WHITE STOCKHOLM NIGHTS

The picture you are looking at shows Sophia Church (Sofia Kyrka), just opposite, and due north of, my apartment in Stockholm. As you can see from the church clock, it is precisely midnight. I arrived back home, after 12 weeks of travel, on the evening of 22 June, just some twenty minutes before taking this photo. For you, dear readers, not familiar with Sweden and its peculiarities, you are witnessing the famous white night of the Nordic midsummer.

All was quiet on this blessed occasion. The sun had, of course, already set, but was ambling along, slowly but surely, just a wee bit below the horizon, keeping the northern sky full of light, against which the church tower stood as an enticing silhouette. Suddenly, birds started to twitter, as if being confused between dusk and dawn. And right they were in being confused, since dusk merged with dawn without an intermittent period of dark. Soon the zone of lightness would pass the church and amble towards the right, getting more brilliant along its way until, an hour later, the first golden colours of the sun would start colouring its lower fringe, announcing the newly borne day. But at midnight, Hammarby Sound (Hammarby Sjö) to the right of the church was still spared the sun, being bathed instead by the vermillion of predawn.

MORNING AFTER CRAYFISH PARTY

Here I am sitting in the balcony of my newly acquired apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad, with Sophia Church (Sofia Kyrka) towering in the background and the sea channel, leading to Hammarby Sound (Hammarby Sjö), just below my feet. You can glimpse the odd boat being anchored on the quay opposite to mine. My apartment building has the street address Hammarby Kaj. As the name indicates, this, as well as the opposite, side of the channel used to house harbour facilities in the old days, when Stockholm still was a city full of industries. Nowadays, the former industrial sites have all been converted to residential areas, with the new harbour and heavy industry located far away from the city centre.

This picture was taken in the morning after the inauguration party of my new residence, or more precisely, a traditional Swedish crayfish party. This was the morning when I really felt at home in Stockholm for the first time since ten years back, when I had moved away from this beautiful city to assume a post in the capital of Europe. The move back had been prepared carefully, being spread out over most of two years. It also coincided with my transition from active professional life to the more relaxed living as pensioner.

Although I have never been an especially driven person, taking life and work more or less as it came to me, I still had to think about some other activities to fill my days, after having left Brussels. Fortunately, I have always had photography as a hobby, so I decided to make more of a profession out of this old hobby and carry out some creative projects along the way. So why not start this new professional venture at home, by documenting some nice scenery from the windows of my new apartment, as it emerged over the seasons? The background is enticing, with the sea channel merging into Hammarby Sound, and varying weather conditions will certainly provide me with ample variation in my pictures. Let’s see what this series is leading up to, and let ourselves be surprised by the ever changing picture motives occasioned by the seasons and by varying weather conditions.