Those powerful Armenians...
The NYT has an item about the ongoing France / Turkey row, in which I saw this odd comment from Turkish novelist Alev Alatli:
"One of the most powerful institutions of the diaspora Armenians is in Sweden, and they are very powerful there. Can you imagine that one could have been even nominated without being in good terms with these circles?"
So, the challenge having been made, it would appear that there are maybe 4,000 Armenian Swedes.
So, presumably these 4,000 must get about a bit. Maybe they are big in politics? Can't see any -ian surnames or similar featuring among the big cheeses of either the Social Democrats or the Moderates.
Big business perhaps? Again, no names featuring on the boards of Volvo, Ericsson, Tetrapak or Electrolux. Nor Akzo Nobel itself. Abba was famously a major part of the Swedish economy back in the 70s, and they all have remarkably white bread Swedish surnames.
Maybe the Nobel committee in the form of the Swedish Academy itself? Again, no. Perhaps there have been disproportionately large numbers of Armenian Nobel laureates? A dig around Raffi Kojian's excellent Cilicia.com and Armeniapedia.org sites shows that poet Alicia Ghiragossian was nominated for Literature in '96. (I fear that there may well be a typo in that item as apparently she's been writing since 1067. Even assuming she started writing at birth, at 939 she looks remarkably good for her age).
So, until I see any further evidence, it look like the Elders of Armenia are about as all powerful as their near namesakes of Zion.
"One of the most powerful institutions of the diaspora Armenians is in Sweden, and they are very powerful there. Can you imagine that one could have been even nominated without being in good terms with these circles?"
So, the challenge having been made, it would appear that there are maybe 4,000 Armenian Swedes.
So, presumably these 4,000 must get about a bit. Maybe they are big in politics? Can't see any -ian surnames or similar featuring among the big cheeses of either the Social Democrats or the Moderates.
Big business perhaps? Again, no names featuring on the boards of Volvo, Ericsson, Tetrapak or Electrolux. Nor Akzo Nobel itself. Abba was famously a major part of the Swedish economy back in the 70s, and they all have remarkably white bread Swedish surnames.
Maybe the Nobel committee in the form of the Swedish Academy itself? Again, no. Perhaps there have been disproportionately large numbers of Armenian Nobel laureates? A dig around Raffi Kojian's excellent Cilicia.com and Armeniapedia.org sites shows that poet Alicia Ghiragossian was nominated for Literature in '96. (I fear that there may well be a typo in that item as apparently she's been writing since 1067. Even assuming she started writing at birth, at 939 she looks remarkably good for her age).
So, until I see any further evidence, it look like the Elders of Armenia are about as all powerful as their near namesakes of Zion.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, October 14, 2006 at 10:03 am.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Admirable research. However, Anna-Fred (or Frid) of Abba was a Norweg-ian. Wd that count?
(Info from H. Ibsen)
Thanks for that S. Given that Norway is even further from Hayastan than Sweden, I suspect not.
Meanwhile, I am indebted to a friend from university for telling me that the Norwegian for hedgehog is pinnsvin, pronounced 'peenschween'. Might come in handy one of these days.
Interesting stuff. For her part, Alev Alatli seems a bit dazed and confused on this issue. In all the years I have been living in Turkey, this is the first reference I have ever heard to an all-powerful Armenian lobby in Sweden.Obviously, she had France's Armenian lobby in mind but needs to bone up on her geography a bit.
Poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world, my, erm, eye. About as successful as legislators are at poetry....
» Post a Comment