Stamp of the Day: Lighthouse (Svenska Högarna, Sweden)

Anybody that has read Tove Jansson's books about the Moomin Trolls knows that she has a special relationship to the sea.  The book Moominpappa at Sea ('Pappan och havet' in Swedish) takes place during a summer at a lighthouse far out in the archipelago on a little island, remote, scary, and beautiful.  Lighthouses are amazing buildings, sturdy by design, but isolated and lonely.  To get up to the action, the light, you have to step and step and step upwards through dark stairs, like a tunnel through a mountain.

These days lighthouses are endangered.  Most have no living people in them, and many have stopped shining.  Some are for sale. Some are taken by the oceans.  And most ships has GPS monitors that take you through the night.  Just 100 years ago, a blip in the time on Earth, there was just the sea, a boat, and a light at the distance, and nothing else to rely on.  Well compasses too, of course.  And sunrise and stars.  

Now it is all electronic, and abysmally insecure, unfortunately. A few irate or unresponsive electrons (=no juice!) and you are met by a black screen.  Few people in the past had a non-functioning compass (unless you put an iron rod next to it), but I think we all have swore over bad GPS directions or digital maps that suddenly show you driving in a river when in fact you are on a street in a city.  GPS is so convenient and insecure at the same time, it is scary.  It is like a teddy bear that can be lost at any time, and then what do you do.

Today's stamp is from Sweden, and shows the lighthouse at Svenska Högarna (which means 'The Swedish Mounds', which is here on Google Maps. It is out in nowhere, in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.  Tove Jansson could have used this as her lighthouse for her book, that is for sure. It is one of the few lighthouses in Sweden that still has staff year-round.

Stamps of the Day: Birches (Betula, björk)

Birches for me is a real spring sign - small tiny leaves coming out in spring green, and in Sweden we have a saying "the birch leaves are the size of mouse ears', that is the sign of spring.  The leaves on our birches are not out yet here in New Jersey but I can feel it coming.  The hazelnut shrubs are about to flower, and then the birches come soon after.  Finally spring (well, we still have freezing at night), and it feel like this winter has been too long.  The stamps are from Sweden and Finland, and all for feature the birch tree (Betula is the genus, and it is in the family Betulaceae). 

Friendly Moomins

This cute video was made singlehandedly by our neighbor girl with a camera, sofa, and some toys - isn't it wonderful? It has music, so make sure you have the sound on. I love the Moomins, or Mumintroll as we call them in Swedish. Thanks EL!

Fantastic artist.... Anu Tuominen

Anu Tuominen is a Finnish contemporary artist that uses everyday objects, often colorful ones, to create new assemblages, memories, and meaning.  She collects things from fleamarkets, often things that we consider useless now or just old and worthless, and put them together into new combinations. Anu also knits and crochets from colorful yarn as part of her art.

I saw her exhibit at the Nordic Watercolor Museum in Sweden and loved, loved, loved it.  To take worn, worthless things, from school project crocheted potholders, short, blunt pencils, old soapholders, and kitchen and tools from previous years and then make it into something more, that is something.

You look at her art and think - "WOW, that is so innovative.  So simple, why didn't I think about that.  Oh, look at how those colors are put together, look, look!"  It is innovative, simple, elegant and basic at the same time. When you see her art you are transported back in time to earlier years, back into memory lane and you think about all those worn erasers you dug into with your pencil because you were bored, the red and blue correction pencils the teachers had, and how the boys hated learning how to crochet in home economics class.  And then they gave their flawed potholder to their grandmother, and now it might be hanging on an wall as an art installation in Sweden.  And so on, and on...

Anu has a fantastic website with much better photos than I took, so go there for more beauty and thinking.  here below are some of the things we saw and loved in Sweden. Thanks, Anu!


'Early Morning by the Sea' [Tidig morgon vid havet]. Old soap holders (plastic boxes) with worn Arctic Sea stones inside them... so beautiful.  I think she noted that this art project was started 10 years ago or so, when she started to collect the soap holders.


'Grass' [gräs]. The grass is greener in the drawer. Plastic combs as grass in a drawer, making hard things into soft plants, of course!


'Mrs Albers Color Mixtures' [Fru Albers Färgmix]. All of these knitted squares are made from 3 colors, red, yellow, and blue, but they are still resulting in different colors - innovative, random and still so predictive.

 
 'Walk-in Wardrobe' [Klädrum]. I remember my grandmother had fancy handpainted hangers, some green and some red. I wonder where they are now. They would have fit right into this rainbow.

You wonder how she starts an art project and how it looks like in her studio... Boxes upon boxes of things, of course...


'Real colour circles' [äkta färgcirklar]. And here are the potholders. I stared at this for 10 minutes straight I am sure. Lovely, lovely, and it makes you reevaluate some of the old things that are hiding in drawers at home for sure.

Tranströmer - tired of words

During the Nobel Prize party a few days ago, the wife of Thomas Tranströmer, the Novel Laureate in Literature, read this wonderful poem by him:  

Trött på alla som kommer med ord, ord, men inget språk
for jag till den snötäckta ön.
Det vilda har inga ord.
De oskrivna sidorna breder ut sig åt alla håll!
Jag stöter på spåren av rådjursklövar i snön.
Språk men inga ord.

Tired of everybody that comes with words, words, but no language

I traveled to the snow-covered island.

The wild has no words.

The unwritten pages extend outwards in all directions!

I discover the tracks of deer hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

Thomas Tranströmer [translation by LS]

I can see it in front of me, an island surrounded by frozen water in winter, stillness, no people, just the man and the snow, frozen bare branches, blue icy sky, and a few birds looking for something to eat in the brush.  And then the tracks of the deer, winding its way through the landscape, telling a story without words.

Winter Sun, a photo from the Finnish Baltic archipelago by Niklas Sjöblom (Flickr)

In a way this also reminds me of a very different poem/song, Blå Hjärtans Blues, by Eva Dahlgren.  In English, the song (called Blue Hearts' Blues) starts with these lines (translated by me):

The island lays empty in the winter sea

a last ferry turns back towards the city

at the pier, here I stand

and see my lover choose

My head so heavy of the truth

I see your foot tracks in the snow on the way home

so light steps that say so much more

than frozen words on your lips

Bye baby blue
caresses me in the night

with her sadness
bye baby blue
all these memories

in a dull moonlight blue tune
[cont.]

That is the beginning of this song about relationships, break-ups, winter, ice, and islands, just like Tranströmer's poem. The blues song ('bye baby blue', etc.) she refers to I guess is something by Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. Listen to Eva performing the song here: Youtube link, and here are the complete Swedish lyrics.

Stamp of the Day: Sauna

Leave it to the Finns to have a sauna stamp (or 'bastu', as it is called in Swedish, after badstuga, meaning bathing house).  These men are unusually dressed for sauna, with fresh birch branches strategically located in front of their bodies.  Some sumemr days it feels like a sauna in New Jersey, but it never really gets that hot (about 19- degrees!), and here certainly are no nice lakes or oceans to take a cooling off dip in.  Sauna is a great invention, and wonderful for both body and mind...

Stamp of the Day: Finnish Birches

You rarely see stamps of these shapes, which only have become possible after we got self-sticking stamps that you no longer have to rip off a sheet along a holed line. And you rarely see stamps that feature such small botanical details as these two Finnish stamps of birch (björk, Betula in Latin).  The young bud and then the seeds in their catkin, ready to disperse in the wind.  Stamps really have changed, from the old time-consuming engraving and printing and licking, to the printed stamps from photos on sticky paper.  I like both types, but I think the older are really more like art and these feel more like quick mass-production.

Stamp of the day: Syrenernas tid är här (Time for lilacs)

Nu är syrenernas tid här, och de sprider väldoft i varje vrå av vårt avlånga land. Vid varje liten röd stuga finns en gammal bondsyren, ibland finns inte huset kvar men bara grunden. Jag kan se framför mig hur äldre generationer njutit på samma sätt som jag med en trevlig paus invid syrenen när sommaren äntligen anlänt och de första skriken från tornseglarna hörs i skyn.

Även jag har en syren, en ungersk stamsyren som nu har en krona klädd i vitt. Den doftar ljuvligt. Hur ser din syren ut?

Translation by LS:  It is the time of the lilacs, and they spread their gorgeous scent in every corner of our long land [=Sweden]. By every little red cottage is an old heritage lilac, and sometimes the house is not there any longer, just the old foundation. I can imagine how former generations have enjoyed, just like me, to take a rest near the lilac bush when summer has finally arrived and the first swifts are crying up in the sky. 

Even I [EH] have a lilac, a Hungarian tree-like one that now is covered in white. It smells heavenly.  How does your lilac look like?

Stamp from Finland: Lilacs.

Stamp of the Day: lichens of Scandinavia

Stamps of today are two lichens, Xanthoria parietina (vägglav) and Hypogymnia physiodes (blåslav), which both are very common in Sweden. Xanthoria grows on rocks, wood, and bark, and Hypogymnia are on branches and bark of trees. The stamps are issued by the little island of Aland, between Finland and Sweden.  It belongs to Finland, but they speak Swedish, and have the right to issue their own stamps. I love lichens, they are amazing creatures (not plants), of a fungus and an algae living together permanently. 

Stamp of the Day: Boreal Forest

This is a stamp of a typical Swedish or Finnish spruce forest (granskog).  Dark, with mushrooms (except these seem to grow a bit to high up on the stem!). Moss on the forest floor, moist air, shades, and mosquitoes. Looking at this stamp brings back many memories of hikes through trailless forests looking for chanterelles, boletus, or just a lost trail.  Sometimes a birch or aspen shows up among the spruces.  Of course a real old natural spruce forest would have been a mix of species, but these days many of the spruce forests are planted decades ago and are near monocultures as part of the forestry industry.  (Finnish stamp - Suomi is Finland in Finnish).

Congratulations to Finland!

You won!  We admit it, we Swedes.  In ice hockey VM tonight for those that don't know. This time you Finns didn't have to say 'if I only had more speed'. But you have only won VM once before, so you deserved it very much. For the record -  I love Finland, and especially surdegslimpa, Tove Jansson, and Arto Paasilinna. Some of my best friends are Finns. Really. :)  Nobody said it better than Monthy Python:

Book review: Yrsa Stenius - Makten och kvinnligheten

(Sorry English-speakers, this review is in Swedish, since the book is in Swedish and not translated into English.  Here is the short review: great self-biographical novel from famed leftist journalist, author, and ex-chief editor of Aftonbladet Yrsa Stenius about power, gender, and how we deal with it all, or not deal with it...  insightful, brutally honest, and well worth the read, that is, if you can read Swedish.)

Jag har alltid beundrat Yrsa Stenius.  Jag har inte alltid hållit med henne, men jag har beundrat hennes styrka, och hennes Finlandssvenska dialekt har på något sätt fått hennes ord och kommentarer att kännas mer viktiga än andras.  Jag vet, det är nog inte så, men finskans allvar och samtidiga humor i livets svarta ögonblick färgar nog av sig i finlandssvenskan, iallafall inbillar vi det oss.  I somras hörde jag Yrsa Stenius i en podcast från ett svenskt radioprogram och hon var fantastisk - hon fick mig att tänka, och sånt gillar jag.

I boken Makten och kvinnligheten, som är självbiografisk och väldigt självutlämnande utan att vara överdrivet personlig, så skriver hon om sin livskris efter att hon avgått som chefredaktör för Aftonbladet.  Boken handlar om hur vi vill ha makt och blir beroende av den, hur vi ofta tror att vi är inget utan makt, och behöver iallafall lite makt över någon eller vår situation, och hur makten utnyttjas och påverkar.  Och kvinnor reagerar annorlunda än män generellt när de ställs inför någon med makt, får makt, eller förlorar den.  Makt låter som något mest politiker har, men Yrsa skriver om den i vardagslivet, och makten vi har (eller inte har) över våra livsval, våra kärlekar, karriärer, och hur makten eller bara aningen av lite makt kan påverka oss i livet.  Hon beskriver hur hon klappade ihop och hamnade på psyket efter att ha förlorat sin makt, och till slut vågade vara maktlös, och hur hon hittade tillbaks till sig själv och sin självkänsla.  Jag tror Yrsa Stenius är en av de modigaste människor jag känner till i Skandinavien, för iallafall i Sverige undviker man att sticka ut från mängden, undviker att prata om obehagliga ämnen (och där ingår makt), och den intressehämmande men alltför vanliga ytligheten flyter ofta över alltihop, speciellt i medie- och politikervärlden. I den här boken rannsakar hon sig själv och sina val, och bygger styrka ur sina svagheter. Många kvinnor (och män) borde läsa den och tänka efter ett tag.  Underbart och tack, Yrsa! 

Här är ett kort utdrag:

"Simone de Beauvoir uppmuntrade inte mitt kvinnliga självförtroende, så som jag alltid har påstått. Nej hon stimulerade mitt personliga självförtroende trots att jag var kvinna.  {...} Jag brukade henne till att fördriva mina kvinnodrömmar, plåna ut dem ofullgångna ur mitt medvetande. Jag ersatte dem med något dubbeltydigt som handlade om framgång i männens värld, om att förtjäna deras uppmärksamhet, uppskattning och uppvaktning genom att vara en av dem, lika duktig, om inte duktigare "

Blomfantasten!

Jag kunde inte motstå denna underbara bild av Tove Jansson. Hon må förlåta mig för att jag publicerar den på vår blogg. Den påminner mig om någon...gissa vem?

I couldn´t resist this wonderful picture made by Tove Jansson. She has to forgive me for publishing it on our blogg. It reminds me of someone, guess who?

OK snapshot: Finland, Finland, Finland

Some christmas music? (Photo by OK, posted by LS)

Fall is here, again

(Japanese maples in our garden)

Whenever fall (autumn) comes around I always feel so surprised. I have been waiting for it, longing for clear sky fall days and colored leaves, but it always sneak up on you while you were planning to do a little more harvesting in the garden or a little more yardwork. But now it is here, and the geraniums and tropical fern is taken in from the porch, only a few tomatoes and peppers are left in the garden, and the leaves are accumulating. Most trees still have their leaves, but they are not mainly green anymore. One morning I woke up with a Finnish-Swedish song on my head called Höstvisa (Autumn song), with lyrics written by Moomintroll-author Tove Jansson. I love the lyrics, and the sadness and hope it portrays. It is about human relationships as well as the end of summer. Here is just a little piece of it:

Nu blåser storm därute och stänger sommarns dörr,

det är för sent för att undra och leta.

Jag älskar kanske mindre än vad jag gjorde förr

men mer än du nånsin får veta.

Nu ser vi alla fyrar kring höstens långa kust

och hör vågorna villsamma vandra.

En enda sak är viktig och det är hjärtats lust

och att få vara samman med varandra.

Skynda dej älskade, skynda att älska,

dagarna mörknar minut för minut.

Tänd våra ljus, det är nära till natten,

snart är den blommande sommaren slut.

Loose translation in English:

Now storms are blowing outside and the door to summer closed,
and it is too late to worry and search.

I might be loving less than I did before,

but more than you will ever know.

Now we see all the lighthouses along autumn's long coast,

and hear how the waves are wandering.

Only one thing is important and that is the will of the heart

and to be together with each other.

Hurry my darling, hurry to love,

The days are getting darker minute by minute.

Light our candles, it is soon nighttime,

soon is the flowering summer gone.

One of my favorite things in the kitchen...

...is this little eggcup, just a simple little egg cup made by iitala in Finland. in their series Origo. Isn't it gorgeous? We had two, one disappeared, and we got two more from KV (thanks!), so now we have three. I usually don't like orange much unless it is on plants, because it reminds me too much of the over-oranged 70s (I grew up in a house with orange doors inside), but I love the color combination on this design. It makes me happy. One day it would be nice to have a bowl and not just a little eggcup in this design, or a plate to go with the egg cup. But it isn't necessary, the eggcup is perfectly fine by itself.

Yksi kaksi kolme

IS and Pippi Longstocking (not her real name) took me to see an art exhibit about contemporary art in Finland and Sweden, and a few things really stood out. The name of the exhibit is "Ei Saa Peitää" (=Do not cover, a sentence that was on every electric radiator when I grew up.

Mikael Ericsson had a multimedia exhibit in a large dark room with a curved screen - his white drawings on blue background were very suggestive and fastpaced - like a combination between French animation, doodling, and timber spiders... I took several videos that are on my account on Flickr, and here is one.



The whale called Archangel of Seven Seas by Marcus Copper was also incredible. A whale skeleton was made out of wood and the wooden organ pipes from a burned down rural Finnish church, and hooked up to a compressor or something so the whale 'played', with incredible deep sounds, like whale song. A must see!

A small world - Finland in the morning

I woke up this morning in a hotel room in Washington DC, USA, turned on the TV, and guess what was right there on the screen. Mushroom hunting for chanterelles, boletus (Karl Johan svamp), and other delicacies in a Finnish forest. Looked just like Sweden! The reporter was so excited over all the mushrooms they found during a short walk, but he made a big botanical mistake, he said that they leave the root stumps in the forest because that is where the spores are. Hmpf! The spores are under the hat, mister!

The program went on to a restaurant where they made an old-fashioned lunch dish for workers. They took a whole fish (caught that morning) and baked it rolled into sourdough bread, so it just looks like a loaf of bread but inside there is a fish for easy transport and keep during a long workday. I haven't seen anything like it in Sweden, but it looked good. And I love Finnish dark sourdough bread, the kind you can't buy here.

Right now they are having a crawfish party in an old inn. "That slurping sound is considered a healthy sound, and is appreciated by the host". The reporter said this for real, and he got it right. Now I am getting hungry, off to breakfast. (This was all on the VERIA network channel, and the program was Under the Sun with Nathan Leroy.)

Stamp of the Day: Fiska abborre

Fishing bass (not flounder) in the Baltic is a great way to spend some time. Sitting on a smooth rock or in a little boat, seeing that little bobbing thing go up and down, thinking about the drowning earthworm on the hook, the bass nibbling on it, and suddenly get caught, and then up in the air! Of course half of the time the worm is eaten and no fish caught, but oh well.

Last time we did this kind of fishing was with friends in Finland and we caught three bass (abborrar), which were quickly named George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Washington by the young kids. They made a great dinner, fried up in butter.

The artwork reminds me of children's book illustrations, so rich and crisp. Not at all the foggy, muddy, and wet mess fishing usually is.

Stamp of the Day: More Finnish lighthouses

There really is something special about light houses. Maybe it is the safety of the light in the night, and at the same time the closeness to storm and deaths, isolation and despair? I wonder what other buildings have so much symbolic value to people. Churches, for some, maybe?