Next week is going to be one long celebration in my family. My son Bjarne will graduate from High School, and on the same day we will be celebrations the turn of the light with the bonfire. All Danish Celebration means preparing lots and lots of food, so I have been busy gathering berries from my garden. I have picked the tiny woodland strawberries that cover my garden where ever I don't want any weed to grow. These strawberries are ten times as sweet as the large strawberries you can buy at the grocery, so you only need a few to make an ice-cream tasty. The gooseberries still taste sour, but I am going to put them in a pie, and give them a mid-summer flavour by adding some elder flowers.
I love spending time picking berries in my garden, it is like the time stands still. Ebbe and Selene eat berries now, but at the moment they prefer to eat all the blooming flowers. I am going to bring them with me to Silkeborg for the first time, so we have also been gathering food for them, for the celebration. Selene will be wearing her new floral dress, and Ebbe is going to have his hair cut. He saw how I gave our dog a summer cut, so now he wants a summer cut as well.
Ebbe and Selene's mid-summer food
After the bonfire I am of to a Viking party, and the following weekend my mother will turn 75 years old. So I will stay in Silkeborg for two weeks. I am not going to be able to upload to my blog, so I will update you when I return to Als.
The bonfires we have in Denmark is on the 23th. of June, on the longest day of the year, and the turn of the light. The bonfire is a celebration of the turn of the year. The bonfires are an old pagan tradition that goes back to the time of the Vikings. In Denmark most of our holydays are adapted to the old pagen traditions. When The Catholic Church came to Denmark in the year of 900, the Danes wouldn't move their old celebrations, so if the church wanted supporters, they had to adapt the Christian celebration to the old pagan traditions. We still celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December, because it is closer to the turn of the light than the 25th is.
Some Danes burn a witch doll on the bonfire, this tradition is from the time, when the Catholic Church preformed the witch hunts all over Europe. Some have kept this tradition other like my self don't like it. We put fire works on the fire instead to welcome the turn of the light.
I can see from many blogs that have been posted here, that I am not the only one who has come across narrow mined people when it comes to fairy belive, and art.
I live on a small island called Als, and I guess that living in a small community can have it's good and bad sides. Most people on Als are friendly, but the longer we live her the more we get to know about all the local conflicts.
Every year we have a bonfire on the road we live on. My husband was approached by a new couple who moved in to a farm on a road running parallel to our road. They would like an invitation to join the bonfire. My husband told our not so nice neighbor,and he told me husband that the new couple wouldn't, be invited as they are not living on our road. My husband pointed out the there are no other houses on the parallel road, so if they can't come to our bonfire, they will have to drive to a city to join a public bonfire, but our neighbor didn't want to invite them any way.
We had a lady from a house in the other end of the road complaining about a sculpt we have in the garden. She asked me to get ride of it. She thinks it looks like the German Eagle form the time of the Second World War. I know for a fact that it's not an Eagle, but a raven from the Old Norse mythology, so I am not going to remove it from our garden. The sculpt came with the house when we bought it. It was created by a Danish sculptor from the Danish Royal art Academy in Copenhagen.
I think that my grumpy neighborjust doesn't like intruders, and the same goes for the lady further down the road. I love the nature and wild life on Als, but some of the humans are a bit strange, or perhaps I am stranger moving to an island with all my fairy ideas and art.
Just a few weeks before all this took place I painted this snake. I had this dream about a nasty snake hunting me. Snakes are my worst fear so I decide to paint it to get it out of my mind. In my dream I was scared of this snake, but at the same time I felt that it wanted to tell me some ting.
I would like to thanks all of you for your support!
"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own."
Two days ago I was siting in my garden sketching my apple trees, when myneighbor came to say hello. I don't know him very well jet, so when he asked if he could see my sketch book, I became a bit shy, as my sketchbook is very personal to me. I handed it to him, and picked up my ewer to water some flowers while he was looking at my sketches.
He did'nt say much, and when he was done he just handed the sketch book back to me, greeted me a good day, and went back to his house.
This morning I was siting under the apple tree again. I could see my neighbor working in his garden, so I greeted him good morning. He came over to me, and he started to tell me how he had looked me up on the Internet. He had been reading some of my Nidlongdir blogs, and he was very upset about them.
I asked him what had upset him so much?
He told me that he thought people like me are dangerous. To be honest I didn't understand why he thought I could be a dangerous person, so I asked him to explaine to me why he thought I am dangerous.
You mix up fantasy and the real world, he said. You make people believe that there are fairies in your garden, you are a crazy dangerous woman, and people like you should'nt be allowed to use the Internet to spread you crazy ideas, there should be a law against it, he kept on.
I was shocked by his anger and accusations. I just stood there paralyzed in my own garden not knowing what to say. Then it was like a trembling went through the apple tree, my neighbor felt it too, he looked up into the tree branches and in a few seconds it was like the tree unfolded all it's secrets to him. You could see the streets of Lefenheim city leading up to Apple Hold Castle, and right in front of his nose King Applestrong popped up pointing his wand at him. Just as sudden as the apple tree's treambeling had started it stoped. My neighbor backed of into his own garden and disapired inside his house, with out a goodbye or any thing. I haven't talked to him since and I doubt he will be visiting me again in the near featur.
What do you think about my neighbor's accusations?
Is it a dangerous game I am playing?
If I am a crazy lady should I then be banned from the Internet?
