Today is a decently warm summer’s day. Just three months ago my home shore looked like this: broken ice crackling against the rocks. Impatient kayakers trying to navigate the slushy waters. A “lifestyle indian” (as we would say in Finnish) enjoying the first warming rays of the sun. 
We hardly had any snow that winter, but spring was cold. REALLY cold. Snow on the night before May Day. Unusually much snow in Lapland in June. 11 degrees Celsius and windy on the first day of June. Global warming is upon us, wise people say. But who knows if it means we will actually feel the warmth. Maybe temperatures just even out into in-between seasons all year round? How awful that would be.
(Helsinki, Finland; March 2017)
Tag Archives: Scandinavia
Sunday morning, 11 am
Oslo was as crisp and tranquil as the weather on a Sunday morning in December. After a ladies’ weekend out (including spa and sushi and jazz), a morning stroll and a cup of hot tea a welcome moment of mindfulness.
I must have been the only one thinking so as the streets were almost abandoned. So much beauty and nobody but me to see it, at least not today. 
(Oslo, Norway; December 2016)
Away with the frost
De-icing at Helsinki airport is routine on nippy mornings. I’ve always wanted to replace the light-orange viscous liquid with shock pink. The airplanes taking off would look so much more cheery.
(Helsinki airport, Finland; December 2016)
Snow confusion in Stockholm
One would think that, like in Helsinki, snowfall in Stockholm would equal much shoveling and careful driving. But snowfall in Stockholm always equals chaos. Roads close, schools close, trains won’t run, and even this time the subway (?!) did not run properly.
Welcome to Sweden, where modern society has very quickly forgotten how things used to be before climate change. Where nobody skis to work anymore – and thus everything stops when the snow comes. 
(Stockholm, Sweden; November 2016)
Endless white
Cold. Windy. White. Dark. Imagine if the sun were just a stone’s throw further away from us. Then this is what all of us would live in, all the time. Thank goodness our planet is just leaning out to take the curve properly, before zooming closer to the light again.
(Helsinki, Finland; November 2016)
Dark & cold
Still a few long, dark months ahead. With climate change there is no consistent winter in Helsinki region anymore, has not been for quite some years. So one day I can go to the office in rain, wearing my rubber wellies, and walk back home in snow. Thank goodness I had the mind to slip on boot liner fleece socks or I’d have no toes left.
(Helsinki, Finland; November 2016)
The writing on the wall
“Finally, in this greenery, Ulla stood as bride for the last time”
In the oldest restaurant in Stockholm the writing on the bathroom wall is by an 18th century poet-songwriter called Bellman. They are the last lines from a song describing a marvelous summer lunch out in the lush forest, by a spring.
Food and love always went hand in hand.
(Den Gyldene Freden, Stockholm, Sweden; October 2016)
Freezing night in Stockholm
I am quite certain this 400 year-old gasthaus was alive last night. Either that, or the cold made the house shrink very loudly. Perhaps it moved a little, too… crept closer to the waterfront, if only anybody bothered to find out.
Fall has come to Stockholm. The tired sun barely throws its blanket off to say good morning as we land. Soon it will not even have the energy to get out of bed until way past 9 am.
(Stockholm, Sweden; September 2016)
Morning in Gothenburg
After a magical moonrise there was an almost equally magical sunrise, in Gothenburg.
After the silence I stood on a stage in front of a conference room filled with people. Through the bright lights on stage I could sense the confusion, the questions, and the timidity of an organization that has gone through a dismantling and rebuilding in the past year. While I did not know the people in the room I sensed the need for a purpose.
And I thought of how professional organizations are more like collective individuals than families. A family’s main purpose is to support each member, but an individual or an organization needs a higher, more defined purpose to reach for.
If we have no purpose to strive for together, we will not be brought together in union. And if there is no union there is discord, or dullness.
Some say that the second best may be to improve the world, but the highest best is to improve oneself from the inside. Yet, when people work together with a noble purpose, they improve both the world as well as themselves in ways they never thought possible.
The sun was high when I left the conference room and my new friends. I look forward to keeping closer contact and observing them recreate a new, fresh sense of purpose.
(Gothenburg, Sweden; August 2016)
Day escape
It was the last real summer’s day in Helsinki, as it turned out later. And sadly, this day came already early in August. But our timing was perfect, and so was the tabbouleh and the cheese cake and the temperature of the prosecco in the coolbox. Is there a better way to celebrate a family birthday than by having a picnic by the shore, with this view of the Helsinki skyline? 
(Vasikkasaari, Helsinki, Finland; August 2016)
This blue marble 