1.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
2.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
3.
Film director
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A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. Generally, a film director controls a films artistic and dramatic aspects, the director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film, the film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized, or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions, there are many pathways to becoming a film director. Some film directors started as screenwriters, cinematographers, film editors or actors, other film directors have attended a film school. Some outline a general plotline and let the actors dialogue, while others control every aspect. Some directors also write their own screenplays or collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners, some directors edit or appear in their films, or compose the music score for their films. Film directors create a vision through which a film eventually becomes realized/noticed. Realizing this vision includes overseeing the artistic and technical elements of production, as well as directing the shooting timetable. This entails organizing the crew in such a way as to achieve their vision of the film. This requires skills of leadership, as well as the ability to maintain a singular focus even in the stressful. Moreover, it is necessary to have an eye to frame shots and to give precise feedback to cast and crew, thus. Thus the director ensures that all involved in the film production are working towards an identical vision for the completed film. The set of varying challenges he or she has to tackle has been described as a jigsaw puzzle with egos. It adds to the pressure that the success of a film can influence when, omnipresent are the boundaries of the films budget. Additionally, the director may also have to ensure an intended age rating, thus, the position of film director is widely considered to be a highly stressful and demanding one. It has been said that 20-hour days are not unusual, under European Union law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory. Auteur theory is a film criticism concept that holds that a directors film reflects the directors personal creative vision
4.
Ingmar Bergman
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer, and producer who worked in film, television, theatre and radio. He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television and he also directed over 170 plays. From 1953 he forged a creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, most of his films were set in Sweden, and numerous films from Through a Glass Darkly onward were filmed on the island of Fårö. His work often dealt with death, illness, faith, betrayal, bleakness and insanity. Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden, the son of Erik Bergman, a Lutheran minister and later chaplain to the King of Sweden, and Karin and he grew up with his older brother Dag and sister Margareta surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. His father was a parish minister with strict ideas of parenting. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions, such as wetting the bed, there was everything that ones imagination could desire—angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans. Although raised in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman later stated that he lost his faith at age eight and only came to terms with this fact while making Winter Light in 1962. His interest in theatre and film began early, At the age of nine, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a magic lantern, a possession that altered the course of his life. Within a year, he had created, by playing with this toy and he fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts. Bergman attended Palmgrens School as a teenager and his school years were unhappy, and he remembered them unfavorably in later years. Bergman wrote in a response that he had disliked the emphasis on homework. In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the vacation with family friends. He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler, Bergman commented that Hitler was unbelievably charismatic. The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful, Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service. In 1937 he entered Stockholm University College to study art and literature and he spent most of his time involved in student theatre and became a genuine movie addict. At the same time, a romantic involvement led to a break with his father lasted for years
5.
Cries and Whispers
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Cries and Whispers is a 1972 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann. Cries and Whispers marked a return to traditional Bergman themes such as faith, the psyche. Unlike his previous films, it uses saturated colour, especially crimson, after several unsuccessful experimental films, Cries and Whispers was a critical and commercial success. It received five Academy Award nominations including one for Best Picture and it was for the colour and light scheme that the cinematographer and long-time Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist was awarded the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Cries and Whispers takes place in a mansion in the 19th century, filled with red carpets. It depicts the final days of Agnes, who is near death due to cancer and her sisters Maria and Karin have returned to the family home to be with her. However the two women remain distant and awkward, struggling to comfort their sister while dealing with the shock, the deeply religious maid Anna, whose own daughter died at an early age, is the only person in the house able to comfort the dying woman. At length Agnes dies and during her wake the priest declares Agnes faith was stronger than his own. In a dream-like sequence that follows Agnes seemingly returns to life for a moment and asks her sisters one last time for the love. For a moment Karin, Maria and Agnes grow closer to each other, once again only Anna is able to embrace and comfort Agnes. The film is characterized by flashbacks that visit the characters lives and their memories, the last flashback, from the deceased Agnes point of view, is narrated via her diary and shows her sisters descending upon the house clad in white, like angels. The last words are Agnes whispering, Come what may, this is happiness, I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection, and I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much. Bergman then decided to shoot the film in Swedish and not in English, and to finance Cries and Whispers through his own production company, Cinematograph. Although he used personal savings of 750,000 SEK and loans of 200,000 SEK, he also had to ask the Swedish Film Institute for support with the 1.5 million SEK budget, to some criticism. To save costs, the actresses and Nykvist gave their salary as a loan and were nominally co-producers. In his book Images, Bergman wrote, Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries, and that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover. In an essay with the DVD, the critic Peter Cowie also quotes the director, All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except Cries and Whispers
6.
Lutheranism
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway
7.
Missionary
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A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to proselytize and/or perform ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development. The word mission originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning act of sending or mittere, meaning to send. The word was used in light of its usage, in the Latin translation of the Bible. The term is most commonly used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology, a Christian missionary can be defined as one who is to witness across cultures. The Lausanne Congress of 1974, defined the term, related to Christian mission as, Missionaries can be found in many countries around the world. Jesus instructed the apostles to make disciples of all nations and this verse is referred to by Christian missionaries as the Great Commission and inspires missionary work. The New Testament-era missionary outreach of the Christian church from the time of St Paul expanded throughout the Roman Empire and beyond to Persia, in 596, Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian Mission into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland and from Britain became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe, about the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans started moving into Asia and the Far East. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa and these are some of the most well-known missions in history. While some missions accompanied imperialism and oppression, others were relatively peaceful, contemporary Christian missionaries argue that working for justice forms a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel, and observe the principles of inculturation in their missionary work. Over time, the Vatican gradually established a church structure in the mission areas, often starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures. The two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius had extensive success in central Europe. The Byzantines expanded their work in Ukraine after a mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century, Orthodox missionaries also worked successfully among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church. The Russian St. Nicholas of Japan took Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church also sent missionaries to Alaska beginning in the 18th century, including Saint Herman of Alaska, to minister to the Native Americans. Quaker publishers of truth visited Boston and other mid-17th century colonies, the Danish government began the first organized Protestant mission work through its College of Missions, established in 1714. This funded and directed Lutheran missionaries such as Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, India and he also got to know a slave from the Danish colony in the West Indies. Within thirty years, Moravian missionaries had become active on every continent, and they are famous for their selfless work, living as slaves among the slaves and together with the Native Americans, the Delaware and Cherokee Indian tribes
8.
Belgian Congo
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The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa between 1908 and 1960 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century, King Leopold II of the Belgians persuaded the government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopolds creating a colony on his own account, with support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the trinity of state, missionary. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo, the country was split into nesting, hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions, and run uniformly according to a set native policy. This was in contrast to the British and the French, who favoured the system of indirect rule whereby traditional leaders were retained in positions of authority under colonial oversight. The Congo had a degree of racial segregation. The large numbers of immigrants who moved to the Congo after the end of World War II came from across the social spectrum. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo had extensive urbanisation, one of the results was the development of a new middle class of Europeanised African évolués in the cities. By the 1950s the Congo had a labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into the Congo basin. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying malaria and other diseases, such as sleeping sickness. After Henry Morton Stanley had explored the region in a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer, Leopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. The Belgian civil government showed little interest in its monarchs dreams of empire-building, ambitious and stubborn, Leopold decided to pursue the matter on his own account. European rivalry in Central Africa led to tensions, in particular with regard to the largely unclaimed Congo River basin. In November 1884 Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference to find a resolution to the Congo crisis. The rules recognised the Congo basin as a free-trade zone, but Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference and his single-shareholder philanthropic organization received a large share of territory to be organized as the Congo Free State. The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organization, the state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908, when the government of Belgium annexed the area
9.
High jump
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The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern most practised format, a bar is placed between two standards with a mat for landing. In the modern era, athletes run towards the bar and use the Fosbury Flop method of jumping, leaping head first with their back to the bar, performed since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly more effective techniques to arrive at the current form. The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events to feature on the Olympic athletics programme and it is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and IAAF World Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meetings. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, Javier Sotomayor is the current mens record holder with a jump of 2.45 m set in 1993 – the longest standing record in the history of the mens high jump. Stefka Kostadinova has held the world record at 2.09 m since 1987. The rules for the jump are set internationally by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Jumpers must take off on one foot, a jump is considered a failure if the bar is dislodged by the action of the jumper whilst jumping or the jumper touches the ground or breaks the plane of the near edge of the bar before clearance. The technique one uses for the jump must be almost flawless in order to have a chance of clearing a high bar, competitors may begin jumping at any height announced by the chief judge, or may pass, at their own discretion. Three consecutive missed jumps, at any height or combination of heights, the victory goes to the jumper who clears the greatest height during the final. If two or more tie for first place, the tie-breakers are, 1) The fewest misses at the height at which the tie occurred. If the event remains tied for first place, the jumpers have a jump-off, the bar is then alternately lowered and raised until only one jumper succeeds at a given height. The first recorded high jump event took place in Scotland in the 19th century, early jumpers used either an elaborate straight-on approach or a scissors technique. In the later years, the bar was approached diagonally, around the turn of the 20th century, techniques began to modernise, starting with the Irish-American Michael Sweeneys Eastern cut-off. By taking off like the scissors, but extending his back and flattening out over the bar, Sweeney achieved a more economic clearance, another American, George Horine, developed an even more efficient technique, the Western roll. In this style, the bar again is approached on a diagonal, Horine increased the world standard to 2.01 m in 1912. His technique was predominant through the Berlin Olympics of 1936, in which the event was won by Cornelius Johnson at 2.03 m, American and Soviet jumpers held the playing field for the next four decades, and they pioneered the evolution of the straddle technique. Straddle jumpers took off as in the Western roll, but rotated their torso around the bar, straddle-jumper Charles Dumas was the first to clear 7 feet, in 1956, and American John Thomas pushed the world mark to 2.23 m in 1960
10.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
