tungsten Helsingborg

Everything is clean in Sweden. It’s as if it’s the exact opposite of Mexico. There’s a caretaker picking up litter from in the playground outside the apartment at 7am.  A lady sweeping her section of kerbside. Council workers tidying bushes on the central reservation (in England these would be left until someone deemed it no longer safe, but here it seems a matter of pride and good behaviour).  It seems that a Swede is ten times more likely to pick up a piece of rubbish, than throw it out of the car window. But maybe that’s just the company I’m keeping. I like it.

The light in Helsingborg has a blueish, tungsten feel to it*. It’s as clear as glass above the fir trees. As if the wind, gliding from Denmark to Sweden, has meticulously swept away every micro-particle of dust with musical precision. It’s the sort of air you want to sink down deep into the bottom of your lungs and save for later.

On Monday we whipped through forests of waffle coffee houses, and cut across wide gold horizons of hay-bailed fields on the way to Kullaberg. Each home we pass bears a stamp which quietly betrays the confident individuality of its resident. No need to stand out from the crowd too loudly. There’s dutch looking round/peaked roofs with the odd semi-circled attic window, familiar looking triangle rafters on top of square red-english-brick walls, a traditional grey hatch now and again. There’s an unique (purple) paint job, a bold number (146) on the front-side, a rash of tall light pink poppies adorning the boundary wall.

A rust-red cottage flashes by on the left with a single heart adorably piercing the midpoint of each cream, flaking window shutter. Then when you least expect it the roadside offers up a majestic Royal Palace in orange or the smudge of a charcoal windmills plucked straight from a fairy-tale. Even the deer gracing the red rimmed road signs are elegant, leaping higher than would be possible in a country with dustier air**.

Monday, I rode pillion to the edge of the world. “Kullen” (my host says he doesn’t pronounce his Swedish properly “You shouldn’t learn from me”) is the Western finger tip of Sweden, jaggedly jutting out into the Oresund. The Information Centre under the Lighthouse tells you about the porpoise residents; kids can touch a starfish’s very suckers; there’s book of aerial photography (proof that this country is even more beautiful from high up in a plane); rocks have been cut open to show off their marcasite innards.

When you get out to the real thing and climb around the coastline (the stones are made-for-rock-climbers-grippy) you see how the fascia has been sliced by glaciers in a previous life. Silently beautiful stones cut through their middle glint back in answer to the tall afternoon sun: a galaxy of bronzed metallic stars.

The sea round this green coastline is clear and deep emerald and calls you in (bikini or not). It would be rude not to strip off and dip into the edge of the world right?

It’s cold. Like just melted ice. A sudden shock to the lungs and every naked pore of skin. Definitely more screaming banshee than graceful mermaid. There’s shelter from the wind though in this little bay and twenty minutes later we regretfully pull our droplet dried limbs back into jeans and jumpers and loiter back to the motorbike.

Soaring back to Helsingborg I’m stunned again by the light. As the sun sinks quickly in the sky it makes buildings blush a deeper shade of pink. At the edge of my visor, I spy a Dad and his daughter fishing with sticks for something along the pier. I wonder if they’re fishing for crayfish. It’s a Swedish tradition which we’ve been booked for later in the week as part of a friend (and his twin brother’s) Birthday celebrations (double trouble). Should be immensely brilliant: crayfish and alcohol. Could also be immensely messy. I’ll let you know. There’s home-brew involved. And vodka. Hmmm.

This blushing benefit of this nordic blue lens is a  constant, so far as I can tell.

The day before, after food on the edge of the mast filled harbour, we rode down to Tropical Beach. (They actually draft in trees from the local leisure centre.  And sand. From I’m not sure where).   The sun sinks down and the edge of water and sky dissolve into a mirage of pink, mauve, purple-blue spill. It’s calmer than is usual he says:  the water has been like smooth endless glass for the past three days.  It’s so calming. I’m a bit sad it doesn’t always look this way.  But I’ll always have that first precious evening in Helsingborg, backdropped with that melting sunset and sprinkled with plastic spoonfuls of red grapefruit sorbet and creamy coconut ice-cream.

Sweden:  I can’t help but keep grin at each watercolour drenched inch of it.

And the pure Swedish air. It’s a good high.

“Higher than a lion in Zion” Morgan would say: ‘Iron like a Lion, in Zion’ was just to make it radio friendly he informs me, and his coffee-loving friends Cimmy and Sundberg.  Bob Marley can help you and three Swedish men while away an entirely pleasant afternoon as you sit in a cafe on the South side of town. Cimmy’s primary concern, just for the record, is that one day he must find that t-shirt adorned with a lion ironing in Zion.  Just in case you ever see one…

*I just found out (wikipedia,  naturally) that “the word tungsten comes from the Swedish language tung stendirectly translatable to heavy stone”.   Tungsten the colour temperature for cameras (which is what I mean) is in the disambiguation section.  Funny how everything comes around and back to the same thing.  Or maybe I just notice it more because I’m here?

**Its common that German tourists steal the deer  (although Morgan says they are moose, and I don’t know how to explain the difference) signs.  Some entrepreneurial spirit he knows, thought they would purchase 100 with a view to selling them in that country.  But then discovered that no one really wants to buy one.  I love the thought that he still has 98 deer warning signs elegantly languishing in his Dad’s barn.