Sweden, land of the last milk-dock…?
I have now passed the border.
I react on that I react so little. The same mountains, the same frozen lakes. From the perspective of a walker not much changes at the border.
I react a lot more when I pass the tree-limit than when I pass the national border. When I change biome something happens in my body. Different biomes triggers different sides of my soul. When I walk over the natural border from forest to tree-less mountain my soul gets wings and soars. When I come down in the forest again I land in a feeling of belonging. But when I walk across a manmade border where the only difference is the color of the road-marks not much is happening in me.
I react a lot more when I pass the tree-limit than when I pass the national border. When I change biome something happens in my body. Different biomes triggers different sides of my soul. When I walk over the natural border from forest to tree-less mountain my soul gets wings and soars. When I come down in the forest again I land in a feeling of belonging. But when I walk across a manmade border where the only difference is the color of the road-marks not much is happening in me.
Not that I don’t love my country. But after being in the outdoors for two weeks it feels that my home is more the forestland that I find on both sides of the border rather than the nation that happens to have issued my passport.
But if you look beyond nature and into the culture there are differences.
Some of the last houses I saw in Norway were the big and well-kept farms just below the tree-limit. I have not so far seen any farms in Sweden, but I did see “Sweden’s last milk-dock” (milk-collection point) in the village of Tännäs, next to Sweden’s highest situated church.
Is the farmer, just as the hunter-gatherer before him, on his way to become an historical archetype in our country?
/AN
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