Sveinn's sister, one year older than he, is Mette. They're scions of Swedish nobility, with remote blood ties to King Oscar II, the ruling monarch.

Sveinn is both an artist and a naturalist, and has studied in Germany and in Africa. He's an obsessive; if Darwin could devote time to collecting finches, he can jolly well devote time to the collection of seashore cockles.

However, his obsessions have a time limit: a beginning, and then, sooner or later, an end. At the moment, he is looking towards finding something new to collect and study.

I mentioned that he is also an artist. Naturalist studies were not frowned upon in the social circles he frequented, but being a paint-stained lowly worker in oils was. Ah, but his friends admired arts, but from a distance, no need to be stained! So, Sveinn painted furtively.

He had little sartorial discipline; his sister had to prod, cajole, and remind him to wear boots rather than stride barefoot among those folks he outranked by class. But Mette was no paradigm of sartorial virtue herself.

He's a quiet man, soft-spoken, but this perhaps is because his interests and thoughts flow through him like cresents of water, churning and re-defining as they roil; there's little left to say.

Both Sveinn and his sister currently live in London; it seemed convenient was all that he thought about, years before he suddenly knew he was going to need to care.