Having a chat with Swedes in Minnesota about a missing head (of a statue)

 

A photo of a bust on a pedestal in a park. 
I edited it so you can see what it would look like without the
bust statue on top

On the second Monday every month, there's this so-called "Pratstund" where a group of Minnesota Swedes and folks of Swedish descent have a Zoom where everyone speaks Swedish at wildly variant levels of fluency.  Somehow I got invited a year ago and I show up periodically. Meaning twice in total. The second time I made an appearance was last week.

So I get on the video chat and the head Swede is talking about a BFD that recently transpired in their little town. It was front page news. It went down like this:

The town had been founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1800s or whenever the Swedes were in the business of founding towns. There was one gentleman in particular who idk did a lot of founding-type work and so to honor him in the early 2000's, the town erected a bust of the guy and put it in the town square. 

Five years later, someone stole the head. They made off with the bust under the cover of darkness.

Good news! The town had insurance and the sculptor still had the mold so a new head was commissioned and erected on the pedestal. 

Life goes on for fifteen years, which brings us to January 2026.

Right after the new year, someone left out front town hall, in an IKEA bag mind you... the original head.

(In an IKEA bag! I could barely control my face.)

So now the town found themselves with two heads. There was a meeting to decide what to do with the original head, which was no longer needed since the pedestal had a new head installed upon it and the town is too small to have two busts of the same dude.

The town decided to host a lottery and raffle off the old head. A local indoor market won the head. They are going to put it in the lobby area.

Honestly I was on the edge of my seat while this whole dramatic true-crime tale unfolded. Then one of the women asks if the chicken was good there. 

Because yeah. Wildly variant levels of fluency. Points for the head Swede for being lovely and kind in the face of total low key chaos. 

As for me... I might just come back next month.