Fritillary

It's spring and the crocus are in full bloom. I took photos of them both in the beginning of the week and today, but have been too busy to post any photos. There's also a few other flowers beginning to bud. The fritillary is not one of them. It's from the shop and sits in a pot indoors.

I've developed a penchant for this flower, Fritillaria meleagris aka snake's head aka kungsängslilja, recently. As you can see amongst my pins. There's one, two, three and even four photos pinned that I found just at the top of the boards. (And notice how in almost all of them, they're matched with another favourite of mine, the hellebore.)

We used to have these flowers by the wall of the smaller building where my sis and I live, but they disappeared years ago. At the time I didn't miss them that much as they weren't my favourites, but of cause it was sad to see them thinning out and then, one year, just be gone and never coming back. Then I forgot about them more or less. Until recently when seeing all those gorgoues photos of this both delicate and striking flower. Don't know if it was just its beauty or -- at least partially -- a touch of nostalgia that made me drool over the pics.

Now I adore it. Unusually, it's especially as a cut flower I love it. Combined with a few hellebores or on its own. Perhaps just a single flower with leaves in a clear vase. Normally I prefer living flowers with roots in soil, especially out in the garden or in nature. Flowers in a vase is just not really my thing. Sometimes it's nice, though, and sometimes it's a way to "save" a flower with broken stem for a while. Or you put them in water in order to let them develop roots so they can be planted. But just buying bouquets every now and then to decorate tables etc? No, that's not my cup of tea. I don't even find a dozen red roses romantic because of that.

Anyway, I mentioned that I wanted a snake's head fritillary as my sis and I went to a flower shop to pick up a couple of daffodils. Though they were a tad expensive, though, so I didn't buy, but apparently it'd rubbed off on my sis so she bought a pot. The one in the pic above.

The legend of the snake's head fritillary

Why not take the opportunity to tell of the legend of the snake's head? In swedish it's called kungsängslilja, named after Kungsängen (lit. the king meadow) outside Uppsala. The area is known for the fritillaries, which thrive here. It's the biggest wild fritillary population in the nordic countries. You can find both the usual checked variety seen in these photos, but also some of the white variety that is less common.

According to local lore, the fritillaries here are a memory of a battle between swedes and danes, back in the days a common thing as the wars between Sweden and Denmark were many. For every dane killed on the battlefield, a red flower grew and for every dead swede a white flower grew. As the swedes won a great victory with few casualties the white flowers are very scarce.

Rune doodles and sun cross troubles

Last night I was sketching on some symbols, trying to find one I could use as my signature. The idea being that with large works it's easy to sign with your whole name, but with smaller items like jewellery, a small logo or registered name stamp (as used by gold- and silversmiths) is pretty much the only thing that fits. And if you've seen east-asian art, a logo stamp can become an intergrated part of the artwork.

Now, as I'm interested in history/archaeology, mythology/folklore and symbolism, one of the first places I go to find inspiration for a symbol is my local and regional history. That leads me to something universal and something that's more or less a symbol of the Nordic countries. The former one is the sun cross, which among other things can be found in bronze age carvings (and you know how I love the bronze age) and the latter is runes, a type of alphabet mostly associated with Viking Age but in use both before and after it.

There might however be a small problem here, which I never thought about until right now... For me, runes and sun crosses represent my interest in mythology and (bronze age/iron age) history. However, the major issue is that those insufferable idiots known as nazis/neonazis used and still use these symbols and to people who aren't interested in history, they might have only ever seen magic runes like Ägishjálmur and the sun cross on neonazi banners and flyers. While the sun cross is slightly less tainted than the swastika -- another positive and universal symbol they corrupted for their own purposes -- especially outside Scandinavia, you really don't want to use a symbol that many people will interpret as nazi. On a scale it seems like a sun cross is, at least in Sweden, more likely to be interpreted as a symbol of nazi or white nationalism sympathies than the Thor's hammer, which was the major symbol of those groups in the early 90's (at time when they began to grow, especially among teens) but which now is more commonly used by viking reenactors, history buffs etc. Not a good sign... It bums me out because I just know that there will be someone who will start sending hateful e-mails about me being a nazi if they spot anything remotely like swastika, even if it's just a spiral cross or a four-winds symbol. Don't thing people confuse such different symbols? Think again! Bleh, I was in such a good mood about this, and then I start googling...

But then again, maybe I'm just worrying for nothing. Most peole are smarter than that. After all, my idea isn't to use a simple sun cross or existing binderuna or rungalder. I'm creating my own version, which looks more like a magical seal, astrological or alchemist sign or plain old hobo symbol. I hope you agree with me, when I say most of my versions look more like folkloristic symbols (be it from a nordic rune staff or sami ceremonial drum) than anything that would be instantly associated with nazism. Because it's that sense of history, time immemorial, old symbols, fascinating mythology and a nature filled with magic that I want to capture in my symbol. The kind of style and feeling you get when seeing it in Johan Egerkrans' personal take on skogsfrun/skogsrået/skogssnuvan here (pdf file) -- or in his Nordiska väsen website for that matter where a version is used as favicon.

So for the time being, I'll put those worries aside and keep playing with my rune and sun cross doodles. I will check so they aren't too similar to other existing symbols. Perhaps not so much nazi symbols as existing rungaldrar as you don't want to use symbols some will recognize as black magic signs either... "Oops, I accidentally used a rune used to cast back luck on your enemies and now my sis/friend/costumer thinks I hate her." Want to avoid that sort of thing.

But why not look a little closer on my doodles? I first made a page with sun cross variations, which I didn't take a photo of (but you can see the traces of them in the first page as the runes where drawn on the page of the sun cross page). After that I began playing around with my initials in the form of runes for K and I (which also means J). I focused on viking age runes as K and I lack staffs in the older fuþark, but I did do a few doodles using the older runes too. In the case of K and I, the medieval runes are rather similar to the viking age runes so I never used them. And the anglo-frisian runes (popular among neopagans and "rune magicians" today) wheren't used as they weren't used here.

 Notice that I did make a couple of symbols fusing the runes with a sun cross.

The runes that look like wrought iron nails are so called staveless runes. I quite like the "carnations" where I used vänderunor, mirrored runes. (Hopefully it doesn't look too much like a christian cross -- compare the shape to, for example, maltese crosses.) At the bottom are a few more or less failed attempts at binderunor, two runes fused together.  The long lines on the left are my names (real one, Kristina, and then my online persona, Maneki) written using so called samstavsrunor. They're pretty neat in my opinion and I probably should use them more often.

And for those of you not familiar with runes, here's a key to the runes K and I/J in various runic scripts.

The first one is from the elder futhark (which has a seperate letter j), followed by the viking age younger futhark (which can be sorted into three different alphabets called long-branch runes, short-twig runes and staveless runes). After that you find the anglo-saxon or anglo-frisian runes, sometimes called the futhorc, and then back to the Nordic countries and the medieval runes. The latter is more different from the younger futhark than the letters K and I/J let you see here as it was influenced by the latin alphabet. There is also another type of runes called dalrunor, which were used in the northern part of the swedish province of Dalarna (Dalecarlia) from the 16th to the 19th century. They were originally a version of medieval runes, but as time went on they became more and more influenced by the latin alphabet. You can find a pic of that runic script here.

Of cause there were also ciphers developed using runes. They might sound like something interesting to use, but they do take up space and aren't that useful in a logo. But why not show you what they could look like in the Viking Age?

Isrunor, ice runes (second row), sounds cool until you realise it's a boring cipher that looks like bar codes... There are a few different variations of  a cipher called kvistrunor. Here, you can see the three versions I found in Lars Magnar Enoksen's book Runor (the one you see in the first photo of this blog post and my go-to source for information on runes). Ran out of space so with the the last two versions I just wrote a K instead of KJ. The last row is just a very simple substitution cipher where you write down the letter before or after the letter you intend. In this case HA (example A) and RN (example B).


Now, if returning to my own design woes and logo attempts, I have weeded out a couple of favourites among my rune doodles, as well as a couple of variations on the sun cross that I like (cf. pic below). But I haven't settled for one as my signature stamp yet. The sun crosses are cute and simple, easy to scale down or up depending on what's needed, but on the other hand they might be so simple that I've picked symbols already in use by others (historically or contemporary). A rune symbol like the circular ones in my first doodle page are prettier, but harder to scale down if going with a more intricate version -- and those are the versions I like the best.

For the moment, I'll keep doodling and playing with symbols. If nothing else, I'll soon have a good library of signs to use as motifs if nothing else. But fingers crossed I will find a symbol to use as my signature too!

And if you do like runes, I want to end with a good tip: don't believe everything you read online -- most of it is new age bs, based on ideas made up by occultists in the 20th century.

Challenge of travel: Welcome to Bjäre!

Well, I didn't think I'd be able to make it in time with everything that's happened. However, Uggi (that's our youngest cat, who got very ill last weekend for those of you that don't follow my blog) is recovering fast and it's given me a big burst of energy. Or perhaps rather of happiness and relief, which could be turned into creative energy. So here it, my Challenge of Travel reveal!

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First of all, before I forget, I must thank our hostess, Erin, for this fab challenge! Even when so much else took all my time and energy, I never wanted to give up on this challenge as it was so fun to work on. The 2nd Annual Challenge of Travel, which is themed Staycation, is a blog hop. To find links to all participants' reveals, please check out our hostess reveal post HERE.


This stop on the hop is an hommage to my hembygd (a word that has no direct english equivalent I can think of, but it's the area where you grew up and/or live and feel a connection to, the place where your roots are). I grew up -- and now live -- in a small hamlet located in the middle of Bjäre. A place you can see every time you visit my blog as the blog header features a view from home. Bjäre is a peninsula in the northwestern corner of the southern-most province in Sweden, Skåne (also known by it's latin name Scania) -- a province once called "a piece of the Continent attached to Sweden".

Making a long story short, the province became swedish in 1658 after long having been part of eastern Denmark. Half of Skåne sits on limestone bedrock, which makes it more like the countries of the Continent than of Sweden, which partially explains the quote above. We also have a distinct dialect and our own red-and-yellow flag. I guess we are also known for affluent farmland and the food. There are many regional specialities such as luad ål (smoked eel), äggakaga (a thick panecake-y thing served with lingonberry jam and bacon), skånsk äblakaga (apple pie), spickeskinka (dry-salted and cold smoked ham), kavring (sweet rye bread), mårtensgås (goose dinner on St Martin's day), spiddekaga (can't translate, please see Wikipedia for explanation), rabbemos (mashed rutabaga/swede and potato) etc. An old scanian saying goes "goen mad, möen mad og mad i rättan ti" ("good food, a lot of food and food at the right time").

Bjäre is part of what one scholar dubbed risbygden, a region "between the plough and the forest" ("mellan plogen och skogen") with a variegated nature and a landscape characterized by smallholdings. To the south of Bjäre is a second peninsula, Kullen, which you can see as a blue mountain ridge in the above photo, separated from Bjäre by the Skälderviken bay. Just off the the western Bjäre coast, by Torekov, is the island of Hallands Väderö placed in the sea called Kattegatt (which catlovers might be interested in learning that it is thought to mean "cat hole" or "cat gate" in dutch because it was so narrow it was difficult to navigate through). Like most of the Bjäre coastline, Väderön is a nature reserve.

In the north, you can see the ever present Hallandsåsen ridge and the northern half of Bjäre is characterized by the hilly terrain created by the ridge as it stretches from the inland out towards Hovs Hallar (the place where the knight plays chess with Death in Ingemar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal). The other half is more of a flat terrain spreading towards the sea. The two most famous towns here are the market town of Båstad and the former fishing village of Torekov (known locally as Torke).

I will however not dwell there, both as the places are already wellknown and packed with tourists and as they're too posh for a country girl like me. Well, at least they can be very posh during summer. No, despite interesting things I could tell (the attempted russian invasion of Båstad 1788, the tennis and Mr G, ridiculous upper-class party activities like vaskning, the Torekov compromise that created our current constitution, the first seaside resorts etc etc), I want to focus on the little hamlets and villages around where I live. The real countryside with hamlets, small-scale fields, grazing cows, bronze age burial mounds, small forests, strandängar, trails for ramblers, farm shops, miles of 19th century stone walls, local football fields, potato fields, art exhibits -- and a clog factory (yes, I did forget the golf courses on purpose). And trolls, you can't forget the trolls.

But first, let's place Bjäre and my hamlet of Svenstad on the map.

Click for a close up. Photo taken during spring, which explains this common sight.

 
If you want to check out Bjäre on Google Maps, here's a link to get you started.

The place marked on the first two maps is our hamlet. Svenstad is a very small hamlet, has been since it was depopulated during the danish-swedish wars (over provinces like Skåne) in the 17th century. There is however one name that has made this hamlet a bit better known than most others of its size: world famous opera singer and hovsångerska -- and cat lover -- Birgit Nilsson. Birgit and her husband Bertil were occasionally our neighbours as it was her she grew up on a farm she later inherited.  After her death, the work to turn her family home into a museum started and our road was renamed after her. So one of our nearest neighbours are now the Birgit Nilsson Museum.

For a virtual view of the museum (and Svenstad), you can go to the street view at Google Maps here. A map of and info on the ancient monuments and historical relics -- mounds, stone carvings, culturally important buildings -- can be found on the Fornsök map at The Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) website. It's in swedish only, though.

Of cause, while this post is turning into a very long one, I still can't tell you all about Bjäre. If you're more interested, there are are few tourist websites for Båstad/Bjäre and Skåne. The official tourist website for Bjäre is Bastad.com and the official one for Skåne is Visit Skåne. Hallands väderö has its own website here while Torekov has a site in swedish here. If you're interested in hiking/rambling, there is a trail throughout the province called Skåneleden, which you can read about here. Apart from it there are several shorter, local trails. On Bjäre, it follows the coastline and there are two paths leading over the Hallandsåsen ridge towards the southern coasst. Upplev Bjäre is another tourist website, but it's in swedish only, but offer translations via Google Translate (in other words: do check it out, but don't expect great translations). The Birgit Nilsson website also have a few tips on this page, including the linen weaving mill in Boarp and Märta Måås-Fjetterström's studio in Båstad.

If you're interested in guided tours or hikes, there are many to be offered (though I'm not sure how many have english-speaking guides). Interested in local produce? So called "farm tourism" is booming at the moment and you can experience everything from farmer's markets and annual events (Day of the potato most notable here on Bjäre) to kosläpp (popular family event when the cows are let out on the pastures after a winter indoors) and culinary food hikes though the landscape. Completed with farm shops, farm cafés and countryside B&Bs. You can even pay for the opportunity to plant/set or harvest potatoes! Love of gardening? For example  Din Trädgård offer no less than four tours of private gardens and nurseries in Northwestern Skåne: Höstrundan ("the autumn tour"), Rosrundan ("the rose tour"), Månskensrundan ("the moonshine tour" visiting lit up gardens on an october evening) and Trädgårdsrundan ("the garden tour"). History and archaeology buff? Local societies like Föreningen Gamla Båstad and Bjäre arkeologivänner sometimes do guided tours in or around Båstad, talking about history and ancient monuments respectively. Naturskyddsföreningen do nature hikes, but I'm not sure if they're for members only or not. The tourist centres can also provide guide books and maps for your own explorations.

Oh, and by the way: Don't forget the artisan fair in Båstad, Hantverksmässan! An annual show during the last weekend of July where you sometimes even find a lampwork bead artist or two, but most of all handmade jewellery and kinds of other art and craft products from artists all over the country.

The most important question, then: are there any bead shops? Well, not exactly on Bjäre, but there are a few craft and bead shops nearby. On Bjäre you can find a craft/embroidery/yarn shop in Båstad and two fabric shops in Förslöv unless I'm mistaken. As for bead shops and craft shops with a bead range, I refer you to my website Svenska Pärlbutiker where you'll find a map of such shops in Sweden. 

For loads of photos of Bjäre -- Svenstad in particular -- please see the landscape photos label on this blog (you might have to scroll through a few pages to find the really good photos...). And for many more photos of the province of Skåne in general -- from the Turning Torso in Malmö to the iconic beech forests and yellow rapefields, from reconstructed viking cottages to the castles of the old nobility, from apple orchards to university buildings  -- please see my Skåne - Scania pinboard:

So from all this, where did I draw inspiration for my creation? For me, most of the things I love about Bjäre and Svenstad revolve around the nature, coastline, agriculture (cows, fields, farms, farmer families) and cultural history. Places like the burial mounds, which are ever present on the peninsula, often with troll legends attached to them , and Drottninghall with its prehistoric stone carvings shrouded in local folklore and overlooking Bjäre, Skälderviken bay and beyond that Kullen. I've written a few posts on local lore, from trolls to princess saints, which you can find here.

For the tourists, Bjäre and places like Torekov, Kattvik, Stora Hult and Båstad are places of summer and sunshine. Picturesque places of vacations. They only see one aspect of the peninsula. I see it and love it around the year. Love the changes in the landscape as summer turns into autumn, autumn turns into winter and winter turns into spring. For me, images like these are just as much my idea of Bjäre as a summer beach. Perhaps even more as that tourist summer thing is so ephemeral. The real Bjäre is easier to see once the tourists have returned home.

Now, this necklace didn't turn out at all like I wanted it to, but still showing it as it was the first idea I got. I wanted to use this hand-dyed silk thread for an autumnal design inspired by the apple orchards in Kattvik (which means "cat bay", by the way) and Båstad. Don't know if more than the one in Kattvik produce apples commercially, the rest are sadly abandoned -- on turned into a golf course. It also echoes of our own apple trees, many of which my dad has grown from seeds.

The bamboo charm is also a nod to our own garden -- I love bamboo and grew up with a couple of plants around the farm.

The second piece is also all about the flora. I chose the teal flower as it reminds me of the gardens, parks and farmland wrapped in mist in the late autumn when not much colour remains as the flowers wilt, but there's still a somewhat melancholic, serene beauty. Dew and mist drifting inland from the cold sea.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention the connection to the seaside park/public gardens of Norrvikens trädgårdar what with the sea-colour flower and beads. Norrviken have had some tough years, but in 2006 it won the award of most beautiful park in Sweden and went on to compete over the title of most beautiful in Europe, ending up in second place.

A small pic of its full length.

Then I struggled to create something with bronze. I have to include bronze as the bronze age is always just above or below the ground level here. But what to do? Not much bronze in my stash right now (had forgotten about a couple of bronze clay components I won ages ago), nothing but some round tags. But then this morning I got an idea and layered them with coloured copper tags on a flexible rubber bangle. Three charms on one bracelet, which might become three bangles with one charm each if I get more of those rubber bracelets.

As everything else is filled with symbolism, this got one too, apart from the bronze age heritage: the modern, sleek style and the colours stand for all our local artists (catlover? Check out the couple Ulla & Gustav Kraitz!). There's an annual konstrunda in Northwestern Skåne, an event where local artists open up their studios for the public, who will go around a route visiting as few or as many artists as they want. All artists are also represented in a collective exhibition in addition to the open studios. Arts represented include painting, graphics, fiber arts, sculpture, silversmithing, glass, photography etc. In 2013 148 artists were represented, at least 20 being in Bjäre as you can see in this map.

This piece isn't actually a challenge piece, it's just a test of my new Pébéo Fantasy paint, but I thought the result looked like one of our beaches on a sunny summer's day so it was a good fit here now that the test coincided with the challenge. The base is a 2x2 cm glass mosaic tile. I'll soon do a post on my first Pébéo experiments, which will include a close-up of this one.

Last but not least, the pièce de résistance. It took me a long while to come up with making this. I wanted to do something related to the stories I told earlier, the local legends and tales about Saint Tora, the stones in Hov, the trolls and Drottninghall. After a lot of thought, it struck me that a gold crown would be a possible common denominator: Tora is often depicted wearing a crown since the legends often portrait her as a princess, some of the stories about Drottninghall involve a queen and the trolls were well known for their treasures, which must've included crowns. Add to that my penchant for bridal crowns and I just had to give it a go.
 
It was a long time since I last made a crown and I'm afraid it shows, just as well as it shows that I just whipped this thing together yesterday, but I hope you still like it a little.

It wasn't my intention, but I discovered that it ended up being the same colours as our provincial flag, red (garnet) and yellow (brass)! Which perhaps was very fitting.

And so we come to the end. I hope you enjoyed my introduction to Bjäre, the place where I grew up and the place where I now once again live. Thank you for stopping by, taking the time to read and/or check out at my challenge creations!

I'm going to wrap up this long, long post the same way I started it:  

Welcome to Bjäre!

The legend of saint Tora

S:ta Thoras sten. Photo by Yabosid [via Flickr.com]. License: Creative Commons by-sa 2.0

On the pebbled beach in Torekov, you can see this boulder, a glacial erratic. It looks like many other boulder and it's not even impressively big. it does, however, has an interesting story attached to it. It's not a "jättekast" (a name for glacial erratics in general, but boulders said to have been thrown by a giant in particular -- compare with the Hov legend.), but a stone infused with a legend of saints.

Like with my last post on local lore, this is a tad long and requires a break. Be sure to click the "Read more" below for the whole story of the girl who became the symbol for the Bjäre peninsula.

A tale of trolls

Having written about the stones in Hov, the second and most important story I want to tell is the story of the trolls and mounds, which I've alluded to in a couple of blog posts (e.g. here) but never really told the whole story about. As it's a really long post, I've added a break so be sure to click below to read the whole tale of the trolls.

The story of the giant and the church bells in Hov

I thought I was going to write a little about Bjäre and more specifically about the old stories surrounding different places here on the peninsula before the Challenge of Travel reveal. Sort of mention a few things I don't have room to talk about in the reveal post and created a wider picture of some of my inspiration sources. The first legend I wanted to write about is the story of the stones and the church in Hov.

Hov is a village I've often passed by, stopped by or just taken photos of (if you see a photo with a church in the background on this blog, it'll most likely be the church in Hov). It's situated when the road between Torekov and Båstad meets the road from Västra Karup, which in the other direction continues south through Grevie and Förslöv. If you arrive at Hov from the west, from Torekov, the first thing you'll see is  the church on the hill and in front of it the two standing stones (bautastenar, menhirs, liths) just outside the church wall. The two stones are the most visible markers of the old bronze age/iron age gravefield, indicating the ritual importance of the place as a place of worship and counsels long before the arrival of christianity.  People have been buried here continuously for almost 4000 years.

The iconic silhouette dominating the landscape can be seen in the necklace above with the stone setting, standing stones and the burial mound Klockarehögen in the fourground and the church bell tower in the background.

Photo by Guillaume Baviere via Flickr.com. License: Creative Commons CC BY 2.0

 
Anyway, of cause there's a story behind these ancient monuments. It's a classic tale, really, about a giant who couldn't stand the sound of the church bells. The giants and trolls inhabited the lands long before the humans came along, but they seemed to be more at peace before christianity arrived. In fact, it seems like the giants emigrated after the churches came as they simply couldn't stand these new intruders. Many were the trolls and giants that suffered in the new times, but the toll was harder on the giants that on the trolls (provided we make a clear difference between the two, which isn't easily done).

After the first church was built in Hov -- the one you see in the pendant is the current 19th century church -- and the church bells began to ring life got hard for the giant woman living on Kullaberg on the neighbouring Kullen peninsula. The bells caused her ears and head to ache, non-christians being especially susceptible to anything christian -- you might even say they were allergic to things like bell ringing, holy water and crosses. Soon she got so mad at this horrible new thing that she picked up a stone and, using her garter as a sling, hurled it at the church across the Skälderviken bay. But, alas, as in all these stories about giants and churches, the stone landed just before hitting the church. Infuriated, she tried again, but this time too, she missed her marks. The magic powers of the church were stronger than her muscle power. In the end, she did like so many of her peers and moved to a more secluded place, untouched by christianity, where she could live her life in peace, far from any ache-inducing church bells.

Hov and Hov's church seen from Svenstad

Drottninghall – traces of the Bronze Age

View of Southern Bjäre and the Kullen peninsula from Drottninghall

Almost two years ago, my sis and I walked down to Drottninghall and I took some pics, thinking of telling you the story of the place, but because this was in August, other things got in between and I never showed the photos or told about Drottninghall. Now a comment on another post made me remember the pics and why not post them now at once so I don't forget about it another two years?

I went to school in Västra Karup and remember how many times made little trips around the village (and also further away on Bjäre, places like the island of Hallands Väderö and the dramatic coastline at Hovs Hallar). One of the places we went once was Drottninghall. Here, while gazing over the village and seeing Kullen peninsula by the horizon, we were told the story of the footprints. According to legend they were the footprint of a queen who passed by. What queen and why she left the prints vary. One version claims it was queen Margareta (or Margaret I of Denmark as she's known in english) and that she either stepped out to admire the view or fell out of her carriage. The cup marks (skålgroparna) are said to be the paw prints of her dogs. This story would explain the name: Drottning means queen and hall or häll a slab of exposed rock.

Other stories claim that the footprints come from a ghost whom the priest "läste fast" ("read stuck") on the rock after he had very loudly haunted the village of Västra Karup. The prints are the only thing remaining of the ghost and the cup marks are the marks of his tears. Of cause, there was also a general belief in southern Sweden that cup marks were fairy mills and that you could perform magic or wish for luck by placing items in the hollows.

You can read more about these stories – in swedish – here. There you'll also find a good photo of the carvings, filled in with red paint which have faded now and is covered in lichen, making it harder to see the carvings. You can also find photos of them here.

We school kids were only told the most child-friendly story, the story of the queen, as far as I can remember. And of cause we were also told about the real history beyond local folklore, about how the cup marks, footprint carvings and grooves (sliprännor) are bronze age petroglyphs carved by people living here a long time ago during the south-scandinavian Bronze Age (1 800 – 500 BC). Some of our oldest ancestors.

(By the way, the little droppings are from the sheep that graze the little wedge of pasture between two of Bjäre's many roads that converge just below Drottninghall. Two of the culprits can be found in the photo below.)

Apart from the carvings there's also a burial mound from the same age nearby – pretty much behind the house in the middle of the picture below. It's named Revhögen och Rävhögen, the latter meaning the Fox Mound. Bjäre in general have many mounds, one of the mound densest places in Sweden, and there are of cause much folklore surrounding them. I'm afraid I don't have a good story about this particular mound, though. No trolls (otherwise very common), no buried viking king (the second most common folklore surrounding mounds), no treasures that can't be salvaged without horrendous punishments from dark powers, no burials over mysterious english princes.

No one knows exactly why the petroglyph sites were situated where they were. They're concentrated to a handful of places on Bjäre and Drottninghall is one of them. One archaeologist have put forward the idea that they were created along roads between settlements where perhaps people met or safety was needed. Most likely they were used in rituals, but we don't know how ritual places were chosen. One thing about this particular place, though, is the view – you know, the reason why the queen stepped out of her carriage here (unless she fell out, that is). Because of the hilly terrain you can get some fab views of the landscapes every here and there on Bjäre and this is one of the good spots. Just see the photos below.

Drottninghall is one of the stops on the Bjäre bronze age trail that was created some years ago. It's two trails, the northern and the southern trail, which you can walk/bike/drive along to experience some of the ancient monuments here on the peninsula. The places along the trails are marked out with signs like the one below. The square symbol is a prehistoric symbol used in Sweden and other countries to mark a noteworthy places (often, but not always, an ancient or historic place/monument/ruin). The petroglyph boat with the stars is a sign for the trail, the star arc reminding us that the trails were created as part of an EU project (cf. the PCL logo).

Revontulet -- one of my first bead embroideries

I recently had a look at my little bead embroidered piece called Revontulet and since this is my first finished bead embroidery project it was a bit interesting, re-visiting old beadwork I haven't thought about in a couple of years now. I made it in 2008 for a beading contest at Pärlplatsen, a Swedish bead community were I'm a member. You can see all the entries here. I won, but you can see that I was a newbie at bead embroidery when I made it.

The theme for the contest was aurora borealis, the Northern lights. Bea, the founder of the community lives in Norrland (far North) so she's used to this phenomena and it was when looking at the lights that she came up with the theme. I live in Skåne in Southern Sweden and have never seen it IRL.

In my research for finding an approach to the theme, I read all sorts of folklore and myths. I stumbled across a site that said the Finnish word for Northern lights, revontulet, means fox fires. According to legend, there'd be special fire foxes in Finnish Lapland and when they ran across the snowclad mountains, sparks would fly from their fur. Those sparks were the Northern lights. Didn't know enough about Finnish folklore to judge if the story was true or not, but it sparked my imagination.

This piece is made using several different stitches: couching, satin stitch, back stitch, running stitch, back stitch variation. I wanted to test many different stitches as I was new to bead embroidery. When I was finished I came to this conclusion: it toughest part is that embroidery take so much time, even the little things -- the hardest part was translating my sketch into beads. The beads have a whole different feel and density than pencil marks. Where my sketch focused on the soft and ethereal, the bead embroidery had to focus on colour and shape.

I wanted to avoid using beads with AB finish as it felt a bit cliché so instead I used sparkling-lined Delicas in green and turquoise hues. I also used jet green iris to get the feeling of the dynamic in the Northern lights, the flowing and changing properties you can't capture on photos. Iridescent beads look black in certain angles and sparkling green, blue and purple in others.

The background is black, unbeaded felt and the contours of the landscape is embroidered using transparent gray lustre 15/0 seed beads. There you find two tiny sterling silver "foxes" (actually wolf or coyote beads, I think) and the sparks from their furs (also known as purple iris Delicas). All in all, this piece is 16 x 11 cm big/small.

Not an easy piece to photograph with the sparkling, shimmering beads and black background that refused to get as dark as I wanted on camera. This is the original photo I submitted to the contested, haven't tried re-shooting it.

Gears, sprockets and cogs

One thing I like about this latest fascination with steampunk is that the bead shops (and hobby shops) have begun to sell all sorts of cogs. From watch movements to imitation spoked gears. While using cogs and watch parts might be considered a cliché by the "true" steampunks that just see this mainstream fad as people "jumping on the bandwagon", I love because it's become so much easier to find pretty cog-shaped components for my jewellery. I like steampunk -- I love cogs.
One thing true steampunks dislike is the use of watch parts or cogs as single elements, not actually part of a mechanism. While I could argue that jewellery making is all about using parts in ways not originally designed for, I won't. I'll just tell you why I personally don't mind these "scattered" and lonely parts.

I grew up in the countryside. I still live in the countryside. Like all farms that's been in the family for some time (in our case, my grandfather bought our farm around 1900), you can find a slightly forgotten corner outdoors where the old machines were placed when they were no longer of any use in the farm work. When I grew up, going for treasure hunts there was one of the best things we knew. We had to climb over some wood and then fight our way through bushes and weed until we got to the good stuff. There, with the big ash trees towering over this old and forgotten place, we would pull out all sorts of things: porcelain shards, old glass bottles, wire -- but most of all the rusty remnants of all things discarded decades ago. As there were machines it of cause also included some heavy cast cogs.


So there you have it, really, the reason why I love cogs even though I mostly make more or less romantic jewellery inspired by nature. The same nature that inspired me cotained these treasures. And that is also the reason why I love rust. It's pure nostalgia.

Watch parts was "just" something I wanted to get as the size is more useful in jewellery that the large cogs I'm used to. But if I have to be honest, I do prefer cog-shaped stampings as they look more like those cogs we retrieved for our "archeological expeditions" as kids.


I think the type of "cogs" you see above are nice too even though they look more like toothed washers (known as tooth lock washer or star washer) to me... But I have seen something similar, with many more teeth, in a watch movement actually. Still looks like washers to me, though: you can tell I grew up with a dad who had a workshop filled with washers and other types of hardware rather than watches.


If I had to analyze my fondness for cogs -- which really just gained momentum as source of inspiration since I first heard of steampunk some years back and saw people using cogs as design elements -- even further they have a shape that attracts me. Not just are they shapes I remember for such different things in my childhood as treasure hunts and cartoons (Donald Duck has a way of getting stuck in big gears and watch parts, not unlike Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times). Not only do they make me think of old-fashioned machines and "the good old days", past times always being a great source of inspiration. Not just are they often made in one of my favourite metals, brass. Look at the little watch gear with four spokes that I showed in the beginning of this post. That is more or less the same shape as a bronze age sun wheel/sun cross -- just compare my cogs and gears with these bronze age pendants. Cogs are like the modern, industrialized version of a sun symbol.

While I and probably most other people don't consciously find cogs and gears pretty because they look like the archetypical sun symbol -- nor were they designed to look like that -- I think there might be something of an underlying positive feeling about the shape that can attract people to it. It's a shape that can symbolize industrialism, but when it's made of brass people can be nostalgic and associate it with old times rather than modern industry. The prongs (and spokes if it has any of those) on the cogs also makes a simple but interesting shape: something more is happening than if it were just a plain circle or washer. The design is basically the same, but can vary from the most simple to something very ornate: there's something for everyone, regardless of what styles we like.


BTW, that enamelled spoked gear (by C-Koop Beads) you can see two of the pics above is destined to become a part of a flower. An echo of the nature-meets-culture that a rusted cog enveloped in weeds is -- inspired by the treasure hunts -- and also a way to show that the cog shape can be so much more than just a gear when used in jewellery.