Stockholm Syndrome

The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: X is for Xylopolist

In my initial post announcing this 29-Day Blogging Challenge, I solicited topic suggestions from readers as I didn’t happen to know a xylopolist. Truth is, that isn’t wholly correct, so I’m here to clarify my earlier comments…

While not a traditional xylopolist, per se, out local grocery and hardware store do sell firewood in the winter months. When Jill first took this apartment she mentioned that it has a fireplace, and that there are services one can sign up to that deliver wood to your door on a regular schedule. Never having had a wood-burning fireplace, I was excited at the possibility of lighting one up on those cold, dark winter nights for which Stockholm is known.

We haven’t signed up for a wood delivery service, however; late last year a number of apartment buildings in our neighbourhood were going through renovations, and thus nightly had bags of old timber, cut to 1-foot to 2-foot sections, neatly stacked outside their front doors. So there I was, almost on a nightly basis, trolling through the back streets of Östermalm picking up ‘burnables’, discarded building material that would serve as fuel for the fire. Better that than have it end up taking space in some landfill…

Of course, there were several times when there was no flammable detritus was to be found, and with no wood delivery service at our beck and call, it seemed like we were out of luck. However, we soon discovered that Ica, Sabey’s, and the local hardware store all sold bags of birchwood timber. So whenever we wanted a fire, and had no pilfered means of creating one, I would trudge off to the local shop to pick up a bag of wood; pre-dried, organized by size (kindling on top, the larger, longer-burning logs at the bottom), perfectly prepped and ready for the match.

There’s nothing really astounding about this discovery, considering most apartments in Stockholm have some sort of fireplace for self-heating, but having come from Canada, where this is a rarity, and being an unabashed pyromaniac, this was pure heaven. Many nights we fell asleep to the cracking fire in the next room, the warm glow wafting in like a cherubic ghost, blissfully aware of what we had been missing back home.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm; T is for The Local; U is for Urban Living; V is for Verisimilitude; W is for Wikipedia

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