A Riot Of Color On The Welsh Shore

Traeth Mawr means "Big Sands" in Welsh; it's the name given to the wide estuary between Portmadog and a blank hillside of trees and rock.  Or, a mostly blank hillside.
Portmeirion is a fabricated, storybook "village" that is unlike anything else we've seen.  It is literally a patch of Italian baroque set down in Wales, like a spill of paint on a concrete slab.  Nobody knew how to explain it to us, and I'm not sure I can explain it here.  Imagine two postcards set side by side; the first is of wintry Britain, the second is of summery Portofino.  Portmeirion is like two distant vacations, remembered in a dream, thrown together and piled atop itself on the rocks.  Some people actually live here.  The rest of us pay an entrance fee and walk around, bemused and surprised.

The emblem of Portmeirion is a naked woman, calf-deep in waves, a hint of mermaid tail rising behind her.  When we walked those rocky shores, it was hard to imagine swimming or sunbathing.  The beaches of North Wales are empty expanses of sand and rock; the sounds of gulls and waves only made the loneliness more vast.  November there is a time of frosted fields and rattling, leaf-bare forests.  The fish and chip shops are closed for the season, the ice-cream stands boarded up.  This isn't a season when the rough coast - barnacled rock, concrete wharf, frozen sand - could seem hospitable to bare flesh.
But the pale citizens of this grassy land do emerge in the summers to venture into cold waves and lie in tepid sunshine.  North Wales, like the whole of North Europe, is home to hardy people who tire of winter. People are always drawn to the sea, aren't they?

A man named Sir Clough Williams-Ellis built this place in the half century between 1925 and 1975, using Italian seaside villages as a model, and bits of other buildings as his material.  Many of the architectural pieces already existed, and were moved and reassembled at Portmeirion.  Ornate clock towers jostle against wrought-iron porticos. Hard angles take surprising turns, statues peer from unexpected windows. The whole thing has a postmodern, collage-like air of disorder and order.  It feels a little like a town made from children's toys, where disparate parts are thrown together in a pile and expected to play out a fantasy.
Though some of the buildings are semi-inhabited (there are "private" signs everywhere, so that we tramping tourists don't stumble into an actual Welsh living room), the majority of the structures really serve their own purpose.  William-Ellis was building a piece of art, not planned-housing in the mold of Le Corbusier.  Room is needed for a cafeteria, of course, and for souvenir shops and ice cream, a hotel and restaurant.  Tens of thousands of people visit Portmeirion every year.  It might as well be a called a museum.

The small touches are some of the most poignant.  Little copper fixtures, wooden statues of sea-captains, painted rocks, a sermonizing Jesus on a balcony.  The town isn't actually town-sized, but the few acres of buildings are so intricate that they feel like a much bigger place.
While William-Ellis used Italy as a rough template, the buildings and architectural features are from every corner of the globe. A colonnade from Bristol, England, is set against statues from Myanmar and Greek gods.  It's meant to be surprising and confusing, and some of it isn't even real - one whole facade is done completely in trompe-l'œil.  If there is one commonality, it's the influence of the sea on all these surfaces.  Everything is salt-touched and vaguely nautical.

I remember wondering, in the November darkness of two years ago, how the cold Lithuanian coast could ever attract hollidaymakers and sun seekers.  Cold light, beach-walkers in parkas, the threat of overnight snow.  We turn towards the sea for half the year, and away from it the rest of the time.
Something that remains is the smell of the ocean, especially in the still waters of the Big Sands.  That odor of kelp, salt and something indescribable emanating from the deep - it's the same all year.
Portmeirion was originally called "Aber Iâ," which Williams-Ellis took to mean "frozen mouth."  He changed the name to make it seem more pleasant, but he couldn't erase the actual image of a cold estuary.  As colorful and tropical as the village is, it will always look out over a big slick of Welsh, northern sand.  It's beautiful, but it could never be confused with Le Marche.

Near the estuary, on a rocky hillock, the Portmeirion "lighthouse" stands duty over nothingness.  The tiny, metal figure in the scrub is something like a playhouse feature - we ducked inside and peered out through the empty porthole. It's only about ten or twelve feet tall, and doesn't have a light (as far as we could tell).  The design suggests moorish rocketship more than naval signal.  The view from inside is empty except for glistening sand, reeds, wheeling birds.  Maybe it's the sea that projects to this lighthouse, not the other way around.

If I haven't really explained this place, forgive me.  Portmeirion isn't so much a defined space as it is a funny concept.  It isn't the right season, or the right texture, or the right temperature, color or height - not just for Wales, but for anywhere. In a children's book, the zaniness might make better sense.  In a architectural textbook, the ideas might be better ordered.  On a rock beside the water, it's just a pile of buildings.  Which is to say, it's fun.  It made us laugh, which is something a town usually doesn't.  It made us want to open every door we could find.

Grey Stone Studding Green Grass: Irish Ruins

With mud on our boots and hawthorn-scratches on our arms, we've wandered Ireland's Autumn lands.  In the background? Cawing crows, manure laid on tilled earth, big places and important things that have been covered over by time and moss. Some of Ireland's greatest sights lie in cow pastures.  Walking the Green Isle's back lanes and marshy meadows, we've seen countless ruins and decaying piles.
People come to Cashel to see the Rock, the venerable citadel of the kings of Munster.  But we found the old seat under re-construction, half obscured by scaffolding and tarps.  We never went in. From the hilltop we caught sight of another stony relic in a field below that flared our imagination even more.  Hore Abbey (funny name) is like so many secondary sights on the island: neglected, beautiful, lonely and worth the walk.

On a bright day in County Tipperary, we set off on a ramble between Cashel, where we were sleeping, and the nearby town of Golden.  The public trail was closed because of potential flooding, but we followed it anyway, figuring we could always turn back if the water got too high.  The path hugged the swollen River Suir, crossing electric fences and stone stiles, taking us by Holsteins and tractors.  For some miles the walking was never worse than muddy, but after a while it became necessary to continue on an inland road - the river was a bit rambunctious, the ground really sodden.  At noon, we were able to eat our egg salad sandwiches, satisfied, beside the water in Golden.
Golden is like so many Irish small towns affected by the recession.  There were more closed storefronts than open - of the three pubs, only two seemed in good working order and a little butcher's was the most lively spot among the blank windows.  There was a steady stream of traffic on the road, but nobody was stopping.  A woman at the Spar grocery (which seemed to have replaced an older grocer's) told us we should continue on to Athassel Priory.

"It's only twenty minutes" she said.  "It's very popular with the tourists and the photographers." She may have meant that it was the most popular spot in Golden, but it's hard to think that too many people really come here, even if it is a beautiful place.
The abbey is reached by a low medieval bridge over brackish water.  Goat willows and reeds were sunk in the muck, and cow patties are littered here and there in the field, but once inside the ground was firm and dry and close-mown.  A few birds were still in the chinks and holes where they'd built their nests, high up on the soaring walls.

Athassel was once the largest abbey in Ireland, built during the 13th century by Augustinian monks.  In the early centuries of its life, the walled brotherhood was at the center of a thriving village, and there may have been several hundred monks living in the complex.  The village was burned down twice, though, and now all that remains is a convoluted, sprawling stone shell.  This cluster was once the gate house.  Now, only a little cattle-gate is still in place, to keep the nearby animals out of the abbey's center.
In the massive nave are a collection of headstones - some were placed back to the 14th and 15th century, some are as recently dated as the 1980's.  Faceless statues stand along the walls and waterspout gargoyles jut from the crumbling crenelations.  We could see our own footsteps in the grass, and the marks of one car in the soft earth, but otherwise there was no sign of recent humanity.  If you want to feel great solitude, standing in the shadow of antiquity can deepen the sensation.

On that walk along the Suir, we talked about how intricate the Irish countryside is.  Centuries of stonework crisscross the fields and glens - walls for sheep and stoned up ditches, old springs and little crosses in the woods, forgotten monuments and weedy tombstones - and it's difficult to walk more than a few hundred yards in any direction without coming across something from a previous generation.  The cows don't pay any mind to the feudal-age rock walls around them, or to the old barns where they're milked - we, on the other hand, find it intoxicating.  It's the essence of old-stone Europe.  It's the quiet thrill of blackberry bushes and unfaded green, a land that feels eternal.
And, just as we were getting ourselves worked up, we spotted this tumbledown tower house across the water.  We could never figure out what it was called, or anything about it.  Just another pile of stone, surrounded by fences and bracken, sitting quietly in the autumn sunshine.

In the forests near Lismore, some miles to the south, a very different kind of ruin lies hidden in crawling vines and overgrown oaks.  The Ballysaggartmore estate is more modern than the others, built not for defense but for vanity. For mossy, branch-covered intrigue, this is the place to go.
In the countryside around, the hidden "towers" are legendary - everyone wanted to know if we'd been or were planning on going.  "They paved the river with cobblestones, they put up huge towers and planted dozens of oaks," we were told by one woman.  "And then, before they could get started on the real castle, the money ran out."

The Ballysaggartmore towers are two large architectural follies, built in the 1830's by a man named Arthur Keily-Ussher in an attempt to please his young wife.  Keily-Ussher was a terrible landlord, by all accounts, who leveled the houses of tenants who couldn't pay his high rents - this during the great famine, no less, when the people who lived on his estate were starving.  The "castle" towers were to be the gates to a palatial new home, but money became scarce and the actual house was never built.  Some accounts say that his wife left him when she didn't get her castle.  Others say she was too embarrassed to go out anymore.
Today, there's a very atmospheric walk up along a stream, past the first gates - which serve as a bridge - and up to the second, gothic revival structure.  Weeds grow from cracks in the stone, the old iron gates are rusted and swing loosely on their hinges, the forest around is creeping ever closer to the walls.

We walked around Hore Abbey at dusk, as the dew was settling onto the grass and the air was beginning to feel like frost.  A few other people were roaming around, casting long shadows across the fields and murmuring in hushed tones.  We all kept our distance from one another, appreciating the quiet and the beautiful, broken spaces.  Inside, the medieval chambers were surprisingly well-preserved, even without their roofs.  The earth floors looked as though they'd just been swept.  Outside in the scraggly weeds, a few gravestones tilted beneath crabapples.  Their inscriptions were too worn to read.

As the darkness gathered around us, the black outline of the abbey - the nave, bits of an old cloister, some other surviving walls - began to take on more and more character.  It was difficult to tell in which century we were standing.  Hore has been abandoned for nearly five hundred years. The sheep and spongy grass around it haven't changed.  The romantic feeling at sunset is just the same.   

You Are What You Sit On

The Swedes may have given the world IKEA, but the Danes gave us all a place to sit.  Sure, chairs existed before the Danish design movement, but the idea of what a chair was or looked like was vastly different.  To be fair, it really started with the Germans.  Danish furniture makers were highly influenced by the Bauhaus school in Germany which, from 1919 - 1933, taught a revolutionary style of furniture design that mixed craftsmanship with fine arts, encouraging creativity, but also keeping human proportions, modern materials and technique top of mind.  The even greater 'gift' (I really hesitate to use that word) from Germany, when it comes to Danish furniture design, was World War II.  Denmark was relatively unscathed, the rest of Europe was looking for cheaper, simpler products and plywood construction became the start of a Danish empire on four legs.

It's amazing how little you think of designs that have become so mainstream they are simply the default.  For example, we have missed Q-Tips deeply since beginning this trip, never really realizing that "cotton swabs" are just not the same.  If I saw the above chair in a home, I might think "nice chairs."  Maybe.  If I saw it in a store, I would recognize that it's a perfect version of chair that I may want for my own home.  In a museum,  specifically Trapholt in Kolding, I realized that this chair is a work of art that didn't just always exist.  The fathers of Modern Danish chair design were (or worked closely with) cabinetmakers.  Lighter woods, function and simplicity, the idea that the piece would fit into the personal world of its owner all factored in.  Thoughtful craftsmanship was key.

Arne Jacobsen, Kaare Klint, Hans Wegner, Verner Panton led the wave of design, teaching and studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Art.  They were commissioned by hotels to make one-of-a-kind furniture.  Wegner's Round Chair became known simply as The Chair after it was used by Nixon and Kennedy in one of their historic, televised debates.   Jacobsen's The Egg and The Swan are icons of modern design and his stackable Ant Chair was so popular that it became Denmark's first industrially manufactured chair.  Above, Ant chairs fill Trapholt's museum cafe.

Finn Juhl was a little more radical than his Danish design contemporaries.  The Pelican Chair, strung up in a colorful array at Trapholt's exhibit commemorating what would have been Juhl's 100th birthday, was called "aesthetics in the worst possible sense of the word" when it debuted.  A great artist panned during his lifetime? Shocking.  What I found more shocking, though, was that this and other curvaceous and plush, colorful and space-age designs were created in the early 1940s.  Looks that I associate with the swinging 60s or the groovy 70s predated both by my entire lifespan.  Juhl may not be the most influential of the chair designers, but he is credited with bringing modern Danish design to America, where it gained instant popularity and still flies off the shelves.

The above Ball Chair was actually designed by a Finn (Eero Saarinen), but when you read the architect's account of his process, you see why Trapholt would include it in a retrospective about Danish design.  With all of its whimsy, uniqueness and its futuristic feel, the chair's dimensions were still based on the most functional of factors.  "Being the taller one of us, I sat... and my wife drew the course of my head on the wall,"  Saarinen explained.  From there, it was simple enough to make a ball "just remembering that the chair would have to fit through a doorway."  It's the art of making something completely logical look and feel imaginative.

The thing about chairs is that, more than any other piece of furniture design, it just won't catch on unless it's truly functional.  You can own a table and define its use by what it can handle.  Lamps, shelves, they serve functions, but there's really no wrong way to do them.  Chairs have to hold weight, they have to be comfortable, they have to fit the owner's taste and also their frame.  Imagine a world where chairs didn't stack or swivel, weren't light enough to move with one hand or inexpensive enough to buy in large matching sets.  Then, thank Denmark.  (with a shout-out to Germany, Finland and the US).

Things Swedish People Like

Falu Red aka This Red Paint.  As soon as we drove away from Stockholm, we entered a land of red houses.  And all the same red, too.  This isn't an overstatement.  At first, Falu Red was designed to mimic the look of brickface in cities in the 1700s.  When, farmers began to paint their houses in the 1800s, they chose the paint for its practical purposes and it swept the nation.  Made of linseed oil, water, rye flour and copper compounds and zinc from the great copper mine in Falun (hence the name), Falu Red is non-toxic and actually helps preserve wood.  The recipe has been the same since the 1920s.   Falu Red has become so iconic in the Swedish countryside that "a red house," is used the same way "a white picket fence," would be - the symbol of an ideal.

Cardamom.  When we first saw kardemumma in a labeled shaker at a coffee shop - you know, where the cinnamon or cocoa powder usually are - we were surprised.  Then, we tasted it in one baked good after another.  It's a spice that we would probably never have associated with sweets before.  I'm not sure either of us could really have picked it out of a line up before Sweden.  But we sure can now.  Above, one of many kardemummabullar.  Think cinnamon bun, but with cardamom.

Dagens Rätt.  This means "Daily Lunch Special," and is served for about three hours mid-day Monday through Friday at just about every Swedish restaurant. Usually, it's a smörgåsbord (buffet) of soup, one or two hot dishes and an extensive salad bar. For the record, "salad bar" in Sweden means a whole selection of salads, from grains and beans to tzaitziki and hummus. We're not simply talking lettuce and fixings, here. A soft drink and coffee is included and, sometimes, a small dessert. It began decades ago when the government decided to subsidize lunches to keep workers happier and healthier (and more productive). Nowadays, most employers subsidize the lunches. So, places are packed at lunchtime. It was easily the healthiest and best we were able to eat on the cheap in a very long time. Swedes like the system so much that even big city brunch - the trendiest meal of all - is a buffet by reservation system in the hottest places. I call it smörgåsbrunch.

Wallpaper.  Don't let the white walls of Ikea fool you (or the lime green or pink ones for that matter).  Swedes love wallpaper and, being as I love wallpaper, it has been a real treat.

Beer and Burger Pubs.  In Sweden, bars can only sell alcohol if they classify themselves as 'restaurants' and serve hot food until at least 10pm.  That's a recipe for a pub right there - a place where you can sit with your stronger-than-supermarket beer and eat something simple.  Like a burger.  Boy do Swedes like their beer with a burger.  And they like one strong and the other big. The list of beer was always impressive, from the island of Gotland to the island of Jamaica and a whopper of a homemade veggie burger was available at each place we tried.  Never the thin, frozen type, either.  It was nice to go to these pubs and not feel like they were British or Irish themed.  Just good ole fashioned (or new fashioned?) Swedish beer and burger bars.

Extra Headlights.  In an unofficial survey performed by me in the passenger seat on a highway 4 hours north of Stockholm, 9 out of 50 cars (18%) had extra headlights attached to their grills.  Logically, they showed up more and more as we continued on toward the Arctic Circle. In the far north of Sweden, Lapland, the sun rises above the horizon for only two hours during winter.  (Stockholm gets about 5 1/2 hours of daylight in that same depth of winter).  So, one can see the point of the extra wattage. At a gas station yesterday, a man affixed his extra headlights.  Autumn has arrived.  The beginning of the sun's end.

Wooden Butter Knives.   These are not just quaint decorative touches.  A Swedish person would never dream of spreading butter with anything but a wooden butter knife.  Families have one for each member - different hands, different perfect fits. Households tend to have slightly different knives for use with different breads.  They are smooth, light, often made of juniper wood and every kitchen we rented (4 in all) had loads of them in their utensil drawers.  The handles are thinner than the blade.  They're kind of like little, shortened canoe paddles.  Above, the magical butter at Fäviken Magasinet.  Don't let the photo fool you.  Swedes skim their butter from the top.  Those wooden butter knives were not made to dig, scoop or chop, but rather gliddde and spread.

Saab.  It is the only automobile given the "Royal Warrant" by the King of Sweden and, as of June 2012, Saab belongs to the Swedes once more!  Well, the Swedes and the Chinese who share ownership of a company called National Electric Vehicle Sweden.  Sure, there was the whole GM bankruptcy snafu, but Sweden came to the rescue and their beloved brand will live to see another day.  (Obviously, Swedish people also like Volvo, but I really wanted to use this picture of an awesome classic Saab in Stockholm).

Honorable Mentions

Making you pay for the toilet.  Even as a paying customers in some cafes, you've gotta fork it over to pee.  Lessons learned the hard way, folks.  We felt stealthy when we discovered a free one, marking it one our maps.  Carry coins with you if you ever go to Sweden.  5 - 10 krona (75¢ to $1.50) is the going rate to use the restroom and since most have a door that you insert a coin into, it's vital to have exact change. Apparently, Stockholm pay toilets have been transitioning to Pay-By-Text functionality, but we didn't run into any of those ourselves.

Too Many Toppings.  This applies the most to pizza.  Outside of the cities, pizzeria and kebab restaurants are your local places to eat.  The pizza menus in Sweden are massive and include a list of combinations that seem bizarrely overwrought.  Pizza with kebab on it was a no-brainer, of course. But then...shrimp, skagen (roe and mayo salad), ham, pickles, pineapple, bernaise sauce.  On one pie.  Hot dogs get served with all sorts of pålägg (toppings): shrimp salad, Kalles (the iconic tubed caviar spread), bacon, cheese, coleslaw or mashed potatoes stuffed into the bun.  Lest we forget smörgåstårta.  The land of buffets has bred some very overzealous taste mixers.

The Painted Farms of Hälsingland

The man with the sword, to the left to the door, is the Guardian.  A quote above him states that he was there to protect anyone that entered, but also reserved the right to kick you out of it you got too drunk.  In the panel closest to the fireplace, the Fiddler laments his role as maître d'.  He is there to wrangle people, entertain, keep order.  He is harassed by a rowdy bunch whose job it is to make his job difficult, hiding in barns, boozing it up.  On the opposite wall, Sophia promises her unending love in a wedding ceremony and a man with a horse spins a tale about a buzzy political topic of the day, To Eat or Not to Eat horse meat.  This is the festivities room at Ol-Anders farm, one of the decorated Hälsingegården (farmsteads of Hälsingland).  These painted rooms are one part of what make the Hälsingegården unique to Sweden and the world. 

 In the 19th century, a boom occurred in Hälsingland.  It was a perfect storm of events for the region with a farming tradition dating back to the year 200.  Things that the farmers of Hälsingland had done for centuries suddenly became big business.  This is flax country and flax makes linen.  So, when a British man with know-how and his team of women who could spin with both hands simultaneously came into town, Hälsingland became Sweden's linen capital.  (The only linen mill still in Scandinavia exists here, today).  Then, when cotton began to usurp linen, in the mid 1800s, fortune struck again.
Agricultural reform gave farmers large swaths of forest they had little-to-no interest in.  But just about at the same time, industrialization started, railways were built and selling off land and felling rights became a goldmine.  Add to all of this a doubling of the population (thanks to peace and the smallpox vaccine) and the lack of a noble class and the farmers of  Hälsingland soared. "Cash in their pocket," Gun-Marie Swessar explained to us at Ol-Anders, something incredibly new for a population of people traded goods amongst themselves.  This is what they chose to do with it.

"That which... in Hälsingland, immediately arouses an outsider's attention are the magnificent and imposing buildings."  Elementary School Textbook, 1878.  Not much has changed since then.  As we drove to Alfta, where we'd booked a farmstay with the Hisved family, we kept noticing these enormous barns and houses.  Estates, really, grand in stature, but with an overwhelming sense of functionality.  Some people call the Hälsingegården, Hälsingland farmsteads, 'log castles,' and their layouts are pretty fortress-like.  Above, you can see the traditional form.  A fourth building used to be right where we're standing, completing the square.  The winter house is at the top, facing south for optimum sunshine.  The cow stables are to its left and the festivities and summer house is to its right.
This farm, Ol-Anders, was originally down in Alfta's town center.  However, after a 1793 fire destroyed almost all the buildings, the Anderssons and other families, moved their farms up onto hills, out of close proximity to neighbors.  For extra protection, they set them up like mini fortresses.  After the blaze, came the boom and what started as one story - two windowed buildings expanded upward and outward.  

Then came the decorative touches.  In parts of the region that were connected more closely to city, via trade routes or proximity, elaborate doors, detailed woodwork and pastels were the design of choice.  That's what the urban folk were doing, after all.  In places like Alfta and Långhed, porches were the style.  It's impossible not to notice them, some baroque, some rococo, some faux Greek temple.  "It took about 25 - 50 years for the fashions of the mainland [Europe] to get to this part of Sweden," Gun-Marie said, laughing.  Whether with a porch or not, the entrance to the home was considered the true sign of status.  Amazingly, though, even when the authorities actually began to complain that they were building on too large a scale and 'being too extravagant with wood,' the farmers of Hälsingland were never trying to outdo one another.  It was more like they were all deciding upon a local folk art, using most of the same builders and artists.

The painters mainly came from Dalarna, south of Hälsingland.  They would come on foot, with no job opportunities in their own neck of the woods, knowing that there was some wealth to go around up north.  Offering to paint for a few nights room and board, the artists began to adorn the festivities rooms.  Then, one room after another became canvases.  As the buildings grew, there was more wallspace to adorn.  With international styles beginning to come into vogue, farmers asked their painters to create the look and feel of expensive materials that would never be available to them.  Paint was used to create the illusion of oak and mahogany, Italian marble and French silk.  Always practical, the most intricate art was left for the rooms used only now and then.  More durable wall treatments, like stenciling and splatter painting, were used in entrance halls, sleeping rooms.  Because the fanciest murals were done in rooms that got use maybe a few times per generation and were not exposed to smoke or grease, they were able to remain intact.

Before we met with Gun-Marie at Ol-Anders, we didn't quite know how we'd be able to get a look at some of the famous interiors.  "Perhaps I can call my friend," Kersti Hisved told us when we asked about it.  We stayed with her and her husband, Ivor, in the hamlet of Långhed.  "Or, you can just come upstairs and look at ours!"  Ivor remembers touching the wall paintings as a child.  The paint used to come off on his fingers, he recalled.  Amazingly, with windows all around, it shows no signs of fading.  They've turned the festivities room into a kitchen, removing the wall panels temporarily to add insulation and having a restorer add a protective sealant before beginning any construction work.  "He told me to clean the walls with bread," said Kersti, "that's how they do all the old churches.  Lots of bread."  She dabbed at the wood with an imaginary chunk of baguette.
"In the 50s and 60s, everyone wanted everything new."  All across Hälsingland, some design elements became casualties of modernity.  But the festivities rooms, with their lack of insulation, were often the last things to get touched.  "She did not have the money to renovate this whole, big house," Ivor said of his grandmother.

Although the buildings on Kersti and Ivor's farm date back to 1845, they have only been in the Hisved family for four generations.  Some Hälsingegården have been in the same family for 400 years.  A strict code of inheritance governed the land here, where there was no aristocracy to clamor for real estate.  Father to son and if you had a daughter, it was customary to marry her off to a close neighbor.  Ironically, though, right after all these big houses were built in the mid 1800s, 10 - 30% of the people in this area emigrated to America.  They were following Erik Jansson, a preacher whose love of book burning got him run out of town and whom they promptly shot in Bishop Hill, Illinois after discovering that - prophet or not - he was an egomaniacal control freak.  Anyway, lots of houses were left empty.

While driving along in Edsbyn, we spotted Panesgården, a Halsingegården-turned-garden shop.  A warm welcome was given by Rosemarie and Rolf, who'd bought the building under a year ago.  Rosemarie had a flower shop in town, but fell in love with the historic farm, which wasn't being put to any use.  The ceiling had been newly touched up, the old faded painting could still be seen.  As we gawked at it, Rosemarie came up beside us.  "Want to see the upstairs?" she asked almost mischievously.  The impossibly narrow spiral staircase was unroped for us.  "You do this at your risk," she said before telling us to duck.  "I'm not allowed to let customers up here."

Upstairs, we emerged into a huge, bright room with some of the prettiest painting we'd seen.  She would like to turn the space into a cafe, if she can figure out the dangerous staircase situation.  Of the 1,000 Hälsingland farms, around 50 of them can be visited.  Many have been turned into B&Bs.  I think it was most fun to have just stumbled upon some.
What I love most about these farmers' mansions is the clear idea you get of what was truly valued by the people who built them.  Even as the farms grew almost ludicrously large, entire families would still sleep in a single room.  Why heat more than one?  They remained self-sufficient, continuing to spin, weave, slaughter, build, brew, bake... and all those big buildings gave them space to do it.  On most grand estates, the space is filled with stuff.  Here, they were filled with tools.  On most, fashion trumps function, wallpaper and furnishings are switched out for newer styles.  On these walls, art was made to last. 

In Abandoned Factories and Red Barns, a Capital of Culture

Vestfossen Cellulose Paper Factory declared bankruptcy in 1967 and was closed for good by 1973.  The town of Vestfossen was hit hard by the industrial crisis around this time, when petroleum had just been discovered off Norway's coast and was pumped straight into the economy - washing out almost all other industry in its gush.  Vestfossen lost its identity when this and other factories closed... but found a new one when they reopened.  In 2003, Vestfossen Cellulose was rebirthed as Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium.  Other art spaces soon followed and the small town is now an unlikely art lover's mecca, a cultural capital in the middle of nowhere.

The town's industrial space being turned into art space isn't what's so surprising.  Artists have been drawn to the high ceilings, huge windows and low-to-no rental cost of abandoned factories for decades, all around the world.  It's just so wonderfully random that it happened here.  Approaching Vestfossen, you'd be shocked that it was ever an industrial town.  Idyllic farmland stretches in every direction.  We were surprised to find a real center at all, a main street with two grocery chains, a pub, a restaurant, a caffe and bakery - and posters publicizing the newest exhibitions around town.  Above is an installation piece called "Hay Harvesting Contraption." That's not true.  It's just a rake, but once art is on the mind, it's hard to not see everything as a work of it.

Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium (Art Laboratory) is currently showing pieces from Jack Helgesen's collection.  A number of his other pieces made up the very first show at the Laboratory in 2003, two years after artist Morten Viskum (best known for replacing olives with newborn rats in jars on grocery store shelves across Norway - the Rat/Olive Project) bought the old factory.  It was a big get for the new museum, as Helgesen's collection brought internationally renowned artists' work to the little village of Vestfossen. Around Norway, the Laboratory is now considered one of the very best spaces for showing contemporary art in the country.  It's really hard to beat a four floor space like this.

When we asked a local how many visitors they get and if they'd ever thought about having a hotel here so that more people would maybe come, she looked at us a little blankly.  Then, she realized what we meant. "It is really more for locals.  To raise the quality of life."  We'd just assumed they'd want more tourism.  Who doesn't?  Well, this is Norway, home of the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world.  It is one of the world's most expensive countries, but Norwegians earn such high wages that their actual cost of living translates to one of the world's lowest.  They're doing that well.  So, while farming communities in, say, America may bring in a traveling theater group or show some local artist's work on the walls of the post office to bring a sense of culture to their village, Vestfossen's borrows a Roy Lichtenstein. 

In a lot of ways, collector Helgesen's story is very much like Vestfossen's itself.  He was an elevator repair man by trade, who collected art as a passion-driven hobby.  When Norway's petroleum boom began, he found himself with more disposable income than he knew what to do with. "A lot of Norwegians did," the woman at the Art Laboratory told us.  "Villages that were more... the poorer jobs, when we were a colony... all of a sudden, people's quality of life was great."  'Quality of life' is a phrase we've heard used a lot here in Vestfossen.  The fact that they consider art such a vital part of that is what makes the place so special.

Fredfoss Kulturpark opened around the same time as the Kunstlaboritorium.  Formerly Fredfoss Uldvarefabrik - a textile factory - it boomed in the early 20th century, recessed, had a World War II spike in business and then shuttered when all the rest of the factories did.  Its closing left nearly 200 workers unemployed.  It has more than made it up to the community ever since.  The Cultural Center has an art therapy workshop open to anyone who would like to work through mental troubles through art.  It also rents out studio space to nearly a dozen artists in residence.   We visited a woodworker named Lars, who crafts beautiful guitars and custom frames from local wood.  "I prefer Norwegian wood," Lars said.  "It is important to use what you have."

One can only imagine that when these big factories were built they were seen as blights on the scenery.  Sure, job creating piles of brick, but piles of brick blocking out views of the beautiful Vestfosselva river and surrounding countryside nonetheless.  Reusing them, revitalizing the space that they take up, makes the buildings themselves kind of like found art.  "Did the Laboratory start a trend? Did it attract artists to the area and then that's why more sprung up?" Again, the answer we received was humble and matter of fact.  "We just saw that we had these buildings - and we had to do something with them."  Use what you have.

What Joran Tone Gjerde had was a family farm, inherited from her father who housed his animals in this red barn.  "I am not in farming, so I did this,"  she told us, while crouching barefoot next to a television with a live goldfish inside.  We crawled over the knitwear covered floor to meet her.  You see, what Joran has done is turn the big red barn into "Sanselåven," Sense Barn, an interactive art exhibition space that allows children (little ones and big, awkward ones) to explore all their senses.  The current installation was brought over from Denmark - a four room world of whimsy that involves such textural wonders as a ceiling completely covered in open umbrellas and a freezer filled with books.   It was as magical as everything else in Vestfossen. Ripe with imagination, fanciful purpose and the notion that everyone deserves art.

Bergen's Hanseatic Bryggen

This is Norway's "city of rain." On wooden streets – even if they are storm-soaked and age-softened – footsteps echo so loud that two people can sound like a troop.  Bergen’s Bryggen (the name translates to “wharf”) is a neighborhood of lilting gutters, odd angles, old houses, blind corners, narrow spaces and medieval history.
Created in the 11th century, settled by the Hanseatic league in the 14th and updated during the late renaissance, the pretty stretch of buildings is the symbol of Bergen, a UNESCO site and an unfailingly charming tourist trap.

At every Bryggen entrance, there’s a big “no smoking” sign.  It seems silly on wet days in September, but the city is truly worried.  Most of the buildings have burned down at one time or another.  Fire destroyed most of the buildings in 1476 and 1702.  In 1955, several of the waterside houses were flattened in a conflagration that burned more than one third of Bergen.  In each case, the buildings were carefully reconstructed according to the original settlement plans, with old tools and methods  - which is interesting in the 20th century, but is astounding for the 15th and early 18th centuries.
The result is a fascinating area of boarded canyons and dripping clearings, filled with shops and confused tourists.

The Hanseatic League was, during the middle centuries of the last millennium, the pre-eminently powerful trading force in northern-coastal Europe.  The German-based association of tradesmen (all of them bachelors, all of them sworn to German law and the Holy Roman Emperor) existed as a kind of extra-state, self-governing partnership.  They set up enclaves in cities from London to Novgorod, with closely-held internal management, and essentially built their own cities - Gdansk, Bruges, Malmo - where they could.
Bergen was an outlier, far away from the north coast of the continental mass.  Still, its sea wealth and northern location made it a valuable outpost, and it became a major Hanseatic port. The Bryggen kontor, or enclave, was established in 1360, mainly to trade in Atlantic fish (which was brought to the south) and southern grains (which the people of Norway had a difficult time growing).  As a Hanseatic settlement, it was excused from local rulership and laws.  The traders mostly kept to themselves.

Wandering through the Bergen Bryggen, it's easy to feel off-kilter, as though you've just stepped off a rolling ship's deck.  None of the lines are plumb, none of the windows seem square.  People bump into eachother in wooden passageways - the whole place seems more in danger of tipping over than burning up.  It's especially off-kilter after the square lines of the modern town and present-day Norway in general.
In Bergen, like in most Hanseatic enclaves, the trading center was a compact and well-guarded compound close to the docks.  These mini-towns consisted of the trader's houses, storerooms and shops, all enclosing open courtyards where markets were held and goods were unloaded.  Today, there are high-price hair salons and antique stores, souvenir shops, art galleries and clothing boutiques scattered along the wooden walls.  They all have a quaint, nordic softness to them; frayed wool and well-worn wood, moose-heads hung on the walls, bold paints and grey skies overhead.  The courtyards are of well-rounded cobblestones.  The shop-proprietors are Norwegian now - not German - and generally they trade in tourism.

The Bryggen is one of those places that at first looks tiny, then feels huge, then reverts back to feeling small.  From across the harbor, it appears as a simple row of buildings.  A few minutes wandering through wooden alleys makes it seem like an endless sequence of corners and uneven boards.  Roofs hang, second-floor protrusions loom.  Then, it runs out - a few turns through and one realizes they've passed the same courtyard twice, the same yarn store three times.