In her living room in an apartment on Södermalm in Stockholm, Brita Hedlund opens a lined notepad. There she has her system for loan books. On page after page, she has written in pencil which books she is interested in. Everything she picks up and wants to read, she notes in the long list. As she borrows the books, she crosses them out and rates them on a ten-point scale. Some she dismisses with a "no!"
She is 87 years old and spends a large part of her time reading.
- What else should I do? When you're my age, you have very few friends, she says.
She looks up at the taller library assistant Marek Wolk, and says delightedly:
- Hey, buddy!
Both of her wrists are weakened by previous broken bones and she cannot carry anything heavy, but once a month Marek Wolk from Stockholm's city library comes here and leaves a white box filled with borrowed books.
Public libraries around the country do the same. Librarians can be among the last contacts people have in their lives.
Three days earlier, librarian Eva Eriksson stands in front of a shelf in the Stockholm City Library's warehouse premises in Frihamnen. In front of her, she has 30 books that she has collected for Brita Hedlund. Crime stories, novels and a book about the history of Egypt.
This is the hub for the service "Boken kommer" in Stockholm, where six librarians work part-time to provide people with books when they are most vulnerable.
Every month Eva Eriksson calls Brita Hedlund to go through her book lists and agree on the next loan. Others let the librarians help more with choosing. Eva Eriksson looks after approximately 30 borrowers around Stockholm. Several read "copycat" a lot.
- They don't feel well if they don't get 20 novels - now.
This service was introduced in Sweden in the 1950s and is available to anyone who for some reason is prevented from visiting the library themselves, for a short period or longer.
The contact will be something other than meeting home care and healthcare staff.
- Talking about books can make you feel more at ease. You get to be a person and not just someone to be taken care of, says Eva Eriksson.
One of her borrowers is a hundred years old and very alert, talking directly about exactly what books she wants. Advanced literature, such as newly published psychiatry.
Another recently said that she can only cope with feeling good right now, since several in the family have passed away in a short time.
Eva Eriksson is still unprepared for certain announcements. She can talk on the phone with a borrower, decide which books to send. A couple of days later the person is dead.
- It will be emotional. You get pretty close to someone when you talk about books.
At the entrance to the library warehouse in Frihamnen stands a silver gray van with the word "Library" on the side. Marek Wolk has packed the cargo space with personal book cases, today he will drive out deliveries to borrowers south of town.
First he stops at Brita Hedlund's, takes out her white box and calls the intercom.
Brita Hedlund has lived here in the same apartment building since she was two years old. Here there are several reading armchairs, art books and a bookshelf with Stockholmiana that she collects. The walls are decorated with paintings and souvenirs. Marek Wolk has heard the stories behind most of them. Brita Hedlund describes herself as a chatterbox.
They start discussing a cap in the hall, which Brita's husband once received from Björn Borg.
- I ask about everything. There will always be some story, says Marek Wolk.
He came to Sweden from Poland in 1985, and started working as a library assistant five years later. Soon he was driving books home to the borrowers through "Boken kommer".
In the borrowers' home, he got a different picture of Sweden than the one that appeared outside, learned about the country's layers of history.
- I came home to people and everything looked like it was in the 60s.
He asked about wedding photos, dialects and embroidered clothing, people told about the cramped conditions of childhood, about what it was like during the Second World War.
- There are generations that do not like to brag about what they have done in life. But sometimes they want to talk about a book, and then they start talking about what they themselves have been through.
In the city of Stockholm, there are approximately 200 people who use "Boken kommer".
Often those who receive the service have been avid readers all their lives, frequent library visitors who know the staff, says Jenny Lindberg, researcher at the University of Libraries who has studied the subject.
But quite a few that she has interviewed in her research have also started to read a lot more as they get older and have more time.
- You can become a reader. There is nothing that is only established when you "crack the code" when you are small.
For the oldest borrowers she spoke to, the service is "fundamentally meaningful".
- Many spoke of human encounters, intellectual stimulation, an emotional exchange. The feeling of being part of a meaningful context, both through the worlds of literature and in the concrete meeting with the library's staff.
- There is an existential quality in this service that can never appear in any statistics sticks, says Jenny Lindberg.
The latest book that Brita Hedlund has put on her list is the detective story "Rivals in Rome" by Anders and Anette de la Motte. She loves detective stories, and the list is full of them. But here is also a biography of Gustav III, and the book about Egypt that Marek Wolk has just delivered. Much is newly published.
She likes memoirs, and books that give insight into how other people live.
Through the books, she experiences things, she says. And she has a contact, a human voice to talk about books with.
- That means everything.
