I haven’t been reading Francis Strand’s weblog How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons recently, and coming across it again I’m amazed, again, at the skill and calm with which it is written. It’s a wonderful example of a narrative weblog. Rather than the long serial narrative that you see in Flight Risk, where each post fits into a complicated over-arching plot, Francis Strand’s blog consists of micro-narratives. You can appreciate each post independently, which means that I can easily come back after not reading it for a few months and feel right at home. Flight Risk, on the other hand, frightens me off with the mass of archives I’ll have to read to catch up with the storyline. It’s serial, but still bound to the notion of a whole work where readers are expected to read right from the start.

How to learn Swedish has a very simple but effective method of tying posts together: each post is concluded with the Swedish word for the day. What a brilliant strategy. It’s the perfect excuse for the title of the weblog, and reinforces the theme of the weblog, which is written by an American in Stockholm, who often experiences the strangeness of a different culture. It’s a a refreshing variant of metaphor, becuase of course the words chosen reflect the theme of each post. And it creates a rhythm of variations on a set theme.

Many webloggers post micronarratives now and then. Francis Strand does it all the time.