Sweden 2011

Sunset over lake Unden

So I am back from my little break! I went on a two week holiday with my husband, to visit the beautiful nature of Sweden. We both really like quiet holidays: just us, nature, our walking shoes and some books. Sweden served us well.

We stayed at two different places, both central to several National Parks (Sweden has 29 National Parks). But to me, all nature in Sweden was so beautiful (National Park or not). It is so much different frow our own flat country. I also really loved the houses there, they are all kinds of happy colours: blue, yellow and even pink! And everyone decorates their houses with flowers and it all looked so nice and sweet.

Whenever I go on holidays I just take my analogue camera (a Canon EOS 1000F) with me. I do this for two reasons. First of all, I noticed that when I take my digital camera with me, I become obsessed by the quality of the pictures. When I see something that I want to take a picture of, I have to stay there and mess around with my camera until I get the perfect picture. This is kind of an annoying habit, and I'm not really able to enjoy the environment as much. When I take my analogue camera, I just frame the shot, click, and that's it. No worrying about perfection. I also really like bringing my film to the photo-store and picking up my photo's to see how they turn out.

So I shot a few pictures in Sweden and scanned some of them.



This was one of our first hikes, in the forest near a place called Knäred (where in 1613 the peace between Sweden and Denmark was signed). There are a lot of very pretty green mosses growing in the forests, especially on the rocks.



These rocks are part of the National Park Tiveden, where the last ice age shaped a very interesting landscape. We went on a hike to two very large and weirdly shaped rocks, called "Trollekirche", which means something like Trollchurch.





Weirdly looking underwaterfeet in lake Unden, one of Swedens clearest lakes. We stayed in a little wooden house on a camping that was situated at this lake. It was so nice to take a cold swim in there, especially with all the mosquito bites! The bottom of the lake is covered with slippery stones, but it is easy not to fall since you can always see your feet through the clear water.





This dead bird was just lying on the side of the road, like it just crashed there. We saw a lot of dead animals on the side of the road, one of which was a badger (which I had never seen before in the wild). So beautiful and sad at the same time. There are of course a lot of beautiful animals in Sweden, but they stay well hidden in the forests. We did see a lot of slugs, really tiny frogs and many pretty beetles <3

Words & pictures Mirjam