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michiexileMay 14 this year, the triennal Quarnevalen occurred again in Stockholm. I had the good fortune of finding a nice spot early on in this student parade, and was able to take a number of nice pictures.
Here, I'd like to use these pictures as a base for explaining swedish student culture in general and Quarnevalen in particular to friends abroad, and in particular to friends within the hacker/maker culture.
First off, something I have learned to explain in detail during my time in Germany, namely the sub-cultural icons and identifiers of Swedish (and Finnish) students.
Swedish students were up until a few years ago mandated membership in “student unions” — in organizations meant to primarily act as a sort of labour union for students, representing student issues towards the university hierarchy, and act as support organization for the students. This mandate was cancelled recently, and nowadays, these student unions still exist, but have to motivate the money they consume independently.
Typically, this membership used to be the only money you had to pay to study in Sweden: on the scale of <$100/year.
In addition to the labour union functionality, the typical student union also would organize parties, regular pub nights (with surprisingly cheap beer for Swedish standard), and some sort of “initiation” or “frosh week”. These have, especially in the last few decades, turned into very cleaned up acts, with volunteers from the older students
enacting skits instead of the “traditional” heckling or embarrassing exercises for the new students.
Having gone through the initiation, and wanting to take part in the party-planning and party-participation, a student would acquire one full white tie attire, and dependent on university and line of study either a second white tie attire (adorned with badges, and meant to stand up to the wearer being drunk enough to lie in their own puke in a gutter…) or a coverall in a colour decided by university+line-of-study, also adorned by badges and meant to be worn for the … less savory parties.
Also, a student — especially at the engineering universities — would wear a hat with a tail adorned with knots signifying the years they have already studied.
Chemistry students in the parade: coverall in the Royal Institute of Technology Chemistry yellow clearly visible. The corresponding hats are not worn in this picture
In Germany, similar hats and white-tie traditions are in heavy use by the old Burschenschaften, Landsmannschaften and similar centuries old student traditions. These, in Germany (and the Germanic world in general) are currently very associated to conservative, reactionary, and neo-nazi movements in Germany. I have experience from wearing Swedish student attire in Germany, and the reception you get is cool to say the least — I have had people take detours to avoid me since I looked too much like one of these old-school fraternity members.
With traditions ranging back to 1902, though not in the least continuously, the students in Stockholm — and outsiders traveling to Stockholm for this event — come together every 3 years and build during a period of two weeks floats for a parade through Stockholm. This is one of the very most visible expressions of student culture for Stockholm, a city that is too large, and too much of a seat of government, for the numerous universities to have particularly large influence on the city culture at large.
In the years when the Quarneval does not run, there is a smaller, and water-based parade organized called SquVALp.
The themes for the floats are quite varied. I'll show you some subtypes here:
Current political themes are always a popular subject with the floats in Quarnevalen. Perennial themes include CSN — the national student loan and stipend administration, and SL — the Stockholm public transit administration.
National loan and stipends depicted as vikings, robbing students retroactively. A comment on recent retroactive changes in the loan and stipends rules.
National loan and stipends depicted as a huge block of marble, pulled by teams of student coolies, and trailing a heavy bag of “trailing exams”, increasing the load for the poor students.
A bus built on a foundation of a bunch of bicycles, and powered by alcohol-fueled students pedaling away. A pun on the use of alcohol to fuel combustion engines.
City-bananen — a heavily punning float, punning both on the similarity between “bana” (track/route) and “banan” (banana), on the current construction of a new train tunnel through Stockholm with large disturbances to public transit as a result, and with a barb towards the tendency for Stockholm commuter train traffic to fail every autumn due to slippery rails from fallen leaves.
Another barb towards the very many failure modes causing delays: this float depicts a subway train being delayed due to a lack of rails to run on.
Recently, one of the controlling politicians of Stockholm county said in a press interview that the planned increase in ticket prizes was not a big deal, since it only corresponds to, say, 3 packets of potato chips a month. The statement caused a lot of noise in Swedish politics and media, and thus, certainly, comes up as a theme to be heckled in a float.
Environment:
Does the gulf leak?
A punnish 4-float cluster: one clean (same word as reindeer), one unclean and one oil platform followed by a Green Peace (Grön Fred) boat.
US foreign policy:
Whack a Dictator
The pope, and his specially built vehicle
Pope my ride
Any parade has a few elements in common, and this is no different. There is a Quarneval princess:
And a number of orchestras, samba troupes, drum corps and DJ-manned party floats:
Sometimes the DJ troupes are a bit too enthusiastic with their smoke machines…
Not all DJ troupes are “officially sanctioned”.
With heavy inspiration from the Blue Man Group.
Many floats are just based on particular puns or jokes without necessarily coming with specific political slants.
“War of the ants” is what Swedes call the black-and-white analog TV static. Hence here, a TV with a black and white ant pummeling each other with boxing gloves.
The Cover band wagon: a band wagon with a cover band on it. Alas, the drive bands didn't even survive the first hundred meters of the parade, so the pun wasn't all that obvious…
F*cking Magnets — how do they work?
In Sweden, though, Juggalos are pretty much unknown, so the Juggalo angle was neglected.
404 — submission not found. Scrolling panels with various excuses, such as “Check that you are attending the correct parade” on display.
“We care best drunk” — the nursing students on appropriate uses of alcohol in a hospital environment…
For some reason, this year had a LOT of games or software industry inspired floats. Surprising amounts thereof.
Pacman
Whack a mole, with dictators.
Worms
Angry nerds
Super Mario
Mario Qart
“App app and away”
Apple kingdom: praying to Jobs.
Slaves under technology
And then, finally, what you have all been waiting for if you are who I think you are: the innovative building aspects of the parade. Parts of the Quarneval culture is all about topping each other with complex mechanical contraptions.
A rollercoaster built in wood, running a shopping cart.
A pair of seats rotating around a common center, with students seated in each.
This year's submission from the M20 fraternity — an invitational, elitistic group of 20 machine engineers, who always build spectacular floats. This year, a gangster-era Ford, in scale ~2:1.
Autonomous walker from the Stockholm engineers. This one broke down regularly, and they brought shopping carts to cart the walker once it broke down.
Autonomous walker from the Gothenburg engineers — coming to Stockholm to show us how it's done.
A pair of car fronts welded together and driving on the diagonal by synchronized steering.
A pair of cars welded together.
A LEGO car
A wooden car
A catapult.
The LED Zeppelin — alas, the electronics didn't work out, so it didn't glow like it should have.
The next Quarneval is in 2014. As evidenced by the club Mosquito, and by the several non-student orchestras walking the parade, being a student is not a prerequisite to participate. In three years, we should be able to assemble a cool crowd of hackers and makers, and get some sort of living arrangements cleared out et.c. and build a kick-ass hackers of the world float. What do y'all say?
Here, I'd like to use these pictures as a base for explaining swedish student culture in general and Quarnevalen in particular to friends abroad, and in particular to friends within the hacker/maker culture.
First off, something I have learned to explain in detail during my time in Germany, namely the sub-cultural icons and identifiers of Swedish (and Finnish) students.
Students and student unions
Swedish students were up until a few years ago mandated membership in “student unions” — in organizations meant to primarily act as a sort of labour union for students, representing student issues towards the university hierarchy, and act as support organization for the students. This mandate was cancelled recently, and nowadays, these student unions still exist, but have to motivate the money they consume independently.
Typically, this membership used to be the only money you had to pay to study in Sweden: on the scale of <$100/year.
In addition to the labour union functionality, the typical student union also would organize parties, regular pub nights (with surprisingly cheap beer for Swedish standard), and some sort of “initiation” or “frosh week”. These have, especially in the last few decades, turned into very cleaned up acts, with volunteers from the older students
enacting skits instead of the “traditional” heckling or embarrassing exercises for the new students.
Having gone through the initiation, and wanting to take part in the party-planning and party-participation, a student would acquire one full white tie attire, and dependent on university and line of study either a second white tie attire (adorned with badges, and meant to stand up to the wearer being drunk enough to lie in their own puke in a gutter…) or a coverall in a colour decided by university+line-of-study, also adorned by badges and meant to be worn for the … less savory parties.
Also, a student — especially at the engineering universities — would wear a hat with a tail adorned with knots signifying the years they have already studied.
Chemistry students in the parade: coverall in the Royal Institute of Technology Chemistry yellow clearly visible. The corresponding hats are not worn in this picture
In Germany, similar hats and white-tie traditions are in heavy use by the old Burschenschaften, Landsmannschaften and similar centuries old student traditions. These, in Germany (and the Germanic world in general) are currently very associated to conservative, reactionary, and neo-nazi movements in Germany. I have experience from wearing Swedish student attire in Germany, and the reception you get is cool to say the least — I have had people take detours to avoid me since I looked too much like one of these old-school fraternity members.
Quarnevalen: student innovation and maker culture
With traditions ranging back to 1902, though not in the least continuously, the students in Stockholm — and outsiders traveling to Stockholm for this event — come together every 3 years and build during a period of two weeks floats for a parade through Stockholm. This is one of the very most visible expressions of student culture for Stockholm, a city that is too large, and too much of a seat of government, for the numerous universities to have particularly large influence on the city culture at large.
In the years when the Quarneval does not run, there is a smaller, and water-based parade organized called SquVALp.
The themes for the floats are quite varied. I'll show you some subtypes here:
Political floats
Current political themes are always a popular subject with the floats in Quarnevalen. Perennial themes include CSN — the national student loan and stipend administration, and SL — the Stockholm public transit administration.
CSN
National loan and stipends depicted as vikings, robbing students retroactively. A comment on recent retroactive changes in the loan and stipends rules.
National loan and stipends depicted as a huge block of marble, pulled by teams of student coolies, and trailing a heavy bag of “trailing exams”, increasing the load for the poor students.
SL
A bus built on a foundation of a bunch of bicycles, and powered by alcohol-fueled students pedaling away. A pun on the use of alcohol to fuel combustion engines.
City-bananen — a heavily punning float, punning both on the similarity between “bana” (track/route) and “banan” (banana), on the current construction of a new train tunnel through Stockholm with large disturbances to public transit as a result, and with a barb towards the tendency for Stockholm commuter train traffic to fail every autumn due to slippery rails from fallen leaves.
Another barb towards the very many failure modes causing delays: this float depicts a subway train being delayed due to a lack of rails to run on.
Recently, one of the controlling politicians of Stockholm county said in a press interview that the planned increase in ticket prizes was not a big deal, since it only corresponds to, say, 3 packets of potato chips a month. The statement caused a lot of noise in Swedish politics and media, and thus, certainly, comes up as a theme to be heckled in a float.
Other political themes
Environment:
Does the gulf leak?
A punnish 4-float cluster: one clean (same word as reindeer), one unclean and one oil platform followed by a Green Peace (Grön Fred) boat.
US foreign policy:
Whack a Dictator
The pope, and his specially built vehicle
Pope my ride
Music and classic parade elements
Any parade has a few elements in common, and this is no different. There is a Quarneval princess:
And a number of orchestras, samba troupes, drum corps and DJ-manned party floats:
Sometimes the DJ troupes are a bit too enthusiastic with their smoke machines…
Not all DJ troupes are “officially sanctioned”.
With heavy inspiration from the Blue Man Group.
Punning and jokes
Many floats are just based on particular puns or jokes without necessarily coming with specific political slants.
“War of the ants” is what Swedes call the black-and-white analog TV static. Hence here, a TV with a black and white ant pummeling each other with boxing gloves.
The Cover band wagon: a band wagon with a cover band on it. Alas, the drive bands didn't even survive the first hundred meters of the parade, so the pun wasn't all that obvious…
F*cking Magnets — how do they work?
In Sweden, though, Juggalos are pretty much unknown, so the Juggalo angle was neglected.
404 — submission not found. Scrolling panels with various excuses, such as “Check that you are attending the correct parade” on display.
“We care best drunk” — the nursing students on appropriate uses of alcohol in a hospital environment…
Games and software industry
For some reason, this year had a LOT of games or software industry inspired floats. Surprising amounts thereof.
Pacman
Whack a mole, with dictators.
Worms
Angry nerds
Super Mario
Mario Qart
“App app and away”
Apple kingdom: praying to Jobs.
Slaves under technology
Maker related
And then, finally, what you have all been waiting for if you are who I think you are: the innovative building aspects of the parade. Parts of the Quarneval culture is all about topping each other with complex mechanical contraptions.
A rollercoaster built in wood, running a shopping cart.
A pair of seats rotating around a common center, with students seated in each.
This year's submission from the M20 fraternity — an invitational, elitistic group of 20 machine engineers, who always build spectacular floats. This year, a gangster-era Ford, in scale ~2:1.
Autonomous walker from the Stockholm engineers. This one broke down regularly, and they brought shopping carts to cart the walker once it broke down.
Autonomous walker from the Gothenburg engineers — coming to Stockholm to show us how it's done.
A pair of car fronts welded together and driving on the diagonal by synchronized steering.
A pair of cars welded together.
A LEGO car
A wooden car
A catapult.
The LED Zeppelin — alas, the electronics didn't work out, so it didn't glow like it should have.
Calling makers and hackers
The next Quarneval is in 2014. As evidenced by the club Mosquito, and by the several non-student orchestras walking the parade, being a student is not a prerequisite to participate. In three years, we should be able to assemble a cool crowd of hackers and makers, and get some sort of living arrangements cleared out et.c. and build a kick-ass hackers of the world float. What do y'all say?
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-08 02:13 pm (UTC)(And the Lego car: O.O )
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Date: 2011-06-08 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 12:07 pm (UTC)BTW: I'm not aware of any hacker/maker groups in St Andrews, but there's a recently-established hackerspace in Edinburgh, and a group in Glasgow that's apparently trying to get a FabLab set up there. There was apparently a plan to set up a Glasgow hackerspace too, but that seems to be on hold.