Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Inspiration in abandoned houses

@brittarnhild

There is something sad, at the same time beautiful and fascinating about old abandoned houses.
Life lived and loved through generations.

I have collected photos of abandoned houses for years and years.
Some times I look at one or a few of them. Imagining life as it have been. A little girl sleeping behind a window. A father up and out before dawn to row fishing. A grandmother singing for her newborn grandchild. Preparations for a funeral. A birth. A wedding. Man and wife making love.

 A man building a house using his hands, for himself and his wife to be. Dreams in every nail he turned in. Years passed. Generations. And one day the house was empty. Walls painted by laughter and wiping

Columbines outside the wall inspires me to write a tale.

Beauty in hardship.

 

To fall in love with a house…..or a way to live life

@brittarnhild

This week we stay in a little cabin near Reine in Lofoten, the most beautiful area you can imagine. The place belongs to my brother´s parents in law. Just behind where we stay is a tiny little red house, and I have fallen in love!

 

A tiny red house, closed. 
A tiny red house, patiently waiting for someone to come and open the shutters, let in life, love, laughter

 

 

Can you imagine living there for months during the summer :-)
Lace curtains and pelargoniums in the windows. Beds made for a guest or two, a kitchen where the fragrance of freshly baked pastries sits in the wall, books, paintings, collections of small stones and shells, a loom with a weaving in progress, music......

The house is not for sale, but in my dream it belongs to me.

Will you come for a visit?

 

The Book I Read, The House I Love!

text and images britt-arnhild

I am reading "The House I Loved" by Tatiana De Rosnay (author of Sarah´s Keys). Have you read it? I am only 55 pages into it so far, and hooked. Luckily it is Friday night, I have a quiet weekend ahead, and if you want me you will probably find me in my favorite corner of our livingroom, with my nose deep in the book.

Houses have always meant a lot to me, though the fact that my childhood home has had new owners for a long time, doesn´t matter. Past is past. Present is now.
And now is The House in the Woods.
Where we live and where my husband and I create our shared memories.

We have lived in The House in the Woods for 11 years now. When we moved here, we got the key on Sept 11th 2001, and couldn´t understand what we would do with a "new" house when the world was falling apart, all four kids moved in with us. Today Marta is an "only" child.

Life continued from that fatal day in 2001, and our 11 years here have been and are filled with blessed moments. 

I continue to read Rosnay´s book, and as the words unfold, my love for My House, My Husband, My Family grows, deepens. Fills me with thankfulness.

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Good literature does that! Creates new life in you, around you. Broadens your mind.

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Photos today are from Krakow, an old neighbourhood outside the historical old town.
Looking at the houses I imagine all the tales they hide. 

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The tale I promised you, the 80 years one about my grand uncle Sivert,
has to wait......

......tonight I´ll be reading. 

Dirty river after the storm, still filled with beauty

text and image britt-arnhild

The storm is over. There are other storms to come, but hopefully they will not be as strong and furious as Dagmar.

After staying indoors for a couple of days, it felt wonderfully refreshing to come out for a long walk. Terje went up to the hills behind The House in the Woods for cross country skiing. I headed downtown, for my favorite walk, along the river.

 

I must have hundreds of photos of the old ware houses, thousands. You have seen many of them already.

None of them are the same though.

The colours of the houses may be, but the river, the trees, the air, the sky is always different. 

The river is dirty brown now, after the storm. But when the ware house bend down to look at herself in the river mirror, the colour of the water changes.

Mirror, morror in the river.....

I am booking flight tickets and hotel for an upcoming travel with my girls. A big city of Europe. The travel genes in me sends rushes of longing down my spine. 

Deep down though I know with all I am that Trondheim is the city of my heart.

Of my love.

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Today Torgeir and I will take a book browsing tour in the city. And then Torgeir has promised me to take me on a sushi lunch.

Lucky me.

Dressed for Christmas. December 10th

text and images britt-arnhild

Walking through this house makes me imagine I have come to Christmas Fairy Land. Red, green and white, snow covered flowers, a dust of snow on the stone steps.

This house sets us in Christmas mood, and while we are in this state of mind I have a challenge for you. Or rather, one of my blog readers, Mrs Steglich, has. She wrote me this email the other day:

Dear Britt-Arnhild
Here where I live there is no tradition of the advent calendar and therefore I am not able to give my contribution. On the other hand I would suggest a topic for another blog post. What about  invite your blog readers to share something else that happened on Christmas Eve. It can besomething funny, sad, touching. Something has made that day memorable for some reason.
My suggestion is not without reason because I myself have a memory I'd like to share with everyone.
Have a blessed day.

I remember one "the night before Christmas". I must have been 10 or 11. We had decorated the tree, I, my parents and my two brothers (Torodd was not born yet). I had gone to bed, slept a little but then woke again. The house was dark and quiet. Filled with anticipation I was unable to sleep again. My parents and my two brothers had their bedrooms upstairs on the first floor, mine was on the groud floor. There was also the kitchen, the diningroom and the bathroom. I needed to go to the bathroom, but didn´t get that far. The diningroom table was moved away, so were the chairs, and on the floor was a huge miniature railway, ready with tracks, a small village, a mountain, tunnels, people.......and everything. The best Christmas present ever for my brothers and me.

I crept back to bed and dreamed about our new toy!

Time for a walk along the river

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

.....well, not much text actually, but a lot of images......

 
The river Nidelven

 

The Old City Bridge, Gamle Bybro

 
A quiet river, its water running slowly

 
Belief. Hope. Love

 
Mauro has taught me an importan lesson: explore, if you see an open gate, walk in to find hidden treasures.

I did, and found a pair of old wooden skis :-)

 
Reflections

 
River seen from another angle

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Thanks for walking along.

When you come to Trondheim I'll take you on a river walk. What else do you want to see? To do?

Caffe Avec

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 

When I started my Caffe Avec-blog I wanted it to be a blog for travels. A place where I, and you, could sit down, enjoy some coffee and may be a cake together, and talk about travels. Running more than one blog properly has proved to be a task beyond my ability, so most of the time Caffe Avec has been quiet......and very, very lonely.

 

I still have a dream to make it my travel blog though, and one day I know I will succeed.

For the moment I can at least post a few of my caffe avec-posts both at Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods and at Caffe Avec.......

....and a morning at the tiny little Norwegian village of Solvorn, near Sognefjorden, might be a good choice for both blogs.

Let's meet at Linahagen Kafé

 
Solvorn, with its white painted houses, is a place where time seem to stand still. A place where you automatically slow down your steps, you stop to smell the roses, or to look at the tiny little ferry when it comes in and the few cars in the queue have to board backwards to make the unboarding on the other side of the fjord easier.

 

We came to Solvorn to spend our anniversary night at Walaker Hotel. We left Solvorn many hours later refreshed, blessed, filled with beauty and serenity.

 

My creativity chest, my basket for travel tales, fastly fills up. Sweetly nourished by a few kisses behind a red wall. Not troll kisses this time.

What a blessing that places like this still excist.

A place to charge your battery.

A place to remember.

 
Looking in. Looking out.

It doesn't really matter.

 
It do matters though how you live your life.

How you spend what you have been given.

 
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The coffee is finished, the cake all eaten.

Thanks you for sharing a few minutes of your time with me.

 

I'm in love!

 Is it possible to be in love......with a green house?

A crooked green house?

 
I think I am.

Or is it just spring?

The tales the houses tell

My Saturday morning walk took me to an area of the city where I seldom walk. Old wooden houses combined with a few grand old ones and many concrete quite ugly buildings from the 1970ies. A camera can chose what to shot and you know my favorites - wood, flowers, gardens, blue.......

 

Old houses have stories to tell. So many stories.

This white and blue house must have been a stable, probably with a flat on top. Children playing in the stable, a young boy proudly showing his girl the horses, hard work, happy days. Good to be anmong the animals during the strength of winter, a place to hide for the warm summer sun.

Close by is a bigger house where I went to music playschool as a toddler.I still have the book I got, worn now, filled with memories. A few years later I came back to the same building to play the piano in a student concert. I was the youngest one and therefore the first one to play. Oh my, was I nervous.....

 
Generations must have lived and loved here. I wish the walls could tell their stories. At our cabin Terje and I are reading aloud books froma local late writer, kristian Kristiansen. Many of his books are from this part of Trondheim, Kalvskinnet. The tales of life lived are greatly captured by his pen.

Another grand house, the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Center. I have never been inside this house and have bo idea of its history.

My walk continues, and soon I pass an old house with a very sad story, the old prison, "The Slavery"

 
I am not sure if I want to know about the history from inside these walls.

It is important to know though, and today there is a museum here.

My walk is coming to an end. It is time for a cappuccino, a visit in one of Trondheim's bookstores, and then may be visit a park before going home to make lunch.

But that's another story.

 

 Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

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Booksuggestion:

Not only houses, but also old books have stories to tell. Geraldine Brooks write about a very special book, the Haggadah in Sarajevo in her The People of the Book

I wonder what life might have been......

On a small island in the Adriatic Sea you might stumble upon this house, as I did. The house is abandoned now, but close your eyes and imagine what life have been here one day.

At first I found it hard to imagine. This small island is so far from the life I know, the life I sometimes dream of on small islands in the North Sea. The language, the vegetation, the heath, the surroundings.......

Then dreams started to come. People. Life. Laughter. Work. Green hands. I sat down to read my book, which happend to be Traveller's Prelude by Freya Stark.

..........og yes, it would not be difficukt at all to stay in this house during long winter night, among books, a fire and a mug of tea, dried figs.......

.....planning travels east of the moon.

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I found this house on Lopud island during our day on The Adriatic Sea.

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in the days since my stumble upon this old house, a tale about the life there is making itself come alive. I am daydreaming.