It was stormy and grey on the streets of Stockholm where I was visiting family last week, so for a change I was photographing the glow of a Scandinavian Christmas, but indoors.
Tastefully designed, as you would expect, Christmas here knocks the stuffing out of the predictable old tat that it often brings out in the rest of us! For Swedes there is a kind of reverence for the winter festival of light. You can understand why the further north you travel; long nights, harsh weather, deep hibernation.
Every window here is lit by a traditional candelabra. Along Hornsgaten where we soaked up the warmth of this vintage shop (Hornsgaten 64) there are wax candles and small paraffin lamps everywhere. The light of welcome, that this year has even deeper meaning.
While I was enjoying the warmth of my Swedish family and being mesmerised by my new Grandnephew, Syrian refugees continued their long march from the south to Stockholm.
Under the Christmas market in Sergels Torget there are layers of lives being lived out and stories being told with every new arrival. In the Central station Red Cross workers are in tents waiting for the next train. They now think that approximately 200,000 refugees will have arrived here by the end of 2015. The system moves people on efficiently but there is talk of closing the Bridge to Denmark which allows Sweden to be so accessible. The Swedes are feeling overwhelmed.
And you'd have to wonder how this dark cold December is affecting those Syrian children who have probably never seen snow or such dark days without a hint of sun? I hope their first Christmas in Sweden will be as beautiful and welcoming as I found it to be.......
Check out this link for more blogposts about Sweden
My sister is honey coloured so she tones in beautifully with traditional Swedish architecture. From the old town of Gamla Stan to the hilly cobbled streets of Sodermalm, the Swedes seem to favour warm Italian tones. That's the first surprise I wanted to share with you. Maybe this is why Stockholm is called the Venice of the North?
It's also because Stockholm is built on a series of islands, thousands of them spread out between the city and the Baltic Sea. There is a distinct culture, a wonderful language, some western influence, but the northern ambiance is much more prominent.
Did you know for example that Swedes never ever wear their shoes inside their homes? That they eat dozens of variations on salted herring? That they swim in the pristine waters in the middle of their cities, so clean and pollution free are their harbours?
Swedes don't use curtains on their windows at night. As one said to me, once you've seen everything your naked old man neighbour has to show you get over it! They are practical, humane and clever. They have to be to deal with severe dark winters and still find joy in skiing and hunting in the snow.
There is everything to admire here from their design sensibilities to their white blonde heads. It looks like they share more than a love of raw fish with the Japanese; minimalism, love of rural life, art and interior simplicity. Their social systems, now under threat from right wing tendencies, are the envy of the world.
Is there a down side? As most Irish people would have it they could do with having a bit more craic, but we say that about everyone.....
The sister has lived and worked here for many years and even forgets English vocabulary now and then. She will soon be a Swedish Farmor (Grandma!) so I suppose after 30 years it's safe to say she has settled here.
Himself and myself came here first though; way back in 1975. We were enchanted by it and vowed to come back. Little did we know we would be returning so often or that we would have extended family living here.
Why did we come here in the first place? Why didn't we stay after all? We were busking and making art on the streets of Stockholm. We were hanging out in cool communes during that sunny summer, but of course when it started to get cold we vamoosed.
Next time I will share photos of a precious Swedish World Heritage Site designed for the living as well as the dead.......one of my sister's favourite places in Stockholm.
They were born here on the lake last spring. Swans often don't survive that first year, foxes or mink take the young eventually. These two are about 9 months old, hiding amongst the reeds, tall and strong.
My own chicks have been here for a few weeks. All six footers with beards and long legs, they are each in a transition state of mind.
We look back at old home movies. The lads are building a raft, determined to float it on a lake. One rushes around gathering tools, and materials, talking non stop, broadcasting the adventures they will have. One stands at the lake edge, banging a long stick on the surface of the water, he dreams about the said adventures I suppose. The youngest sits sweetly on the half built raft, driving it as you would an imaginary car, saying...... when will the raft be ready.......while no one responds.
Twenty years later we are all together again in this stage set home. Everything moves around. Musical beds, household contents, the remains of their lives boxed and bagged. The hall is full of chaos, empty, then full again. Larder contents diminish at an alarming rate. A lot of toast is made.
And while I am at the shoreline lost in following half adult cygnets through the seasons, everyone around me is growing up or growing old.....and there will be even more goodbyes........sooner or later.
I'm in Micky Macs place. It's been disturbed by party goers, doors open to the yard, a gentle sea breeze blowing through windows, cracked and broken. I once visited him here in his smokey room, walls blackened from the wood fire. I sat on a settle bed in a wollen blanket while he sat on that once pink arm chair with a once yellow cushion.
Even on the beach where he used to sit on summer evenings, he wore the whole kit; a long great coat, a flat cap and black boots. Surrounded by picnics and bathing families he stayed shyly at the edge, chatting to anyone who lingered.
His neighbour, used to wave down cars by standing in the middle of the road. A tousled head would peer through the window, asking mysterious questions;
"Have ye any cigarettes?"
"No we don't smoke"
"Well have ye any kittens?"
They are both gone now as are most of the older generation of my own family. Flimsy remains of curtains and occasional memories all that's left.
A way of life is dying out too. Small farms are being swallowed up and old walls, lanes and streams, absorbed into lawns for horses and feed for herds. No more cattle roaming freely along roadside verges, grazing the long acre.
At the top of the lane is another collapsing cottage. There's an eery emptiness there, a tweed jacket on a hanger in the bedroom, a candle on the kitchen table. The next neighbours, three stoic older siblings, recently lost their fine thatched cottage in a horrible blaze that took all they had. Everything seems vulnerable.
My Dad used to talk about the old days around here and return in his mind to the lanes of Kilkenny where he grew up. He could still feel the hunger experienced through the War. He remembered feet crossing the footpath windows above his grandmother's basement kitchen. The smell of laughing gas from his Father's primitive dental surgery. I have some audio of him singing every word of Run Rabbit Run which he learned as a small boy. Precious mementos.
Today I step into Micky Macs little house, falling down and forlorn without him. My strange ambition to become even more eccentric isn't any wonder, because for a lifetime I have studied the elders. I have loved them, admired their depth, questioned their mysteries, witnessed their fading. And I know that as they disappear I am an elder apprentice, creating my own mementos as I go.
PS To honour Micky Mac a plaque was erected by his friends right on the wall at Garrarus beach where he used to sit.
The Bealtaine Festival celebrating creativity as we age
Also posted today on Vision and Verb a global gathering of creative women sharing words and images.
