Eriksberg (Uppsala)

District of Uppsala, Sweden.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
How I Learned to Understand the World	Hans Rosling	setting	In 1952, aged four, Rosling nearly drowned in the open drain in front of his grandparents’ house while his mother was in hospital with tuberculosis.

How I Learned to Understand the World — Hans Rosling (2019)

Source: How I Learned to Understand the World · Readwise highlight

Even then, in 1952, there was no deep drainage system in the Eriksberg area of Uppsala, where many factory workers, including my paternal grandparents, had their home.

• Role: setting
• In the book: In 1952, aged four, Rosling nearly drowned in the open drain in front of his grandparents’ house while his mother was in hospital with tuberculosis. His grandfather, a brickworks man, had built the wooden house himself on a wooded plot.
• Why it matters: Earliest memory and the source of his sense of slum conditions (open drains) and of Sweden’s rapid improvement.