Life, with the garden
Location: Oslo, Norway • • • Visit: August 2022
In transit, from Stockholm to Bergen
I
It’s 7:36 in the morning as we roll out of Stockholm central station. I enter into that train-travel-state-of-mind. Winding thoughts.
We pass the Swedish parliament. I got my voting card ”for Swedes abroad” some time ago, in a couple of weeks I’ll go to the Swedish consulate in Bergen to vote.
I’m working on a scarf, using yarn from a local Bergen factory, made from wool from vildsau sheep, an old western Norwegian breed.
I applied for a new passport yesterday, had to turn in three times as many documents as if I’d still been registered in Sweden. They want to know the citizenship of my parents, when they got married. I learned: In the beginning of my life, I did not have any citizenship. Four months between my birth and when my parents got married, being born in Sweden to a Finnish mother meant I wasn’t officially registered as a citizen of either country. I hope the Swedish police won’t hold that against me. I’ve got conferences to travel to this autumn.
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II
I have three hours between trains in Oslo. I know this walk now, find my way to the botanic garden, have done it several times this summer.
It is drenched in sun, difficult to photograph but full of sun-bathers and a heat perfect for strolling through herb gardens.
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III
Later, I edit photographs while the still snow-covered mountains pass by my window. A windy picture of Hannes on the top of Ulriken – just one of all the visitors I’ve already had. Could that be one of the measures of making a new place your home: How easy it becomes to act the tourist guide?
It’s already dark when we emerge from the last tunnel, straight into central Bergen. Lights from houses strewn like stars along the mountain-sides. And like instinct, the thought: How nice to be home. Where does it come from? I don’t know what it is, but now, returning, this is what I feel. It took five months.
Katja Malmborg 