Swedish Norway

Sunday, nine o'clock, and for once Degsy's mam isn't listening through the wall. She's brought her knitting into the studio.

So Gaz tells her whose ground she's sitting on. For at least six hundred years, this corner of the coast was Norway. Then, in the winter of 1658, the sea between the Danish islands froze. Karl X Gustav marched his army across the ice of the Little Belt, horses led by the bridle with wide gaps between them, and some of it went through — including the king's own sledge, moments after he'd climbed out. According to a French diplomat who was there, the frozen beer had to be chopped up with axes, and the king might never have tried the bigger ice if a rider carrying the English envoy's peace letter hadn't come across it first.

A week after the army reached Zealand, Denmark had agreed peace terms. At Roskilde, on 26 February 1658, it signed away a third of its land, and Norway lost Bohuslän. The French mediator signed without his credentials: the courier carrying them was stuck in the ice.

Halfway through, there's a knock at the door. It's Roy, the landlord, and he isn't alone.

Two new punk tracks off the back of it: THE ICE WILL HOLD and SWEDISH NORWAY.

The history is fact-checked. The mangling is the comedy.

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