Just an Ordinary Day at Nordita

by Hans Mühlen 31 Oct 2014 International Cooperation, Nordita
Published in the "From the Institute" section of Nordita News issue 1, 2014

One of the best things with working at Nordita is the international atmosphere at the institute. Our students and researchers come to us from all over the world, and thanks to our scientific programs we have hundreds of international visitors, enriching the institute both scientifically and culturally.

The theme of this year's Nordita Winter School was condensed matter physics. One of the lecturers at the school, Nicola Spaldin from ETH Zurich, is an inspiring virtuoso not only in questions concerning the Berry phase, ferroelectrics, and topological insulators, but also on the clarinet. Whenever she travels to Stockholm she takes the opportunity to play together with the Fjord Quintet. And we at Nordita are treated with an exclusive concert.

The Fjord Quintet at the Winter School concert, 14 January 2014: Sigrid Neumann (violin 1), Lars-Arne Axelsson (violin 2), Krister Persson (violoncello), Erik Hagersten (viola), and Nicola Spaldin (clarinet). On the program: Brahms' Clarinet Quintet and Debyssy's "Petit Pièce".

As mentioned on the top of this page, we celebrated Nowruz earlier this year. This is what Nordita PhD student Sara Jabbari taught us about the Persian new year: Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in the Persian calendar. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical Northward equinox, which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. The moment the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day is calculated exactly every year and families gather together to observe the rituals. Last time it happened was on 20 March 2014 at 6 pm, and Norditians were ready, standing around our version of Haft S?n (or the seven "S"s), a traditional table setting at Nowruz, with seven items that start with the letter "S" or S?n in the Persian alphabet, each item symbolizing qualities like love, patience, health and affluence. Can you spot our Haft S?n items? s?b (apples), sabzeh (wheat, barley or lentil sprouts), samanu (a sweet pudding made from germinated wheat), senjed (the dried fruit of the Oleaster tree), s?r (garlic), somaq (sumac berries) and serkeh (vinegar).

If the Persian spring celebration Nowruz made us all healthy and affluent for the remainder of the year, it unfortunately didn't bring out the Swedish spring. This was our second attempt to use culture to quash the Nordic winter, after our 1 March Maslenitsa party, the Russian version of the celebration of the end of the winter or the start of the lent, like Swedidh Fettisdagen, French Mardi Gras, or British Shrove Tuesday.

Nordita postdoc Alexander Krikun (leftmost in the first photo) promised to make the pancakes traditionally eaten at Maslenitsa (in frying pans on the Nordita BBQ, no less), and the rest of us brought caviar and other salty and sweet fillings. The sunny-golden pancakes inspired Sarah to a major break-through in her work on determining the origin of sunspots (rightmost photo).

After that we gave up on spring magic, even neglecting the Swedish arrival-of-spring bonfire rituals at Valborg, 30 April. Braving the cold, we had our first BBQ, this most Norditian of rituals, on 7 March, continuing grilling outdoors on and off to Midsummer Eve, 20 June, when the weather still was about the same. Can you guess which photos were taken on which of these dates?