Notarius

I wanted to know the Swedish word for notary, so I referred to the Skoldatanäten Lexin web-site which gave the answer notarius, or, in full, notarius publicus. I was a little surprised, as one sees relatively few such obvious latinisms in Swedish. Indeed the only other one that comes immediately to mind is centrum, when referring to a town or city centre.

I wanted to know this because my wife is in the process of renewing her passport, to which end she required a person of suitable standing to sign a form confirming that she is who she claims to be. A Google™ search subsequently led me to the address and telephone number of the sole notarius in the town where we live. We went to his office this morning.

I had never visited a notary's office before, and didn't quite know what to expect. I imagined our provincial professional in a wood-panelled office with a large, ornate desk, and leather-upholstered chairs. In the computer game I started playing at the weekend, Syberia, one of the first things the protagonist has to do is to visit the notary in the French Alpine town to where she has been sent by her employers. The office of this fictional notaire is an elegant essay in art-nouveau...

Such decor would not have been entirely out of place in the building we visited earlier today, which may well date back to the 1920s. We made our way up to the 3rd floor in a somewhat rickety old elevator, where we found the offices of Messrs W_____ and F_______, advokaterna, lawyers. Our entry through the office door rang a bell, but we were left to linger hesitantly in the hallway for a short while before a secretary brusquely motioned us into a waiting room, which contained a couple of sofas, and some cheap-looking book-cases tightly crammed with legal tomes.

No more than five minutes later, a man in his fifties, mustachioed and bespectacled, wearing a tweed jacket and with a wearily crumpled air about him, invited us into his office. To judge from it, one might assume that the legal profession is less lucrative in Sweden than elsewhere. There was an overproliferation of paper, in the guise both of books and of loose documents, which threatened to engulf the whole room. The furnishings were more functional than elegant, although there was indeed some leather-upholstered seating. A mismatched selection of mediocre paintings decorated the walls, yielding pride of place to a very large framed photograph of a yacht behind Mr. W_____'s desk.

The signing, stamping and general notarising took only ten minutes or so to complete, and cost us two hundred kronor.