Autumn & winter 24/25
Tracks in the snow
This collection is something truly special. Wilder and more beautiful, filled with drama and excitement. Like a refusal to be subdued by the cold that awaits around the corner. A beacon for life and warmth. Captivated by the seasons and their meaning for life and living, we continue to be challenged and inspired by Swedish history.
Tracks in the snow exist as a printed catalogue. The texts are excerpts from August Strindberg’s book "The People of Hemsö" from 1887.
The indoor photographs were taken at Munthes Hildasholm in Leksand. The house, dating from 1910, is the wedding gift from the doctor and author Axel Munthe to his wife Hilda Pennington Mellor. The interior from the family’s life in the house is well preserved. The Hildasholm grounds also consist of a large nature park made up of fourteen different garden rooms, each unique in its design. In summer, the estate is open to visitors who can choose to wander about the garden on their own and visit the café, or join a guided tour of the house. Each summer, a number of artists also exhibit their works. A unique destination for all who find themselves in Dalarna.
Read more about: Munthes Hildasholm
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The wind was sharp outside, but she didn’t want to turn back and put on something else, since it was only a stone’s throw away. The hillocks were slippery and the snow drifted like flour dust, but she quickly made it up to the barn, went straight into the cowshed where it was warm. There she stood listening and heard someone whispering inside the sheep pen. In the faint moonlight, filtering through cobwebs and hay bales on the windows, she saw the cows turn their heads back and look at her with large, green eyes glowing in the dark. The stool was there, and the churn too. But that wasn’t what she wanted to see, it was something else, something she never in her life wanted to have seen...
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Two pairs of footwear, one smaller and one larger, had left tracks in the snow, and they were blue in the shadows, leading to the lifted gate. She followed as if being dragged along by someone, and the tracks lay on the ground like a chain, to which she was tied and which was now being lifted from an invisible place inside the pasture.... Further and further it went into the forest, where the capercaillie flew up from its night perch and startled her, out over the marshes, where the tussocks swayed, – over fences that creaked as she tried to cross. The tracks went two by two, some small, some large, side by side, sometimes stepping on each other, around each other, as if they had danced; over stubble fields where the snow had blown away, over stone piles and ditches, fence heaps and fallen trees.
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She didn’t know how long she had been walking, but her head was cold and clumsy, she stuck her thin, red hands under her skirt and blew on them from time to time. She wanted to turn back, but it was too late and she might as well go straight ahead as go back. So she went forward through a stand of aspens, whose remaining leaves trembled and shivered as if frozen in the north wind; and then she came to a small platform. The moonlight fell clear and sharp, so she could clearly see that they had been there. She noticed the imprint of Clara’s skirt, of the cardigan with the sheepskin trim. So it was here! Here! She trembled at the knees, froze as if her blood had turned to ice, burned as if there was boiling water in her veins. And she sat down exhausted on the platform, cried, screamed, suddenly calmed down, got up and walked across
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On the other side, the bay lay smooth, black, and straight across she saw the lights in the cabin and a light up by the barn. The wind blew sharply and felt like it went right through her back, tugged at her hair strands and chilled her nostrils; half-running, she came down onto the ice, skated out onto the swaying sheet, heard the dried reeds rustle around her ears, crack under her feet, and she fell on a frozen-over hole; got up and ran again, ... She felt the cold rising up her legs, but she didn’t dare scream so that no one would come and ask where she had been. Coughing, as if her chest wanted to burst, she dragged herself out of the hole, sneaked up the hill, went straight into the cabin to the bed, lay down and asked Lotten to make a fire in the stove and put on a pot of elderflower tea; and there she stayed lying down.
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Tracks in the snow
Tracks in the snow draw a silent line through the winter light.
They tell of someone who walked here before, a mark of movement in the stillness.
Between the crystals, the memory lingers, a path soon to fade but still showing that the world has already been touched.