Grandmothers

an Art of Dying fragment

In Swedish, we have separate words for maternal grandmother (mormor — literally: mothermother) and paternal grandmother (farmor — literally fathermother). And then there was trollmor (Minta, my troll mother — not many humans have one of those).

My mother Lisbet’s mother, my mormor (whom we all called Mommi), was named Olga. My father Kjell’s mother was named Irene.