The Joy of Archipelagos

Among the pleasures of our stays in Gothenburg and Stockholm were the joys of exploring the archipelagos which are such an instrinsic part of life there. Our first experience of them was in in Gothenburg. On our second day there we caught the tram to Saltholmen ferry terminal, and then a ferry to – where? Styrsö? Donsö? Vrångö? Or some of the many other islands forming the Southern Archipelago? Did it even matter? Island hopping is easy by inter-connecting ferry. What a delight to stand on deck, the breeze on our faces, the sea and sky an uninterrupted blue. We island-spotted. Some barely qualified, they were so tiny.

Some were inhabited … just about.

But we were aiming for ones with inhabitants as well as wilder spaces. Gothenburg’s Southern islands are vehicle-free, so on landing we noticed employees – electricians in this case – going on their rounds with company vehicles. Bicycles.

It was on one island – Donsö – that we had our lunch. It turned out to be our only properly Swedish meal, as local cooking seems hard to come by in the city.

A simple but perfect meal of herring, new potatoes and cheeses, tastily garnished.

We were after the natural world though, so headed further south for Vrångö and its nature reserve.

There was something special about strolling along the coastline, always having the sea in sight, but always other islands too, of different shapes and sizes.

We had similar experiences exploring Stockholm’s Archipelago. One day we settled on setting foot only on one – more distant – island, Vaxholme, which has a BIG town of 6,000 inhabitants. Its municipality includes 64 further islands, bringing its total population to some 11,000.

We wondered what it would be like to live there year round, including dark and rather cold winter, and decided we’d opt, as many do, for having our summers there before heading back to the Big City for the rest of the year.

We’d arrived in time for fika, that typical Swedish tradition where you take time out of your day to pause and enjoy coffee and a snack. Look! Here was somewhere with a large terrace on the waterside, great coffee, and a range of cakes so temping that it was incredibly hard to choose. Near us was one very unfortunate couple. As they sat down, their cakes and coffee on the table, down swooped a kittiwake who made off with one whole slice of cake. All we had to deal with were sparrows , hoping for crumbs.

We did like the idea of being buried on Vaxholme though. Swedish cemetries are a delight, being mainly in expansive parkland where it’s quite usual to come for a family stroll. We wandered round for quite a while before searching out some wilder walking.

And here’s how we commuted there and back.

Grand days out, our Archipelago adventures.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Yesteryear to Prophet Song.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s starter book, Yesteryear, by  Caro Claire Burke attracts me not at all. Here’s what Google’s AI Overview has to say about it: ‘Yesteryear is a darkly satirical thriller about Natalie Heller Mills, a high-profile ‘tradwife’ influencer who glorifies a romanticised, 19th century farm life. Behind her curated, cottagecore Instagram feed lie hidden modern appliances, paid nannies, and a crumbling, fame-obsessed marriage.’ 

I thought I’d run away immediately to a group of women whose young lives could hardly be more different from our own Instagram-able days. The Eights, by Joanna Miller, follows the fortunes of 4 young women admitted to Oxford University in the very year – 1920 – in which they would be able to study towards a degree, a possibility until then denied to female students. They face petty and strict rules about their day-to-day lives, prejudice and family difficulties. This is their story.

Two women , in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave show how women’s possibilities change during the twentieth century. English (bi-sexual) Erica comes across French (lesbian) Laure one summer morning in 1978, on the steps of Sacré Coeur when Erica smiles at Laure after spotting they’re reading the same book. They become lovers then part – often. Erica is in her mid 30s as the story reaches its climax, and the social change that characterises both French and British society between the 70s and the very early 2000s is subtly yet vividly made a living part of the narrative.

In Vaseem Khan‘s Edge of Darkness, another female is treading new paths for women. We’re in just-post-partition India, and Persis Wadia is India’s first female detective. She faces the same kind of prejudice and condescension faced by the Oxford students. Persis is determined, principled and awkward. She thinks outside the box, but has very little support, with the possible exception of her new second-in-command. Solving the murder of a prominent politican isn’t something you should leave in the hands of a mere woman. Or is it? This is the sixth book In which Persis is Our Heroine, and I’ve loved every single one of them.

We’ll stay on the Indian sub-continent, but change the mood completely, and look at a real door-stopper: High: A Journey across the Himalayas, through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China: by Erika Fatland (translated by Kari Dickson). Erika Fatland is a Norwegian anthropologist. She’s undertaken here quite a journey: the one outlined in the title of her book. She observes the sights and sounds of – often very remote -cities, towns and villages on her travels, describing her meetings with locals. These can be the inhabitants of these communities, or religious leaders, nuns, bureaucrats, countryside rangers – even a king: even the dispossessed. In particular, women’s lives are still on the whole greatly impacted by tradition and custom. A big chunk of a book, this is nevertheless highly readable and accessible, and engagingly translated.

Travel in unfamiliar places always brings challenges of one kind or another. None more so than when you are deliberately abandoned on a deserted and inhospitable island in the South Pacific. This was the fate, in the early 18th century, of Alexander Selkirk. His misadvenures have already been imagined by Daniel Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe. Now Francesca de Tores has done it again, in Castaway. I’m reading it now. And it’s no swashbuckling adventure, I can tell you. Think rats, mosquitos, and not a single mod con, 18th century style, to help you along. (For ‘mod con’, read eating or drinking vessel, knife, axe, change of clothing, blanket ….).  Over time, Selkirk’s back story is trickled into the story. Our task as readers is to observe this man reveal himself as he comes to understand himself better.

Paul Lynch greatly enjoyed Francesca de Tores‘ previous book, Saltblood, and as I got a lot from reading his Prophet Song, I’ll end my chain with it. It was one of my winning reads of 2024.  It’s set in Ireland in the near future, after a fascist government has been elected to power. Long breathless paragraphs, light on punctuation, drive the story on as everyday wife, mother and daughter Eilish ‘s decision making and relationship with her children and family gradually becomes increasingly erratic, as the government increases its stranglehold on everyday life, as violence and the impossibility of everyday living increases. It’s a deeply uncomfortable read. Perhaps even more so now than when I first read it.

One way or another, I’ve wandered pretty far from the starting point this month. What will happen next month, I wonder, when our starting point is a book already on my TBR list:  Maggie O’Farrell‘s Land?



Last on the Card

The last photo I took on my phone in June was a few days ago. * I was driving from my village – through which a main road passes – just as three families of Greylag Geese decided to wander across. Greylags moved (seasonally) into our village about three years ago – we have three village ponds. They have no predators, no sense of social responsibilty, but lots of babies. And to be fair, they’re pretty good parents. I counted the birds as they crossed the road. Forty of them. And we have far more than three goose families living here. The longer-term residents: mallards and moorhens are not impressed. Moorhens contrive to survive, but mallards no longer expect to bring their babies through to maturity here. We’re all rather right-wing about them. ‘Immigrant geese not welcome here! Go back where you came from!’ we protest, as we scrape from our shoes yet another layer of the goose droppings which so liberally encrust our pavements.

‘ *Officer, I know I mustn’t use my phone when driving. But my engine’s off, and I’ve been here 5 minutes already. And may be here another five too’.

For Brian’s Last on the Card

Bright As Can Be

I set this week’s challenge for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. I must be mad (as required for Monochrome Madness …). What I’m asking for are photos of subjects you’d normally choose to shoot in colour exactly because of their vibrant colours. Can you make them as arresting in black and white?

My header photo was taken only about ten days ago in the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. This exhibit was bemusing and distorting us with confusing mirrors and colours. I was suffused in rich blues. As you can’t see here. But does it matter? I was surprised to discover that it didn’t, much.

A couple of months ago, I met Sarah of Travel with Me fame in London, and we amused ourselves with our cameras near the Gasholder development. Some pavement art caught our eye, and our own black shadows contrasted with the rich rainbow tones of the illustrated bottles. As you can’t see here. But it seems to work anyway.

Summer near the sea in England can mean to me clumps of sunshine-yellow gorsebushes on the cliffs near Staithes. Blue sea below, blue(ish) sky above (it IS England after all). So does this work in black and white? Not for me. Another shot might have done, but not this one.

Then there’s the brightly lit-in-multi-colours tunnel near Granary Wharf in Leeds. It’s striking enough in simple black and white, but … in the original,the coloured lights lend a greater vibrancy to the shot.

Let’s go back to Sweden, where we started. When I show my (colour) photos from one of the ferry boats we spent so much time on, ‘Wow! The sea. The sky. They’re so blue!’ is the immediate comment. So what if they’re not …

So what can you come up with? I think three of these images stand up quite well to being in monochrome, one doesn’t, and one just about holds its own. But you can look at the originals below, and make your own mind up. And then please join in! Link your post back to mine, and to Leanne at Monochrome Madness here..

And by the way, you don’t have to include any colour photos you might have used as your starting point. That was an optional extra I imposed on myself.

Stockholm-on-Sea

We dropped so lucky in our choice of accommodation in Stockholm. It ticked every box, plus some we hadn’t even thought of. Ours was a small apartment – sorry – ‘studio’, in Saltsjöqvarn. Now residential, the area has a long history of industry: shipbuilding and milling. From our point of view, there were waterfront views back to Stockholm and the more open area opposite. Leisurely long waterfront walks too. And our ‘studio’! Modern and well-appointed, with one wall overlooking the water being entirely window, there was little better to do during downtime than watch boats and ships busily ploughing to and fro, enjoying views in every direction, and sunsets every evening (and, if you were awake in the small hours, sunrises too). Commuting into Stockholm? Well, there were buses, and we used them. But it was much more fun to stroll down to the landing stage and catch the no. 80 ferry into the city. In our opinion, there’s nowhere better to stay in Stockholm. And there’s not a tourist in sight.

Here’s a little gallery. We should have made the bed before taking the photo that included it. But you’ll also see here the twice-daily Viking car ferry to and from (we think) Finland; a sunrise shot which includes not industrial buildings, but Gröna Lund, Stockholm’s Amusement Park. The grey skies (and chilliness) were there as we arrived in town, but soon dispersed to postcard-perfect sunniness and warmth. Wonderful memories.

‘Glad Midsommar!’

And … we’re back. Our Swedish adventure has filled our memory bank with so many wonderful sights and experiences, and I’ll share some of them here. I’ll begin, not at the beginning of our holiday, but at (almost) the end.

Last Friday was Midsummer Eve. We’d planned a day of sightseeing in a part of Stockholm we hadn’t explored at all, and hopped onto a ferry – our preferred method of travel in a city built on 14 islands, with up to 30,000 more in its Archipelago. At the terminus, puzzling over our map, an American offered his help. We could tell that he was no fellow-tourist, as he had a pushchair laden with with rugs, picnic hampers and all the clutter needed for a day out with his – as it turned out – Swedish-American family. ‘You can’t go into the city! Everything’s closed!’ We’d forgotten. Swedes celebrate on the eve of a Big Day. Christmas Eve is their Christmas Day. Midsummer Eve is their Midsummer Day. He argued that we needed to jump onto a ferry bound for one of the many small islands and join in everyone’s fun. Why not follow them, and choose Sticklinge on Lidingö? It sounded like a plan.

On our ferry – especially dressed with branches for the day – we met a young Swedish woman as encumbered by gifts and picnic paraphernalia as our new American friend. She said she was doing what every Swede aims to do – celebrating Midsummer on a small island with friends. Hers was a stop or two beyond ours, but she Googled our destination, and got us the programme of events.

The ferry stopped at this and then that island, where families laden with good things got off for their own celebrations, and then at ‘our’ island for the day. We were not burdened with picnic paraphenalia, so toiled off in search of an open shop. A slightly shabby convenience store yielded nothing better than nuts and biscuits, but we wouldn’t starve…

A quiet path through the woods took us to the beach.

And here, we found ourselves part of low key celebrations. Families quite simply enjoying time together: eating; beach games; swimming; linking up with friends, neighbours, acquaintances. Our new American friend’s mother arrived with plates of food for us, aware we had little of our own to eat.

An accordian player loosely compered the event, and at two o’clock, the maypole was raised: not be-ribboned, like its English relative, but hung about with greenery. The accordian player acquired a little team of girls who wanted to sing along. More and more people arrived: women and girls – often in white, or pastel shades – and decked with home made crowns of flowers for their heads.

Raising the maypole.

Then it was time for dancing around the maypole. We had no idea what was going on- lots of miming: pretending to scrub laundry (?) or jumping as frogs during the frog song (?) We thought it best to sit it out and watch.

After that, we thought we’d go, and leave families to finish their day out together. We went for a wander in the woods, before we took the ferry that puttered back and forth collecting passengers from the many little islands here. Then it headed back to our starting point, where that lucky chance meeting had given us the gift of enjoying special Midsummer Moments.

Goodbye, Sticklinge!

I’ll now resume normal service. I’ve not been reading anyone’s blogs for the duration – sorry – though I hope I’ve continued to respond to comments.

It Never Rains but it Pours …

Every day of our holiday so far, rain has been promised. And it hasn’t rained. Until today. Suddenly, from mid-morning, it deluged. And how. We abandoned our plans, in favour of a tour of Gothenburg’s Northern Archipelago. Which has a ridiculous number of islands. One or two are biggish, and can support a population of 5000 or so. Others are so small they probably aren’t on the map, and there wouldn’t even be room enough for my 2 year old granddaughter to sit down.

We caught a bus to a tiny landing port half an hour outside Gothenburg so we could catch the ferry to the Big Island, Hönö. It’s a car ferry  – they all are – and passenger comfort is not really a consideration. But (a) our first voyage was only 6 minutes long and (b) it was completely free. We never saw a member of staff all day, in any of these free ferries.

Here’s our ferry coming to collect us, and maybe a dozen cars.

So a couple of ferries go back and forth, back and forth between the mainland and Hönö, while others service the other islands. Once landed, we had time for a ferry-terminal kind of lunch (it wasn’t bad) before catching a bus across the island. We were a bit surprised to find we’d travelled across not one, but three islands, courtesy of causeways we hadn’t realised were causeways.  Blame the rain. Two more ferries. Two more islands.

View of another ship, and ours, doing their daily thing.

We loved it. We enjoyed the views of all these gaunt and rocky islands, mainly unpopulated apart from cormorants and gulls. Many people choose to live on the bigger islands. It’s hard to know why. They’re crowded with houses but few facilities, and may well be inaccessible during winter storms. We spotted one church, one supermarket and a propellor factory in our meanderings.

I even got a bit of a walk along the coastal path on Hälsö. It had stopped raining for 10 minutes.

Hälsö

As rainy days go, this went rather well. We didn’t get all THAT wet.

A Postcard from Sweden

You know how it can be with postcards. Nothing for days. Then they all come at once.

So here’s one from Malmö, our first Swedish port of call.  We wish we’d stayed longer. More later but let’s have this postcard set the scene:

Malmö was where we spent a happy morning with Ann-Christine, who blogs as Leya, and is a key member of the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge team. More photos later!

Now we’re in Gothenburg. Only we weren’t. Our city travel pass allows us not only on buses, trams and trains, but to jump on the ferries plying between the many islands that scatter the coastal area. So we toured the southern archipelago, visiting 3 small islands, including Vrångö and its nature reserve. Photos now. Stories later.

Rain tomorrow? Probably. Never mind.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Post Office Girl to The King’s Mother

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s chain begins with Stefan Zweig – The Post Office Girl. Which I haven’t read. I’m going to hunt for six books with the names of jobs and occupations in the title.

This gives me an easy way to begin my own chain – with The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault .This is a bittersweet, poetic tale about Bilodo, a lonely postman in Quebec who escapes his somewhat empty  reality by secretly reading the letters inside open envelopes. When he comes across a mysterious haiku, he becomes deeply entangled in a long-distance romance. 

There’s many a children’s book featuring postmen. many of them written by Janet & Allan Ahlberg. But the Ahlbergs covered other – er – occupations in their very many books, of which a family favourite was – Burglar Bill. The book follows an entirely amiable burglar as he goes out nightly to steal – well, a toothbrush and the like, and whose life changes when he accidentally steals a baby, and then meets a soul mate – Burglar Betty, leading them to abandon their criminal ways, marry, and presumably live happily ever after.

Returning to more public-service professions, there’s The Light House Keeper’s Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage which follows the story of Mr. Grinling, a lighthouse keeper, and his clever wife Mrs. Grinling, who daily sends his lunch along to him from home to lighthouse via a complicated pulley system. When scavenging seagulls repeatedly steal Mr. Grinling’s delicious lunches, it’s up to Mrs. G to upset their nefarious schemes by making sandwiches generously filled with …. mustard.  That soon sorts the thieves out.

Perhaps a more useful occupation for a landlubber is that of the milkman.  And Milkman is a book by Anna Burns.This convoluted, stream-of-consciousness narrative is no easy read, but it rewards the effort made to get under its skin. An eighteen year old woman living somewhere in (it has to be, though never said) in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, attempts escape from the convoluted realities of loyalties, honour, family, tribalism, rumour by reading 19th century novels, attending French classes. There is no escape from the attentions of The Milkman, a married man who all-but stalks her. There’s her maybe-boyfriend, her wee sisters, her mother’s attempts to marry her off, her family to contend with, and all this is described in multi-layers of language, which simultaneously illuminate and confuse. The inability simply to be, to get on with life without meaning being imposed by others on the simplest routines is described in all its confusing power by Burns’ use of language – adjective piled on adjective, metaphor on metaphor. It’s suffocatingly powerful, and quite honestly, I was glad to finish it. Though very glad to have read it. 

Luckily, The Memory Police are not part of the job-offering here in the UK – yet. I’m not normally a fan of dystopian fiction, but I found this a powerful and unsettling read, by Yōko Ogawa . Simply yet lyrically written , the writer – this is told in the first person – lives on an island in thrall to the Memory Police. Things comprehensively disappear, and the inhabitants soon lose any memories of the things that have vanished. Those unfortunate people who find they do not forget simply are removed by the Memory Police and never seen again. The ‘writer’ of this book is herself a novelist and she hides her editor in her house, because his memories do not fade, and he is therefore in danger… We never find out more about the Memory Police, or know to whom they are answerable. But we are left with a lot to think about – totalitarian regimes, life, death and the process of letting go and of dying. 

Is being The King’s Mother a job?  Read Annie Garthwaite’s book about Cecily, Duchess of York, and you’ll discover that it is indeed a job for life. This narrative, a successor to Garthwaite’s first book, is about the troubled reigns of Cecily’s sons Edward (IV) and Richard (III), who are brought to life in the story told from the perspective of their redoubtable mother. It offers a rounded perspective of life as it must have been at that time. Being rich, powerful and influential was no passport to an easy life, with allies becoming sworn enemies, and enemies friends, for a whole variety of reasons both good and bad. Richard in particular is sensitively portrayed, and is a different one from his image in popular mythology.  An involving and powerful story from a troubled period of history. 

So. Job done. A chain all about jobs. Next month’s looks to be about Woman’s Work. It’s Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. I’ve just read the Guardian’s review, which hasn’t tempted me to read it. But it’ll make for am intriguing chain, I hope.

Yesterday, I informed you that you’d seen the back of me for a while. I’d forgotten about my Six Degrees post lurking in drafts. Now I really AM off … though I’ll try to respond to any comments on this post.

The Rule of Three

Today, I offer a miscellany of shots setting out to explore the Rule of Three: that images with three subjects (or more, but always an odd number) are more appealing and therefore more memorable. It’s Tina who invites us to look at this idea for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.

Country Mouse is inevitably book-ending this post with sheep. Part of the daily round here.

But she gets herself out and about sometimes. Here she is in London, near the Thames. Overlooking the river near Greenwich; looking at Peter Burke’s Assembly in Woolwich in the company of a pigeon; and over at Granary Square, part of the Gasholder development.

She’s even ventured further afield. To be intrigued by a window sill in Alsace, at Soulzbach-les-Bains; and by a decorated pillar in the Castell de Santa Florentina, Canet de Mar, Catalonia.

But those sheep are calling, back home.

Don’t those lambs grow up quickly? They were adorable little bundles of wool a month ago, playing races, and I’m-the-king-of-the-castle. Now they’re stolid little mini-mums.

Country Mouse must have known inside herself something about this Rule of Three, as she took these shots unaware that she was Sticking to the Rules.

Signing off now for a bit, apart from tomorrow’s scheduled post. I may not see your posts, though I might send the odd Virtual Postcard.