US Memory Loss Man Wakes Up Speaking Swedish

BBC ^ | 22 August 2013 | 22 August 2013

[nickcarraway]

An American man, who woke up speaking Swedish but with no idea of his identity, has travelled to Sweden in the hope of restoring his memory.

Michael Boatwright was discovered unconscious in a motel room in Palm Springs, California, in February.

[nickcarraway]

Have you seen this man?

[x]

My diagnosis would be too much Hüsker Dü (the game or the band), but that’s actually Danish or Norwegian.

[blackdog]

Does he favor Abba over Lynnrd Skynnrd?

[A CA Guy]

All I can tell you is the glasses the guy wears in the video dates back to the 80s.

[nickcarraway]

I thought it was The Replacements.

[Michigan Bowhunter]

First thing that came to my mind!

[Veggie Todd]

[llevrok]

I wonder if that whole girl with the dragon tattoo thing makes sense to him now too.

[PowderMonkey]

“Lutefisk. It’s one helluva’ drug!”

[shalom aleichem]

Well it is elementary. Swedish is the default language. The one you know before someone else tries to teach you theirs.

[Slings and Arrows]

"Maybe THIS will refresh your memory!"

[dayglored]

Geez, there went 10 minutes staring at one photo....

...and no I'm not done staring yet...

[SamAdams76]

We are definitely living multiple lifetimes on this planet earth. Often I get flashbacks from previous lives. I think one life, I was drinking a very dark beer out of a flagon from the Middle Ages and I stunk because I hadn't taken a bath in some 15 years.

But that was then. In this lifetime, I shower once a day and drink my beer out of mugs like a civilized person.

[Larry381]

Strange story, but true.
During World War 2 a German nun belonging to the Sisters of Charity was working at a German military hospital in East Prussia. The head of the hospital surrendered it to the Russians who then murdered all the patients and killed and raped most of the nursing staff.
This nun was later found in a Polish farmhouse in a coma-she had just appeared there one day accompanied by a Russian officer who appealed to the owners of the farm to care for her.
This nun finally came out of her coma in 1946 but could no longer speak her native language, German, but could speak English fluently, a language unknown to her at that time.
She later emigrated to the US in the fifties where I met her-she was one of my teachers in Catholic school and was someone I never forgot.
She spoke English without a trace of German accent

[Exit148]

It doesn’t say whether he had any knowledge of the Swedish language, or if he only spoke English.

[Defiant]

I think I read in an earlier article that he had spent a short time in Sweden in his youth.