sigizmund reviewed Markings. by Dag Hammarskjöld
Vägmärken
5 stars
I read this in Swedish. This is a book by Secretary-General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld, who was shot down by far-right paramilitaries fighting for the Belgian-backed Katanga militias during the Congo crisis. He was, and perhaps will always be, the greatest Secretary-General the UN has had. This is because he was a true visionary.
Vägmärken, as Markings is called in Swedish, is a text he was apparently working on during the Congo Crisis. It's made up of aphorisms, and of observations, both from his own life, as well as of the experience of being human. A lot of it is Christian, a lot of it is kind of Nietzschean, in the sense that Hammarskjöld is hammering home the idea that you really have to work for your ideals, and have faith in them, and that through this they'll come to pass. He was a remarkable man, and I didn't …
I read this in Swedish. This is a book by Secretary-General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld, who was shot down by far-right paramilitaries fighting for the Belgian-backed Katanga militias during the Congo crisis. He was, and perhaps will always be, the greatest Secretary-General the UN has had. This is because he was a true visionary.
Vägmärken, as Markings is called in Swedish, is a text he was apparently working on during the Congo Crisis. It's made up of aphorisms, and of observations, both from his own life, as well as of the experience of being human. A lot of it is Christian, a lot of it is kind of Nietzschean, in the sense that Hammarskjöld is hammering home the idea that you really have to work for your ideals, and have faith in them, and that through this they'll come to pass. He was a remarkable man, and I didn't read this without knowing something about the man and the circumstances around his death, and I've admired him a long time. Finding this book on a bookshelf in a bookshop, I was ecstatic. Reading it was surreal.
Vägmärken translates as "markings", but directly translated it's actually "Road marks". What Hammarskjöld writes here is less so a roadmap that you can follow to live a good comfortable life, than a roadmap you can follow to live a meaningful one. It's a collection of short, idealistic musings, aphorisms, etc, which centre basically around his own values, and his own beliefs of what he should be striving for, but also for what we, as humanity, should be striving towards.
If this seems overly abstract, or rambly, it's because I'm also having a hard time pinpointing exactly how to describe this text. It's very interesting, and I personally also found it very valuable to read, in that it's given me a good roadmap on acting out my ideals. It's a short read - if you're able to, I can only recommend reading it, though I'm sure you might benefit from knowing a bit about the crisis surrounding his premature death. And I'd recommend reading up on that, even if you don't want to read this book.