Sweden is the leaping part of the tiger image called Scandinavia on the map.
Sweden is the lower jaw, teeth, front legs, the belly. Finland looks like the hind legs of the Scandinavian Tiger.
Kings and queens, warriors and politicians have put a line through the tiger´s body. On the west side of the line is Norway. On the east side is Sweden.
That is how humans make countries and divide themselves into nations.
When you study the map, you can see, that the Baltic Sea is east of Sweden.
In the Baltic Sea there is the island Gotland. This island belongs to the Swedish people. It is long and narrow, the biggest one in the Swedish archipelago.
Far up north is the capital Stockholm with its beautiful architecture, gardens, canals and cliffs. That´s where the royal palace dominates the view. Sweden is a monarchy. The king and queen have three children two daughters and a son. The eldest daughter is to be queen in the future. According to the law women and men have equal rights in Scandinavia.
Sweden is a member of the European Union.
When you have found Gotland on the map, you know where Britta and Lars live.
Britta is 8 and Lars is 10 years old.
They live with their parents and their grandmother on Gotland.
“When I grow up,” Lars says, “I´ll move to Stockholm. That´s where the king and queen and everybody lives. Stockholm is great.”
“Why move away from Gotland?” his grandmother asks.
Lars´ and Britta´s grandmother has lived on Gotland all her life. She has never wanted to travel anywhere. Each time they have said to her: “Granny, you should come with us to Spain, or Italy, or England, somewhere where it´s entirely different from here,” she just says: “This is where I feel at home. Why should I travel to strange places?”
Lars and Britta have never been able to understand this, because they have travelled a lot together with their parents and they like travelling.
Yet, their Granny keeps saying: “Gotland is the navel of the world.”
Lars says: “ Gotland is far away from everywhere.”
“No, it´s in the middle, right in the middle of the world,” she insists. “It lies between Finland and Sweden and Denmark. At the same time, it lies between Russia and the Western World. It is right in the middle, where the East starts and the West ends and vice versa.”
“Would you tell us a story?” Britta and Lars ask their grandmother.
“I´ve told you all the stories I know,” grandma says.
“Then make one,” they beg.
“Well, I´d perhaps better tell you the story about The Talking Tree,” she says and looks far out through the window.
“It is a true story and you may be big enough to understand it now.”
“Please,” they both say.
And then their grandma starts:
“Once upon a time there were two children who lived on Gotland in Sweden. They used to take some long walks together with their grandma. They walked along the gravel road in between small hills and bushes. They all loved these walks.
One day they came to a little lake. They had not been as far as that before.
Grandma was tired and wanted to have a rest. They had their packed lunches with them in small neat packages.
While they were sitting there having their lunch, they decided to visit this lake every day when the weather was good enough for a walk.
While they were enjoying their sandwiches and discussing how nice it was to have found a peaceful little lake, it started raining. They looked around and decided to use the only tree on the bank as a shelter.
This wouldn´t have been possible had it been a thunderstorm, because lightnings seek trees. There was no thunderstorm and there were no lightnings, so sitting under the tree branches was safe.
“This is a very old oak tree,” grandma said, as soon as they were comfortably settled under the thickly leaved branches.
They didn´t know it then, but this was the biggest and the oldest oak tree on the island, many hundred years old. Its crown of leaves was so enormously grand, that where it was thickest, the rainfall couldn´t get through. Therefore grandma and the two children enjoyed their lunch in dry air.
When the heavy shower was over, they kept sitting there enjoying the scent that came from the wet leaves and the nearby grass. And the birds started singing.
“One of them is singing a samba,” Britta said.
“What is that?” Granny said surprised. “This is the lark. I don´t think that a lark sings a samba. What nonsense.”
They had eaten their rye bread with liver paste and some whole wheat bread with cheese and tomatoes. After that Lars and Britta were allowed to have a peace of candy. Grandma always carried a little bag of candies in one of her many pockets inside her skirts.
They kept sitting there listening to the larks and chewing their candy. They did not speak. It was wonderfully peaceful and quiet.
Suddenly they heard a deep and hoarse voice say: “ I am two thousand years old.”
They looked at each other. Was Granny teasing them? Was Lars trying to sound like a base? Was it Britta? Or – was someone standing behind the thick tree trunk they leaned their backs against.
Britta and Lars were afraid. Grandma rose in order to find out if someone was hiding behind the tree trunk. But no, nobody was there. Where had the voice come from? Now it was completely silent. Even the birds were quiet. The lark had stopped singing.
Then Britta discovered a big hole in the tree trunk.”
She and Lars were slim enough to be able to go into the hole in the tree trunk. When they were inside, there was space enough for the two of them. It was like a little attic at dusk, light comin in from the top. Granny was too big to be able to enter the hollow in the tree. She called from the outside:
“Is anybody there? Come out of there! Do you hear me!”
“Yes,” they both cried back and at the same time, they had the feeling that the big tree was breathing. They hurried out again. Grandma stood there in surprise.
“I didn´t know that a tree could talk and that there could be such a big room inside,” Britta said when they came out.
They sat down exactly where they had been sitting when the tree had talked to them and they waited in utter silence.
Finally Britta couldn´t wait any longer. She peered up under the crown and yelled:
“Can you talk, old tree?”
“If you´re able to listen,” the same deep hoarse voice answered and the sound went right through their bodies, into their stomachs and again they became frightened.
No one had ever heard a tree talk before. Maybe this was the only talking tree in the world. Maybe Granny was right when she said that Gotland was the navel of the world.
Lars started whistling an old Swedish folksong. When he had finished the tree said:
“I know this melody.”
After a long pause, when neither a bird nor a human being moved, the oak said:
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” they all shouted and the little lark that sat on a branch close to them pipped.
“Would you give me something to drink?” the oak asked.
Britta and Lars jumped up. They only had the small metal cups they had drunk their orange juice out of, but now they filled them time and again with water from the lake and poured it down at the roots of the tree. Some of these lay spread on top of the ground. Grandma had to move away, because the grass around her got wet.
Suddenly the oak said:
“Thank you so much. Rainwater doesn´t always get through my bark.”
It didn´t say any more this time.
Lars, Britta and Granny walked back home without talking together. In fact they were speechless, because of the talking tree. They agreed not to tell anyone about this. They decided to go out to the tree again, before saying anything to anyone, in order to be quite sure, that what they had heard really came from the tree instead of being some kind of a hoax.
In the evening they lay awake for a long time in their beds and thought about how it could be, that a very old oak tree could talk. Even Granny, who was quite old in human terms, had never heard of anything like this.
The next day they prepared new lunch packets and hurried out to the lake, where the tree stood.
“Are you going for a walk again?” their father asked them in surprise. He was used to their being quite reluctant to everyday walks.
“Yes,” Granny said. “We want to check if there is any fish in the lake.”
“There is no fish in that little lake,” their father said grinning. “Nobody knows why, but we know for sure, that the lake is dead.”
“That´s exactly what we´re going to investigate,” Granny said and then they walked away from the house. They looked back several times in order to see if anyone was following them. They wanted to be alone.
When they arrived to the oak again, everything was the same as the day before, quiet and beautiful, peaceful and idyllic. There were no houses and no traffic. Only the birds lived out there and were busy building their nests.
Lars had taken a pail with him, because he wanted to give the oak as much water as it could drink.
When they came close to it, they all said very politely:
“Good afternoon, old oak,” but there was no answer.
Granny took a seat in the grass and packed out their lunches. This time she had taken with her a handbroidered tablecloth, sandwiches and organic juice.
Britta and Lars started giving the tree water from the lake. They were careful not to wet the ground around Granny. When they had finished pouring gallons of water on the roots of the tree, they sat down and began to eat. No one said anything. They just waited for the deep hoarse voice to say something.
They heard a car come driving along the tracks they had walked. It was a truck. It stopped on the other side of the lake. The driver stepped out, jumped up on the stand and pushed a big sack, so it fell down on the shore of the lake. Then he jumped off, opened the sack and poured the contents into the lake. He shook the sack thoroughly, rolled it up, put it on the stand, hurried into the car and drove away. He had been so sure of being alone out there, that he had not even bothered to look around. Had he done that, he would probably have seen all three of them sitting under the tree, enjoying their lunches.
When the car had disappeared, they saw that where the driver had emptied the sack a yellow color was now spreading and it grew and grew and soon reached out to the middle of the lake.
“Guess what that is?” Britta said.
“Polluter!” said the deep hoarse tree voice behind and above them.
“He is killing us.”
Lars, Britta and Granny kept their breaths, because they wanted to hear more, but the tree didn´t say anything else.
“It´s poison,” Granny said.
“Why put poison in the lake?” Lars aksed surprised.
“It´s not as expensive as driving it to town where they are supposed to dump poisonous waste,” Granny said.
“That´s why.”
Now it started raining. They would have to hurry home, because a thunderstorm was approaching.
They reacheed home just before a heavy downpour began.
Lars couldn´t keep his mouth shut. He said to his parents, while they were having dinner in their big kitchen:
“Do you know who he is who throws poison into the lake out there? That´s why all the fish have disappeared, I´m sure.”
“It must be someone from the cleaning unit,” his mother said. “They have to drive too far to get rid of waste elsewhere.
It´s probably better than digging it down in the ground close to towns.”
“He could drive it to Visby where they have a way of getting rid of things like that without destroying the environment,” Granny said drily.
“There have been some protests and demonstrations,” their father said. “But it´s too expensive to have it dumped by the municipal department for recycling. When you have a firm, you have to think about prices, wages and marketing. The consumers protest when things are too expensive. They produce all kinds of plastic utensils out there, like for example plastic bags. Would you want to be without those? No, you wouldn´t. And you wouldn´t want to pay more for them than you do now, would you? That´s why.”
Granny, Lars and Britta looked at each other. They didn´t say anything to this old song about money and and marketing which seemed to be more important than life in the lake. They just sat there quiet and worried and finished their dinner.
“Well, I suppose it doesn´t matter anyway,” their mother said. “They´re going to build an airfield out there, so the lake will disappear, probably in the fall.”
“An airfield!” all three of them exclaimed. “An airfield! That would kill the old oak, the clever old oak tree!” Granny said angrily.
Her son, their father, had seldom seen his mother angry, so he was rather startled. Yet, he said:
“It´s not worth preserving. It´s so old that it cannot last very long.”
“Not worth preserving!” Granny exclaimed furious.
“We have to save the tree!” Britta shouted.
“You just go and do that,” her mother said laughing.
She was used to Britta´s great ideas about making the world better, saving cats and dogs and now a tree!
The next day Granny, Britta and Lars went out to the tree. They knew that they were its only friends. Nobody cared about it. They even forgot to bring lunchpackets this time. It was no longer a picnic.
They stood under the great big tree, sheltered by its grand branches and leaves and Granny said:
“We´re going to do everything in our power to save you. Do you have any idea of what we could do to open human eyes to the fact, that you are more important than an airfield?”
The oak said:
“ Once upon a time there were great big living woods here. I am the last tree. Two thousand years ago, I was the tiniest tree around. They came and destroyed the others, little by little, day by day, sometimes one, sometimes hundreds of them at the same time. They needed logs for their fires. They needed timber for their houses. They didn´t renew the woods. And now that I am the only one left, I hardly dare drink the water from the lake, because of the poison. Many of my root arms are long enough to reach down into the lake. I haven´t dared for some time. That´s why I´m thirsty most of the time. It doesn´t rain enough. Yet, I have to do with rainwater.”
“We are going to save you,” Granny said.
All three of them hurried home, because from now on there was no use just standing and talking. There was a need for action.
Grandma held a speech at the dinner table that evening. She said, that she and the kids would do everything possible in order to save the old tree. The parents became very anxious and said, that if she did anything against a firm called “Plastico,” the police would come and imprison her. The children were too young for prison, but she certainly wasn´t!
Grandma said the police wouldn´t be able to do much about this, because she and the children were going to chain themselves to the oak, so nobody could harm it without hurting them. She asked her son, the children´s father, to buy some real broad and strong steel chains and added, that the parents were welcome to take part in their action. The parents said “ no thanks.”
On the following day, her son bought some real broad and heavy steel chains for all of them and said that it would even be hard for the police to cut them without a special equipment. He had also found some special padlocks to fasten the chains with. They had never seen anything like it, neither in size nor strength. While they were chained with this to the tree, it would be impossible to start building an airfield out there.
Now, it became a daily routine to walk out to the lake and check if the driver of the truck came to get rid of his stuff.
One day, when they were resting in the shade of the tree and hoping that it would talk to them, they heard a frightful noise, as if the sky was about to fall down on them.
Out there, on the gravel tracks they knew so well, three huge excavators came rolling. They were bright yellow and the size of boats, much bigger than the ones the farmers use to dig ditches with.
It was now!
Granny, Britta and Lars hurried as much as they could. The steel chains and the padlocks lay there ready for use. The children´s father had helped them wind them around the treetrunk and the broadest branches. The only thing they had to do was to close the padlock after winding the chains twice around themselves.
They barely succeeded in closing the padlocks and throwing the keys out in the lake, before the first excavator reached them.
The driver stopped his machine in order to see what was going on. He had not expected to see two children and an old woman chained to the big tree he was supposed to hew down and pull away.
What was he to do?
He stepped down from his heights and walked to the tree.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“We shall be sitting here, until people understand, that this tree is worth more than an airfield,” said Granny in a friendly tone.
“Now, come on,” the excavator man said. “I´m only at work. You can´t do this to me. They´ll fire me, if I don´t do as they told me to.”
“If you cut down this living being, you will not only kill the oldest one among us, but you will have to kill the three of us too,” Granny said firmly as if she were talking to a school boy who had been naughty.
Now the other machineman had arrived and jumped down from his excavator. He stared at Grandma and the children, as if he had never before seen people out in nature. He just stood there and stared at them and scratched his head, without knowing what to do.
These two guys didn´t want to kill anyone. They were just obeying orders.
Grandma addressed the second one:
“Now, Oliver boy, I know you and your family and none of you would ever take part in destroying nature, would you? You are no messenger of death, are you?”
“It´s not my fault,” he said hurriedly, still scratching his head. “My boss said to get rid of this tree here. We´re only workers, you know.”
“Nonsense!” Grandma exclaimed. “You´re much more than that. You´re the hands that carry out the work. You should help us, instead of standing there like a fool. Bring some more padlocks and chain yourselves to this tree and help us save its life!”
Oliver lost some of the big size he had acquired from driving the huge machine. Now he looked like the good little boy he used to be, the neighbour´s son with his hands deep down in his pockets. He didn´t know what to say or how to react. His boss was far away on a business trip. In fact, Oliver felt that the right thing for him to do was to help Grandma and the children. However, just as he was about to make up his mind, three limousines came driving along the tracks.
Three gentlemen stepped out of one of the sleek cars. When they saw what was going on by the tree, they started running in their eagerness to witness what was going on. When they realized what it really was, one of them ran to the limousine and called the police over the mobile phone.
Oliver got so frightened that he jumped up to his excavator and closed the door of the glass cabin. He was high up above the conflicting forces.
“Idiot! “ Grandma shouted after him.
There came a long Landrover jeep and in it were the kid´s parents and two of their neighbours. They drove straight to the oak tree, stepped out and chained themselves to its branches with new chains and heavy padlocks. Before they closed themselves into this tight unison with the tree, they put one of the chains through the windows of their jeep, so that it was also fastened to the tree. A whole jeep! Just like that!
“Hurray!” shouted Grandma and the children.
“That´s what families are for,” their father chimed laughing.
He had called the local newspaper and knew they were on their way to take pictures and write in the paper about the demonstration.
Soon the journalists came and started shooting pictures.
After that came a big television bus. The tv-people kept asking questions, filming and running around, until the police arrived. Nobody had thought that anyone cared about such an old tree by a tiny lake far away from everywhere. The police had only sent two police officers.
One of them was a young woman and she said:
“Is it clear to you what you are doing? It´s illegal and you risk being imprisoned.”
“No,” Grandma answered. “What we are doing is legal. We´re helping nature and if that is illegal, we need a new law.”
“The law is the law!” said the other officer, a young guy.
“The law is just a law, until you make a new and a better one!” Grandma corrected him.
The officer scratched his head under his cap which was too big for him.
While they were discussing this thing about the law being a law, until you got a new one, the television people filmed the whole thing and then they drove away, as if they were racing. They wanted this on the day´s news.
It became quite a gathering. Grandma, Lars and Britta, their parents, two neighbors and their jeep were chained to the tree and nobody said anything. Some got tired. Grandma took a little nap. Gradually it grew dark and cold. They sat there during the whole night.
When the sun finally put its crown above the hills at the horizon and sailed out to the Baltic Sea, they woke up from their slumber.
The deep and hoarse voice said:
“It´s today you have to stay firm.”
Nobody had ever heard such a beautiful voice before. It was in no way similar to any other voice any of them had ever heard. Now they all realized that what Grandma and the kids were trying to do was something unusual and something good. What else but the good in the universe could use nature as its voice?
The sun filled the whole sky now, so it hurt their eyes. The night had been long and cold, but the sun warmed everybody up.
They were there all of them, those who were chained to the tree, the sleeping excavator men in their machines, and the police who had dozed off in their patrol car.
“I´m hungry,” Britta said and yawned.
“I am too,” Grandma said. “We are on strike and while it is so, we shall not eat.”
“Do you mean we´re on a hunger strike?” their father asked.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“Oh, gosh,” he murmured. This was the worst thing he thought could happen to him, – no food!
At eight o´clock in the morning all kinds of vehicles started appearing in the landscape. There were Volvos, Saabs, cycles, motorbikes, tractors, police cars and limousines.
The three elegant limousines that had driven away during the night had been out to fetch some authorities.
Some of the cyclists and motorists had brought their own chains and padlocks.
Suddenly Lars said:” Isn´t that the man who poured poison into the lake?”
“Yes,” Britta asserted.
The man chained himself to the tree!
In a short while, there were so many people chained to the tree that it was hard to find space for more. They had even chained themselves to the jeep. People were sitting inside it, on its top and the hood.
The tv had shown what was going on at the little lake in Gotland. Very few people in Sweden knew about the old oak and much fewer knew about the airfield plans.
Many people became so enthusiastic about Grandma and the children´s initiative, that they sailed in their boats from the mainland to this wonderful island in order to participate in the demonstration.
They wanted to make the government aware of what was going on in their own country.
A big bus filled with police arrived. They were uniformed State Police.
“Now it starts,” Grandma whispered. “It´s today we have to stay firm. Remember that.”
A woman in a grey suit walked up to the crowd.
She was the minister of environmental affairs.
“Is it clear to you,” she asked Grandma, “that you are breaking the law. What you are doing is illegal.”
“No,” Grandma answered.
“No,” answered all the others.
There were now about five hundred people around the tree.
The chorus was so loud and strong, that it hit her like a wave, so she almost fell.
“You have to leave the site at once or we shall ask the police to remove you,” she said.
“Let them try,” said the fivehundredpeoplechorus.
The minister signalled the police who surrounded the tree and its protectors.
They walked closer and closer to the tree and its fivehundredfriends.
The force had masks before their faces and carried huge scissors in order to cut the chains.
When they were about to cut the first chain and drive the fivehundredpeople away, the old oak closed its enormous leaf-crown in on them, so they could´t even move. And then the old tree started singing with its hoarse voice:
“Let us live and feel
and care about our Earth,
our Trees and Nature.
Let us love the fields,
the lakes and larks
and not destroy it all.
Let us find
what´s left of Paradise
and save the best
the World has got.
Nothing can replace the woods,
the fields, the birds, ourselves.”

And the fivehundredpeoplechorus started singing this verse together with the old oak.
All Swedes love music and singing, so the State Police forgot their job. Their scissors fell to the ground and they joined in the song.
The Minister of Environmental Affairs was speechless.
The excavator men rang the bells of their machines.
The tv people filmed the whole thing.

Let us live and feel
and care about our Earth,
our Trees and Nature.
Let us love the fields,
the lakes and larks
and not destroy it all.
Let us find
what´s left of Paradise
and save the best
the World has.
Nothing can replace the woods,
The fields, the birds,
ourselves.

The Minister said:
“We shall have to change the law.
Nobody is ever to hew down this great old oak.”
Now the uniformed police helped Grandma and the children, their parents, their neighbors and the fivehundredpeoplechorus out of their chains.
The oak lifted its branches gracefully, so the birds could sit on them again and sing to the coming of spring.
TV stations around the world broadcast this and from now on everybody knows the new law.