then following the trails to other thinkers. One week it became clear I should join in and on 21st November 2022 I pressed ‘publish’. I have never once regretted the decision. There are many things in the pipeline for this Substack, most of which I’ll announce in December and the New Year but for now I wanted to list a few things which you may like to know. Having travelled for 14 hours yesterday, arriving home after midnight, I hope you’ll forgive a slightly ‘listicle’ piece this week. However, I will be recording the audio for last week’s essay, after all.

‘Stickers’: Over the next weeks I’ll be making the ‘No AI’ and ‘Human Made’ stickers I was talking about last week. They’ll be free and available to download for your own use.

PDFs: I will also be putting aside time to make pdfs of all the essay posts previously published in this Substack, as several people have asked for this facility so they can read off-screen in front of the fire, (sometimes with a small, furry dog called Maizey sleeping on their lap), and I am happy to oblige.

Playlist: Last year I made a Spotify playlist full of songs I love that seem to have a yearning quality that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s 500 tunes long and freely available to all. You can also use whichever other music provider you like and import the track list, apparently.

Heartwork Movement classes: These continue on 30th November at 4pm UTC / GMT, all are welcome, just take out a paid subscription for a month or a year or anything in between. Alternatively, if you haven’t the cash for that, reply to this email and I will comp you 6 months for free. All the details are at the bottom of this previous post.

Founders Members offer: On top of their other benefits, founder members to Uncivil Savant worldwide will now receive both my current book Found and Ground (Search Press June 2023) and my upcoming book Drawn From the Wild, which will be published in June 2025. The books and international postage are worth at least £50.

Can you help with our plans?

Second Anniversary Subscription Offer: I have some beautiful plans hatching with my film-maker partner for next year and I hugely appreciate those of you who already have paid subscriptions. I will always keep my writing free for everyone to read here and am looking forward to offering more home-made beauty free to all, in the coming months. The generosity of paid subscribers allows me to focus on writing and creating and now collaborating. It is taking all of my self-control not to spill the beans already, so I will just stop and say thankyou again to all who subscribe. I could not do this without you.

Wall pennywort - Umbilicus rupestris, earlier this month, looking rather lovely against an old Dorset stone wall, its favoured habitat.

A month ago I updated my about me page and welcome post, if you haven’t read them, it might be a nice place to go if you are new to this Substack. I have also added lots more recommendations of other ‘stacks that are worth your time. Well, that I believe are worth my time, and the rest is for you to decide. I’ve also brightened the colourway and wordmark in honour of the iron oxide red paints I love so much as featured on many a building in Sweden. Red and orange ochres are a mainstay of my artistic life, so this year they can creep into my online design, too. It has also improved the clarity of links and buttons, which is important to those of us with less than perfect eyesight.

The Podcast: Uncivil Savant main posts are always available as an audio voiceover and as a podcast from your usual providers. If you feel someone would enjoy reading Uncivil Savant, but they seem like a Very Busy Person, then sending a podcast link is often the best option.

Buy me a coffee: And if you have been appreciating the odd post and dipping in here and there, but are way too overloaded or underpaid to subscribe, feel free to buy me a coffee. It’s simple to do and offers a way to make one-off contributions that the Substack system itself isn’t set up to do, yet.

There, that’s all the lists, thanks, updates, money stuff and plans. Next week, I hope to bring you the first part in a piece about yielding, integrity, turning the other cheek, not resisting things (including evil) and why that doesn’t mean what you worry it might, at first glance. It might take me a couple of weeks to wrangle the entire thing, so there may be an interlude, if life intervenes. I hope it will be of help and I will attempt to bring things together that are sometimes seen in opposition. I’ll be pointing you towards words from a host of great writers and thinkers, practices that have stood the test of millennia, as well as proposing an aesthetics of faith.

Wish me luck!

Vänern, the largest lake in both Sweden and the EU, taken from Åmål.

Ost and Öst

¹My connection to Sweden goes back to the early 2010s when I was teaching T’ai Chi in Gothenburg a few times a year. Ace London yoga teacher and bodyworker

Jonathan Monks

used to study T’ai Chi with me in those days and offered me the spare room in his rented flat one time when teaching there. I shared our forms with some of his friends and students and they invited me to come and teach. Over the years, I came to love the mellow people and their dry sense of humour, the landscape full of beautiful granite rocks (and the profusion of delicious cakes on sale, I must admit).

This week’s visit was to accompany my work-wife Theresa Emmerich Kamper to buy her new home, then to go on and visit friends, take part in a podcast recording² and celebrate Dougald’s birthday.

Chanterelles, winter chanterelles and hedgehog fungi, 40 feet from the door.

Deep conversations and misty sunsets made up for the inevitably long days spent sat in a car en route to get bureaucratic things done in disparate places. You’ll be seeing more of this landscape from me over the coming years, as I plan to get started on my next book there next autumn at the same time as preserving the abundant fungi, blueberries, pears and apples on the property, while Theresa is away teaching on the other side of the globe.

All missions and side-quests were accomplished, with the help of great weather, extremely kind strangers, helpful officials and possibly too much good cheese. Whisky from the tiny village where I used to live in Aberdeenshire was delivered to a tall Englishman in a small town in eastern Sweden. Astounding cakes were eaten, including ‘princess cake’ and Black Forest gateau made by Anna. Clara, a very happy little toddler, decided rocking chairs were the greatest thing while birthday songs were sung in Swedish, Norwegian and English. Only the Norwegian one has a dance to go with it. As a Brit, I now feel cheated, ‘Happy Birthday to You!’ is rather short and dull in comparison.

This week’s good thing: Mushrooms, by Roger Phillips has been my go-to book for UK fungi identification since the early 90s. It was wonderful to come across the Swedish edition this week at the cabin, expanded to include the European mainland species we don’t get here in the UK. It was like meeting the twin sibling of a much loved old friend.

I am tired but happy to be home, glad to be writing to you.

Wishing you a peaceful week ahead. Tack så mycket!

1. ‘Cheese’ and ‘east’, in Swedish, respectively.

2. I’ll make a post about it when it goes live.