The Forest is Magic

I grew up on a steady diet of fairy- and folktales. Not just the stories that inspire watered-down Disney movies, but the darker and more fantastic tales, devoid of logic or unimaginative ties to reality. Women who spend years stitching nettles into coats to transform swans into men. Woodcutters meeting lucky spirits in the stream that runs through the forest. In particular, the Grimm brothers collected a lot of these stories from different villages and towns, where they were passed down through the generations from villagers living surrounded by the forests. The beauty, mystery, hope and danger that the forest presents throughout these stories is something the villagers drew inspiration from for their stories. I have always been captivated by the forest.

As I've always lived in the suburbs, I became nostalgic for something that didn't really exist in my concrete jungle. I have seen and loved forests all over the world, from the sun-drenched pines of Northern California to the ancient, gnarled, multicolored trees of Japan to the tall, nameless trees of Bangladesh, that at once shade beneath a magnificent rainy sun and seem to hide something.

Sweden's moss-covered giants are no exception. I have gone mushroom picking twice now, the first time guided by a mycologist and the second time only with a friend who loves the forest as much as I do, and each time the forest was perfection.

The road to Torup, in Malmo.

Meet Alexander.

Swedish children grow up in the outdoors. The first time I went picking, on the tour, there were several families there, exposing their children to the elements.

The first mushroom of the day...appears poisonous, though attractive.

This mushroom has a beautiful amethyst color that results from taking up a toxic amount of arsenic into itself.

Lucky ladybird! Hardy prefers to create his own luck, though.

Life abounds: spiders, ticks, mosquitoes, frogs, and deer were just a sampling of the friends we encountered.

Hardy told me in Austria, the folktales take a snail's height on the base of a tree to be an indicator of how high the snow will fall in the upcoming winter. However, this next Swedish winter is supposed to be a cold one, so we both agreed the snail had some climbing to do.

Stepping on puffballs to see the smoke-like spores waft out! It's addictive, like hookah for your feet. They're called roksvamp in Swedish: literally, "smoke mushroom".

The moss, and the sweet, mellow light filtering in through the endless trees.

Another world exists if you just look down. They are like little tree spirits.

We'll certainly be coming back.

Impressions

I woke up to a beautiful morning. Beautiful enough to make me regret choosing to spend the day studying rather than go hiking in Kullaberg, a nature reserve situated between forest and sea, as was the original plan. It is a solitudinous day, marked by pillowy clouds sleepily drifting across a once blue sky, painting it a familiar new shade: "Lund gray".

Some time has passed since my first encounter with this color. Enough time to make friends, do a laudable amount of traveling, studying, pseudo-painting and pseudo-partying, and seeing the sights both well-known and taken for granted by the natives. Our bright eyes in the beginning, shining on our faces between our screams of "look at this place" and "see how old these buildings are" and "have you been here yet" and "would you like to come with me then, tonight" and "can it really cost that much" and "i can't wait for everything to begin" have shaded over a bit. My focus is starting to settle. The diaphragm has opened even wider, letting in enough light to expose even the darkest days. And the days will get darker, and colder, and shorter--every Swede has assured me that is a promise. I find myself at once apprehensive and excited, just like in the beginning.

The Swedes are definitely more reserved than I’m used to from an American context. I do not mean unfriendly, but they are like flowers in a cold spring: slow to open up, though well-appreciated when they finally do. Lund is charming in its age; such long histories are missing in America.

Although I’ve been here only two months, I’m already taking for granted the cobblestone streets, lack of cars, the stemroses growing from the sidewalks. They are a part of a very different and very lovely landscape and soundscape.

Compared to home, there are far fewer people and there is much more preservation of nature, and open expanses of land are abundant. Simply biking outside this small town brings you to seemingly endless fields of wheat and turnips, dotted by stretches of forest. This country is nothing if not scenic.

Things are so expensive here.

Nothing is censored in Sweden…the word “fucking” is present without a second thought on a poster in a train station, or in songs on the radio, or on the most basic cable channels. 1,500 Swedes and I were collectively flashed by a singing group of sixty-year-olds whilst they played their ukuleles (an impressive feat of multitasking, now that I think about it), and it was only I and my fellow American that found ourselves expressing an inkling of discreet shock.

And I'm cheating here, since this isn't a first impression; rather, it's the opposite of an impression, since I've given it much thought and mulling over: I find Swedish liberalism to be somewhat paradoxical, but that is a story for another time.

Music Makes the World Go Round (Part I)

My third weekend in Lund was one of the most musical of my life, and also mostly spent outside of Lund. That Friday night, 19 August, began Malmöfestivalen, a weeklong, free and fantastic music festival in the neighboring city, bursting with names big and small, festival food and drink, rides, crayfish parties and loosened-up Swedes. A bunch of us went to see Iron&Wine that night.

Trying our first crayfish at a kräftskiva (crayfish party)

The Iron
The Wine
It rained on us, but at moments that made everything more beautiful.
Floating art

The next day marked an event I'd been waiting for pretty much the entire time I was in Sweden. Kristina and I set off to take the train to Helsingborg (the closest Swedish city to Denmark), where the goal was to gather at least 900 Swedes (or pseudo-Swedes, likes us) to beat the world record for the biggest ukulele orchestra playing a song together.
From the uke shop, this pair sold us our Swedish ukes, since I left mine back in California and Kristina was a ukulele virgin (no longer!)
I was amazed by the variety of people there: young, old, ukulele masters and people like Kristina who had been playing for a total of 3 hours (bravo!).
The man on the book cover and the man holding the book are one and the same! Ukulele love forever, through the decades.

In the end there were 1,547 of us, and beat the world record we did. What an amazing day! They filled the day with rehearsals, performances and ukulele-jokes (bad ones). We played Vikingarna's "Leende Guldbruna Ögon" (Her Golden Brown Eyes), which is every bit as awful as it sounds, but is pretty fun when you're playing it along with 1,500+ other ukulele enthusiasts.

The middle woman is from Guinness World Records, and announced that we had officially broken the record! The audience thundered into Bob Marley-style victory "oi oi oi"s.
We walked away as world record-breakers and spent the rest of the daylight exploring the beautiful city.

That night, I returned to Malmöfestivalen to see an excellent performance by Amadou&Mariam, a blind couple from Mali that combine French, Mali, and other worldly rhythms into their extremely dance-inducing music. I couldn't stop moving.

I must credit an old friend, Hjalmar, who told me they'd be there, and he was actually the first friend from International House that I had a reunion with. Back in San Diego, Hjalmar and I would trade ukulele lessons (me) for Swedish lessons (Hjlamar).
The lovely Raphaelle, Antoine and Robin
The boys

One of the best weekends of my life, both for the music-related events and the company. Music has turned out to be a huge part of my journey abroad so far, entwining itself into the best moments I've had in Sweden, in other countries and in the friendships I've formed. Next post, exploring Skåne and then exploring Berlin, Germany. It only gets more musical.