Joakim Palmkvist

Rural communities, forests, farms. The densest forests start slightly farther west still, stretching virtually uninterrupted from there all the way accross the county border to Kronoberg and the Växjö diocese, from which the expression "dark heart of Småland" originates, a reference to the social conservatism and high church Lutherianism of the capital of Kronoberg County.

In some ways, he was the epitome of the dutiful baby boomer, even though he was born at the early part of that generation: the mind-set was that you had to work hard and save your pennies. he was, after all, only one generation away from nineteenth-century Smaland, a place of starvation and despair. In those days, hoarding money was the only way to survive if something went terribly wrong.

Perceptions of Göran Lundblad varied depending on how people knew him or what type of exchanges they had with him - in a personal capacity (very few) or through business (a few more). Kind, lonely, quiet, sometimes gruff, family-centric, dutiful, tightfisted, submissive, his father's servant, and a lightweight when it came to alcohol.

Just like Tiina Nieminen, Irina described a tough life under the thumb of a very demanding patriarch. The picture Irina paints of life in Stigtomta consisted of working, having virtually no privacy, and not spending money. Everything revolved around money - keeping what you had and making more, working hard, minimizing costs. Even at that point, despite the fact that Göran had recently turned forty, his mother was still in charge of all his finances.