Change

Have you gone through any changes over the summer?
This bloke has.

 5 September, 2010

 
1 June, 2010

Compare the post Of Many Faces (5 June, 2010)

Revisiting this sculpture again three months after the first set of photos was a powerful reminder not only of the passing of time but also of the fact that while some changes come automatically, others require quite a lot of hard and determined work.

Yesterday's Mysteries Unravelled

In yesterdays Silly Photo Challenge I added a little guessing game of my own, challenging my readers to guess the original purpose of two different stones that I had taken photos of. I gave the clue that both stones are found in a museum park and each did serve a special purpose in the past. But what purposes?

I got a few guesses. Most popular were the ideas of the round one being a grinding stone and the flat one perhaps used to cover a well. Neither of these suggestions came close to the real answers:



This is a Lifting Stone from the early 19th century. This was before the days of Gyms and Barbells; but lifting heavy things seems always to have been a popular game or challenge among young men. The original place for this particular lifting stone was where three roads met. Lifting stones were often placed at the side of a road like that. Sometimes big crowds gathered to witness contests who was able to lift the stone the highest. This was also a way of proving your competence when applying for a job! Lifting stones were always rounded in shape on purpose to make it extra hard to get a good grip on the stone.




This is a Bridal Stone. It was placed just outside the wall surrounding the churchyard. After the ceremony in the church, the bride and groom stood on this stone to be looked at by the people of the village, while music was played and preparations made for their horse-and-carriage ride back home. Records show that this particular stone was used for the purpose as late as in 1820, in its original place. The church in the museum park (which has been moved there from somewhere else) is still a poplular wedding church. I'm not sure whether the bridal stone is still used, too. It is still customary for bride and groom to stand for a while outside the church, while people line up to congratulate them (and take photos). I guess that a special stone to stand on was also a good way to avoid getting the wedding shoes all muddy in bad weather! (Although getting "cold feet" about the whole thing might be a little too late to think of after the ceremony was already over...)



View of the old wooden church in the museum park. In front of it you see a midsummer pole (maypole); the leaves and flowers all withered because the pole is decorated for Midsummer and this photo was taken in August. See my Midsummer's Eve post from last year.

Silly Photo Challenge

On 15 June Sandra = MadSnapper and her friend SquirrelQueen are encouraging us to post SILLY PHOTOS on our blogs and link them to SquirrelQueen’s post at The Road To Here.

SILLY defined as “silly, crazy, blooper, or just simple mistakes”.

I’m afraid most of my bad pictures tend to be just boringly bad, rather than haha-silly.

… like my attempts to take photos of birds very high up in trees. (Why do I even try?!)

… lion cubs at the zoo; with a crowd of other photographers between me and the cage.

… duck running towards me. (Help!)

… my brother’s dog, enjoying the sun.

Silly Or Not? 

Two stones that you might well ask yourself why I bothered to take photos of. In fact both pictures were taken in a museum park, and both stones were used for different purposes in the past. Have a guess if you like - and you might as well dare go a bit silly...! I will give the answers tomorrow.

1.

2.

For a different kind of “silly” post, visit my DawnTreader’s Picture Book blog today, post entitled At The Zoo.

Of Many Faces

A stone head by artist Olle Brandqvist. The kind of stone used for this one is diabase; originally grey but polished it becomes black.

In this year’s sculpture festival, another and considerably bigger head that the same artist is working on has been moved into town, allowing people to watch him  work:

He is mostly doing some polishing now, because the actual cutting is too noisy.

The original block of stone used for this sculpture (granite this time) weighed 14 tons. When the sculpture is finished, this one too will have a polished surface (the darker colour you can see beneath the ear).

 

As you can see, both stone heads are of irregular shape. As you walk around the sculpture, looking at it from different angles, your impression of the face changes. The artist says this is meant to remind us that there are many sides to a person.

In Roman mythology, there is a god with two faces: Janus. He was the god of gates, doorways, beginnings and endings. The month of January, which begins the new year, was named after him. Janus is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, looking in opposite directions – into the future and the past.

Writing this, I’m reminded of an article I read just the other day – or maybe it was said on the radio. Anyway, it was about how these days, we spend a lot of time and energy just on creating profiles for ourselves, on Facebook and other internet communities (like Blogger…)

This in turn reminds me of an early blog post of mine entitled Multiple Me. Follow the link if it tickles your curiosity.

Being in a reflective mood, my thoughts also go to one of my favourite passages in the Bible. If God had a blog/ Facebook profile, this would be it:

When God calls Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses argues with the Lord:

“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 

God said to Moses: “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”

Exodus 3: 13-14

 

Passing Through Stone

Above is a collage of winter and summer pictures of a sculpture.
I posted pictures of it back in July 2009 too. My comment then was: "This is another one of those sculptures that may work as a magic door, if you dare look through it instead of just circling around it." (The perspective you get when looking through the stone is different from when looking past it from a distance, and it is added to by reflections, since the inside of the hole has been polished so that it works like a mirror.)

I'm generally fascinated by (stories about) "magic openings". And I know this is something I share with people all over the world, through thousands of years back in history...

Today, a post at the Japanese blog Camera Works Blogger by Tsutomu Otsuka caught my attention. It is entitled Relationship Making and Breaking Stone, and tells of

a shrine with "a giant stone 1.5m high and 3m wide. It is said that the power of the gods flows into the round hole on the top side of the stone. Pass through the hole in the stone from front to back to break off a bad relationship. And then pass through from back to front to make a good one."

This triggered a memory at the back of my brain - something I read a couple of years ago about a stone on some island off the coast of Scotland, to which similar traditions were connected. At first I couldn't remember what island, or why on earth I had been reading about it, but it came back to me...

It was in connection with my "Harry Potter research" that I came across it. I had been reading up on and comparing Old Norse and Celtic traditions; and then, in connection with "unbreakable vows" (there is one of those made in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), I happened to come across a web page about The Odin Stone on the Orkney Islands. Once I remembered enough to know what to put into the search engine, I managed to find the website again now.

The Odin Stone, or Stone o' Odin, was a "holed monolith" (thought to have been erected around 3000BC) that stood in a field by the Standing Stones o' Stenness; until it was destroyed in 1814 by an incomer to the island, by the name of Captain W. Mackay.


The stone was "approximately 2.5 metres (8 feet) high with a breadth of about one metre (3.5 feet)" and "played a major part in a number of Orkney wedding traditions".


"...the man being on one side and the woman on the other, they took hold of each other's right hand through the hole, and there swore to be constant and faithful to each other. This ceremony was held so very sacred in those times that the person who dared to break the engagement made here was counted infamous, and excluded all society" 

"It was likewise usual, when a husband and wife could not agree, that they both came to the Kirk of Stainhouse (Stenness), and after entering into the kirk the one went out at the south and the other at the north door, by which they were holden legally divorced, and free to make another choice." - Although in this case, the "divorce" took place in the church of Stenness, a short distance away from the Standing Stones, was this a later development? Perhaps an attempt by the church to draw the Orcadians away from their heathen practices? 

I just find it interesting, that in so different parts of the world, a giant stone with a natural hole in it should be connected to "relationship making and breaking"...

(The modern Swedish sculpture, as far as I know, has really nothing to do with this, except in my mind.)