Stig Björne: Hello there – my name is Path Bear

Not Stig Björne but Conquering Bear

Stig Björne means Path Bear or Track Bear. I prefer the first interpretation. Even though my name Stig Björne may sound like I come from some North European tribe it is not so. I am a city guy from Sweden a nine million citizen country situated in Scandinavia, a region in the northern part of Europe. My country has nothing to do with Switzerland. Sweden do have many bears and huge forests of pine trees. The country is pretty big compared to other countries if we exclude the giant states such as Russia, Brazil or Australia.

If you would disseminate all people of Sweden evenly there would be 21 individuals on every square kilometer. Given that Sweden is covered by 60% of forest these 21 individuals would have a hard time finding each other unless constantly hollering. But thats not the reason our tendency not to procreate very fast, I mean not to increase the population. We are simply individualists. In fact Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, is said to have the highest number of one-person households. We are likely to stay singels a long time in life before settling down to make a family and we often have just two kids.

I have a family of two. My wife Annika wants to have Stig Björne Junior and in time he will come, or she. If it will be a he his name will not be Stig Björne Junior or anything near resembling any animal. But when I think about it Wolf Bear (Varg Björne) would be kind of cool. By the way, you may have heard about Anna Anka. She used to be married to Paul Anka, the songwriter. Her name would be Anna Duck if translated into English.

Now you may think people in Sweden all have animal names but it’s more common we have names referring to natural elements such as stone (”sten”), branch (”gren” or ”kvist”), flowers (”ros”, ”blom”), creek or lake (”å”, ”älv” or ”sjö”), island (”ö” or ”holme”), beach (”strand”), the four geographical directions (”nord”, ”syd”, ”öst” or ”väst”), trees (”björk”, ”ek”, ”lind”, ”bok”, ”asp”, ”en”, ”lönn”, ”Alm”) or parts of a tree like stem (”stam”), root (”rot”), leaf (”löv”) or simply the ground (”mark”) or a mountain (”berg”). We like to combine the words such as: Lönnkvist, Roskvist, Lindmark, Stenholm, Lönnrot, Ekstam, Nordgren, Lindstrand or Almlöv. Why not  think of Mark Wahlberg, the actor or Ingemar Bergman the director?

I work with IT. Sweden is very good at Information Technology. The Swedes are fast to adapt and to integrate IT in their daily lifes. Along with IT I also work with Public Relations or PR. The combination of IT and PR is promising and in this cross breed I find my income as a freelance consultant.

I have a married sister and her last name is no longer Björne. She is quite a private person. My parents are still married but are no longer living in Sweden. They enjoy their retirement abroad in a warmer place. Guess which one. That has promoted my willingness to travel back and forth and there you have one explanation why me and my wife so far have no kids. If she were to find a job in California or any neighbouring state we might go there to establish a new and permanent home base.

Stig Björne