The Light That Stretches
In spring 2023, when the wandering bug hit again, I went north. I did not know how far north I would go. There were two places I wanted to visit. First it was the Wadden Sea, that stretches along the North Sea from the Netherlands to Denmark. I had seen several times “the riddle of the sands”, a movie that takes place in the German part of the Wadden Sea. Not an objectively great movie, but the first half has a certain mysterious atmosphere that captivated me. I wanted to experience that atmosphere. The second was the island of Fårö, in Sweden. It is Fårö that the renown film director Ingmar Bergman called his home. This single fact made me curious. And for some obscure reason, I had been convinced for years that it was in Fårö that I would experience landscapes that best match the music of Mike Oldfield in “the tubular bells”: tormented rocky sea shores and crashing waves. None of these two places were as I expected: the German island of Norderney was not that mysterious, and the Baltic sea was like a big quiet lake that did not ring any bell. But it did not matter. These locations were just starting points, bearings I used to travel north. By train mostly, by boat and bus sometimes, on a derelict bicycle one freezing day in Fårö, or on foot, alternating between cities and nature. My mind was shifting. Spring went backward as went north. It was as if leaves and flowers were shrinking back into their buds. Through the Rhine valley, Koln, Norderney, Hiddensee, and across Denmark to Sweden. Because I don't like to come back the same way, after Fårö I kept going north to Stockholm. The night was shrinking. Spring going backward and increasing daylight seem awfully antagonistic. Weirdness was ever present; my mind shifted and I let myself wander in a world of reverie. A hint at the Sami culture in the excellent regional museum in Umeå pushed me further north still. People in T-shirts in Luleå while the border of the Baltic sea was still frozen. The mining town of Kiruna (which felt like a dark gloomy hole in bad weather) being displaced bit by bit to its new location. Sweden encouraged meditation. The quiet, almost featureless landscapes meant that I naturally focused on details: trunks, rocks, wooden walls, textures... It could have easily made me feel depressed, but mostly it was a quiet peacefulness. From Kiruna, that north of the arctic circle, the most natural way to come back was through Norway. And if Sweden was introspection, Norway was the opposite. The extravagant and majestic fjords, the impressive cliffs, the waterfalls... My eyes could not rest anywhere. At that point, spring accelerated and daylight shortened. Nature was blooming, people were more numerous. Reverie was definitely over when I walked through dead spruce forest around the Harz mountain in Germany. Then unexpected big fireworks in Heidelberg concluded that seven week journey. I arrived home a little bewildered, not completely sure I had not been on another planet.
