Norwegian Woods (OT)

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Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2013 - 04:08pm PT
"The spruce is blooming well this year", people from the forest say.
They stop where their paths cross in the forest
and are there for each other
with a silent glow of joy in their eyes."

Freely after Hans Børli

Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2013 - 04:18pm PT


I'm standing by the river. It's late at night. I've been walking along the river, fishing, for many hours. The last hour I haven't caught a fish. Darkness is approaching. Colours are fading around me. Mist is starting to spread down the river. I can feel a cold breeze softly touching my cheek. The humming sound from the river is growing deeper. I'm standing in some kind of enthrallment. I'm filled with energy, connected, yet calm. I can sense, I can feel, all of this, and still not, since there is no sense of a separate I. The river flows and the river flows in me. I am the river.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2013 - 04:12pm PT


It is the ephemeral things
that you carry with you:
the shadow of a bird’s wing
crossing the path in front of your foot
the smell of ice and frozen fruit of mountain-ash
an early autumn morning long ago, a word
spoken in the mist and wind
by an open fire
deep inside the moose-fields

It is the ephemeral things
that live inside you
and firmly hold a picture of yourself
and life - shimmering
like beaches reflected
in a flowing river

Freely after Hans Børli

Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 16, 2013 - 01:38pm PT
The Forest Finns brought with them many customs from Finland. Sauna, "svedjebruk" (slash-and-burn agriculture), a special kind of rye, the use of "never" from birch as material and so on.

The sauna was often the first building the forest Finns built and the sauna served as a multi purpose house.


The beginning of Urho Kekkonen's book describing the story ot the "Sauna":

"In the beginning was only a heap of rocks. They were heated, they were worshiped. Perhaps they were propitiated, perhaps they were appeased by having water cast upon them.

Rituals have always been an inherent part of the sauna. Once it had become an everyday bathing place, ceremonial uses remained: the bride was bathed in the sauna before the wedding.

The very earliest Finnish woodsmen used the sauna as a multiple purpose building, it was both dwelling and sauna. It could also be used for drying grain.

The first saunas were probably earthen saunas: a pit was dug in the ground and the rocks to be heated were heaped at the bottom. The sides of the pit were reinforced with tree trunks and eventually the entire construction began to rise out of the ground, with walls made of logs.

The functions of the sauna kept increasing: of course the sauna was for washing and bathing and laundring; but it was also a dispensary, where the old cupping women would draw the "evil blood" from the veins with their cupping horns, where painful muscles were massaged, where the children were born and the deceased laid out to be washed. Flax was dried in the sauna, hams and mutton were cured, and malt was dried. The sauna was the source of indispensable hot water. The water was warmed on the hot rocks, or in the hot-water cauldron.

The old saunas were often very large, 25 square meters up to 40 square meters. The door was at the gable end of the sauna and led directly into the sauna-room with it's earthen floor."...


The Helsinki Yacht Club and Bar - Finntown/Butte - Montana - where the annual naming of St. Urho takes place... And: Yes, there are saunas in there :-) Posted by Mojede on the Finland thread.

Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 21, 2013 - 03:13pm PT

Look - the lake's shining with scarlet
from the land of the sunsetting sky.
And bright as a piece of old silver
is the diver's red-throated cry.

Hans Børli


Smaalom (Gavia Stellata - Red-throated Loon )
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Filmed by Gunnar Fernqvist, Sweden.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 04:12pm PT
The Forests' Song

It sounds so sad on the moor at night:
the forests' song.
Its lyrics are written in gold twilight
where the weary sun sinks out of sight
over the desolate highlands.

I stop and listen. - I hear a note:
the forests' song.
A trembling cry from the wild bird's throat,
a murmuring brook where the fall winds float
over the desolate highlands.

How blessed those notes of its music are,
the forests' song.
They rise in the light of both sun and star
where tree-shaking winds blow near and far
over the desolate highlands.

The moose hears a dusky melody play:
the forests' song.
He rests in the moss through the lulling day
till twilight calls him out on his way
over the desolate highlands.

And the hunter hears the old tune run:
the forests' song.
He polishes up his shot-blackened gun
as smoke coils up when the day is done
up in the desolate highlands.

And the song flows on in each slumbering glen,
the forests' song.
They stop and they listen again,
the lonely beasts and the lonely men
up on the desolate highlands.


Hans Børli (translated by Louis Muinzer)


Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 04:21pm PT
Have You Listened to the Rivers in the Night?

Have you listened to the rivers in the night?
They speak of other things.

They send no laughter trickling over their sand bars,
hum no song about
girls' brown bodies
that glide outward at the bathing place
or wide meadows with their curlew-cries
or the ferryman who looks at the clouds
as he rows.

They speak of other things.
Things that are homeless in the day,
things that are Never and without words.

If you listen long to the rivers in the night,
listen long,
it is at last as if your soul
is mysteriously remembering its future.


Hans Børli (translated by Louis Muinzer)
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 04:49pm PT
For a Young Girl

So slim and supple in your eighteen years!
Your being is a wind-bent straw
where your smile's shy grass-butterfly
sits tipping its wings slantwise
and shining for nobody
and everyone.


Hans Børli (translated by Louis Muinzer)
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 05:16pm PT
The Moose Heart

He cut the heart out from
the hot and steaming cavity
and threw it in the heather.

Gentle snowflakes
came slanting through the grey air
and settled silently, melted
against the reeking redness.

But before we'd cut the carcass up,
the heart was snow-covered.
just a little hump in the whiteness.

And when we set off homewards
with big wet sacks
that scratched against green branches,
we forgot the moose heart...


Hans Børli


Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 24, 2013 - 03:28pm PT

The Little Flute

You mend your instrument.
give it more and better strings,
a deeper ring -

but the little flute...

The little bone flute
waits
till the bows are lowered
waits
till the trumpets are silent
and the light goes out on the podium
then
it makes lonely music in the darkness
by the backdoor.

A naked tone
white
as a bird-bone
in the bog wind.

There is No One playing.
The little bone flute.


Hans Børli



Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2013 - 04:32am PT

Kvarntorp and Ritamäki, old Forest Finn farms in Värmland, Sweden.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2013 - 10:51am PT

Otto Tyskeberget's great grandfather, Daniel Tyskeberget (1778-1856), was a legendary bear hunter at Finnskogen. He is known to have killed close to 100 bears. Daniel had a deep passion for bear hunting. Other words than passion could of course be used. Once a serious disease had reached Tyskeberget. But a bear had been seen in the area and Daniel wanted to hunt it down. His wife asked him to stay, but he couldn't. He left with his gun and didn't return until some weeks later. Two of his children had died. As the story goes - that was the only time Daniel was seen crying.


A bear claw left by Daniel

Daniel's gun - rebuilt from flintlock to percussion cap during his life-time.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2013 - 10:54am PT

"Jag väntar" ("I'm waiting"), a tune by Gunnar Turesson (1906-2001) with lyrics by his brother-in-law, Dan Andersson. Gunnar Turesson was only 16 years old when he composed the tune.

Sofia Karlsson singing "Jag väntar"

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 2, 2013 - 02:26pm PT

The Lady Wanderer

It is as if your face has listened somewhere
near the springs. - Sister, it is
as if you brought dawn's stillness with you
from the heights with sacred trees.

Many a time you filled my loneliness
in days when my heart was lost:
I sensed your nearness in the roe dear's leap
and in the kestrel's wings of fire.

Now I stand with my hands heavy from their loss,
so poor, so coarse-made and grey.
You are like an image, a shining name
of something I shall never reach.

You have gone on slanting rays of sunlight
towards the highland deep inside you.
Your listening, averted being has gained
a scent of snow in autumn mountains.

I look at you. The way a lost man
in the darkness may stand and see
a star above an unknown country
where the paths are snowbound.

Hans Børli
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2013 - 04:01pm PT

Halling after the "Limping boy" Ola Porkkala Lehmoinen, Grue Finnskog.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2013 - 04:04pm PT

Cemetery in natural forest (Finland)

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2013 - 05:03pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]

Inscription

Your life. Your dream:
The warmth beneath the foot of a bird
that's dozing in the autumn dawn...

H.B.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 15, 2013 - 01:28pm PT
At dawn this weekend
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 15, 2013 - 01:33pm PT
Some tools for shoes and leather
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 15, 2013 - 01:42pm PT
Some old tools for timber and wood
Messages 101 - 120 of total 954 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
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