Swedish Album

This is Granbacken, the house of Matts and Anders in the village of Ortala, Sweden, where Jeff and Isaac spent two delightful weeks in the summer of 1993. At this time of year the sun is up for all but a few hours out of the day, and the rest of the night is gently lit and magical to those of us from further south. It also seemed that everything that could bloom was blooming, taking advantage of the rather short summer.

The front of the house had just been renovated not long before our visit. Here at the back of the house was a porch (since enclosed) where we spent a great deal of time; the small guesthouse is also here. The garden is down the hill from the porch with lots of vegetables for the table, including two of our favorites: new potatoes with fresh dill to put on it. Anders has quite a green thumb, and there were lots of flowers to admire everywhere.

Gardening isn't the only passion in the house. Both Matts and Anders are expert knitters, which appears to be about the only way to keep one's sanity during the long, dark winters. Matts also weaves: here he and Jeff are setting up the loom with some new wool he'd just gotten to weave some herringbone fabric for a suit. The loom is near the window at the front of the house, a strategic spot from which Matts can track village events.

Food and eating provided memorable punctuation for our visit: good food, good friends, good places. Here we're having a picnic in Prästängen (Priests' Meadow), a nature preserve noted for its native orchid species.

Occasionally we got away from the house for a bit of sightseeing, although it was hard to tear ourselves away from just sitting on the porch and reading. One day we went to Skokloster, originally a Cistercian monastery (about 14th century), later a castle.

And where there's a castle, there's castle grounds, which means the perfect place for a picnic! That's Anders on the left, Matts on the right, and the back of Isaac's head below.

Proving that one can eat even in the city, here are Anders and Isaac (Jeff is taking the picture) enjoying an afternoon coffee in Stockholm; on Södermalm actually, overlooking Stockholm and its Baltic inlet below.

Aside from continual investigation into eating habits, there were other cultural differences to note. We thought this road sign terribly amusing (to us it meant "car diving"), but we had to explain the humor to Matts and Anders (to whom it meant the more prosaic "ferry slip").

The nearest largish city is Norrtälje, about half an hour from Ortala. We shopped there one day, and strolled about the city, through the middle of which runs this stream. This picture suggests a bit of the tranquility that seemed the theme of our trip.

One of the nicer habits we developed was taking walks after dinner, sometimes going down the road to Bear Lake, where we see Jeff and Anders sitting on the dock. Swimming is possible, and Matts liked to do that, but the water is still a bit cold.

This is one of the lasting impressions from our trip: peaceful times just sitting on the back porch, enjoying the quiet and the abundance of flowers.