Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

New artists in Stockholm

@brittarnhild

I had the best intentions to blog every day from Stockholm, I really had. But then there were so much to explore, we actually ending up leaving the hotel right after breakfast, not coming back till late night, diving into bed, exhausted. The sun was shining, spring was in the air, Stockholm is beautiful, we walked miles and miles every day and I did not want to miss one minute.

One day we took the tube and then a tram out to Lidingö to visit Millesgården Museum, an amazing place which originally was the home of the artists Carl and Olga Milles. A sculpture park, an art gallery, a unique collection of antiques and art both outdoors and indoors.

The garden, the sculpture park, the artists´home was great, I could walk there for hours, but we were also lucky that the art gallery had a display of photographs by Madame Dra, Dora Kallmus (1881-1963) She had a studio in Vienna and later in Paris and being a pioner female artist photographed a vide range of subjects and made her studio into a fashionable meeting place. When I posted the above photo, of Joséphine Baker, on Facebook it was deleted, due to nudity :-)

A portrait of Collette, a French writer. I was introduced to her through one of Frances Mayes´books.

And here is.......
.......well, who is this?

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I have made a video with the title Postcards from Stockholm.
Enjoy!

 

 

Postcards from Stockholm

@brittarnhild

 

A video from the daffodil fields

@brittarnhild

Terje and I are in Stockholm, Sweden for a few days.
I plan to share with you some post from our trip, eventually, and while you wait, why not enjoy the video I made from our trip to the daffodil fields :-) The video is in Norwegian, but there are some lovely footage from the fields in the beginning, and then later on a long sequence from the fields and also from our cabin during Easter.

 

 

Fields of daffodils

@brittarnhild

Last summer we visited the small island Gossen/Aukra, four hours by car and ferry south west of Trondheim. It was then I heard about the fields of daffodils for the first time. "You should come back in spring" my friend told me when we drove past the church, "then these fields are painted yellow with thousands and thousands of daffodils. There and then I promised myself that I would go back in spring.

But when is spring in Norway, when exactly will the daffodils be in bloom?
The past weeks I have sent quite a few messages to my friend on the island, "how are the daffodils doing? do you still have snow? when will they bloom this year? And a couple of weeks ago I wrote again "we will be at our cabin fort the Easter holidays (our cabin is halfway between our home and the island) do you think the daffodils will be blooming then? 
My friend was sceptical, probably Easter time would be too early, and I told myself to wait for better luck next year. Our opportunity to see the flowers this year had to be Easter.

Then, some time last week, my friend wrote again, the snow has melted and with the warm, sunny weather we have now the daffodils will probably be in bloom next week.

All I had to do then was to convince Terje that six hours of driving home from the cabin was about the same as two hours driving, since we then got to see the daffodil fields, and also had an invitation from our friends to come and eat lunch with them. Terje is rarely hard to convince and yesterday we found ourselves on the island.

The story says that the very first daffodil bulbs were taken home from The Holy Island around 1720 by Alexander Borck who was a priest on the island then. Back home he planted the bulbs but was for a long time haunted by guilt. He had not been given the bulbs but had taken them, from Calvary, and now he doubted that God could forgive him. He struggled with his guilt for a long time until he finally prayed for forgiveness through one whole night. Finally dawn came, he looked out his studio window and was greeted by a field of yellow flowers.

He was forgiven, and for 300 years now people have been blessed by the yellow daffodil fields in spring.

 

A new video, in English

@brittarnhild

Yesterday I made two different videos, one in Norwegian, one in English.
Here is the English one:

 

 

A diarist

@brittarnhild

From time to time, in books I read, I meet the word diarist, a word we do not have in Norwegian. Well, we have a word for a person writing a diary or a journal, but when I googled diarist I learned that it means a person who has been writing a published diary. Ever since the first time I saw the English word diarist I have loved it.......though I have given it the meaning one who writes a diary. And I am proud to call myself one.

I got my first diary, or journal, for Christmas in 1964, when I was 6 1/2. I had not started school yet, but I knew how to read and also how to write. Already on Christmas Eve, probably not long after I had unwrapped the gift, I wrote my first entry, which you see above.

I still have this book, and enjoy reading through it from time to time.
Dagbok is the Norwegian word for diary, directly translated it says daybook :-)

It took me three year and one week to fill all the pages in my dagbok. The last entry was written on New Years Eve 1967.

 

Since then I must have filled probably more than a hundred dagbøker (bøker is the plural for book) In long periods I have written entries every day, then there has been short and some times long periods with no entries. 

The other day I again stumbled into the word diarist in a book I read, and I realised my own dagbok has been neglected for some time. I do have both an online one, and a beautiful leather-bound book handmade in Venezia. I really want to be a diarist, so I am back to writing more frequently again now. And as I sat there with my pen, filling pages with words, it came to my mind that Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods actually used to be some kind of a dagbok as well, right from the start back in 2005. A dagbok sadly neglected for some time now. 

I want to do something with that.......so here I am, hopefully to stay!

 

Creative Days

@brittarnhild

We are in deep winter here where we live. Deeper snow than we have had in many years, and more snow coming every day. Terje has got Covid 19, I have not (so far), but we are all doing fine, though homebound for one days. We both have for our three shots and feel safe, and I must confess that I enjoy these days at home, just the two of us, no possibility to go out to do all the things that we, may be, should have done. A kind of vacation actually, a very creative one.

I spend hours and hours up in my studio, enjoying colours, yarn, needles, crayons, paper, pencils, flowers.......just making stuff.

I love these days.
And I m ake the most of them.

Like recording a new video for my YouTube-channel, like I did yesterday :-)

 

 

A snowman and a video

@brittarnhild

Because of the pandemic we have not met our grandchildren indoors for a few weeks. But some days ago the two oldest ones, Leander 6 and Milian almost 3, came to make a snowman in our garden. You can see more of the snowman and a lot of other things in today's video (in English)