Playing in color
Ellie pricked her ears as the embers rose from the heap of ashes that had been the Valborg or Walpurgis fire. On this sunny May morning, we’d passed the last of the iron nights and could fly with wings open into summer. The fire seemed to have cleared away the old season of cold browns and grays, and opened up for the olive green of the early summer. The water ran from the King’s fountains to meet the thirst of this sunny, warm morning when the chill winds had been stilled and the bumble bees had started to fly in the berry bushes. Fire had met water and everything was in balance. This very old tradition of Valborg or Walpurgis night was to me all about that: old and new, fire and water, the chill and the sun. It was a truly northern European habit and something we’d been doing in these parts long before men had started to construct the idea of a god that was over nature.
I scanned the olive green hill. Families had poured down over it on the night before to see out the winter. The sound of the local choir, which everyone said sung flat, blended with the honking of the geese, which seemed to be the only ones truly listening. I listened. Strangely, a human choir that sings flat blends perfectly with honking geese. These sounds had been beautiful to listen to without really seeing where they were coming from. As we approached the fire, Ellie stood still. In the three and a half months of her short life, she’d never seen anything so mighty. The arms of the giant fire groped for the sky, like winter longing for a way out. Families and friends watched and greeted one another, the Red Cross shook the coins in the collection cans, and children chased one another, daring the fire. A new member of the community gave a speech: something obscure about spring and history that few listened to but that lent the confidence of tradition to the night. As the fireworks went off, Ellie and I hid under a wagon. One forgets that fireworks must seem like Armageddon to a dog.
Now on this peaceful and blissfully quiet morning, the pansies had been laid out in a sea of color in the very same wagon to be purchased by park visitors. The colors were mesmerizing and one wished to play in them forever. Today we’d purchase some pansies: orange, white, purple, yellow, and more color. I wondered whether Ellie could see these colors the way that I could. If not, I was sure she could smell them.
We headed for the fountains. It was the last treat of this morning after Walpurgis before heading home. I scooped up the water from the fountains so that Ellie could lap it up out of my palm. She liked this and wiped her raspy tongue across my cheek in thanks. Tourists climbed off the steamboat from Stockholm, cameras preceeding them. Would they notice it was the morning after Walpurgis, the night when winter had gone to embers and the spring had risen, young and vibrant?
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Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores, including major Swedish online bookstores such as bokia.se and adlibris.se. Learn more about Julie’s other books and activities at www.julielindahl.com.
Hej Julie,
Good to see and read another wonderful story from you. Yes what a wonderful tradition out with the cold and gray and in with the light and brightness and hope.
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Sweden a land of extremes gives rise to a culture that celebrates the passing and onset of these extremes. This is a great thing that here in my part of the world hardly causes one to make note. Seasons are relatively mild maybe reaching 0 C for a few nights and occasionally topping 38 C in the summer. Length of day and night are much more balanced here than in Sweden.
Perhaps this lack of extremes allows us to “forget” whats going on around us as we go about our days hurrying here and there, planting this and that, getting the flower and vegetable beds ready for the next season, fixing the sprinklers and on and on and on. Without the extremes we seem to be busy all the time. There is no forced down time here where one can take time to reflect on what is really going on around us and we lose contact with the world at large. It takes work to stay connected here.
Thanks for the reminder to stay connected to the earth. Perhaps the tidal pull of Scandinavia on some long lost ancestral blood will some day bring me back to experience what I can now only read about. Cheers!
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@Erik
Very interesting points about our weather not being as extreme as in Sweden. But here in Washington we do get all four seasons but not to the extreme as your Winters and Summers can be.
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Great reading and a fantastic article. Lets here more about this far away place
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