DryStoneGarden

In my last post, I copped to possibly loving Gustav Vigeland’s sculpture park in Oslo. Something in me resists that word ‘Love’ but I will unreservedly admit to fascination, which led me to make a batch of watercolors studying his bronzes. Do I love his work? Maybe. Am I fascinated? Absolutely.

The most unique garden I saw in Scandinavia is Gustav Vigeland’s Frogner Park in Oslo. It’s a sculpture park, the largest in the world by a single artist, but it’s laid out like a formal garden using sculptures instead of plants, and it’s pretty amazing. My feelings for it are a bit complicated — Vigeland seems to have been an unpleasant man and possibly a Nazi sympathizer — but it’s unique and impressive and fascinating and also somewhat unsettling. I’ve seen a lot of sculpture in gardens, but nothing quite like this.

Commentary tends to focus on the monolithic people-phallus or the nudity of the sculptures. The people-phallus is a 45 foot tall block of stone weighing several hundred tons, carved by a team of three masons working 14 years. It’s one of the most impressive single stones in the world, but it’s also somewhat off-putting. To me it’s suggestive of a lot of different things, but none of them are appealing. Powerful, but not appealing. I admire the work of the three masons who carved it, and I admire Vigeland’s ability to make expressive forms, and I also don’t want to sound like I love a weird people-phallus designed by a possible Nazi sympathizer.

Along with the phallus, there are lots of penises at eye level, lots of butt shots, and lots of sculptures showing violence against women and children. Vigeland would probably say nudity and violence are a part of humanity, and he would point out that the violent sculptures are derived from classical mythology and the foundational stories of humanity, and I don’t disagree, but I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t like spending any amount of time with him personally.

But then there are these remarkably tender statues. Sculpture is so often about a single person, rarely about the connections between them.

This one, Mother and Child in the museum, is sentimental but beautiful.

And his bronzes have a beautiful patina. There’s something about the copper content or finishing or weathering of Scandinavian bronze I find more consistently beautiful than any other bronze in the world.

The garden also has these terrific cast iron gates that make line drawings against the sky, like stained glass frameworks using the sky as the glass. I love how they cast drawings onto the pavement.

I can’t think of another time I’ve seen figures cast with shadows like this. Maybe against a wall, but not on pavement.

I guess I sound like I love the park. Maybe I do. There are so many elements I love, and even more that I find impressive, even as I find some of them distasteful. It’s one of the more remarkable places I have visited in Europe and totally unmissable for a visit to Oslo.

Another lovely Swedish trail is the Marstrand Trail. Marstrand is like Dyron, another island in the archipelago northwest of Gothenburg. And, like Dyron, it’s a charmer.

The trail quickly leaves town and goes through a narrow slot similar to the gullies on Dyron.

Then there is some coastal scenery and airy woodland.

But the best section of trail is out on the stormswept rockiness on the west side of the island, a string of little bridges weaving through the slickrock.

Very cool, very Swedish.

Another lovely Swedish hiking trail is on Dyron in the archipelago a little north of Gothenburg. Dyron’s a lovely island and the trail is laid out with a lot of style. Steps and boardwalks and handrails, beautiful views of the water. Rocky crags, ferns, and heather. It’s about 5 km to circumnavigate the entire little island.

This section of boardwalk leads to the waterside sauna, considered one of Sweden’s best and definitely one of the best I’ve ever used. Oddly, the island also has a small herd of introduced Mouflon Sheep living wild on the tiny island. The sauna I expected, the sheep I did not.

And the boardwalks are more extensive than I expected, built and maintained by volunteer retirees who call themself the Blue Men, though, regrettably, they do not dress like the Vegas lounge act. Boardwalks are a resource and labor intensive type of trail — 50 tons of wood provided by the European Union, countless hours of labor by the blue men — and I really appreciate the effort.

A wonderful little island and trail.

I am a total sucker for a boardwalk trail through a bog expanse, so I routed my Sweden trip to pass through the Great Bog National Park. I felt a little self-conscious on my way there, like I should head to Norway’s fjordlands instead of a bog, but I had no regrets once I got there. It’s great, a pocket of laplands in southern Sweden, a wide chartreuse plain beneath a beautiful sky, and I particularly loved the boardwalk trail. Loved it so much I hiked it twice.

There are straight lines in the section of bog near the train tracks, scars from peat mining in the past. Pink Heather grows on the raised seams between the plots where peat was harvested. There’s a long-term restoration project to heal the scars, but long-term is an understatement when you’re talking about peat which regrows at an average rate of 1 mm per year.

Some scraggly pines make it into the area that was heavily harvested.

But the true bog is almost treeless.

The bog has long skinny ridges like sand dunes, with pine and heath growing on them. Science isn’t sure how they formed.

The park has a lake and what feels like more of a wetlands than a bog, and the boardwalk is a luxurious three boards wide. It’s awkward but possible to let people pass.

A lot of Bilberries in the park.

A couple sections of corduroy but the park has lots and lots of boardwalk.

Beautiful boardwalk.

Just after Gothenburg, I rode past Peter Korn’s old garden and checked it out. Peter Korn is a horticulturalist with some garden-world reknown for using thick top-dressings of sand in his plantings. I’d read about him and his sand technique here and here and maybe a couple other places, and I’d listened to a couple of talks on youtube; I like this one he gave for a Beth Chatto Gardens conference, but the others are good too. The sand thing is interesting. I recommend listening to his talk to really learn about it.

The garden I visited is his first garden, the one where he developed his sand technique. He left it some years ago and moved to southern Sweden; it’s now tended by another professional gardener, Max, who was kind enough to let me visit. Maybe I’d have have done better to visit the garden during its heyday or maybe I’d do better to visit the new garden, but I liked seeing this one in its post-creator phase. It’s nicely maintained by Max with a bit of a loose grip, a lovely expansive space, fun to explore, charming.

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