Resurrection

Now where are all these people headed on a warm summer evening?

A graveyard chapel? You must be kidding?
Doesn’t really look like a funeral…

Actually it’s rather the opposite of a funeral.
More like a Resurrection!

Guests of honour arriving from the past: A 19th century district judge with his wife, greeted by a woman journalist from their own time; she too brought back from the dead to do one more scoop.

Must be an odd feeling looking at one’s own headstone…

So, what’s going on? It is a live history lesson: a guided tour around a 19th century graveyard. Represented by actors, some old prominent citizens are brought back to life for a short visit, to be interviewed and tell us a bit about their own lives, and the history of the town.

The resurrected old car they arrived in. (No use asking me for car details; I don’t have them.)

Another guy risen from his grave – local artist and art teacher John Hedaeus (1872-1967). I managed to find only two of his paintings on the internet. He also did some paintings in churches.

Left: Watercolour by John Hedaeus
Right: Oil painting by John Hedaeus

 
Another (less well known) artist, son of the journalist who was our guide for the evening, also turned up to “surprise his mum”, and escort her back to their own grave:

 

Actually three more people were “raised from the dead” on this Tuesday evening, but I think I’ll let these photos be enough for one blog post.

However, with a theme like this I can’t resist also “doing a Ginny” at the end (referring to my friend of the blog Let Your Light Shine), and finish off with a Bible quote:

“… we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.”
2 Corinthians 4:14

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.

Trying Out That Movie Star Look…

 

In case you haven’t been following every post lately, the title (and photos) refer to the top picture in Friday’s blog post…

Partly because of my recent eye problems, on Saturday I bought myself a pair of polarized sunglasses that fit over my prescription glasses. Lucky for me, apparently that’s quite the fashion now… (At least I’m going to pretend it is!)

On this particular day, you could actually also get the impression from a walk in the town centre, that headscarves and hats had suddenly also become fashionable. (Not really, though… That was all part of a Laundry Day  history show…)

 

PS. I did not actually wear my headscarf in town, those pictures were taken back home…

Soap Bubbles

Some things in life aren't as easy as they might seem, 
even if you think you've got the right recepy.











Well, at last...!

The pictures are from a Public Laundry Day in our town centre yesterday, organized by the Textile Museum to show how things were done "in the good old days". There are also a couple of photos from this event at my Picture Book blog today. More will be coming up in the next few days.

I remember playing with soap bubbles as a child...
Found the photo below in my old album, of me and my cousin.
I about 8, he going on 2.

St Patrick's Day

Having become a Blog World Citizen, new days of Celebration are added all the time! Like today: Saint Patrick's Day. Inspired by the scrapbooking fair I went to on Sunday (and some of the things I bought) I made the card above, with this week's theme at the Soaring Through the World in Pictures blog in mind: Touch of Luck. For the photo, I put the card with one of my potted plants, a red-leaved variety of Oxalis triangularis.

Saint Patrick (circa 387–461 AD) is patron saint of Ireland because he brought Christianity to the Irish. Legend says he taught them about the Christian concept of the Trinity by referring to the shamrock, a three-leaved clover, using this as symbol of the 'three divine persons in the one God'. Legend also credits Patrick with banishing snakes from the island. Evidence however suggests that Ireland never had snakes (or at least very few of them). But the snake did belong in Celtic symbolism, representing magic, druid wisdom, and the cycle of life/rebirth (because it sheds its skin). While in Christian symbolism, the serpent is a symbol of temptation, deceit and evil (Satan). So the banishing of the snake by St Patrick was most likely symbolic of getting rid of the old pagan religion.

A Bit of Family History

After looking at my blog pictures of the Town Hall centenary (see previous post), my aunt pointed out to me that my maternal grandmother, back in the 1920’s, worked as a secretary in this very building.

This is a photo of my grandmother at work.  Thought it might be fun to include that here, since you have already been shown the building!

I borrowed my aunt’s family album a couple of years ago and quick-copied some of the photos and notes in it using my digital camera. So my copies aren’t top quality. The ones I’m showing here I have tried to edit a little using Picasa, to make them sharper; and adding new frames in Windows Live Writer. 

 

Here’s another photo of my grandmother from the 1920s which I like.
I asked my aunt if she knew any details about the car, but unfortunately she doesn’t. If any old car enthusiast among my readers has an idea about what kind of car it is, please comment!

Wedding picture from 1928.

A fun piece of family history is that my maternal grandparents got to know each other by a newspaper ad leading to correspondence between them using shorthand/stenography!

My grandfather was from the north of Sweden, and in his youth worked at a sawmill up there; but went on to study to become a teacher (and later in life headmaster). My grandmother lived down here in the south. When my mother was born the family was living up north; but a year or so after that they moved down here.

My grandmother died when I was 6 years old, only a few months before my brother and my oldest cousin were born (my cousin just before Christmas and my brother three weeks later). So I’m the only grandchild to have some memories of my own of my grandmother.
(My grandfather later remarried.)

In a interview from another blogger about a year ago, I shared a childhood memory that included this set of grandparents. I decided to repeat it here, and include a picture that I did not have back then:

What is your favourite childhood memory?

Some people seem to have their childhood all sorted out in a series of stories. For me it's more like scattered snapshot images and I think they often involve something that seemed a bit unusual or new to me at the time. Quite a few early images are connected with visits to other people's houses.

The surroundings where my maternal grandparents lived changed dramatically while I was growing up. When I was little, their house was one of just two in otherwise rural surroundings, with a view overlooking fields with cows and haystacks. As I grew older, the town kept coming closer and closer - blocks of flats towering up in the late 60's and early 70's, shopping centres and villas added, until the house my grandfather built back in the 30's was just one among many other houses in a suburban street.

An old photo of the view from my grandparents’ house (sent to me by my aunt). This is what it looked like in my early childhood. Since the 70s the view is quite different – actually reminding a bit of Lars Lerin’s suburban paintings that I just recently showed in another blogpost…

Other people own that house now since many years back. But whenever I am in that neighbourhood, a series of memory snapshots from the late 50's or very early 60's pop up in my head. Me walking with my grandfather over the fields on a sunny summer day, with an old-fashioned metal milk can, to fetch milk directly from a farm in the neighbourhood - "straight from the cows". (This was unusual to me, because in town, the milk in those days came in brown glass bottles with soft metal caps on top.) Opening wooden gates and shutting them. Stopping to pick wild strawberries. On the farm, two huge carthorses inside the stable (I see them from behind, standing in their boxes, towering up high above me - it's dark inside the stable with just some light coming in through the open door). My grandmother (who died when I was six) in their big kitchen, skimming the cream off the milk in a bowl on the workbench by the window overlooking the front garden. Tasting the lukewarm milk - I didn't much like it. Grandma making small pancakes in a special iron on the stove - no one else I knew made those. (My parents are not in the picture, I guess they had gone on a short summer holiday on their own and left me with Grandma and Grandpa.)

Town Hall Centenary

Our Town Hall, now serving as District Court House, was built in 1910, and the centenary was celebrated this weekend with Open House for the public, including guided tours, lectures and dramatised court proceedings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The back of the building.

A group of people waiting for a guided tour inside.

The inside of the building is beautifully decorated.

Waiting hall surrounded by court rooms.

 

Above each door there is a different decoration.

The city arms - a pair of sheep shears.

This mural painting combines the tower of a church which is the oldest building in town, with the two towers of the town hall.

A brief account of the history of the town is given in a number of texts painted on the walls. This one tells the story of the foundation of the town (1622).

 

Decorations everywhere:
window-bays, wash-basin, ventilation grid, staircases

 

 

My favourite: A little snail crawling up the banister!

.~.~.~.

For this post, I have been trying out the new editor
Windows Live Writer which I first learned about in a post by GB the other day. Among other things, it gives a wider choice of variety in the layout.

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.)