Autumn is here again. And with it comes that light which once more transforms the landscape here in Dalsland. It falls at an angle between the trees, glancing off the trunks and making individual leaves glow, whilst behind them the forest is already growing dark.
On the water, everything appears a second time. The trees stand on the bank and, at the same time, seem to grow down into the depths. Sometimes it is almost impossible to tell where the landscape ends and its reflection begins. Then a gust of wind comes along, and the whole order is set in motion.
In the autumn newsletters of recent years, nature was always more than just a beautiful backdrop: it accompanied the initial plans for the Dalsland Studio and the encounters that took place there, offering a space for tranquillity and mourning. Most recently, I wrote about mushroom picking and how differently we perceive the same landscape: whilst I saw trees and colours, my companions had long since spotted the spots where mushrooms might be growing.
Now, as the leaves fall, other things begin to emerge once more. A root stretches over a stone. A broken trunk takes on shoulders. Suddenly, a face appears between two rocks. A moss-covered back, a nose, an eye in the shade.
The trolls are back.
Of course, I know there’s a stone lying there. But I can see the stone and, at the same time, the figure taking shape within it. A few steps further on, it disappears. When I look back, it’s there again.
The trolls of Scandinavian folklore take many forms: mighty mountain creatures, forest dwellers, eerie neighbours outside the human community. In some stories, they turn to stone in the sunlight. A strange rock can thus become the remnant of a tale. What we regard as landscape by day may well have been on the move by night.
We encounter them in the cinema, too. In Ali Abbasi’s Border (Gräns, 2018), Tina, a troll woman, works as a customs officer. She can smell fear, shame and guilt, and thus unearth what is hidden. The film shifts our familiar perspective: the supposed outsider perceives what others miss. And behind the question of who is human and who is a troll lies the far more uncomfortable question of how we actually recognise humanity.
From there, a thought takes me back into the forest: perhaps what I see is by no means all that can be perceived. Mushroom-picking requires experience; spotting trolls requires a bit of imagination – and for both, a willingness to look more closely.
The landscape remains familiar, yet reveals something different every year. Memories stay with me, whilst new encounters are added. The colours of the shore gather on the water until the wind scatters them.
And amongst the stones sit the trolls, pretending they have always been nothing but stones.