Dark forests: the art of John Bauer

Brother St Martin and the Three Trolls

Not long after we bought our house I was given a print by John Bauer. It was Brother St Martin and the Three Trolls, a watercolour painted by Bauer in 1913 which shows the saint in a dark moss covered pine forest, his hand outstretched in greeting or warning to three squat forest trolls.

I love it for many reasons, not least because it captures just what our forest looks and feels like – that’s a dark, liminal space, where the trees stand watchful, the moss grows, water trickles and there’s a sense that just out of sight there are things that you cannot see – but which see you. It is totally silent. The print also reminds me of the illustrated fairytales I used to borrow from the library as a child; I’m pretty sure I must have seen many of Bauer’s artworks in those books without ever realising who he was or what significance he’d play later in my life.

Another reason I like it is that Bauer was a local artist. Born in Rogberga outside Jönköping in 1882 he grew up among the lakes and forests of Småland and died there 36 years later, drowned in a storm as he travelled across Lake Vättern. Anyone who has ever visited Jönköping knows that lake. I have bathed in it and driven right around it; its one of Jönköping’s most famous landmarks. Compared to our little lakes its more like a Scottish loch – the second largest lake in Sweden. I’m sure that when the wind comes up its a rough place to be but on a sunny day it is unbelievably beautiful.

The vast expanse of Lake Vättern

I have hung the print in our hall. Reading about Bauer afterwards I was unsurprised to learn that like a lot of rural Swedes, much of his life had been spent outdoors, studying the wildlife and animals. His preliminary sketches were known for their tiny detail even though at first glance I’d say it is the mood of his paintings that arrests you most rather than his accuracy. Although he travelled a lot as a young man he often longed for the Småland landscapes he grew up in and liked the idea of living among the forests. Years after his death, Bauer’s friend Ove Eklund said Bauer would mumble about on their walks, taking in every detail of the mushrooms and plants he found. He described the creatures he saw – the trolls and magical beings that featured in his artworks – and it was Eklund’s belief that this wasn’t just his imagination, he was certain Bauer really believed these things existed.

Leap the Elk, from Princess Tuvstarr and the Fishpond.

Bauer studied at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Art and had an early fascination with the folk tales and stories he grew up with. His art has a distinct Art Nouveau style and his figures often have a mythic appearance, with great attention paid to their clothes and armour – details he based on artefacts he had studied in museums. In 1904 he was commissioned to make a study of the Sami (then referred to as Lapp) people in Swedish Lapland and his portraits of traditional dress are beautiful but also important records of the lifestyle and dress of the Sami at the turn of the 20th Century. Many of the details he recorded were also later worked in to the clothes worn by his woodland trolls.

From Bland Tomtar och Troll 1915

In 1906 he married Esther Ellqvist, who he had met when she was also a student at the royal academy and two years later, funded by his father, a businessman, the couple moved to Italy for a year. Bauer was hugely influenced by the style and techniques of the medieval artists whose work and frescos he found there but his trip turned sour in Rome when a murder was committed near their home and he was briefly under suspicion. The outrage prompted them to return home to Sweden and cast a shadow over what had been until then an idyllic adventure.

There is a luminous quality about Bauer’s art that makes it perfect for fairy tales. He is masterful in his use of light and shade and the contrast between his beautiful figures and the mishappen, awkward trolls, with all their intricate detail makes his paintings the sort of thing that is best pored over close up, in the pages of a book. His most famous work was for Bland tomtar och Troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls), a collection of fary tales written by Swedish authors, that was published in 1907 and has eight volumes. He also illustrated the beautiful Princess Tuvstarr and the Fishpond.

Esther was frequently asked to model for her husband and it was likely a source of conflict that she was expected to give up her artistic ambitions to be the homemaker and the muse to his art. Bauer loved the countryside and the wildness of rural life; she was used to the city life of Stockholm and had concerns that her husband wasn’t always able to support her and a family. Never hugely successful professionally, he frequently borrowed money from his parents and by 1918, when he had given up his lucrative illustration work, and his marriage was in trouble, it was his father’s offer to build the couple a new house in Stockholm that prompted their fateful return to Småland via Lake Vättern.

If you have a basic knowledge of Swedish you’ll know that vatten is the word for water. So many people, on first encountering the lake, are confused – is it translated as Lake Water then? There seems to be no real consensus but interestingly some linguists believe the name takes its meaning from an old word for forest or water spirits – vätter. Perhaps it was those old nature spirits who inadvertantly played a part if the tragedy of the Bauer famil’s death. On returning to Jönköping, Bauer, Esther and their three-year-old son Bengt, decided that a recent train crash, in which many lives were lost, was enough to put them off rail travel. Instead Bauer booked them spaces on the steamer SS Per Brau. On November 19, 1918 the steamer left the nearby town of Gränna filled with a heavy load of ploughshares, iron stoves and sewing machines. When the hold was filled the rest of the cargo was left unsecured on deck, leaving the ship top heavy. By the time the steamer was out at sea a storm was raging and argo began to slide overboard, making the craft tilt dangerously. It capsized just 500 metres from the next port killing all 24 people on board.

She is looking for her heart, from Princess Tuvstarr

It was four years before the ship was recovered for salvage and its recovery was a public spectacle. Parts of the cargo were sold off as souveniers and the ship itself toured the country as an attraction. At the time, much was made of the idea that the mythical nature spirits Bauer drew so well had reclaimed him for themselves. A fanciful idea maybe but one that he might have approved of. Certainly it is to him that I and many others look when we want to see real and imaginary landscapes that best capture the odd, unearthly and wild side of Sweden. For many of us the folklore and magic he created with his art lives on today.

fabric and thread

Typical Swedish cross stitch and embroidery

I love fabric and textiles and use them a lot in my work. I also collect old lace, vintage embroideries and anything that catches my eye so visiting Sweden is an opportunity for me to indulge all those habits. There’s a long tradition of hand sewing and weaving here, especially in Småland where rag rugs are still used on the floors of traditional homes and vintage ones are rare finds to be treasured.

I’m always on the lookout and this month Steve bought me a few pieces for a couple of pounds when he was browsing the loppis stores. They’re perfect and anything I can’t keep will probably go into the pile for exchange – I’m getting to the stage where I think I might need to open an online shop for all the spares I can’t really keep. These examples show simple cross stitch patterns and another style known as huck embroidery, where the thread is woven through the fabric using a blunt needle to give them impression of a woven textile.

A treasury of patterns and motifs to try out

I also had a lucky find online recently when I bought myself a 1940s Märkbok – a guide to Swedish embroidery motifs. Embroidered initials and names are common on table linens and pillowcases from a time when the women of the house used their skill to add personal details to linens and garments. Smålanders have a reputation for being thrifty and clever; it was hard making a living from that stony farm soil so this chimes with my idea of them as clever homemakers, using the cheapest means possible to beautify their homes.

Mouse Winter

First big snowfall of the winter

This year is the first that we haven’t been out to winterise the house. There were good reasons – first we moved house in October, over the border into Suffolk. Normally half-term week is spent enjoying the last glories of the leaf fall – instead we spent it packing boxes.

Second the weather had been so mild late last year that we thought we could just play it by ear and book a flight once the forecasts started to get colder. We waited…and waited…but the temperatures never really dropped and the lakes remained stubbornly unfrozen. Before we knew it, it was February and we hadn’t turned the heater on in the pump room or put anti-freeze down the toilet.

Not our usual snowy winter

Two weeks ago, Steve went over to check all was well and catch up with things. All was well, the only unusual thing was that the pump room, presumably without the heater or the dry air that snow brings, was a bit damp and musty. A few days with the door open took care of that. Everywhere was green and damp, it all looked like it does in the autumn. Our neighbours said it was a mouse winter, one without snow and presumably good for the rodents. How right they were – our field mice had stopped chewing the insulation between the walls onto our decking and instead moved inside to take advantage of our cushions and wax candles. Small scenes of mouse merrymaking were plain to see.

That was Tuesday. Steve went to bed. A few flakes of snow were forecast but nothing maor and then…as often happens in our neck of the woods, he woke up to this…

Wednesday morning…

A good six to eight inches had fallen overnight. By the end of the Thursday most of it had melted but while it lasted it was beautiful.

And Thursday morning takes us back to greens and yellows.

I hear that in Stockholm some of the cherry trees are already coming into flower. No such luck at our place. No sign of the bulbs we planted either but that might be more to do with ‘the piggies’ or the mice than the weather.

North Pole by balloon

The Eagle, collapsed onto the ice

It seems obvious to anyone who visits the Andrée Expedition at Gränna’s Polar Museum that Salomon August Andrée’s ambitious plan to reach the North Pole by hydrogen balloon in 1897 was always doomed to failure.

And yet, like many late 19th Century would-be explorers, Andrée, initially at least, had full confidence in his plan to become the first to reach the geographic North Pole. Why would anyone set out across the frozen ice in nothing more than yards of canvas and a wicker basket, if they didn’t believe it was a risk worth taking?

He wasn’t the only one who believed in the project either. Accompanied by engineer Knut Frænkel and photographer Nils Strindberg (a second cousin of playwright August Strindberg) he enjoyed huge popular support at a time when conquering new lands and pushing the frontiers of scientific enquiry were seen as honourable ways to boost a country’s prestige and standing.

“Supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and funded by people like King Oscar II and Alfred Nobel, his polar exploration project was the subject of enormous interest and was seen as a brave and patriotic scheme.”

Strindberg (L), Frænkel (c) and Andrée (seated)

Today you can see for yourself the madcap ambition of the trip at the museum’s exhibition which contains many of the original tools and supplies that went with the group.

These include the wonderful photographic plates of the journey which show the terrible isolation and desolation of the empty polar ice sheets the group crossed. It is poignant to see the unopened champagne bottle the men took with them to celebrate their victory. And to read their diary entries which show how little time elapsed before their balloon, along with all their hopes, sank down onto the ice and left them facing a lonely trek across uncharted ice sheet, with little hope of rescue.

Andrée was born in Gränna, a picture postcard wooden town on the banks of Lake Vattern outside Jönköping, in 1854. His father died in 1870 and he was close to his mother and siblings, who looked up to him as the de facto head of the family. He was clever and perhaps always slightly unconventional – he attended the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1874. Two years later he made a fateful visit to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where he was employed as a janitor at the Swedish Pavilion. During his trip he read a book on trade winds and met the eccentric American balloonist John Wise; these encounters initiated his lifelong fascination with balloon travel. He returned to Sweden and opened a machine shop where he worked until 1880 but it was less than successful and he soon looked for other employment.

From 1880 to 1882 he was an assistant at the Royal Institute of Technology, and in 1882–1883 he participated in a Swedish scientific expedition to Spitsbergen led by Nils Ekholm, where Andrée was responsible for the observations regarding air electricity. From 1885 to his death, he was employed by the Swedish patent office. From 1891 to 1894 he was also a liberal member of the Stockholm city council. As a scientist, Andrée published scientific journals about air electricity, conduction of heat, and inventions.

Ballooning and, perhaps as importantly, the idea of exploration, scientific advancement and discovery, for Sweden’s glory as well as his own, dominated his thinking. Andrée was a strange and intense man, utterly focused on his dream of balloon travel, a passion that at times seems to have obscured practical considerations and caution. He seemed entirely unafraid to take risks. He first took to the air in a craft called the Svea, which he had characteristically persuaded the publisher of Aftonbladet, the Stockholm newspaper, to buy him.

“In Svea, he made many significant weather observations, studied the speed and movement of sound, and took some remarkable aerial photographs. His greatest accomplishments in the early 1890’s were several daring, and unprecedented, flights across the Baltic Sea. Then, in 1895, Andrée startled his associates by announcing: “It is possible–and feasible–for a balloon to fly to the North Pole!”

(quote from http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/andree.ht)

To those who questioned how a balloon could stay aloft so long he replied that steady winds would keep the balloon in the air. It would be a quicker journey than trekking across the pack ice with dogs. The constant daylight would keep temperatures steady, maintaining the gas and so causing minimum leaks. And by attaching a bag to the craft, the speed could be increased to take advantage of the winds.

On May 31, 1896, the First Andrée Polar Expedition left Stockholm on a tidal wave of patriotic fervor. After almost a year of preparation, Andrée made headlines around the world as he left for Danes Island, Spitsbergen. Six weeks of waiting followed but the steady winds he had hoped for never arrived.

On August 17, Andrée dejectedly gave up. The balloon was deflated and the expedition crept back to Stockholm in a state of abject depression. Almost overnight, the man who had been labeled a national hero because of his previous, daring flights became an object of criticism and ridicule. He was called a “fraud” by some journalists, a “publicity seeker” by others. Even the most sympathetic newspapers conceded that his chances of ballooning to the North Pole were as limp as the deflated bag.

(quote from http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/andree.ht)

Many men might have given up after such a public failure but in 1897 Andrée was back with a new scheme, backed financially by Alfred Nobel, founder of the peace prizes. He had a new balloon, The Eagle, and the Swedish government and the public were soon persuaded to support the expedition. Going with him this time were Knut Fraenkel and Nils Strindberg. Fraenkel was a civil engineer, with considerable Arctic experience. At twenty-seven, he was a mountaineer, gymnast, and railroad builder. Handsome 24-year-old Strindberg was an academic, with a background as a university professor. A keen photographer, he had designed a special reflex camera, in a sealed case, to take pictures as the balloon soared over the polar ice.

The balloon was made of silk and huge care was taken in its construyction. Engineers oversaw its build and Andrée had devised many clever ways to slow down and manage its speed. The wicker basket designed to carry the men was partly designed to be used as a darkroom and there were plans to use up to 36 carrier pigeons to send a rolling series of photographic prints back to Sweden – partly to communicate the expedition’s progress and partly to ensure that even if the expedition failed, some record of their journey would survive them.

Replica of the Eagle balloon with its silk bag and wooden frame

And yet…visit the museum and it seems incredible that anyone would imagine they could travel so far in such weather conditions in what is basically a glorified wooden framed basket. Photographs show teams of seamstresses sewing the silk together on simple hand-turned sewing machines. I have one of these at my Swedish place and beautiful though it is, and effective, it takes a long time and a lot of skill to sew anything larger than a cushion. The scale of the task is breathtaking.

To those looking on, everything that could be done had been. Yet the balloon leaked. While in the shed being readied for flight, it was found that she lost about 35 cubic meters of gas per day. They tried varnishing the seams to keep the gas in but that failed. Everyone agreed that the balloon bag would just have to be remade and the expedition put on hold. Yet the crew disagreed. Perhaps Andrée felt he had come too far in his grand project to back out, despite the danger. Perhaps he felt this time he might get a little luck. In the afternoon of July 11 the balloon was cut from its ropes and the balloon lifted off in a clamour of excitement. For an hour it was visible to the north, a small dot getting smaller and smaller. Then it disappeared. It would be 33 years before The Eagle was seen again.

It was a Norwegian seal ship that discovered the wreckage of the men’s camp on White Island, some way off from where the balloon came down. Their bodies were there too plus an eccentric collection of goods and ephemera that for some reason the men had taken with them and then carried as they marched east across the ice in search of rescue – a white dress tie, an expensive porcelain bowl, the heavy silver base for a German vase, a white shirt in its original wrappings, a large collection of heavy towels, old newspapers, packets of personal letters, and two tickets to the Stockholm Exposition of 1897.

Andrée’s diary was found wrapped securely in oilcloth next to his skin and it revealed that it was the formation of ice on the balloon and the extra weight that created, which finally grounded the craft after four days of sailing. Also found were hundreds of photographic plates which show the conditions the men faced once they were downed. All these items were gathered up and brought back to Stockholm along with the mens remains.

The funeral procession for the explorers’ return to Sweden

Andrée, it seems, had anticipated that the expedition was doomed even before they started. Yet he had gone ahead anyway, committed to an ambitious and daring plan that never really added up, despite his meticulous methods and attention to detail. Ironically, when they died, all three men had enough food and supplies to survive the arctic winter. If they had made it through they could probably have crossed the ice once light returned and found safety with the Inuit who were not far away from their camp. Yet their diary entries suggest that it was weakness in the end that killed them – Strindberg died from a heart attak in early October. His companions follwed him two weeks later, fatally weakened by stomach cramps and diarrhea.

Onlookers study the remains of the crew’s belongings, brought back to Sweden along with their bodies.

If this strange story has inspired you then a visit to Gränna’s Polar Museum will bring it all to life. As well as enjoying the exhibits you can learn more about Andrée’s early life and if you walk up through the town you won’t be able to miss the other famous product of this little mountain town – polkagris, the red and white peppermint rock you see as candy canes on Christmas trees. You can also read in more detail about the expedition in The Ice Balloon here or see the aviation website quoted above here

Wild berries

Before we visited Sweden I’d only ever tasted lingonberries in Ikea. Order a plate of meatballs and if you’re lucky there’s always lingonberry syllt or jam to go alongside. When we moved to the house I was delighted to discover that our woods are filled with lingonberries – and blueberries. Once you know what you’re looking for, the whole countryside is suddenly filled with these tiny delights.

Lingonberries grow on scrubby little bushes with roundish, slightly shiny leaves, close to the ground and they are tiny, smaller than a blackcurrant. This means that when you pick them it is best to use a scrabbler,, a red plastic fork like tool that lets you strip a bush quickly. Raw they’re a lot like a cranberry but if you cook them into jam or soak them in sugar they taste wonderful and work really well as an accompaniment to köttbullar (meatballs), fish, or chicken. I also like it with natural yoghurt or cheesecake.

I’m the sort of person who can pick fruit until the sun goes down. I just never know when to stop. When I was growing up in Wales I would often pick winberries with my mother on the sand dunes close to our home. Like lingonberries they were tiny but these are sweet enough to eat as you go and leave your hands stained bright purple. I’m pretty sure that the Swedish winberry is blåbær, the blueberries I also pick close to our home. When my mother was little, she would often pick winberries and bring them home in the folds of her skirt (I expect she got into huge trouble for those fruit stains) and if she bumped into a neighbour would resist all sorts of bribes to give up her harvest. The suggestion being that they take so long to pick that it is always better to get someone else to do it for you! In July and August, when I’m out for a run, I pass lots of blåbær bushes and my run takes twice as long as I stop to pick a few handfuls for my breakfast.

Lingonberry bushes in the woods at our house.

At my Norfolk home we also have lots of fruit growing wild nearby and in the summer I pick blackberries, wild strawberries and raspberries (single figure picks for these rarities) damsons, wild plums, sloes and crab apples. Fruit picking has always been a part of my life and it brings back many good memories. There’s a sort of mindfulness in the way it forces you to slow down, to enjoy the sunshine and the sounds around you.

If you’d like to find out more about Swedish berries or other traditional foods then a great website is SwedishFood.com which has lots of information and recipes. You can find it here

 

The Legend of Småland

Småland is a historical province in southern Sweden that borders Blekinge, Scania, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means Small Lands and its landscape is typically mountainous and rocky, pine forests interspersed with beautiful lakes. It was love at first sight for us when we visited there.

In the Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Selma Lagerlof has a chapter titled The Legend of Småland, which charmingly explains how this hard to farm, rocky region, came into being. It begins after tiny Nils and the wild geese with whom he is travelling, look down at the land beneath them carpeted with flowers and, realising that Spring is on its way, decide they must make haste if they plan to get to Lapland in time for the breeding season.

“Akka said instantly that there was no time to hunt up any of the stopping places in Småland. By the next morning they must travel northward, over Östergötland.

Nils would then see nothing of Småland and this grieved him. He had heard more about Småland than he had about any other province and he had longed to see it with his own eyes.

The summer before, when he had served as goose-boy with a farmer in the neighbourhood of Jordberga, he had met a pair of Småland children almost every day, who also tended geese. These children had irritated him terribly with their Småland.

It wasn’t fair to say that Osa, the goose-girl, had annoyed him. She was much too wise for that. But the one who could be really tiresome was her brother, little Mats.

‘Have you heard, Nils Goose-boy, how it went when Småland and Skåne were created?’ he would ask, and if Nils Holgersson said no, he began immediately to relate the old folk legend.

‘Well, it was at that time when God was creating the world. While He was in the midst of His work Saint Peter came walking by. He stopped and looked on, and then he asked if it was hard to do. “Well, it isn’t exactly easy,” said God. Saint Peter stood there a little longer, and when he noticed how easy it was to lay out one landscape after another, he too wanted to try his hand at it. “Perhaps you need to rest yourself a little,” said Saint Peter. “I could attend to the work in the meantime for you.” But this God did not wish. “I do not know if you are so much at home in this art that I can trust you to take hold where I leave off,” He answered. Then Saint Peter was angry and said that he believed he could create just as fine countries as God himself.

‘It happened that God was just then creating Småland. It wasn’t even half ready, but it looked as though it would be an indescribably pretty and fertile land. It was difficult for God to say no to Saint Peter, and, apart from this, He thought very likely that a thing so well begun no one could spoil. Therefore He said: “If you like, we will prove which one of us two understands this sort of work the better. You, who are only a novice, shall go on with this which I have begun, and I will create a new land.” To this Saint Peter agreed at once; and so they went to work – each one in his place.

‘God moved southward a bit, and there He undertook to create Skåne. It wasn’t long before He finished it, and soon He asked if Saint Peter had finished, and would come and look at His work. “I had mine ready long ago,” said Saint Peter and from the sound of his voice it could be heard how pleased he was with what he had accomplished.

‘When Saint Peter saw Skåne he had to acknowledge that there was nothing but good to be said of that land. It was a fertile land and easy to cultivate, with wide plains wherever one looked, and hardly a sign of hills. It was evident that God had really tried to make it such that people should feel at home there. “Yes, this is a good country,” said Saint Peter, “but I think that mine is better.” “Then we’ll take a look at it,” said God.

‘The land was already finished in the north and east when Saint Peter began the work, but the southern and western parts, and the whole interior, he had created all by himself. Now when God came up there, where Saint Peter had been at work, He was so horrified that He stopped short and exclaimed: “What on earth have you been doing with this land, Saint Peter?”

‘Saint Peter, too, stood and looked around perfectly astonished. He had had the idea that nothing could be so good for a land as a great deal of warmth. Therefore he had gathered together an enormous mass of stones and mountains, and erected a highland, and this he had done so that it should be near the sun, and receive much help from the sun’s heat. Over the stone heaps he had spread a thin layer of soil, and then he had thought that everything was well arranged.

‘But while he was down in Skåne a couple of heavy showers had come up, and more was not needed to show what his work amounted to. When God came to inspect the land, all the soil had been washed away, and the bare mountain foundation showed through. Where it was about the best lay clay and heavy gravel over the rocks, but it looked so poor that it was easy to understand that hardly anything except spruce and juniper and moss and heather could grow there. But one thing was plentiful, and that was water. It had filled up all the clefts in the mountain; and lakes and rivers and brooks, these one saw everywhere, to say nothing of swamps and morasses which spread over large tracts. And the most exasperating thing of all was that while some districts had too much water, it was so scarce in others that whole fields lay like dry moors, where sand and earth whirled up in clouds with the least little breeze.

‘”What can have been your meaning in creating such a land as this?,” said God. Saint Peter made excuses and declared he had wanted to build up a land so high that it should have plenty of warmth from the sun. “But then you will also get much of the night chill,” said God, “for that too comes from heaven. I am very much afraid the little that can grow here will freeze.”

‘This, to be sure, Saint Peter hadn’t thought about.

‘”Yes, this will be a poor and frostbound land,” said God. “It can’t be helped.”‘

When little Mats had got this far in his story, Osa, the goose-girl, protested:

‘I cannot bear, little Mats, to hear you say that it is so miserable in Småland,’ said she. ‘You forget entirely how much good soil there is. Only think of More district, by Kalmar Sound! I wonder where you’ll find richer corn crops. There are fields upon fields, just like here in Skåne. The soil is so good that I cannot imagine anything that couldn’t grow there.’

‘I can’t help that,’ said little Mats. ‘I’m only relating what others have said before.’

‘And I have heard many say that there is not a more beautiful coastland than Tjust. Think of the bays and islets, and the manors and the groves!’ said Osa.

‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ little Mats admitted.

‘And don’t you remember,’ continued Osa, ‘the school teacher said that such a lovely and picturesque district as that bit of Småland which lies south of Lake Vettern is not to be found in all Sweden? Think of the beautiful lake and the yellow mountains, and of Gränna and Jönköping, with its match factory, and think of Huskvarna, and all the big factories there!’

‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ said little Mats once again.

‘And think of Visingsö, little Mats, with the ruins and the oak forests and the legends! Think of the valley through which Emån flows, with all the villages and flour-mills and saw-mills, and the carpenter shops!’

‘Yes, that is true enough,’ said little Mats, and looked troubled. All of a sudden he had looked up. ‘All this, of course, lies in God’s Småland, in that part of the land which was already finished when Saint Peter undertook the job. It’s only natural that it should be pretty and fine there. But in Saint Peter’s Småland it looks as it says in the legend. And it wasn’t surprising that God was distressed when He saw it,’ continued little Mats, as he took up the thread of his story again. ‘Saint Peter didn’t lose his courage at all events, but he tried to comfort God. “Don’t be so grieved over this!” said he. “Only wait until I have created people who can till the swamps and break up fields from the stone hills.”

‘That was the end of God’s patience and He said: “No! you can go down to Skåne, which I have made into a good and easily cultivated country, and make the Skåninge but the Smålander I will create myself.” And so God created the Smålander and made him quick-witted and contented and happy and thrifty and enterprising and capable, that he might be able to get his livelihood in his poor country.’

Ah beautiful Småland. I should add, we live in Saint Peter’s part…

If walls could talk

I am a bit obsessed with paper I know. I think that’s allowed when you work with paper though and also read lots of books. I’m also a bit obsessed with patterns and colours so when I went into one of the loft rooms late last year and found some old pieces of wallpaper still attached to an old beam I was very excited.

I’d be interested to know what you think but looking at these I’d guess there might be four or five different patterns here, including some old newspaper. No dates on the paper unfortunately but some lovely vivid colours.

One of the Instagram accounts I follow is the wonderful handprintedwallpaper

They’re very good at dating wallpaper from scraps like these so one of these days, when I’ve got some better photographs, I will send them over to them and see what they say. Who doesn’t love a little mystery?

 

A magical trip across country

Knowing my interest in all things Swedish my friend bought me the Wonderful Adventures of Nils,  by Selma Lagerlöf 1858-1940) for my birthday. She’d spotted it hiding in a dusty corner of a second-hand bookshop and partly thanks to the beautiful cloth cover, picked it up for a closer look.

She and I had no idea that it’s actually an iconic Swedish children’s book although I wonder if it might have fallen out of fashion since it was first published in 1906-7. If that’s the case then it is definitely due a revival as its been quite a while since I read and enjoyed a book as much. I’m so glad she bought it and I’ve since bought the second part, The Further Adventures of Nils, which completes the story.

At first glance this is a classic fairy story, part magic, part cautionary tale. It tells the story of Nils Holgersson, a teenage farmer’s son, who is a bit of a handful for his parents and the animals living alongside him on the farm. Grumpy, lazy, he tends to go his own way thinking only about his own needs and wishes. As Chapter One says: “He wasn’t good for much that boy. His chief delight was to eat and sleep and after that he liked best to get into mischief.” He is cruel to the farm animals and wildlife – he likes throwing his weight around and is dull and lazy .

One Sunday, after refusing to go to church, his exasperated mother leaves him at home with a promise to read the church service before his parents return. But a few pages in he falls asleep and when he awakes he sees he has company – a tiny elf has crept into the house and is sitting on the ledge of his mother’s old chest, admiring the needlework it contains. On impulse the boy grabs his butterfly net and in a flash sweeps the little creature into it. When he shakes the elf out, after extracting a promise of riches, he gets a stinging slap across his face that knocks him senseless and when he awakens he finds he is now the size of a thumb. Condemned to stay small until he has learned his lesson the horrified Nils soon finds himself on the back of Morten Gander, the farm goose, flying north with a flock of wild geese making their annual journey to Lapland. And so begins a series of adventures which see the tiny boy, ‘Tummetott’ as he is now known, whisked across the country, learning about its marvellous terrain, its history and its wildlife as he goes.

One of the most fascinating things about the book is that it was written as a textbook. In 1902, Lagerlöf was asked by the National Teacher’s Association to write a geography book for children. She wrote Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa Genom Sverige, mixing historical and geographical facts about the provinces of Sweden with the tale of the boy’s adventures until he managed to return home and was restored to his normal size. The novel is one of Lagerlöf’s most well-known books, and it has been translated into more than 30 languages.

The evil Smirre fox, enemy of Nils and villain of the first book

Taking the reader on an aerial journey across Sweden, the book skilfully brings the different regions to life without ever making the reader feel like they are being lectured. You learn much about the nature and wildlife of each region and Hans Baumhauer’s illustrations are beautiful.

There is real urgency and drama in the storytelling too – it takes a hard heart not to be moved by the plight of Grayskin and Karr, the captive Elk and his wise dog companion. And there is a magic to it all that is never twee and appeals to adults as well as children. One of my favourite parts comes at the end of the second book – The Further Adventures of Nils – in a chapter titled The Little Manor. Nils, abandoned in the woods outside a deserted old farmhouse is being attacked by an owl on the moonlit path when he is rescued by the sudden arrival of a woman. She, the author tells us, is an author struggling to write ‘a book about Sweden which would be suitable for children to read in the schools’ and seeking inspiration she has returned home to Värmland, and the place where she grew up.

“It was not an easy matter for her to go home as one might think, for the estate had been sold to people she did not know. She felt, to be sure, that they would receive her well. but she did not wish to go to the old place and talk with strangers, for she wanted to remember how it had been in times gone by. That was why she planned it so as to arrive there late in the evening, when the day’s work was done and the people were indoors. She had never imagined that it would be so strange to come home.”

The manor she refers to was clearly Mårbacka, her real-life family estate which had been sold in 1889 after her brother, who took over responsibility for it following the death of their father in 1884, went bankrupt. After being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909, “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writings”, (the first woman to win) she bought back the estate using her prize money. She lived there for the rest of her life and the grand house she helped rebuild is now a museum that celebrates her life and works.

Selma Lagerlöf  

A teacher and member of the women’s suffrage movement, Lagerlöf was a remarkable and principled woman. Her novel Jerusalem was inspired after a visit to Palestine (she has a street named after her in Jerusalem) and during her life she wrote many books, including the one that first made her name, Gösta Berling’s Saga, most of which were set in her home county of Värmland. According to her Wikipedia entry at the start of WW2 she sent her Nobel Prize medal and gold medal from the Swedish Academy to the government of Finland to help raise money to fight the Soviet Union. The Finnish government was so touched that it raised the necessary money by other means and returned her medal to her. She was a friend of the German-Jewish writer Nelly Sachs and shortly before her death in 1940, Lagerlöf intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure the release of Sachs and Sachs’ aged mother from Nazi Germany, on the last flight from Germany to Sweden, andsecure their lifelong asylum in Stockholm

You can find out more about the author here and if you want to read about Nils adventures then you can find new one volume editions, such as the Penguin Classics imprint, here

Fettisdagen or Fat Tuesday

When we visit in February we look forward to two things – snow and semla buns. Not for the dieter, these doughy buns are a bit like a cardamom and vanilla flavoured doughnut and can be seen everywhere in the run up to Lent. A bit like our traditional pancakes, these are meant to be eaten in the run up to Shrove Tuesday but I’ve seen them go on sale just after Christmas, which suggests that, a bit like Crème Eggs here in the UK, they’re too good to enjoy for just a few weeks a year.

I’m fully on board with the Swedish Fika tradition and will down tools any chance I get to go out for coffee and cake. Semla buns with coffee is a firm winter favourite and if I need a fix when I’m away from Sweden I can easily make some at home.

If you’d like to try making some then this recipe from The Local Sweden is pretty straightforward. You can find it here

Loppis love

I have always been a bit of a scavenger and a second-hand shop, car boot sale or jumble sale is my idea of heaven. So it was thrilling when I discovered that Sweden has a strong tradition of second-hand selling and that all sorts of wonderful bargains awaited me there in the trusty loppis sale or charity store.

Loppis signs had caught my eye when I first visited Sweden but initially I had no idea that these handmade signs, often printed on a piece of cardboard and pointing down a dusty track, meant that someone somewhere was having a yard sale. Loppis can cover a whole spectrum of second-hand selling, from vintage stores to a trawl through a barn of rusty junk but if you’re a bit of a magpie then the lure of them is irresistible.

One of my favourite places is the wonderful Erikshjalpen, a veritable supermarket of unwanted goods where most of the profit goes to charity. These stores often have a café attached to them (honestly, only in Sweden), encourage you to drop off your unloved goods and can be perfect places to spend a rainy afternoon if you can cope with the crowds who had the same idea. Bargain hunting is a popular way of whiling away a few hours and even my small local loppis store has a queue forming outside it every Friday afternoon when it opens for business. If you want to bag the best bargains you need to be quick and know what you’re looking for.

All those books!

Just look at those bargains…

Last year I had some amazing luck finding beautiful embroidered linens, hand-sewn cushions, some beautiful illustrated Swedish guide books from the 1920s and 30s and a wonderful candle chandelier, very similar to one I had seen and lusted over at Carl Larsson-gården in Sundborn, but priced at an affordable £8 rather than the £150 replicas.

Best of all was the broken Westerstrand gilt clock that I leaped upon for £14. I already have one of these beauties that was given to me by my brother who happens to be a clock restorer. Somehow I got this one packed up and in my suitcase and on arriving back in the UK discovered that all that was needed was a new spring for the pendulum. Repaired, cleaned and working beautifully, that clock, which had all the dates of its services neatly written in pencil inside the case, will be heading back to Sweden very soon to take pride of place in our hall.