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Wonder often comes before the answer. Before humans understood how birds could fly, they studied their wings. Before we could travel to the Moon, we imagined what it might be like to get there. And long before we could see distant galaxies, we filled the night sky with images, stories and questions.

Throughout history, art, science and imagination have often grown from the same impulse: to notice something, marvel at it, and want to understand more. 

When Art and Science Were Not Yet Separate Worlds

Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps one of history’s clearest examples. For Leonardo, there was no obvious boundary between the artist, the scientist and the inventor. He studied the human body, plants, animals, water, geology and the flight of birds. He designed machines and tried to understand the movements of nature. And throughout all of this, he drew.

Drawing was not simply a way of documenting what he already knew. It was a way of investigating the world and thinking. The Royal Collection describes how Leonardo used drawing to develop artistic and technical projects, record his observations of the world, explore his imagination – and quite simply, to think.

One of his sheets of drawings illustrates this in an almost playful way. It contains around twenty carefully observed cats, several lions – and, among them, a twisting dragon. The real and the imagined inhabit the same sheet of paper. The Royal Collection describes the dragon as an example of how Leonardo’s exploration of the possible movements of animals eventually became limited only by the artist’s own imagination.

Perhaps there is something important in that. Carefully observing what exists and simultaneously imagining what does not yet exist need not be opposites. They can be two sides of the same curiosity. 

Seeing Further

A few generations after Leonardo, Galileo Galilei turned the telescope towards the night sky and gained access to a world the human eye had never been able to see in quite the same way.

It is a recurring story in human history. New tools change the boundaries of what we can observe – and therefore also what we can think and imagine. The telescope allowed us to see farther. The microscope opened up a world in the opposite direction. Photography made it possible to capture moments that would otherwise disappear. Today, space telescopes and probes allow us to encounter landscapes, galaxies and phenomena far beyond the reach of the human body.

But technology does not replace wonder. On the contrary, every new possibility of seeing seems to open up even more questions.

What lies beyond what we can observe? How much remains to be discovered? Are there other forms of life? And what does our own brief existence mean in a universe whose dimensions are almost impossible to imagine? 

When Science Needs Poetry

Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden was not a poet when he travelled towards the Moon in 1971. He was an engineer, test pilot and astronaut. During the mission, he spent nearly three days alone in the command module Endeavour, orbiting the Moon while his colleagues worked on its surface.

After returning to Earth, he began to write. A few years later, Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour was published – a collection of poetry born from the experience of space and of seeing the Earth and humanity’s place in the universe from an entirely new perspective.

It creates a fascinating reflection across five centuries. Leonardo used art to investigate and understand the world. Worden travelled into space using the tools of science and technology – and returned with a need for poetry to give form to the experience.

Perhaps this tells us something essential about wonder. Science can take us further out. Art can help us understand what that does to us.

Between Knowledge and Imagination

There is a particular space between what we know and what we do not yet understand. Science investigates this space through observation, experiment and theory. Art can approach the same unknown territory in another way – through colour, form, stories, associations and imagination.

Art does not need to know exactly what an unfamiliar world looks like. It can ask:

• What might it look like?
• What landscapes might exist beneath other skies?
• What happens if light behaves differently?
• What would it feel like to stand somewhere no human being has ever stood before?

This is where scientific and artistic exploration can come close to one another. Both may begin with an observation, an intuition, a pattern or something that does not quite fit with what we already know.

And with a question: What lies beyond?

Sometimes Imagination Comes First

Humans have long imagined things that only much later became possible to experience. We dreamed of flying, travelling beneath the oceans, reaching the Moon and exploring other planets long before technology made any of these things possible.

Images and stories have allowed us to travel mentally to places we could not yet reach. This makes imagination something more than fantasy. It helps us test possibilities before they exist, envision different futures and formulate questions that do not yet have answers. Sometimes imagination comes before discovery. 

Space as an Inner Landscape

But humanity’s fascination with the cosmos may not only be about what exists out there.

When we look at a star-filled sky, something happens to our sense of perspective. Everyday concerns become smaller. Time feels different. Our own place in the world is set against something almost unimaginably vast.

In this way, space also becomes an inner landscape. Darkness and light, distance and proximity, movement and stillness take on meanings that extend far beyond astronomy. A star can be a celestial body – but also a guiding light. A dark space can signify emptiness – but also a place where something new has not yet taken form.

Perhaps this is one reason the cosmos appears so often in art. Space offers an almost limitless landscape in which to explore questions about humanity itself. 

The Capacity for Wonder

At a time when more and more questions seem capable of being answered instantly, wonder may paradoxically become even more important. Wonder does not begin with the answer. It begins when something makes us stop.

What is that? How can that be possible? What might exist beyond what I can see?

Wonder requires an openness to not knowing. Art can create precisely such moments. It does not always have to explain the world. It can make the world feel a little larger, stranger or less self-evident. It can open a door without telling us what lies on the other side.

In recent years, researchers have also begun to investigate wonder – or awe – as more than a fleeting emotion. It can arise when we encounter something so vast, complex or unexpected that our familiar ways of understanding are no longer quite sufficient. We need to broaden our perspective and reconsider how we make sense of what we see. Studies have linked awe to scientific thinking, a less self-centred perspective and a stronger sense of being part of something larger. Research also suggests that awe may stimulate aspects of creative thinking.

Perhaps this is why wonder has such a natural place in both science and art. It emerges precisely where our existing explanations no longer quite suffice – and where curiosity begins.

When the Image Begins to Move – and Respond

This is also part of Novisali’s artistic exploration. Novisali’s works originate in hand-painted watercolours that are further developed through image processing. In some works, the process continues through moving images and digital layers, where light, forms and landscapes begin to change over time. The still image does not necessarily have to be the endpoint. It can become an opening into a larger story.

But what happens if the viewer can not only see and experience such a world – but also begin a conversation with it?

That question is one of the starting points for Novisali Living Memory, a platform in development through which Novisali explores how art, stories, places and knowledge can be brought to life through interactive conversations. Rather than simply receiving a finished narrative, viewers can ask their own questions, follow their curiosity and allow the encounter to develop in different directions.

In a sense, it is a very old human impulse in a new form: to see, to wonder, to ask.

From the World of the Vättar to the Cosmos

One of the first Living Memory experiments grew out of the exhibition Vättarnas skymningsland (The Twilight Land of the Vättar), where Nordic folklore and stories of nature’s unseen worlds became the starting point for the characters Runa, Glimma and Lummer.

Here, curiosity is directed towards what might exist very close to us – among moss, stones, roots and old stories.

In the next experiment, that same curiosity is directed in the opposite direction: towards the stars. The distance between the world of the vättar and the cosmos may seem immense. Yet they are connected by something deeply human: a fascination with what lies beyond what is immediately visible. Throughout history, people have tried to understand the unknown through observation and knowledge, but also through stories, symbols and imagination.

From what might be hiding beneath an ancient root to what might exist beyond a distant star, the same question returns:

What is there that we cannot yet see?

Cosmic Excursions – Along Unknown Paths

These ideas now take physical form in Novisali’s exhibition Cosmic Excursions – Along Unknown Paths, on view 14–28 September 2026 at Entrétorget, Danderyds Centrum, Stockholm.

The exhibition brings together works from two of Novisali’s art series. The Space in Between explores the space between the known and what might yet become – futures, new worlds and stories beyond our own horizon. In Sparks of Hope, points of light take centre stage: that which is born, grows, moves and begins to shine. Stars become both distant worlds and signs of hope, orientation and new possibilities.

Some of the works continue through moving image. Through Novisali Living Memory, the interactive conversations also travel from the twilight world of the vättar out into the cosmos. Here visitors can meet Captain Fågelsång – the space explorer, Galileo – the star historian, and Celeste – the cosmic interpreter. They approach the universe from different perspectives, allowing visitors to begin with their own questions and discover where the conversation leads. 

For Novisali, the exhibition also brings a personal circle to a close. Her first workplace was NASA, the US space agency, in an environment shaped by science, exploration and the ambition to reach beyond what was already known.

NASA itself has a long relationship between space exploration and art. Its NASA Art Program reflects how the exploration of space has not only been documented through scientific data but has also inspired artistic perspectives.

Many years later, Novisali’s fascination with space, the yet undiscovered and worlds beyond our own horizon has found another form – through art. From Leonardo’s drawings to the telescope, from stories of the unseen in nature to images of distant galaxies, perhaps the same human impulse keeps returning. 

We see. We wonder. We imagine. And then we begin to explore.

Perhaps we do not always need to know where a path leads before we begin to follow it.

Sometimes it is enough to look to the stars.

References

Royal Collection Trust. The life of Leonardo da Vinci. On Leonardo’s use of drawing as a tool for artistic work, studies of nature, technical exploration and imagination. The life of Leonardo da Vinci – Royal Collection Trust

Royal Collection Trust. Top 10 Leonardo Drawings in the Royal Collection. Includes Cats, lions, and a dragon, in which direct observation of nature meets Leonardo’s imagination. Leonardo – Top 10 Drawings

NASA. Galileo’s Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun. On how Galileo improved the telescope and began making astronomical observations with it in 1609, including observations of the Moon’s uneven surface and the discovery of Jupiter’s moons. Galileo’s Observations – NASA Science

NASA. Exploring Space and Poetry During National Poetry Month. On Apollo 15 astronaut Alfred M. Worden and how his journey to the Moon inspired him to write poetry. NASA describes his 1974 Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavouras the only collection of poetry written by an Apollo astronaut. Al Worden, space and poetry – NASA

NASA. NASA Art Program. On NASA’s long-standing connection between science, space exploration and art. The programme began in 1962 under NASA Administrator James Webb and has included artists such as Norman Rockwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Annie Leibovitz. NASA Art Program

Nature Reviews Psychology. The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe. A research review examining the psychological significance of awe, including how it can broaden perspective, reduce focus on the individual self and strengthen the sense of being part of something larger. The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe – Nature Reviews Psychology

Cognitive Science. Awe as a Scientific Emotion. On the relationship between awe and scientific thinking, and how encounters that challenge our existing assumptions can prompt us to reconsider how we understand the world. Awe as a Scientific Emotion – Cognitive Science

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior. On how awe can change our perspective on the self and strengthen the experience of being part of a larger whole. Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior – PubMed

Creativity Research Journal. Awe Enhances Creative Thinking: An Experimental Study. Experimental research suggesting that experiences of awe may support aspects of creative thinking, including flexibility and idea generation. Awe Enhances Creative Thinking – Creativity Research Journal

När vi blickar mot stjärnorna

Om konst, vetenskap och förundran

Förundran kommer ofta före svaret. Innan människan förstod hur fåglar kunde flyga studerade hon deras vingar. Innan hon kunde resa till månen föreställde hon sig hur det skulle vara att komma dit. Och långt innan vi kunde se avlägsna galaxer fyllde vi stjärnhimlen med bilder, berättelser och frågor.

Genom historien har konst, vetenskap och fantasi ofta vuxit ur samma impuls: att se något, förundras över det och vilja förstå mer.

När konst och vetenskap ännu inte var skilda världar

Leonardo da Vinci är kanske ett av historiens tydligaste exempel. För Leonardo fanns ingen självklar gräns mellan konstnären, vetenskapsmannen och uppfinnaren. Han studerade människokroppen, växter, djur, vatten, geologi och fåglars flykt. Han konstruerade maskiner och försökte förstå naturens rörelser. Och genom allt detta tecknade han.

Teckningen var inte bara ett sätt att dokumentera vad han redan visste. Den var ett sätt att undersöka världen och tänka. Royal Collection beskriver hur Leonardo använde tecknandet för att utveckla konstnärliga och tekniska projekt, registrera sina iakttagelser av världen, utforska sin fantasi – och helt enkelt för att tänka. 

Ett av hans teckningsblad illustrerar detta på ett nästan lekfullt sätt. Där finns ett tjugotal noggrant observerade katter, flera lejon – och mitt bland studierna en slingrande drake. Det verkliga och det föreställda finns på samma papper. Royal Collection beskriver draken som ett exempel där Leonardos utforskande av djurens möjliga rörelser till slut endast begränsades av konstnärens egen fantasi.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Kanske finns något viktigt just där. Att noggrant observera det som finns och samtidigt kunna föreställa sig det som ännu inte finns behöver inte vara varandras motsatser. De kan vara två sidor av samma nyfikenhet.

Att se längre

Några generationer efter Leonardo riktade Galileo Galilei teleskopet mot natthimlen och fick tillgång till en värld som det mänskliga ögat tidigare inte kunnat se på samma sätt.

Det är en återkommande berättelse i människans historia. Nya verktyg förändrar gränsen för vad vi kan observera – och därmed också vad vi kan tänka och föreställa oss. Teleskopet lät oss se längre. Mikroskopet öppnade en värld åt andra hållet. Fotografiet gjorde det möjligt att fånga ögonblick som tidigare försvann. Rymdteleskop och sonder låter oss i dag möta landskap, galaxer och fenomen långt bortom den mänskliga kroppens räckvidd.

Men tekniken ersätter inte förundran. Tvärtom tycks varje ny möjlighet att se öppna ännu fler frågor.

Vad finns bortom det vi kan observera? Hur mycket återstår att upptäcka? Finns det andra former av liv? Och vad betyder vår egen korta existens i ett universum vars dimensioner nästan är omöjliga att föreställa sig?

När vetenskapen behöver poesin

Apollo 15-astronauten Al Worden var ingen poet när han reste mot månen 1971. Han var ingenjör, testpilot och astronaut. Under uppdraget tillbringade han närmare tre dygn ensam i kommandomodulen Endeavour, kretsande runt månen medan hans kollegor arbetade på dess yta.

Efter hemkomsten började han skriva. Några år senare publicerades Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour – en diktsamling född ur erfarenheten av rymden och av att se jorden och människans plats från ett helt nytt perspektiv.

Det skapar en fascinerande spegling över fem århundraden. Leonardo använde konsten för att undersöka och förstå världen. Worden reste ut i rymden med vetenskapens och teknikens verktyg – och återvände med ett behov av poesin för att ge erfarenheten form.

Kanske säger det något väsentligt om förundran. Vetenskapen kan ta oss längre ut. Konsten kan hjälpa oss förstå vad det gör med oss.

Mellan vetande och föreställning

Det finns ett särskilt mellanrum mellan det vi vet och det vi ännu inte förstår. Vetenskapen undersöker detta mellanrum genom observation, experiment och teori. Konsten kan närma sig samma okända territorium på ett annat sätt – genom färg, form, berättelser, associationer och föreställningsförmåga.

Konsten behöver inte veta exakt hur en främmande värld ser ut. Den kan fråga:

• Hur skulle den kunna se ut?
• Vilka landskap kan finnas under andra himlar?
• Vad händer om ljuset beter sig annorlunda?
• Hur skulle det kännas att stå på en plats där ingen människa tidigare stått?

Där kommer det vetenskapliga och det konstnärliga utforskandet nära varandra. Båda kan börja med en observation, en aning, ett mönster eller något som inte riktigt passar in i det vi redan vet.

Och med en fråga: Vad finns där bortom?

Föreställningen kommer ibland först

Människan har länge föreställt sig sådant som först långt senare blivit möjligt att uppleva. Hon har drömt om att flyga, färdas under haven, resa till månen och utforska andra planeter långt innan tekniken gjorde det möjligt. Bilder och berättelser har gjort det möjligt att mentalt färdas till platser vi ännu inte kunnat nå.

Det gör föreställningsförmågan till något mer än fantasi. Den hjälper oss att pröva möjligheter innan de finns, skapa bilder av andra framtider och formulera frågor som ännu saknar svar. Ibland kommer föreställningen före upptäckten.

Rymden som ett inre landskap

Men människans fascination för kosmos handlar kanske inte bara om vad som finns där ute. När vi betraktar en stjärnhimmel händer något med perspektivet. Det vardagliga blir mindre. Tiden känns annorlunda. Vår egen plats i världen sätts i relation till något nästan ofattbart stort.

Rymden blir på så sätt också ett inre landskap. Mörker och ljus, avstånd och närhet, rörelse och stillhet får betydelser som sträcker sig långt bortom astronomin. En stjärna kan vara en himlakropp – men också en ledstjärna. Ett mörkt mellanrum kan vara tomhet – men också platsen där något nytt ännu inte har tagit form.

Kanske är det en anledning till att kosmos återkommer så ofta i konsten. Rymden erbjuder ett nästan gränslöst landskap för frågor om människan själv.

Förmågan att förundras

I en tid när allt fler frågor tycks kunna besvaras omedelbart kan förundran paradoxalt nog bli ännu viktigare. Förundran börjar inte med svaret. Den börjar när något får oss att stanna upp.

Vad är det där? Hur kan det vara möjligt? Vad skulle kunna finnas bortom det jag ser?

Förundran kräver en öppenhet inför att inte veta. Konsten kan skapa just sådana ögonblick. Den behöver inte alltid förklara världen. Den kan göra världen lite större, märkligare eller mindre självklar. Den kan öppna en dörr utan att tala om vad som finns på andra sidan.

Forskningen har under senare år också börjat undersöka förundran som mer än en flyktig känsla. Den kan uppstå när vi möter något så stort, komplext eller oväntat att våra invanda föreställningar inte riktigt räcker till. Vi behöver vidga perspektivet och ompröva hur vi förstår det vi ser. Studier har kopplat förundran till vetenskapligt tänkande, ett mindre självcentrerat perspektiv och en starkare känsla av att ingå i något större. Det finns också forskning som tyder på att förundran kan stimulera delar av vårt kreativa tänkande.

Kanske är det därför förundran har en så naturlig plats både i vetenskapen och i konsten. Den uppstår just där våra befintliga förklaringar inte längre riktigt räcker – och där nyfikenheten börjar.

När bilden börjar röra sig – och svara

Detta är också en del av Novisalis konstnärliga utforskande. Novisalis verk har sitt ursprung i handmålade akvareller som vidareutvecklas genom bildbearbetning. I vissa verk fortsätter processen genom rörlig bild och digitala lager, där ljus, former och landskap börjar förändras över tid. Den stilla bilden behöver då inte vara slutpunkten. Den kan bli en öppning till en större berättelse.

Men vad händer om betraktaren inte bara kan se och uppleva en sådan värld – utan också börja samtala med den? Den frågan är en av utgångspunkterna för Novisali Living Memory, en plattform under utveckling där Novisali utforskar hur konst, berättelser, platser och kunskap kan få nytt liv genom interaktiva samtal. I stället för att enbart ta emot en färdig berättelse kan betraktaren själv ställa frågor, följa sin nyfikenhet och låta mötet utvecklas i olika riktningar.

På ett sätt är det en mycket gammal mänsklig impuls i en ny form: Att se. Att förundras. Att fråga.

Från vättarnas värld till kosmos

Ett av de första experimenten med Living Memory växte fram i utställningen Vättarnas skymningsland, där nordisk folktro och berättelser om naturens osynliga världar blev utgångspunkt för karaktärerna Runa, Glimma och Lummer.

Här riktas nyfikenheten mot det som kanske finns alldeles nära oss – bland mossa, stenar, rötter och gamla berättelser.

I nästa experiment riktas samma nyfikenhet åt motsatt håll: mot stjärnorna. Avståndet mellan vätteskogen och kosmos kan tyckas enormt. Ändå förenas de av något djupt mänskligt: fascinationen för det som ligger bortom det direkt synliga. Genom historien har människor försökt förstå det okända genom observation och kunskap, men också genom berättelser, symboler och föreställningsförmåga.

Från det som kanske gömmer sig under en gammal rot till det som kan finnas bortom en avlägsen stjärna återkommer samma fråga: Vad finns där som vi ännu inte kan se?

Kosmiska utflykter – Längs okända vägar

Dessa tankar får nu fysisk form i Novisalis utställning Kosmiska utflykter – Längs okända vägar, som visas 14–28 september 2026 på Entrétorget i Danderyds Centrum.

Utställningen för samman verk ur två av Novisalis konstserier. The Space in Between utforskar mellanrummet mellan det kända och det som ännu kan bli – framtider, nya världar och berättelser bortom vår egen horisont. I Sparks of Hope står ljuspunkterna i centrum: det som föds, växer, rör sig och börjar lysa. Stjärnorna blir både avlägsna världar och tecken på hopp, orientering och nya möjligheter.

Några av verken fortsätter genom rörlig bild. Genom Novisali Living Memory flyttar dessutom de interaktiva samtalen från vättarnas skymningsland ut i kosmos. Här kan besökaren möta Kapten Fågelsång – rymdspanaren, Galileo – stjärnhistorikern och Celeste – kosmostydaren. De betraktar universum från olika perspektiv och låter besökaren börja med sin egen fråga och se vart samtalet leder. 

För Novisali finns också en personlig cirkel som sluts i utställningen. Hennes första arbetsplats var NASA, USA rymdmyndighet, i en miljö präglad av vetenskap, utforskande och ambitionen att nå bortom det redan kända.

NASA har dessutom en egen lång relation mellan rymdforskning och konst. Myndigheten har ett särskilt NASA Art Program, vilket i sig speglar hur utforskandet av rymden inte enbart har dokumenterats genom vetenskapliga data utan också inspirerat konstnärliga perspektiv. 

Många år senare har Novisalis fascination för rymden, det ännu oupptäckta och världarna bortom vår egen horisont hittat en annan form – genom konsten. Från Leonardos teckningar till teleskopet, från berättelserna om det osynliga i naturen till bilder från avlägsna galaxer återkommer kanske samma mänskliga drivkraft. 

Vi ser. Vi förundras. Vi föreställer oss. Och sedan börjar vi utforska.

Kanske behöver vi inte alltid veta vart en väg leder för att börja följa den.

Ibland räcker det att rikta blicken mot stjärnorna.

Referenser

Royal Collection Trust. The life of Leonardo da Vinci. Om Leonardos tecknande som verktyg för konstnärligt arbete, naturstudier, tekniskt utforskande och fantasi. The life of Leonardo da Vinci – Royal Collection Trust

Royal Collection Trust. Top 10 Leonardo Drawings in the Royal Collection. Innehåller bland annat bladet Cats, lions, and a dragon, där direkta naturstudier möter Leonardos föreställningsförmåga. Leonardo – Top 10 Drawings

NASA. Galileo’s Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun. Om hur Galileo förbättrade teleskopet och 1609 började göra astronomiska observationer med det; bland annat observerade han månens ojämna yta och upptäckte Jupiters månar. Galileo’s Observations – NASA Science

NASA. Exploring Space and Poetry During National Poetry Month. Om Apollo 15-astronauten Alfred M. Worden och hur månresan inspirerade honom att skriva poesi. NASA beskriver hans Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour från 1974 som den enda diktsamlingen skriven av en Apollo-astronaut. Al Worden, space and poetry – NASA

NASA. NASA Art Program. Om NASA:s långvariga koppling mellan vetenskap, rymdutforskning och konst. Programmet startade 1962 under NASA-chefen James Webb och har omfattat konstnärer som Norman Rockwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol och Annie Leibovitz. NASA Art Program

Nature Reviews Psychology. The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe. En forskningsöversikt om förundran och dess psykologiska betydelse, bland annat hur upplevelsen kan vidga perspektivet, minska fokus på det egna jaget och stärka känslan av att vara del av något större. The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe – Nature Reviews Psychology

Cognitive Science. Awe as a Scientific Emotion. Om sambandet mellan förundran och vetenskapligt tänkande, och hur mötet med något som utmanar våra befintliga föreställningar kan få oss att ompröva hur vi förstår världen. Awe as a Scientific Emotion – Cognitive Science

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior. Om hur förundran kan förändra perspektivet på det egna jaget och förstärka upplevelsen av att vara del av något större sammanhang. Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior – PubMed

Creativity Research Journal. Awe Enhances Creative Thinking: An Experimental Study. Om experimentell forskning som tyder på att upplevelsen av förundran kan främja olika aspekter av kreativt tänkande, bland annat flexibilitet och idérikedom. Awe Enhances Creative Thinking – Creativity Research Journal

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post was is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

The post When We Look to the Stars / När vi blickar mot stjärnorna first appeared on Novisali.

Why colour matters

Why are we drawn to certain colours at particular moments in time? Why do some colours evoke trust while others awaken memories, create a sense of belonging, or invite reflection? And why, in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, technological acceleration, and constant change, do softer, more natural colour palettes seem to resonate so strongly?

These questions became the starting point for The Colour of Seeing, a series of photographic essays exploring the relationship between colour, perception, and meaning.

What began as a collection of photographs gradually developed into a broader exploration of colour itself. Research in psychology suggests that colours influence attention, memory, emotions, and decision-making. Designers have long understood that colour shapes the way people interact with products, spaces, and technology, while anthropologists have demonstrated that colours function as cultural languages whose meanings evolve through history, traditions, and shared experiences.

This broader perspective suggests that colour is far more than a visual characteristic. It is one of the many ways through which human beings organize experience, communicate values, and create meaning.

Colour as a reflection of the zeitgeist

This understanding is reflected in Pantone’s interpretation of colour as a reflection of the cultural zeitgeist. Rather than approaching colour as a matter of aesthetics alone, Pantone examines how colours capture the emotional atmosphere of a particular moment in history.

The selection of Cloud Dancer as the Colour of the Year for 2026 offers an interesting example. In a period characterized by rapid technological development, expanding artificial intelligence, geopolitical uncertainty, and environmental challenges, the choice of a soft, natural white suggests a collective desire for restoration, clarity, simplicity, and reconnection.

This observation raises an intriguing possibility. Colours may not simply reflect individual preferences. They may also reveal broader cultural movements and changing social priorities. The colours that resonate most strongly at a particular moment may tell us something about who we are, what we value, and what we feel is missing.

Seen from this perspective, colour becomes a form of cultural observation.

Art, technology, and the act of seeing

Colour, however, cannot be fully understood through psychology, design, or cultural analysis alone. Art introduces another dimension.

A thought-provoking essay published in Aeon proposes that art should not be viewed simply as a product of human development. Instead, artistic expression may have played an essential role in shaping human consciousness itself. Whether one fully accepts this argument or not, it highlights an important insight: art does more than represent reality. It transforms perception.

This idea becomes particularly interesting in an age increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence. Algorithms can identify colours, classify images, and generate visual compositions, yet the human experience of colour extends far beyond recognition and categorization. Colours evoke memories, create emotional responses, and influence the way places, objects, and relationships are experienced.

Photography occupies an especially interesting position within this conversation because it exists between observation and interpretation. A photograph records a moment, but it also reshapes it through framing, perspective, light, and selection. The image that emerges is never a simple reproduction of reality. It is also an invitation to see differently.

The Colour of Seeing

This realization gradually changed the direction of the project. The photographs stopped functioning as individual images and began to form visual constellations connected through colour. Flowers, landscapes, architecture, textures, objects, and details that initially appeared unrelated started to reveal unexpected relationships.

Each colour seemed to open a different conversation.

Blue became a meditation on wonder and the search for the infinite. Green explored growth and the art of becoming. Yellow invited reflection on attention and the practice of noticing, while pink opened a conversation about care and human connection. White became an exploration of stillness and possibility. Warm white shifted the focus toward memory, home, and belonging. Orange reflected on warmth and community, red on presence and visibility, and violet on ambiguity and transformation.The project evolved into a series of visual essays in which colour became both a unifying element and a way of exploring different aspects of human experience.

An invitation to explore

The essays that follow do not attempt to define colours or provide definitive interpretations. Instead, each begins with a photographic collage and unfolds through four perspectives: the colour in the world, the visual patterns that emerge within the collection, the philosophical questions suggested by the images, and an invitation to the reader.

The intention is not to explain colour but to encourage a slower form of observation and reflection.

Perhaps colours influence far more than aesthetic preferences. They shape the environments we create, the memories we preserve, the emotions we experience, and the ways in which we understand the world around us.

Perhaps colours are not simply things we see.

Perhaps they are ways through which we learn to see.

The essays that follow

Each colour opens a different conversation and explores a distinct aspect of human experience. All photographs taken by Novisali.

• Blue — Wonder and the Search for the Infinite: Where do we look for the infinite?
• Yellow — Attention and the Practice of Noticing: Does beauty exist before it is noticed?
• Green — Growth and the Art of Becoming: Is becoming the essence of life?Upcoming;
• Warm White — Memory and Belonging: What transforms a space into a place that feels like home?
• Pink — Care and Human Connection: Can tenderness be a form of strength?

Upcoming

• Orange — Warmth and Community: Is warmth something we receive, or something we create?
• Red — Presence and Visibility: What do we choose to make visible?
• White — Stillness and Possibility: Is emptiness the absence of something, or the beginning of possibility?
• Violet — Ambiguity and Transformation: What happens when we stop resisting what lies between?

References and further reading

The essays in The Colour of Seeing combine insights from colour psychology, design, philosophy, and art with photographic observations from the Novisali archive. The references below provide additional context for readers who would like to explore these ideas further.

Pantone and colour as a reflection of culture

Speaking the Language of Color (Figma/Pantone Color Institute) – An exploration of colour psychology, the cultural zeitgeist, and the thinking behind the selection of Cloud Dancer as the 2026 Colour of the Year. Figma

Art and human consciousness

Humans Did Not Invent Art. It Was the Other Way Around (Aeon) – A philosophical essay proposing that art did not simply emerge from human consciousness but may have contributed to its development. Aeon

Colour, perception, and the act of seeing

What Colour Do You See? (Aeon) – An examination of how individuals experience colour differently and what those differences reveal about perception. Aeon

Seeing Is Not Simple: You Need to Be Both Knowing and Naive (Aeon) – A thoughtful exploration of observation, perception, and the challenge of learning to see differently. Aeon

The intersection of art, perception, and science

The Colour Wheels of Art, Perception, Science and Physiology (Optics & Laser Technology) – An academic article examining how different disciplines understand and organize colour. ScienceDirect

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post was originally shared at www.digoshen.com, and is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

Novisali Novisali

The post The Colour of Seeing first appeared on Novisali.

All artworks by Novisali..

Nearly three thousand years after Homer composed The Odyssey, its lessons remain strikingly relevant. As AI reshapes how we work and lead, the technologies may be new, but the human questions are not.

This growing and evolving essay explores The Odyssey through the lenses of leadership, neuroscience, organizational design, and the responsible stewardship of AI, inspired by Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation and Ludwig Göransson’s evocative soundtrack.

The aim is simple: to discover what one of humanity’s oldest stories can still teach us about leading in one of its newest eras.

Reflections

Odysseus’ journey is not only about returning to Ithaca—it is about personal transformation. Every obstacle, temptation, and setback becomes an opportunity to grow in wisdom, courage, and character. For modern leaders, the story is a reminder that meaningful leadership is rarely a straight path. It requires perseverance, adaptability, and the ability to stay true to one’s purpose even when the destination seems distant. The journey itself often shapes us more than the place we are trying to reach.

The message

The greatest journeys are not measured by the distance traveled, but by the wisdom, resilience, and humanity we gain along the way. Ancient stories like The Odyssey continue to inspire us because they reflect the timeless challenges of leadership and life.

Read the full reflection here

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post was originally shared at www.digoshen.com, and is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

The post The Long Journey Home: The Odyssey Reimagined first appeared on Novisali.

(Historien återges här på svenska)

In an ongoing artistic exploration, I bring photographer Engla Hägertz into imagined correspondence with other creative voices from her time. The works begin with photographs, archives, documented lives and places, while clearly distinguishing historical sources from artistic interpretation. Where the sources fall silent, fiction becomes a way of exploring questions they leave behind.

Earlier imagined dialogues have brought Engla into conversation with Hilma af Klint, the artists of the Halmstad Group, and Tyra Kleen. This time, I imagine an exchange between Engla Hägertz and Axel Munthe — two Swedes whose lives unfolded in very different places, yet whose traces open unexpected connections around seeing, remembering, creating and preserving. The intention is not to reconstruct what either person actually thought or might have said, but to use imagined correspondence as an artistic form through which documented histories can be placed in dialogue. Their paths most likely never crossed. But perhaps their worlds were not quite as distant as they first appear.

Engla Hägertz — Preserving Lives in Photographs

Engla Hägertz (1889–1977) spent much of her life as a photographer in Oskarström in Halland. From her studio, she photographed generations of people: families, children, workers, celebrations and everyday life. Over the years, these individual photographs grew into something larger — a visual memory of a community and a time.

Her work depended upon light, but also upon observation. A photographer chooses where someone stands, how the light falls, what enters the frame and what remains outside it. A photograph may appear simply to preserve a moment, yet it is always shaped by the person behind the camera.

But Engla’s creativity did not end at the edge of the photograph. She also seems to have had an instinct for shaping the places around her. The garden surrounding her photographic studio became part of the world she created, as did the garden around the house in Oskarström where she lived with her mother. Plants, paths, objects and places to pause became another way of arranging what was around her — not so unlike composing an image, but on a larger and more living scale.

Engla has also become part of my own artistic practice. Working from her photographs, places and the fragments of her story that remain, I have created visual works exploring what happens when an inherited archive is encountered from another time and through another artistic eye.
Artworks from this exploration were selected for Hallands Vårsalong 2026 and later exhibited in Oskarström, bringing the work back to the community where Engla lived and photographed generations of people.

Engla also travelled, including to Paris. While the details of that journey remain part of my ongoing exploration of her life, it offers a possible starting point for another imagined journey — one that might have continued south towards Rome and Capri, but perhaps never did.

Axel Munthe — Creating a Place from Memory

Doctor, Storyteller and Creator of San Michele

Axel Munthe (1857–1949) lived a remarkably international and often contradictory life. A Swedish physician, trained in Paris, he became closely connected with the Scandinavian artistic community there before moving south to Italy. In Rome he established a highly successful practice and became a sought-after doctor among aristocrats, diplomats and wealthy international families, while also treating poor patients and involving himself in humanitarian work.

In 1893, he became physician to Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, later Queen Victoria. Their relationship developed over almost four decades into a close friendship and bond of trust, and in the final years of her life Munthe spent considerable time at her side. 

Axel Munthe’s own family life was less settled. His first marriage, to the Swedish artist Ultima Hornberg, ended in divorce. In 1907 he married Hilda Pennington Mellor, an Englishwoman from a well-established family, twenty-five years his junior. They had two sons, Peter and Malcolm. Hilda created a cultural and creative world of her own, particularly at Hildasholm in Leksand, but the marriage gradually became distant and the couple lived largely separate lives from 1919. Despite two marriages, children and an extensive social world, Munthe spent much of his adult life essentially on his own.

At the centre of his story was Villa San Michele on Capri, which he gradually created from gardens, architectural fragments, antiquities and objects gathered over the years. It became something more than a home — an expression of Munthe’s imagination and of a life moving between medicine and art, society and solitude, Sweden and Italy. He later transformed his memories into The Story of San Michele, published in 1929 and in Swedish the following year. The book became an international bestseller, blending recollection, observation and storytelling rather than presenting his life as a straightforward autobiography.

There was another striking contradiction. Munthe had created San Michele around the Mediterranean sun and light, yet serious problems with his eyesight increasingly forced him to seek shade and retreat. In his later years he also began thinking about what should remain after him. Villa San Michele would eventually pass to the Swedish state and become a place of cultural exchange between Sweden and Italy — allowing a very personal creation to continue into lives he would never know.

Photography also had a curious presence in Munthe’s life. His years on Capri were richly documented in photographs, not least by Queen Victoria, who was herself a keen and accomplished photographer and often brought her camera on their walks. The surviving images show Munthe, his animals, friends and family, as well as the world around San Michele — creating a visual record alongside the world he later recreated in words.

This creates another intriguing connection with Engla. She spent her life creating photographs of other people’s worlds; Munthe’s own world became the subject of an extensive photographic record. One stood behind the camera, while the other repeatedly found himself within its frame.

An Imagined Meeting

Perhaps it was Boken om San Michele that finally brought their worlds together.

It is easy to imagine Engla in Oskarström in 1930, reading about the house above the Mediterranean and remembering her own journey to Paris. Perhaps she had once thought of continuing south — to Rome, or even Capri. Instead, San Michele came to her through a book. From there, an imagined conversation begins.

A photographer who preserves people in fractions of a second meets a writer who reconstructs a life through memory. One works with light while the other is slowly losing his ability to endure it. One accumulates thousands of photographs that will eventually become an archive; the other creates a house that will eventually outlive him.

Yet perhaps they shared something else as well: an instinct to shape places. Munthe created San Michele from gardens, fragments, objects, paths and views towards the Mediterranean. On a far smaller scale, Engla shaped the gardens and surroundings of the places in which she lived and worked. Both seem to have understood that creativity need not stop with an image or a book; it can extend into the spaces through which we move and the views towards which we choose to turn.

Their letters move between photography and memory, light and failing sight, portraits and relationships, truth and storytelling, the places we carry with us, and finally the question that gives this imagined exchange its name:

What remains of the lives we have seen, the places we have loved, and the things we have made?

The letters that follow are fictional, woven around real people, places and events. Where history leaves spaces, imagination allows a conversation to begin.

I. The Place I Never Reached

Engla Hägertz to Axel Munthe

Oskarström, April 1930

Dear Dr Munthe,

Your name has reached me more than once over the years, always by a different road. I first heard stories of the Swedish doctor who had lived among the Scandinavian artists in Paris, and later your name appeared again whenever people spoke of Italy. Friends travelled from Halland to Paris and further south and came home with stories of Rome, old churches, crowded streets and a light they insisted was quite unlike our own. Another correspondent of mine had once made Rome her home, and through her letters I began to imagine the city long before I had any thought of seeing it myself.

I did travel to Paris eventually, taking my camera and rather more curiosity than good sense. I remember thinking while I was there that perhaps Paris was only the beginning. Next time I would continue south. I would see Rome, and perhaps, if circumstances allowed, Capri.

There was no next time. Life has a way of quietly replacing the journeys we intend with other things that need doing, and I returned to Halland.

That may be why your book affected me as it did. I began reading about San Michele and found myself thinking not only about your house, but about that journey I never made. Through your descriptions I could almost imagine the mountain, the garden, the fragments of stone, the terraces and the sea below. It seemed less like reading about a house than following the making of a world.

My own world is considerably smaller. I have spent much of my working life in a photographic studio here in Oskarström. There is nothing grand about it. People come through the door in their Sunday clothes, or sometimes directly from work. Mothers straighten children’s collars. Husbands are told where to put their hands. Children refuse to sit still. Older people often become unexpectedly solemn when they find themselves in front of the camera.

For a little while I arrange them within the light. Then the shutter closes, the moment passes, and they leave.

Yet after all these years I sometimes have the peculiar feeling that something of them remains in the room. Perhaps it is simply because I remember them. But there are days when I wonder whether places themselves gather traces of the lives that pass through them.

Reading about San Michele made me wonder if you have ever felt the same.

You have shaped a place around the way you wished to live and see the world. I have spent my life shaping a much smaller room around the requirements of light and people. They are hardly comparable, and yet I wonder whether the question might be the same: do we make the places in which we live and work, or do they, slowly and without our noticing, make something of us?

I hope you will forgive a letter from a stranger in Halland. Your book has made a distant place feel unexpectedly near.

I never came to San Michele. And now San Michele has come to me.

With warm greetings from Oskarström,

Engla Hägertz

P.S. I have enclosed a photograph of my studio. It is not one of my portraits. I thought you might prefer to see the room in which they are made. The light was coming through the window when I took it, and that seemed reason enough.

Axel Munthe to Engla Hägertz

Anacapri, May 1930

Dear Miss Hägertz,

Your photograph has been standing beside me for several days, and I have looked at it often enough that your studio in Oskarström has begun to feel rather less distant than it has any right to.

You apologise for sending me a room instead of a portrait. You should not. Rooms often tell us considerably more about people than portraits do. A person knows when he is being looked at and immediately begins, consciously or otherwise, to arrange himself for the occasion. A room is less careful about the impression it makes.

There is something in your studio that I recognise, although it is certainly not the light. The light of Capri would probably terrify your photographic plates. What I recognise is the sense of waiting. A room that has received many people acquires it, I think. It waits for the next voice, the next footstep, the next person to sit in the chair.

San Michele grew in much the same way, although I cannot claim to have built it according to any sensible plan. I have never had much faith in sensible plans. A column appeared where a column seemed to belong. A fragment of marble demanded a wall around it. A path followed the mountain until the mountain decided otherwise.

From the beginning I knew more clearly how I wanted the place to feel than what form it should finally take. I wanted my home to be open to the sun and the wind and the voices of the sea, like a Greek temple — and light, light, light everywhere.

I could never have enough of it. My eyes have since taken a rather different view of the matter. Perhaps that is one of life’s little jokes: we spend years pursuing something only to discover that we cannot possess it indefinitely.

You ask whether places remember. I do not know whether they remember as we do, but I am certain that they retain something. A stone becomes smooth where the same hand has rested on it for years. A chair remains in the place where someone preferred to sit. A tree outlives the person who planted it. Even silence can seem different when it belongs to a room in which a familiar voice is no longer heard.

You must know this better than most. You have watched thousands of people step before your camera and then disappear again into their lives. What remains with you is a fraction of a second in which they stood still.

But perhaps you have the matter backwards when you say that they leave something behind in your studio. Perhaps you leave something with them as well.

For that fraction of a second, you ask a person to stop being carried along by time. You ask them to stand still and allow themselves to be seen. Years later, when the clothes have gone out of fashion, the children have grown old and some of those faces have disappeared altogether, your photograph will still say: this person stood here. This light once fell upon this face. That seems to me no small thing.

You write that you once meant to continue from Paris to Rome and perhaps Capri. Do not regret the journey too much. There are many ways of arriving at a place, and sometimes imagination gets there long before we do.

Besides, you have sent me Halland through a window. It seems only fair that I send you Capri in return.

Yours sincerely,

Axel Munthe

P.S. I am sending you two photographs. The first shows something of San Michele and the sea beyond. The second is of my old Sphinx looking out over the Mediterranean. She has been staring towards the horizon for far longer than either of us has been looking at anything. I sometimes suspect she understands more about time than I do.

II. The Light We See By

Engla Hägertz → Axel Munthe

Oskarström, September 1931

Dear Dr Munthe,

Your photographs have remained in my studio since your letter arrived last year. The Sphinx has found a place on a shelf among boxes of plates and old portraits, where she looks rather grandly out of place. Occasionally someone notices her and asks where she is, and when I say Capri there is usually a small pause, as though I have named somewhere belonging as much to imagination as to geography.

I have often thought about something you wrote in your letter. You said that you had wanted light everywhere at San Michele, and then added that your eyes had since taken a different view of the matter. Perhaps I noticed the sentence because light is so much a part of my working life that I rarely think of it separately from photography itself. When I enter the studio in the morning, I look first towards the windows. Before anyone has arrived, the light has already told me something about the photographs I shall be able to make that day.

There are mornings when it seems almost willing. A person can sit down and the light finds the face without much help from me. At other times I move chairs and curtains and ask people to turn slightly this way or that. They generally imagine I am arranging them, when in fact I am often arranging the light around them.

When I was younger, I think I believed that more light must always mean that one could see more clearly. Photography taught me otherwise. Too much light can remove what one wishes to see almost as completely as darkness can conceal it. A face needs its shadows. Without them the features flatten and something of the person seems to disappear.

Last winter I photographed a woman who had come to my atelier. She complained that the corner where I had placed her was too dark and asked why I did not move her nearer the window. I did as she wished, but when I developed the plate I preferred the first exposure. In the brighter photograph I could see more of her face, certainly, but somehow I could see less of her. I thought of your letter.

It made me wonder what it must be like to have spent so much of one’s life seeking light and then find that one’s own eyes can no longer welcome it. Has it changed the way you see, not merely in the physical sense, but in the way you notice and remember things?

Photography gives us a peculiar confidence in the visible. I can take out a plate made twenty years ago and find a face preserved with astonishing precision, and yet realise that I have completely forgotten the person’s voice. At other times I remember a voice, a laugh or the way someone entered the room, although I can no longer see the face clearly in my mind.

Perhaps what we see and what we remember have less to do with one another than I once thought.

With warm greetings from Oskarström,

Engla Hägertz

P.S. I have enclosed the first photograph of the woman I mentioned, the one she thought too dark. I do not believe she ever saw this version. I gave her the brighter one she preferred.

Axel Munthe → Engla Hägertz

Torre di Materita, October 1931

Dear Miss Hägertz,

Your photograph reached me safely, and I think you were right to prefer it. I know nothing about the technical requirements of photography, but the woman appears entirely at ease in her shadows. Had you placed her any nearer the window, I suspect she might have become less interesting, although perhaps she would have been more satisfied.

Your question about my eyes is more difficult to answer. You ask what happens when a man who has spent much of his life seeking light discovers that light has become his enemy. For a long time my answer would simply have been that he becomes extremely bad-tempered.

I built San Michele for the sun. I wanted it everywhere: across the loggia in the morning, on the white walls, between the columns, upon the garden and the sea. I had lived through enough northern winters and enough dark rooms occupied by sick people to know precisely what I thought paradise should contain, and a great deal of sunlight was part of the arrangement. I did not consult my eyes on the matter. They eventually protested.

That is one reason I spend so much time here at the Torre di Materita. The old walls are kinder, and I can withdraw when the brightness becomes too much. At first I resented every limitation. I still do, if I am to be truthful. We should be suspicious of people who convert every misfortune into wisdom. I would willingly surrender several philosophical insights in exchange for better eyesight.

Yet I have discovered that I know the island differently now. There was a time when I walked through San Michele and took in the whole spectacle at once: the white walls, the columns, Monte Solaro above me, the blue expanse below and some dog asleep where it had been expressly forbidden to sleep. Now the world often arrives in smaller pieces. I recognise where I am from the sound beneath my feet, from the change in the wind as one approaches the edge of the garden, from the scent of a tree before I can distinguish its branches. Memory does the rest, although it is an unreliable assistant.

You are right about voices. There are people whose faces I can no longer summon properly, but whose voices return without invitation. A sentence spoken forty years ago in Paris can suddenly become clearer than something said to me yesterday. I remember footsteps on stairs, a particular laugh, the sound of a carriage outside a window. None of these things would have appeared in a photograph, and yet they have survived.

This is why I am not sure that memory resembles photography at all. Your camera records what stood before it at a particular instant. Memory is far less disciplined. It keeps what it pleases, alters what it dislikes, and sometimes returns to us something we had no idea we had preserved.

You wrote that a face needs its shadows. I think perhaps a life does too. If everything remained equally illuminated, we should be overwhelmed by it.

Yours sincerely,

Axel Munthe

P.S. Since you sent me one of your subjects, I am sending you one of Queen Victoria’s. It’s some older photographs she made of me at San Michele. She was an accomplished photographer and knew the place well enough not to be impressed by its owner. You may find it interesting to see what happens when the doctor is made to stand on the other side of the lens.

III. The Distance Inside a Portrait

Engla Hägertz → Axel Munthe

Oskarström, February 1934

Dear Dr Munthe,

I have kept Victoria’s photograph beside the Sphinx, and over time I have become almost as interested in the person behind the camera as in the man standing before it. Had you not told me who made the photograph, I think I would still have guessed that the photographer knew you.

There is a difference when we photograph someone familiar to us. Most people who enter my studio are strangers. I have only a short while to observe them before I am expected to make a picture that they and their families may keep for decades. I have learned to use the moments before the photograph almost as much as the exposure itself. While I prepare the plate or move a chair, people forget for a moment that they are being watched. A husband turns towards his wife. A mother reaches automatically for her child’s collar. Someone who has been sitting stiffly suddenly laughs.

Those small movements often tell me more than the pose they have carefully prepared.

A family came to me last winter: a mother and father with their children, the youngest still small enough to be held. It took some time to arrange them. One child shifted in her chair, another stared solemnly at the camera, while the little ones seemed determined not to sit as I had intended. I kept moving them by inches — a shoulder this way, a chair that way — trying to make the group settle into a pleasing order. Then I stopped.

When I developed the plate, I realised that what interested me was not the order at all. It was the small differences: the child clasping her hands, the boy leaning slightly towards his sister, the baby resting against his mother, the father holding the youngest close.

Years from now, they may not remember the afternoon or why they came to my studio. But perhaps they will recognise these gestures. A photograph remembers things we do not yet know we will forget.

Your photograph made me think about this because you do not seem to be presenting yourself to Victoria’s camera. You simply appear to inhabit the place. Perhaps someone who knows us well can photograph what a stranger cannot because there is less need to explain who we are.

But family photographs have also taught me that physical closeness can be deceptive. I have photographed husbands and wives whose shoulders touched and yet who seemed separated by a great distance. I have seen children lean unconsciously towards one parent rather than another. None of this tells me what their lives are actually like, and I would never pretend that it does. The camera is not a judge. But it notices things.

I wonder whether medicine taught you something similar. You must have met people in circumstances in which they could no longer maintain the version of themselves they ordinarily presented to the world. Did you come to believe that there is a truer person beneath the social one, or did you find that we simply contain many different selves?

With affection from Halland,

Engla Hägertz

Axel Munthe → Engla Hägertz

Torre di Materita, April 1934

Dear Engla,

Your family portrait interested me more than it should have. I could see the whole scene while reading your description: the children shifting and fidgeting, the parents trying to keep the youngest ones still, and you behind the camera moving a shoulder here, a chair there, searching for order. And then you stopped.

You chose wisely. The small gestures you allowed to remain may one day matter far more than the symmetry of the group.

Doctors and photographers share the peculiar privilege of seeing people when they are not entirely prepared to be seen. Your advantage is that they generally arrive wearing their best clothes. Mine have often been deprived of both their clothes and their dignity before our acquaintance has properly begun.

I once believed, as young doctors often do, that illness stripped away the superficial person and revealed the true one beneath. I no longer think it is so simple. I have seen men who were courageous in public become terrified when told they were ill, and women considered timid by everyone around them show astonishing calm when someone they loved was dying. I have known people capable of great kindness towards strangers who made life very difficult for those closest to them. I have known the reverse as well. Which was the real person? I would now say all of them.

Perhaps this is one reason I have become wary of portraits that appear to explain too much. A human being is not a single expression that the clever photographer merely has to discover. We change according to whom we are with, what we fear, what we hope for and what we believe is expected of us.

Your family photograph is particularly interesting because at first it appears to tell a very simple story. Here is a family. They have dressed carefully, gathered together and agreed, for the duration of your exposure, to inhabit the same small rectangle. Anyone looking at it today probably knows who everyone is and understands the relationships without explanation.

But imagine the same photograph found in a drawer fifty years from now. Someone will turn it over hoping for names. They will wonder about the grandmother’s hand, why one child looks towards the father while another looks away, whether the young couple were happy, and what became of them all. The photograph will contain all those people and none of the answers.

Your letter also made me look through some family photographs of my own. This was not an entirely comfortable exercise. Families do not remain conveniently arranged as photographers place them. Children grow up, husbands and wives discover distances no camera could have measured, and people who once occupied the centre of our lives move towards its edges while others unexpectedly take their place.

I found one photograph that I thought might interest you. It was taken at Hildasholm in Sweden. Hilda is there, and our sons Peter and Malcolm, and I am there too. We are together in the picture, which is true. But, as you wrote, a photograph can place people very close together without telling us how far apart their lives may have travelled.

I do not think that makes the photograph false. Perhaps it simply reminds us that a photograph can only tell the truth about one moment at a time.

Yours,

Axel Munthe

P.S. You have now seen me through Victoria’s eyes and through the eyes of a family camera. I am beginning to feel dangerously over-exposed.

IV. The Truth We Arrange

Engla Hägertz → Axel Munthe

Oskarström, November 1937

Dear Axel,

Your family photograph has been in my collection for several years now, and I thought of it recently while going through some of my older plates. I have begun trying to bring a little order to them, although every attempt seems to create two new piles from the one I intended to remove. There are thousands of faces.

Some I recognise immediately. Others require a name written on an envelope or a note in an old book before the person returns to me. There are also photographs whose circumstances I remember more clearly than the people themselves. I know that it was raining that afternoon, or that someone’s horse was tied outside, or that Anna was helping me in the studio, yet the name of the person sitting before the camera has vanished completely.

Looking through so many photographs has made me increasingly aware of how much I chose without thinking of it as choosing. I decided where the edge of the picture would fall, who would stand beside whom, which chair would be used and when everyone had become still enough for the exposure. If a room was untidy, I moved the untidiness beyond the frame. If someone blinked, I made another plate. If two photographs were possible, I gave the family the one I thought better. None of this troubled me when I was younger. It was simply photography. Now I sometimes wonder about it.

I have also returned to your book, and perhaps this is why these thoughts have come together. When I first read The Story of San Michele, I imagined I was being shown your life much as someone might open an album and explain the photographs one by one. Reading it again, I notice something else. You move between memory, story, dream and recollection with a freedom my camera does not possess. At times I find myself wondering not whether something happened precisely as you describe it, but why this is the way you chose to remember it.

I hope you will not think the question impertinent. I mean it seriously, because I have begun to suspect that photographers and writers may be doing something more similar than I once believed.

I arrange people inside a frame. You arrange memories inside a story. Neither of us can include everything. Does choosing what to leave out make what remains less true?

Yours affectionately,

Engla Hägertz

Axel Munthe → Engla Hägertz

Torre di Materita, January 1938

Dear Engla,

Your question is not impertinent. It is inconvenient, which is much better. I have looked at the two photographs you sent. Had you enclosed only one of them, I should have accepted it without question as the image of that person at that moment. Because you sent both, I find myself moving between them and wondering which is more truthful. In one the expression is more open; in the other the person seems withdrawn. They were made within minutes of one another, and presumably neither is false. That should already tell us something about truth.

When I began writing about San Michele, I was not sitting before a ledger with the intention of producing evidence. Much of what I wrote came back to me across a great distance of time. Paris belonged to another man, although that man happened to have my name. Rome had changed, Capri had changed, and I had changed most of all. People who had once been alive in my memories were now dead, and conversations returned to me without any guarantee that the words had been spoken exactly as I remembered them.

I could have refused to write anything I could not prove. The result might have been more accurate and considerably less true to the life I remembered.

Life itself is a great storyteller, Engla. Memory merely continues the work. It compresses years, enlarges an afternoon, preserves one conversation and discards a hundred others. We do not remember our lives evenly. By the time the writer takes up his pen, the first editing has already been done for him.

This does not mean that facts are unimportant. A writer who deliberately deceives his reader is merely a liar with good stationery. But perhaps your camera is more honest about its limitations than memory is. The frame is visible. Everyone understands that the world continues beyond its edges. Nobody looks at one of your photographs and assumes that nothing existed outside it. A book hides its frame more successfully.

Capri has taught me something about this as well. Long before you or I were born, Tiberius, the Roman emperor who spent the final decade of his reign on Capri, looked out over this same island while governing his vast empire from here. His villas became ruins, his life became history and legend, and fragments of the Roman world still emerge from the earth. At San Michele there is an ancient marble head which we call Tiberius, although there has been disagreement over whose face it actually represents.

I rather like the uncertainty. The man has disappeared, the empire has disappeared, even the certainty of whose face we are looking at has disappeared — and still the marble remains.

Perhaps places are always being made in this way. One person leaves something behind without knowing who will find it. Another discovers it, gives it a new place and, inevitably, a new story. San Michele became such an accumulation for me: fragments, statues, columns, memories, people and animals gathered over many years until I could no longer say precisely where the place ended and my own story of it began.

Perhaps your photographs will experience something similar. Today you know the names of the people before your camera and something of the circumstances that brought them there. One day someone may find one of those photographs without knowing anything about the person in it. The clothes will belong to another age, the house may have disappeared and even the name may be lost. Yet the face will still be there.

Would that make the photograph less true? I don’t think so. It would simply have become part of another story.

You ask whether choosing what to leave out makes what remains less true. I think it depends upon what we are trying to preserve. Perhaps neither the photographer nor the writer can preserve a life. We can only leave fragments from which someone else may one day imagine the whole.

Your two photographs have convinced me of one thing at least. Had you made a third, I should now have three truths to worry about instead of two.

Yours,

Axel Munthe

Enclosed: A photograph of the ancient Roman marble portrait at San Michele, traditionally associated with Tiberius — a face surviving long after certainty about the person behind it has begun to fade.

V. The Places We Carry

Engla Hägertz → Axel Munthe

Oskarström, February 1944

Dear Axel,

News travels strangely in these years, sometimes quickly and sometimes not at all, and I heard only some time after the event that you had left Capri and returned to Sweden. I have thought several times of writing, but I was uncertain where a letter would find you.

I cannot imagine San Michele without you, although of course this is foolish, since I have never seen San Michele with you either. Perhaps that is the peculiar consequence of having known a place first through another person’s words. In my mind you and the island became attached to one another long ago.

I remembered what you wrote in your first letter to me, that there are many ways of arriving at a place. You were consoling me then for never having continued my journey south from Paris. Now I find myself wondering about the opposite journey. What happens when one must leave a place one has spent half a lifetime making one’s own?

There is another reason I have been thinking about places. Some years ago I was invited to spend more time at Klipperhus in Tylösand, a house belonging to my family, looking out towards the Kattegat. I found myself doing there what I had done, almost without thinking, around my studio and our house in Oskarström: moving things, planting, making small places to sit or pause, noticing where the light fell and where the eye travelled.

It made me understand your San Michele a little differently. I do not mean to compare my modest arrangements with what you created on Capri, but I began to recognise the pleasure of allowing a place to emerge slowly around you. A path changes because one repeatedly chooses to walk another way. A plant is moved because the evening light catches it better elsewhere. A chair finds the place from which the eye naturally travels towards the horizon.

Klipperhus looks out over water too, although the Kattegat would object strongly to being compared with the Mediterranean. The wind is sharper, the colours quieter, and there are days when sea and sky seem made from almost the same grey material. Yet I have discovered that the places we return to repeatedly acquire a kind of inner geography. One knows where the evening light will fall, which path holds water after rain, where the first spring flowers appear and from which place the horizon looks widest.

Perhaps this is another form of image-making, only one that we enter rather than look at.

I wonder whether you still walk through San Michele in that way. Perhaps when we have known a place long enough, leaving it does not mean that we cease to inhabit it.

I am sending you a photograph of our sea. Many years ago I sent a similar view to a friend who was thinking about Paris. I wrote then that I did not know whether the sea in the photograph was a beginning or an end. I was younger and apparently more inclined to make mysteries of such things.

Now I think perhaps a horizon can be both.

With affection,

Engla Hägertz

Axel Munthe → Engla Hägertz

Stockholm, March 1944

Dear Engla,

Your Halland sea has reached me in Stockholm, where it has been placed where I can see it from my chair. I am grateful for it, although you are correct that the Mediterranean would regard the comparison as an insult.

I left Capri last June. Writing that sentence still feels peculiar.

For more than fifty years I had been arriving at and departing from that island, sometimes for months, sometimes for longer, always with the assumption that I would return. Even when I lived elsewhere, Capri remained somewhere ahead of me. There would be another crossing, another climb up to Anacapri, another morning when the sea appeared between the columns. This time I knew it might be different.

The war has made departures commonplace, and mine is hardly among its great tragedies. I have lived longer than most men have any right to expect and have been fortunate beyond reason. Yet age does not make leaving easier. It merely gives one more things from which to depart.

You ask whether I still walk through San Michele. Yes. But not in the way you mean.

I can begin at the entrance and make my way through the house without moving from this room. I know where the light changes. I know where the dogs would stop. I know the turn towards the chapel and the place from which the sea suddenly opens below. I can go on to Materita and hear the wind against the Torre.

Whether I remember all of it correctly no longer seems particularly important.

Your photograph helped me understand something. I have never stood on that Halland shore, yet after all these years of your letters I recognise something of it. Not the landscape itself, but the way you have looked at it.

Perhaps this is one of the things photographs can do that we have not spoken about before. They do not merely preserve a place for the person who has left it. They can give some part of that place to someone who has never been there.

You never came to Capri, Engla. Yet I suspect you know something of my island. And now I know something of your sea.

Yours,

Axel Munthe

VI. What We Leave Behind

Engla Hägertz → Axel Munthe

Oskarström, January 1948

Dear Axel,

I have been sorting photographs again. You would think that after all these years I should have learned not to begin such a task in winter, when there is too much darkness and therefore too much time to continue. The difficulty is no longer simply the number of plates. It is the names.

There are faces I once knew perfectly well whose names now escape me. Some can be recovered by asking someone older in the village, but there are fewer people left to ask. Occasionally a younger person comes to the studio and recognises a grandfather or an aunt in a photograph I had almost given up identifying. At such moments the picture seems to wake again. But I have begun to wonder what happens when no one recognises the face. Does the photograph then cease to be a memory and become something else?

I used to think my work was for the people who came to the studio. A family wanted a portrait; I made it; they took it home. It was a straightforward transaction. Only much later did I understand that the photographs were quietly becoming a record of a place and of people who had lived here.

The factory worker in his best jacket, the young woman before her marriage, the child who would later leave Oskarström, the old couple who had perhaps never before been photographed — none of us thought of history when the shutter closed. We were simply making photographs.

I have heard that you have been thinking about the future of San Michele. It made me think of our first letters, when I asked whether a place could gather the lives that passed through it. Perhaps I should now ask the opposite question. What happens when the person who gathered them is no longer there?

I have my plates and negatives. You have San Michele. Both will outlive us if someone chooses to care for them, although I imagine your marble will prove more durable than my glass. Does it matter who sees them next?

With affection,

EEngla Hägertz

P.S. I am sending you an old glass plate. It is not one of my finest photographs, and that is partly why I chose it. I no longer know the name of the person in it. Still, someone stood before my camera that day and trusted me to make an image. It seems wrong that the disappearance of a name should make the face unimportant.

Axel Munthe → Engla Hägertz

Stockholm, February 1948

Dear Engla,

Your glass plate arrived intact, which at our age is more than can always be said of the correspondents. I have held it carefully to the window.

I do not know the persons either, of course. I do not know whether the face belongs to someone who lived a long life or a short one, whether the person remained in Halland or travelled far from it, whether there were children, disappointments, happiness, quarrels, ordinary Tuesdays. Almost everything that once surrounded that face has disappeared. And yet the face remains.

I think you are wrong to worry that the photograph has ceased to be a memory simply because the name is gone. Perhaps it has ceased to be someone’s memory and has become part of something larger.

I have been thinking a great deal about San Michele and what will happen to it. At ninety, even an optimist must concede that certain arrangements should not be postponed indefinitely.

When I began building there, I thought very little about posterity. I was trying to make a place in which I wanted to live. Stones were moved because I wanted them moved. Trees were planted because I wanted shade. The Sphinx was given her horizon because I could think of nowhere better for her to look.

The house itself was small and the rooms were few, but there were terraces from which one could see the sun, the sea and the clouds. I came to think that the soul needed more space than the body.

Perhaps that is also why I like the thought of San Michele continuing without me. I have decided that it should go to Sweden after my death and remain a place where others may come — young people especially, artists, writers, scholars and those whose work might benefit from Italy and from the strange freedom that can come from being temporarily removed from one’s ordinary surroundings.

I like the thought that people whose names I shall never know may sit beneath those trees.

Yours affectionately,

Axel Munthe

P.S. I send you the Sphinx once more. You have had one photograph of her for nearly eighteen years, but I think she means something different now. She is still looking towards the same horizon. We are the ones who have changed.

Epilogue — What Remains

Engla Hägertz and Axel Munthe most likely never wrote to one another. Yet the traces they left behind make an imagined conversation possible.

Engla’s photographs preserve thousands of moments from lives lived largely outside history books. Munthe left photographs too—not primarily taken by him, but of the world around him—as well as his writing and Villa San Michele itself: a place assembled from gardens, objects, memories and fragments of much older lives.

Both also shaped places around them. Engla did so first around her photographic studio and home in Oskarström, and later at Klipperhus in Tylösand, looking out across the Kattegat. Munthe did so on a far grander scale at San Michele, looking across the Mediterranean. In both, there was an attention to light, nature, views and the experience of being within a place.

Today, people neither Engla nor Axel could have imagined continue to encounter what they left behind. We look into faces Engla photographed without always knowing their names. We walk through Munthe’s gardens among fragments whose original owners disappeared centuries before him.

Perhaps that is where this imagined correspondence finally comes to rest.

We cannot know what of our lives will remain, or what stories others will make from the fragments. We can only leave something for them to find.

A Note on the Imagined Correspondence

The letters in What Remains are fictional. Engla Hägertz and Axel Munthe were real people, and the correspondence has been woven around documented aspects of their lives, places and times, but there is no known evidence that they met or corresponded.

Some words and ideas attributed to Munthe draw directly on his own writing, including his reflections on light, San Michele and the relationship between body, soul and place. Historical events and people appearing in the letters — including Queen Victoria, Hilda Pennington Mellor, Tiberius, Villa San Michele and Torre di Materita — are grounded in historical sources. The conversations between Engla and Axel, however, belong to imagination.

Where history leaves spaces, this project asks what might become visible if we allow two lives to meet there.

Selected References & Further Reading

Axel Munthe and Villa San Michele
Villa San Michele — official history, Munthe, the house, collections and archives:
https://www.villasanmichele.eu/

Villa San Michele — Axel Munthe:
https://www.villasanmichele.eu/munthe

Villa San Michele — The Story of San Michele:
https://www.villasanmichele.eu/book

Villa San Michele — historical photographs, including Munthe, his family, animals, friends and life on Capri:
https://www.villasanmichele.eu/historicphotos

Villa San Michele — collections, including the ancient Roman portrait associated with Emperor Tiberius:
https://www.villasanmichele.eu/collection

Munthe in his own words
San Micheles Vänner — selected quotations from Axel Munthe, including his words on light, San Michele and the need of the soul for space:
https://sanmichelesvanner.org/website/citat/

Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele, 1929 / Boken om San Michele, 1930.

Biography and historical background
Svenskt biografiskt lexikon — Axel Munthe, detailed biographical entry covering Paris, Rome, Capri, Queen Victoria, his marriages and later life:
https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=8548

Bengt Jangfeldt, En osalig ande: berättelsen om Axel Munthe.

Bengt Jangfeldt, Munthes Capri: en bildberättelse — particularly relevant to the photographic world surrounding Munthe and San Michele.

Hilda Munthe and Hildasholm
Hildasholm — the house, gardens and history of Hilda Pennington Mellor Munthe and her family:
https://hildasholm.org/

Photography around Munthe
Tekniska museet / Wikimedia Commons — historical photographs of Axel Munthe at Villa San Michele taken by Crown Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Axel_Munthe

Fondazione Primoli — photographic archive, an important source for the photographic world around Giuseppe Primoli and the international cultural circles of Rome and Capri:
https://archivio.fondazioneprimoli.it/archivio/fotografico

https://slakthistoria.se/livet-forr/livsode/axel-munthe

Engla Hägertz
Family photographs, archival material and personal family history concerning Engla Hägertz have informed the Engla side of this artistic exploration. Her journeys, photographic practice and the places she shaped in Oskarström and Tylösand remain part of my continuing exploration of her life and work.

Engla Hägertz

Engla Hägertz From Treshold to Horizon

Previous Imagined Letter Exchanges with Engla

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post was originally shared at www.digoshen.com, and is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

The post What Remains first appeared on Novisali.

Det är tidigt på morgonen, dimman ligger fortfarande kvar över klipporna, och fötterna sjunker lätt ner i den kalla sanden. Just då, i den tystnaden, krymper alla planer till något litet. Som om världen påminner om att den är större än det vi hade tänkt ut.

Sådana ögonblick hittar man ofta vid havet. Där hav och himmel möts i en horisont som aldrig håller stilla. Ljuset skiftar från minut till minut. Vinden ritar nya mönster över vattnet, om och om igen. Och vågorna kommer alltid, tysta och envisa, för att sudda ut gårdagens fotspår och göra plats för morgondagens.

Kanske är det därför människor i alla tider har sökt sig till havet. Inte bara för att resa eller fiska, utan för att tänka. För att känna saltet på huden, vindens sus mot örat, den kalla klippan under handen när man sätter sig ner.

Hur vi förhåller oss till stunden avgör om den blir meningsfull eller inte. Att orientera sig – i världen, i tiden, i sig själv – är på många sätt den svåraste konsten av alla. Vi famlar, vi tappar riktningen, vi börjar om. Och just däri, i famlandet, finns vår största möjlighet att växa.

Den som färdas till havs vet att riktning sällan handlar om kontroll. Ingen kan styra vinden eller stilla vågorna. Det handlar istället om att läsa omgivningen, förstå strömmarna och justera kursen när förutsättningarna förändras.

Kanske är livet inte så annorlunda. Vi styr sällan – vi läser och justerar, gång på gång.

Där fotspår blir kartor

Ingen karta har funnits från början. Varje stig vi går har en gång varit ett första steg, taget av någon som inte visste vart den skulle leda. Varje hamn har en gång varit okänd vatten. Kartor skapas av människor som vågat ge sig ut utan garantier, som lämnat spår efter sig och därmed gjort det möjligt för andra att hitta vidare.

Så är det också med våra liv. Våra erfarenheter, våra möten och våra vägval blir till osynliga kartor som hjälper oss att orientera oss när landskapet förändras under fötterna.

Dessa berättelser finns överallt, om man bara saktar ner nog för att se dem. Havet har format klipporna, sten för sten, år efter år. Stenhuggare har format berget med sina händer. Fiskare, seglare och badgäster har lämnat sina avtryck i sanden och i minnet. Varje generation har satt sina spår och samtidigt blivit formad av platsen.

Det är denna dialog mellan människa, natur och tid som fascinerar mig mest. Inte som ett facit – utan som en inbjudan.

Att gå vilse för att hitta

Det verkligt okända är inte något vi kan planera oss fram till. Att gå vilse är inte alltid ett misslyckande. Ibland är det själva förutsättningen för att upptäcka något nytt.

Det finns en gammal fråga som lyder: hur går man tillväga för att finna det vars natur är fullständigt okänd för en? Det är, kanske, livets mest grundläggande fråga. Vi längtar efter förvandlande erfarenheter, men vi vet sällan – kan sällan veta – vad som väntar på andra sidan förvandlingen.

Ibland känns det inte som mod att kasta sig ut. Det känns mest som att inte ha något val. Men det är just därför vi måste göra det, snarare än att vänta tills kartan är klar. För kartan blir aldrig klar i förväg. Den ritas medan vi går.

Man kan tänka sig två sätt att möta det okända. Det ena drar in det, gör det känt, som en fiskare som hämtar upp sin fångst i nätet. Det andra gör tvärtom – det för oss ut på det mörka, öppna havet och lämnar oss där, för att vi själva ska finna vägen tillbaka med något nytt i händerna. Konsten hör till det senare slaget. Den ger inga svar. Den ger oss bara mod att fortsätta fråga.

Det är en tanke som känns märkligt aktuell. Vi lever i en tid där mycket förändras snabbare än någonsin. Ny teknik, artificiell intelligens, nya sätt att leva och arbeta. Samtidigt söker många av oss efter något beständigt – en känsla av riktning, mening och tillhörighet.

Kanske behöver vi inte alltid fler kartor. Kanske behöver vi bara bli bättre på att hålla balansen mitt i överraskningar. Att samarbeta med slumpen istället för att bekämpa den. Modet finns inte i att veta. Det finns i att gå.

Att läsa en horisont

En horisont är märklig. Den flyttar sig hela tiden ju närmare vi kommer, men den fortsätter ändå att visa riktning. Den påminner oss om att framtiden aldrig är helt synlig. Vi ser bara en del av vägen, och ändå fortsätter vi framåt – steg för steg, utan att se hela sträckan.

En av de viktigaste mänskliga förmågorna, då som nu, är att kunna stå kvar i osäkerhet utan att fastna i den. Att låta nyfikenheten väga tyngre än rädslan. Att vilja låta sig bli vilse, ibland, är en del av att lära sig något nytt om sig själv.

Det räcker sällan att bara försöka räkna ut framtiden i förväg. Det som verkligen bär oss framåt är om vi fortfarande tror att den är värd att engagera sig i – en sorts brådskande optimism: tron på att morgondagen faktiskt går att forma, även när allt känns osäkert. Den föreställningsförmågan går att träna, precis som en muskel. Ju mer vi använder den, desto starkare blir hoppet.

Och ju mer avancerad tekniken blir omkring oss, desto tydligare framträder det som bara vi människor bär: vår identitet, vårt ansvar, vår känsla av att fortfarande sitta vid rodret. Den som lär sig läsa både sin egen inre kompass och de nya, främmande signalerna omkring sig – utan att ge upp sitt omdöme – är den som navigerar tryggast genom förändring.

Kanske har havet alltid vetat detta. Ingen seglare kontrollerar vinden. Men den som lär sig läsa den kan ändå hitta sin riktning – och ibland är det nog.

Naturen som vägvisare

När vi vistas i naturen förändras ofta vårt sätt att se. Vi börjar lägga märke till sådant som annars går förlorat i vardagens tempo: ljusets skiftningar över havet, mönstren i klipporna, doften av salt och tång efter en natt med blåst, växter som finner fäste där vi trodde att inget kunde växa, och de nästan osynliga spår som människor lämnat efter sig.

Naturen är en lärare snarare än en kuliss, om vi bara låter den vara det. Trädgårdar och vilda platser är vackra exempel: ständigt föränderliga rum där människor i alla tider har sökt vila, sammanhang och inspiration. Varje liten plätt – en kruka örter på balkongen, en handfull blommor vid brevlådan – bär på samma längtan efter kontakt med det levande.

Det är just det ombytliga hos naturen som gör den till en så god lärare. Ingenting förblir som det var. Och ändå finns det alltid något nytt att upptäcka i det som växer fram, just där vi minst anade det.

Genom att observera landskap, växter och årstidernas rytm lär vi oss inte bara om naturen, utan om oss själva. Naturen tränar vår uppmärksamhet, vår förmåga att se samband, och vår förmåga att möta förändring som en del av livet – inte som ett hot mot det, utan som dess puls.

En plats vid havet kan vara just sådan. Här blir horisonten inte bara något vi tittar på. Den blir något vi tänker med, andas med, går vidare med.

En plats för eftertanke

Kanske är det just detta som konsten kan erbjuda i vår tid. Inte fler svar. Utan större närvaro. Inte kontroll. Utan orientering.

För mig är konstskapandet ett sätt att utforska de mellanrum där historia möter framtid, där landskap blir berättelser och där våra egna erfarenheter långsamt formar de kartor vi bär inom oss. Det är också ett sätt att låta dörren till det okända stå på glänt. Inte vidöppen, inte stängd – bara olåst, så att det som vill komma in får plats att göra det. Därifrån kommer de viktigaste sakerna i livet. Därifrån kom vi själva en gång. Och dit, mot samma okända, är vi alla på väg igen.

Jag hoppas att betraktaren stannar lite längre än vid en bild. Att något i ljuset, i färgen och i det outsagda får slå rot djupare än blicken brukar nå. Jag hoppas att det blir en stund där vi får sakta ner. Där havet, ljuset och platsens historia får inspirera till egna reflektioner, och där vi för en stund tillåter oss att inte ha alla svar.

Vilka fotspår lämnar jag efter mig? Vilka kartor bär jag redan inom mig? Och vilken horisont är det egentligen jag är på väg mot?

Kanske går svaren inte att hitta genom att bara tänka. Kanske måste man gå ut på stranden för att hitta dem. Känna sanden ge vika under foten. Se sitt eget avtryck bli till en linje som leder vidare mot vattnet, mot horisonten.

För ibland är det först när vi stannar upp som vi förstår att de fotspår vi redan lämnat bakom oss också har visat oss vägen framåt.

Det är ur denna känsla som utställningen Där Horisonter Möts har vuxit fram. Verken rör sig mellan hav, minne och horisont, mellan det som en gång var och det som ännu inte är skrivet. De erbjuder inga färdiga svar, utan rum för egna upptäckter, samtal och nya perspektiv.

Den 7–14 juli öppnar Bastaskärs Båthus i Grötvik sina dörrar för utställningen Där Horisonter Möts – Fotspår vi lämnar, Kartor vi finner.

Om du kommer hit kanske du inte går härifrån med fler svar. Men kanske med bättre frågor. Kanske med en ny horisont. Eller bara med en stilla känsla av att riktningen inte alltid behöver vara synlig innan vi börjar gå. För ibland är de fotspår vi lämnar inte slutet på en resa. De är början på en ny karta.

Och kanske är det just detta konsten kan erbjuda i vår tid: inte fler svar, utan större närvaro. Inte kontroll, utan orientering.

Kanske börjar din egen karta här.

Källor och vidare läsning:

• “A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves” i Marginalian 
• A field guide to getting lost hos Stanford D.school
• The Future Needs More than Forecasts. It Needs Urgetn Optimism hos Institute for the Future (IFTF)
• Unravelling the Deep Tensions of Human-AI Collaboration hos INSEAD Knowledge
• Unearthing connections to Plants, Gardens and The Natural World Around Us i Smithsonian Magazine

Reading a Horizon 

It is early morning. Mist still lingers over the rocks, and your feet sink gently into the cold sand. In that quiet, every plan suddenly seems smaller. As if the world is reminding us that it is larger than anything we could ever have imagined.

Moments like these are often found by the sea, where ocean and sky meet at a horizon that never stands still. The light shifts from one minute to the next. The wind redraws its patterns across the water again and again. And the waves return, quietly and persistently, washing away yesterday’s footprints to make room for tomorrow’s.

Perhaps that is why people throughout history have sought the sea. Not only to travel or to fish, but to think. To feel the salt on their skin, the whisper of the wind against their ears, the cool rock beneath their hand as they pause to sit.

How we meet a moment determines whether it becomes meaningful. Finding our bearings—in the world, in time, within ourselves—is perhaps the greatest art of all. We hesitate, lose our way, and begin again. And it is precisely in that uncertainty that our greatest opportunity for growth lies.

Those who sail know that direction is rarely about control. No one can command the wind or calm the waves. Instead, it is about reading the surroundings, understanding the currents, and adjusting course as conditions change.

Perhaps life is not so different. We seldom control it—we observe, interpret, and adjust, again and again.

Where Footprints Become Maps

No map has ever existed from the beginning. Every path we walk was once a first step taken by someone who had no idea where it would lead. Every harbour was once unknown water. Maps are created by people who dared to venture out without guarantees, leaving traces behind that made it possible for others to find their way.

So it is with our own lives. Our experiences, encounters, and choices become invisible maps that help us navigate when the landscape beneath our feet begins to change.

These stories are everywhere, if only we slow down enough to notice them. The sea has shaped the cliffs, stone by stone, year after year. Stonecutters shaped the rock with their hands. Fishermen, sailors, and swimmers have all left their marks in the sand and in memory. Every generation has left traces while being shaped by this place in return.

It is this dialogue between people, nature, and time that fascinates me most—not as a conclusion, but as an invitation.

Getting Lost to Find the Way

The truly unknown is not something we can plan our way toward. Getting lost is not always failure. Sometimes it is the very condition required to discover something new.

There is an old question: How do we find something whose very nature is completely unknown to us? Perhaps it is life’s most fundamental question. We long for experiences that transform us, yet we rarely—and perhaps can never—know what awaits on the other side of transformation.

Sometimes stepping into the unknown does not feel courageous. It simply feels unavoidable. Yet that is precisely why we must do it, rather than waiting for the map to be complete. Because the map is never complete in advance. It is drawn as we walk.

There are, perhaps, two ways of meeting the unknown. One draws it inward, making it familiar, like a fisherman pulling a catch into the safety of a net. The other carries us out into the dark, open sea, leaving us there to find our own way back with something new in our hands. Art belongs to the latter. It offers no ready-made answers. It simply gives us the courage to keep asking.

It is a thought that feels remarkably timely. We live in an age of accelerating change—new technologies, artificial intelligence, new ways of living and working. Yet at the same time, many of us are searching for something enduring: a sense of direction, meaning, and belonging.

Perhaps we do not always need more maps. Perhaps we simply need to become better at keeping our balance amid surprise. To collaborate with uncertainty instead of resisting it. Courage is not found in knowing. It is found in walking.

Reading a Horizon

A horizon is a curious thing. It keeps moving as we approach it, yet it continues to offer direction. It reminds us that the future is never fully visible. We can only see part of the journey, and still we keep moving forward—one step at a time, without seeing the entire path.

One of our greatest human abilities, now as ever, is the capacity to remain in uncertainty without becoming trapped by it. To let curiosity outweigh fear. A willingness to become lost, from time to time, is part of learning something new about ourselves.

It is rarely enough to try to calculate the future in advance. What truly carries us forward is believing that it is still worth shaping—a kind of urgent optimism: the conviction that tomorrow can be influenced, even when everything feels uncertain. That imaginative capacity can be strengthened like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger hope becomes.

And the more advanced the technology around us becomes, the more clearly the qualities unique to humanity come into view: our identity, our responsibility, and our enduring sense that we remain at the helm. Those who learn to read both their inner compass and the unfamiliar signals surrounding them—without surrendering their judgement—are those who navigate change most wisely.

Perhaps the sea has always known this. No sailor controls the wind. Yet those who learn to read it can still find their course. And sometimes, that is enough.

Nature as a Guide

When we spend time in nature, the way we see begins to change. We notice what everyday life often hides from us: the shifting light across the sea, the patterns carved into the rocks, the scent of salt and seaweed after a night of strong winds, plants taking root where we thought nothing could grow, and the almost invisible traces left behind by those who came before us.

Nature is a teacher rather than a backdrop, if only we allow it to be. Gardens and wild landscapes alike are beautiful examples—ever-changing places where people throughout history have sought rest, connection, and inspiration. Every small patch of green—a pot of herbs on a balcony, a handful of flowers beside a mailbox—reflects the same longing to remain connected with the living world.

It is precisely nature’s constant change that makes it such a profound teacher. Nothing remains exactly as it was. And yet there is always something new waiting to be discovered in what quietly emerges, often where we least expect it.

By observing landscapes, plants, and the rhythms of the seasons, we learn not only about nature, but about ourselves. Nature sharpens our attention, deepens our ability to recognise patterns, and teaches us to meet change not as a threat to life, but as its very pulse.

A place by the sea can become exactly that. Here, the horizon is not merely something we look at. It becomes something we think with, breathe with, and continue walking toward.

A Place for Reflection

Perhaps this is precisely what art can offer in our time. Not more answers, but deeper presence. Not control, but orientation.

For me, creating art is a way of exploring the spaces where history meets the future, where landscapes become stories, and where our experiences slowly shape the inner maps we carry within us. It is also a way of leaving the door to the unknown slightly ajar—not wide open, not closed, simply unlocked, allowing whatever wishes to enter to find its place. The most important things in life come from there. It is where we ourselves once came from. And it is toward that same unknown that we are all, in time, making our way.

I hope visitors will linger a little longer than they might before a single image. I hope something in the light, the colour, and the unspoken takes root beyond where the eye alone can reach. I hope it becomes a moment to slow down—a place where the sea, the light, and the history of this landscape inspire personal reflection, and where, for a while, we allow ourselves not to have all the answers.

What footprints am I leaving behind? What maps do I already carry within me? And toward which horizon am I really travelling?

Perhaps the answers cannot be found by thinking alone. Perhaps we have to walk out onto the shore to discover them. To feel the sand give way beneath our feet. To watch our own footprints become a line leading onward—toward the water, toward the horizon.

Because sometimes it is only when we pause that we realise the footprints we have already left behind have been quietly showing us the way forward all along.

It is from this feeling that the exhibition Where Horizons Meet has emerged. The works move between sea, memory, and horizon; between what once was and what has yet to be written. They offer no finished answers, only spaces for discovery, conversation, and new perspectives.

From 7–14 July, Bastaskärs Båthus in Grötvik opens its doors to the exhibition Where Horizons Meet – The Footprints We Leave, The Maps We Discover.

If you visit, perhaps you will not leave with more answers—but with better questions. Perhaps with a new horizon. Or simply with the quiet reassurance that direction does not always have to be visible before we begin to walk. Sometimes the footprints we leave behind are not the end of a journey. They are the beginning of a new map.

And perhaps this is what art can offer in our time: not more answers, but greater presence. Not control, but orientation.

Perhaps your own map begins here.

Further reading

• “A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves” at Marginalian 
• A field guide to getting lost at Stanford D.school
• The Future Needs More than Forecasts. It Needs Urgetn Optimism by Institute for the Future (IFTF)
• Unravelling the Deep Tensions of Human-AI Collaboration at INSEAD Knowledge
• Unearthing connections to Plants, Gardens and The Natural World Around Us in the Smithsonian Magazine

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post was is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

The post Att Läsa en Horisont/ Reading a Horizon  first appeared on Novisali.

As summer reaches its peak and darkness barely touches the Nordic sky, people across Sweden gather around flower-covered maypoles, wearing wreaths of wildflowers and sharing meals with family and friends. For many Swedes, Midsummer is the most beloved celebration of the year.

Yet behind the strawberries, dancing, and festive gatherings lies a much older story—one woven from ancient seasonal rituals, folk beliefs, and a deep connection to nature.

A Celebration Rooted in the Rhythm of Nature

Midsummer is celebrated close to the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and daylight is at its longest. Long before modern Sweden existed, people across Northern Europe marked this turning point of the year.

For agricultural communities, this was a moment of profound significance. The fields had been planted, crops were growing, and the promise of harvest lay ahead. The abundance of light, warmth, and greenery symbolized life, fertility, and hope.

When Christianity spread through Scandinavia, the celebration became associated with St. John the Baptist’s Day on June 24. Yet many older customs and beliefs survived, blending seamlessly into the newer traditions.

The Maypole – A Symbol of Life and Renewal

The Swedish midsummer pole, decorated with birch leaves and flowers, has become one of the country’s most recognizable symbols.

Traditionally raised in village squares and open fields, the maypole served as the center of community celebrations. People gathered around it to sing, dance, and celebrate the height of summer.

The greenery covering the pole represented nature’s vitality and the powerful growth of the season. Decorating homes, barns, and gathering places with fresh branches and flowers reflected a belief in the renewing forces of nature and humanity’s connection to them.

When the Boundary Between Worlds Grew Thin

According to Nordic folklore, Midsummer Eve was one of the most magical nights of the year.

People believed that during this night the boundary between the human world and the unseen world became unusually thin. Nature itself was thought to be filled with extraordinary powers, making it a perfect time for divination, healing, and rituals intended to reveal the future.

Three questions occupied many people during Midsummer:

• Who would marry?
• Who would die?
• What would next year’s harvest bring?

As a result, Midsummer became associated with dreams, omens, and magical practices designed to uncover hidden knowledge.

Seven Flowers Beneath the Pillow

Perhaps the best-known Midsummer tradition still practiced today is the custom of picking seven different wildflowers and placing them beneath one’s pillow.

According to tradition, the person would then dream of their future spouse.

In older versions of the ritual, the flowers had to be gathered in complete silence. Some traditions also required jumping over seven fences while collecting them. The silence and the crossing of boundaries symbolized a temporary step out of ordinary life and into the realm of magic.

Whether or not future partners appeared in dreams, the custom reflected a timeless human desire to glimpse what lies ahead.

The Healing Power of Dew and Herbs

Midsummer dew was believed to possess special powers. People walked barefoot through dew-covered grass or rolled in the morning dew to gain health, strength, and protection from illness during the coming year. Dew was also collected for healing purposes and was sometimes used to improve the fermentation of bread and beer.

Herbs and medicinal plants were likewise thought to gain extra potency on Midsummer Night. Many people gathered plants on this particular night to dry and use throughout the rest of the year. St. John’s wort was used to ease anxiety and melancholy, yarrow to treat fever and wounds, while meadowsweet was believed to relieve pain and inflammation.

Several of the herbs collected for their healing properties later found their way into flavored spirits. Caraway, dill, anise, and fennel were used to season medicinal aquavits believed to aid digestion and promote health. Over time, these herbal infusions evolved into the spiced schnapps that remain an essential part of many Swedish Midsummer celebrations today. In this way, echoes of the ancient knowledge of nature’s healing plants still linger in today’s Midsummer celebrations.

Walking Into the Future

One of the most intriguing folk traditions was known as an “årsgång” or “year walk.”

Those seeking visions of the future would walk alone through the night, often fasting beforehand and remaining completely silent. Certain routes or rituals had to be followed precisely.

If successful, the walker might witness symbolic visions revealing future weddings, deaths, harvests, or other significant events.

Stories of year walks often include encounters with mysterious creatures, strange sounds, and supernatural tests of courage.

Elves, Water Spirits, and Hidden Beings

Midsummer night was also believed to be a time when supernatural beings moved freely through the landscape.

The Näcken, a water spirit known for his enchanting violin music, was said to play beside streams and rivers. Elves danced in the morning mist over meadows. Forest spirits, trolls, and other beings could either help or hinder humans depending on how they were treated.

To protect themselves, people sometimes carried iron objects such as knives or scissors. Fire, salt, and protective symbols were also used to guard against unseen forces.

Sacred Springs and Living Waters

Across Sweden, sacred springs and healing wells attracted visitors during Midsummer.

People decorated them with flowers and greenery, drank from their waters, and left coins or small offerings in exchange for health, luck, and protection.

These places were often regarded as meeting points between the natural and spiritual worlds, where the forces of the earth were especially present.

Over time, many of the old beliefs faded, but the traditions remained, taking on new meanings and expressions with each generation.

Midsummer Today – A Celebration of Togetherness

While many of the old beliefs about magic, omens, and supernatural beings have faded, Midsummer remains one of Sweden’s most cherished celebrations. For many, it marks the true beginning of summer.

Across the country, families and friends gather in gardens, by lakes, in the countryside, or along the coast. Communities raise and decorate the maypole with birch leaves and flowers, while children and adults join hands to dance traditional songs around it.

One of the most popular dances around the Midsummer pole is Little Frogs (Små grodorna), whose famous refrain begins, “Little frogs, little frogs, are funny to behold.” Few people realize that the melody originally comes from a French military march and that the song likely has its roots in an English comic tune that mocked French soldiers by calling them “frogs.” What once may have been a soldiers’ song has, over time, become one of the most beloved and playful traditions of the Swedish Midsummer celebration.

The festive table typically features pickled herring, new potatoes, sour cream, chives, crispbread, salmon, and strawberries—the flavors that many Swedes associate most strongly with summer. Flower wreaths are woven, outdoor games are played, and celebrations often continue long into the bright Nordic evening.

For some, Midsummer is about preserving tradition. For others, it is simply a chance to slow down, reconnect with loved ones, and enjoy the beauty of nature at its most abundant. In a fast-changing world, the holiday continues to offer something timeless: a moment to celebrate light, community, and the joy of being together.

More Than a Celebration

Much of the old folklore has faded, yet the spirit of Midsummer remains remarkably alive.

Today, few people expect to encounter elves in the mist or receive prophetic visions through dreams. Yet many of the rituals endure. We still gather flowers, weave wreaths, dance around the maypole, and celebrate the beauty of the season with those we care about.

Perhaps this is why Midsummer continues to resonate so deeply.

At its heart, Midsummer is more than a holiday. It is a celebration of light after darkness, community after isolation, and possibility after uncertainty. It reminds us of our enduring connection to nature, to one another, and to the rhythms of life that have shaped human experience for generations.

And perhaps that is why, even today, the Midsummer night still feels a little magical — a moment when light, nature, and humanity’s longing for connection come together.

Celebrating Summer’s Moments – Art for Collecting and Giving

As summer unfolds, it also becomes a season of celebrations, gatherings, milestones, and meaningful gifts. Just as people have long marked Midsummer with flowers, symbols, and objects carrying memories and stories, art can become a lasting reminder of a special moment, place, or connection.

If this reflection on light, nature, hope, and belonging has resonated with you, you are warmly invited to explore a selection of original artworks by Novisali available for collection and gifting.

Explore the collection here: Novisali Artwork Collection

Swedish Midsummer Music Inspiration

References

• Nordiska Museet – Midsummer
  An overview of the history, traditions, and celebrations of Midsummer in Sweden.
• Nordiska Museet – Midsummer Celebrations and Traditions
  Information about the maypole, dancing, food traditions, and the evolution of Midsummer celebrations.
• Nordiska Museet – Folklore of Midsummer Night Magic
  Insights from folklorist Tora Wall on Midsummer magic, dew rituals, healing plants, year walks, elves, water spirits, and other supernatural beliefs.
• Nordiska Museet – Dream Interpretation and Love Magic
  Traditions surrounding prophetic dreams, love magic, and the custom of placing flowers under one’s pillow.

Additional Sources

• Skansen – Midsummer Traditions
  A historical overview of Swedish Midsummer traditions and their preservation through generations.
• Wikipedia – Midsummer (Swedish)
  Background information on the history, timing, and regional variations of Midsummer celebrations.
• Gimle Kultur – The Magical Midsummer Night
  A popular-history article exploring traditional folklore and magical beliefs associated with Midsummer Night.

Further Reading on Nordic Folklore

• Nordiska Museet – Nordic Days and Nights: The Magic of Midsummer Night
  Folklore accounts and archival stories about Midsummer Night, supernatural beings, omens, and traditional beliefs.

Midsommar – Solens högtid mellan historia, folktro och magi

När sommaren står som grönast och nätterna nästan aldrig blir mörka samlas människor över hela Sverige kring midsommarstången. Vi dansar, sjunger, binder blomsterkransar och delar måltider med familj och vänner. För många är midsommar årets mest älskade högtid. Men bakom jordgubbarna, sillunchen och de lekfulla traditionerna döljer sig en lång historia fylld av symbolik, naturmagi och gammal folktro.

En högtid äldre än Sverige

Midsommar firas nära sommarsolståndet, den tidpunkt då solen står som högst på himlen och dagarna är som längst. Firandet har rötter långt tillbaka i tiden, långt före industrialiseringen och kanske även före kristendomens etablering i Norden. När kristendomen spreds knöts högtiden till Johannes Döparens dag den 24 juni, men många av de äldre sederna levde kvar och vävdes samman med de kristna traditionerna.

För människor som levde nära naturen markerade midsommar en avgörande tidpunkt på året. Sådden var genomförd, växtligheten stod i full kraft och framtidens skörd började ta form. Ljuset, värmen och grönskan symboliserade liv, fruktbarhet och hopp.

Midsommarstången – en symbol för liv och växtkraft

Midsommarstången, klädd med björklöv och blommor, blev under 1700- och 1800-talen en central del av firandet i stora delar av Sverige. Stången restes på byns gemensamma plats och blev en samlingspunkt för dans, musik och gemenskap.

Den gröna stången symboliserade naturens livskraft och sommarens överflöd. Att smycka med löv och blommor var inte bara dekorativt – det uttryckte en djup respekt för naturens förnyande krafter och människans beroende av dem.

När gränsen mellan världarna blev tunn

I äldre folktro betraktades midsommarnatten som en av årets mest magiska nätter.

Man trodde att gränsen mellan människornas värld och den övernaturliga världen var tunnare än vanligt. Naturen ansågs vara fylld av särskilda krafter, och många ritualer utfördes för att få kunskap om framtiden, hälsa eller kärlek.

Folkloristen Tora Wall beskriver hur tre frågor återkom i många midsommartraditioner:

• Vem skulle gifta sig?
• Vem skulle dö?
• Hur skulle nästa års skörd bli?

Midsommarnatten blev därför en tid för spådomar, varseltolkning och olika former av magiska handlingar.

Sju blommor under kudden

Den mest levande traditionen idag är kanske att plocka sju sorters blommor och lägga dem under kudden för att drömma om sin framtida kärlek.

I äldre varianter skulle blommorna plockas under tystnad. Ofta skulle man även hoppa över gärdsgårdar mellan varje blomma. Tystnaden och gränsöverskridandet markerade att man lämnade vardagens värld och trädde in i den magiska. Antalet blommor varierade mellan sju och nio – båda tal som länge ansetts bära särskild kraft i nordisk folktro.

Daggen och örterna som gav hälsa och styrka

Midsommardaggen ansågs vara särskilt kraftfull. Människor gick barfota i daggvått gräs eller rullade sig i morgondaggen för att få hälsa, styrka och skydd mot sjukdomar under det kommande året. Daggen samlades också in för läkande ändamål och användes ibland för att förbättra jäsningen av bröd och öl.

Även örter och medicinalväxter ansågs få extra kraft under midsommarnatten. Många samlade växter just denna natt för att torka och använda under resten av året. Johannesört användes mot oro och nedstämdhet, rölleka mot feber och sår, medan älggräs ansågs lindra värk och inflammation.

Flera av de örter som samlades för läkedom kom senare också att användas för att krydda brännvin. Kummin, dill, anis och fänkål gav smak åt de medicinalbrännvin som ansågs främja hälsa och matsmältning. Med tiden utvecklades dessa till de kryddade snapsar som än idag är en självklar del av många midsommarbord. På så sätt lever en del av den gamla kunskapen om naturens läkande växter vidare även i dagens firande.

Årsgång – att vandra in i framtiden

En av de mest fascinerande midsommarritualerna kallades årsgång. Den som ville få veta framtiden gick ensam, fastande och under fullständig tystnad. Ofta skulle man gå motsols runt en kyrka eller färdas genom natten längs särskilda vägar.

Om ritualen lyckades kunde man enligt traditionen få syner av framtida händelser: bröllop, begravningar eller kommande skördar. I berättelserna mötte årsgångaren ofta märkliga väsen och övernaturliga prövningar längs vägen.

Näcken, älvorna och de osynliga makterna

Midsommarnatten ansågs också vara en tid då övernaturliga väsen rörde sig fritt.

Näcken spelade sin förföriska musik vid forsar och bäckar. Älvorna dansade över ängarna i morgondimman. Skogsrået, trollen och andra väsen kunde både hjälpa och skada människor beroende på hur de behandlades.

För att skydda sig bar många järnföremål, exempelvis en kniv eller sax. Eld, salt och korstecken användes också som skydd mot det okända.

Källor med läkande kraft

På flera platser i Sverige fanns särskilda offerkällor som besöktes vid midsommar. Källorna smyckades med löv och blommor, och människor drack av vattnet eller lämnade mynt som offer för att få hälsa, styrka och lycka. Särskilt kraftfulla ansågs källor vara om de låg på gränsen mellan olika marker eller matades av nordrinnande vatten.

Med tiden bleknade många av de gamla föreställningarna, men flera av traditionerna levde vidare och fick nya uttryck.

Midsommar idag – en högtid av ljus och gemenskap

Även om många av de gamla föreställningarna om magi, omen och övernaturliga väsen har bleknat, är midsommar fortfarande en av Sveriges mest älskade högtider. För många markerar den den verkliga början på sommaren.

Över hela landet samlas familjer och vänner i trädgårdar, sommarstugor, på bygdegårdar, vid sjöar eller längs kusten. Midsommarstången kläs med björklöv och blommor, och barn och vuxna dansar tillsammans runt stången till välkända sånger. Blomsterkransar binds, lekar anordnas och firandet fortsätter ofta långt in i den ljusa nordiska sommarnatten.

En av de mest populära danserna kring midsommarstången är Små grodorna, Små grodorna är lustiga att se. Få känner till att melodin ursprungligen kommer från en fransk militärmarsch och att sången sannolikt har rötter i en engelsk skämtvisa där franska soldater kallades för “grodor”. Det som en gång var en soldatvisa har med tiden blivit en av de mest älskade och lekfulla inslagen i det svenska midsommarfirandet.

På det festliga bordet står ofta sill, färskpotatis, gräddfil, gräslök, lax, knäckebröd och jordgubbar – smaker som för många blivit själva sinnebilden av svensk sommar. Visor sjungs, skålar utbringas och flera generationer möts runt samma bord.

Även om traditionerna har förändrats bär många av dem fortfarande spår av äldre tiders sedvänjor. Blommor plockas, hus och festplatser smyckas med grönska och människor söker sig ut i naturen när den är som mest levande. De gamla teman som präglat midsommar genom århundradena – fruktbarhet, förnyelse, gemenskap och hopp – finns fortfarande närvarande i firandet.

För vissa handlar midsommar om att bevara kulturarvet. För andra är det en möjlighet att sakta ner, umgås med nära och kära och njuta av naturens skönhet. I en värld som förändras allt snabbare erbjuder midsommar fortfarande något tidlöst: en stund att fira ljuset, naturen och glädjen i att vara tillsammans.

Från magi till gemenskap

Mycket av den gamla folktron har försvunnit, men midsommar fortsätter att vara en högtid fylld av symbolik. Vi kanske inte längre tror att älvor dansar över ängarna eller att framtiden visar sig i midsommardrömmar, men många av ritualerna lever kvar.

När vi binder blomsterkransar, plockar blommor, dansar kring midsommarstången eller samlas med familj och vänner gör vi något som generationer före oss också har gjort. Kanske är det just därför midsommar fortfarande berör oss så starkt.

I en tid då mycket förändras erbjuder midsommar en påminnelse om något tidlöst: människans längtan efter gemenskap, naturens kraft och hoppet om en god framtid.

Kanske är det därför midsommarnatten fortfarande känns lite magisk – som ett ögonblick då ljuset, naturen och människors längtan efter gemenskap möts.

Att Fira Sommarens Stunder – Konst att Samla och Ge Bort

När sommaren breder ut sig blir den också en tid för firanden, möten, milstolpar och omtänksamma gåvor. Precis som människor i generationer har markerat midsommar med blommor, symboler och föremål fyllda av minnen och berättelser, kan konst bli en bestående påminnelse om en särskild stund, plats eller relation.

Om denna reflektion kring ljus, natur, hopp och tillhörighet har berört dig är du varmt välkommen att utforska ett urval av Novisalis originalverk, tillgängliga för samlingar och som meningsfulla gåvor.

Utforska samlingen här: Novisali Artwork Collection

Svensk Midsommarmusik Inspiration

Källor

Här är källorna till artikeln med direktlänkar för vidare läsning:

• Nordiska museet – Midsommar
  Översikt över midsommarens historia, traditioner och firande i Sverige.
• Nordiska museet – Midsommarfirande och traditioner
  Om midsommarstången, lekar, mat, musik och firandets utveckling.
• Intervju med folkloristen Tora Wall om midsommarnattens magi, årsgång, midsommardagg, läkekraftiga växter, Näcken, älvor och andra väsen. 
• Nordiska museet – Drömtydning och kärleksmagi
  Om kärleksmagi, sanndrömmar och traditionen med blommor under kudden.

Kompletterande källor

• Skansen – Midsommar på Skansen
  Om midsommarfirandets historia och hur traditionerna bevarats genom generationer.
• Wikipedia – Midsommar
  Bakgrund om midsommarens historiska utveckling, datum och regionala traditioner.
• Gimle Kultur – Den magiska midsommarnatten
  En populärhistorisk genomgång av midsommarnattens folktro och symbolik.

Fördjupning om nordisk folktro

• Folktro om midsommarnattens magi
  Samling av berättelser och folkminnen kring midsommarnatten och dess övernaturliga föreställningar.

The post Midsummer – A Celebration of Light, Magic, and Ancient Traditions first appeared on Novisali.

The night of April 30, across Sweden, fires will be lit. Voices will gather in song. People will stand in parks, fields, villages, and city edges as flames rise into the evening sky. This is Walpurgis Night — Walpurgis Night, or Valborgsmässoafton in Sweden — one of the country’s most beloved threshold celebrations.

Traditionally, Walpurgis marks the leaving of winter and the welcoming of spring. It is a celebration of returning light, waking earth, and communities gathering after the long Nordic dark. In places like Uppsala, Lund, Stockholm and Gothenburg it becomes joyful and festive. Elsewhere it may be simpler: a bonfire, a choir, smoke drifting into twilight, neighbors standing side by side.

Yet beneath the modern celebration lies something much older.

Long before calendars and universities, northern people understood this season as sacred transition. The turning from winter to spring was never taken for granted. It was life returning after endurance. Fire meant warmth, protection, cleansing, and signal. Light meant hope.

Seasonal threshold nights were once believed to be moments when boundaries thinned — between dark and light, old and new, visible and unseen. Communities responded in the oldest human way: by gathering.

There is an older language beneath the flames. Long before our words could travel far, light did. Fires were lifted into the night not only to ward off darkness, but to speak across it — from hill to hill, from one human presence to another. In those flickering chains of light lived a quiet promise: you are not alone.

More than a thousand years ago, a king known as Harald Bluetooth carried a similar impulse through the human world, binding together what had been divided. Today, his name lingers in an invisible form — in the quiet technology that connects our devices — a reminder that the act of uniting, of reaching across distance, has always shaped us.

The Walpurgis fires belong to that same continuum. Flame answering flame. Signal answering signal.

What once moved through smoke and spark now moves through unseen waves in the air — yet the longing behind it remains unchanged: to find one another in the dark, and to gather again in the light.

In parts of Sweden, masked figures known as valborrar or skråpukar moved through the night making noise to scare away harmful forces. There was a saying that one had to become fulare än trollen — uglier than the trolls.

There is deep wisdom in that. Sometimes darkness is not overcome through perfection. Sometimes it is met with courage, humor, wild creativity, and shared presence.

This is why Walpurgis still speaks to us. We too live in a threshold age. Between old systems and new ones. Between certainty and change. Between technology and humanity. Between noise and meaning.

That is where Hopepunk lives. Hopepunk is not naïve optimism. It is the brave decision to keep lighting fires in uncertain times. To choose kindness when cynicism is fashionable. To create warmth when culture grows cold. To gather when fragmentation pulls us apart.

Every Walpurgis fire can be seen as a Hopepunk symbol: not destruction, but courage. not spectacle, but shared light. not nostalgia, but renewal.

And this is also Human Cartography. Human Cartography is the mapping of inner landscapes, relationships, memory, identity, and belonging. Walpurgis reminds us that some maps are seasonal. We all carry winters. We all wait for springs. We all need places where we can stand with others and feel the light return.

Tonight, perhaps ask yourself:

• What winter am I leaving behind?
• What new season is quietly beginning?
• What fire in me still burns?
• Where do I need more warmth, song, or belonging?
• What hope can I help kindle for others?

So tonight in Sweden, when the flames rise and choirs sing into dusk, perhaps we are doing what humans have always done: Finding each other at the threshold. Welcoming light. Laughing louder than the trolls. And remembering the map home.

References

About the Walpurgis Night
About Harald Bluetooth
Old Celebration of Walpurgis night in 1936

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com.

Valborg – Eldar av hopp i en ny tid

En reflektion genom nordiskt minne, folktro, Hopepunk och Human Cartography

Natten till den 30 april, över hela Sverige, kommer eldar att tändas. Röster samlas i sång. Människor står i parker, på fält, i byar och vid stadens kanter medan lågorna stiger mot kvällshimlen. Detta är Valborgsmässoafton — en av landets mest älskade högtider vid tröskeln mellan årstider.

Traditionellt markerar Valborg att vintern lämnar och våren välkomnas. Det är en fest för ljusets återkomst, den vaknande jorden och gemenskaper som samlas efter det långa nordiska mörkret. På platser som Uppsala, Lund, Stockholm och Göteborg blir firandet glatt och festligt. På andra håll kan det vara enklare: en brasa, en kör, rök som driver in i skymningen, grannar som står sida vid sida.

Men under det moderna firandet vilar något mycket äldre.

Långt före kalendrar och universitet förstod människor i Norden denna tid som en helig övergång. Skiftet från vinter till vår togs aldrig för givet. Det var livet som återvände efter uthållighet. Eld betydde värme, skydd, rening och signal. Ljus betydde hopp.

Sådana nätter vid årets tröskel ansågs en gång vara stunder då gränser tunnades ut — mellan mörker och ljus, gammalt och nytt, synligt och osynligt. Samhället svarade på det mest mänskliga sättet av alla: genom att samlas.

Det finns ett äldre språk under lågorna. Långt innan våra ord kunde färdas långt, gjorde ljuset det. Eldar lyftes mot natten inte bara för att hålla mörkret borta, utan för att tala genom det — från kulle till kulle, från en mänsklig närvaro till en annan. I dessa fladdrande kedjor av ljus levde ett stilla löfte: du är inte ensam.

För mer än tusen år sedan bar en kung, känd som Harald Blåtand, på en liknande impuls genom människovärlden och band samman det som varit splittrat. Idag lever hans namn kvar i en osynlig form — i den stilla teknik som förbinder våra enheter — en påminnelse om att handlingen att förena, att nå över avstånd, alltid har format oss.

Valborgseldarna tillhör samma sammanhang. Flamma som svarar flamma. Signal som svarar signal.

Det som en gång rörde sig genom rök och gnista rör sig nu genom osynliga vågor i luften — men längtan bakom är densamma: att finna varandra i mörkret och samlas igen i ljuset.

I delar av Sverige vandrade maskerade gestalter kallade valborrar eller skråpukar genom natten och förde oväsen för att skrämma bort skadliga krafter. Det sades att man måste bli fulare än trollen.

Det finns en djup visdom i detta. Ibland övervinns inte mörker genom perfektion. Ibland möts det med mod, humor, vild kreativitet och delad närvaro.

Därför talar Valborg fortfarande till oss. Vi lever också i en tid vid tröskeln. Mellan gamla system och nya. Mellan säkerhet och förändring. Mellan teknologi och mänsklighet. Mellan brus och mening.

Det är där Hopepunk lever. Hopepunk är inte naiv optimism. Det är det modiga beslutet att fortsätta tända eldar i osäkra tider. Att välja vänlighet när cynism är på modet. Att skapa värme när kulturen blir kall. Att samlas när splittring drar oss isär.

Varje Valborgseld kan ses som en Hopepunk-symbol: inte förstörelse, utan mod. inte spektakel, utan delat ljus. inte nostalgi, utan förnyelse.

Och detta är också Human Cartography. Human Cartography är kartläggningen av inre landskap, relationer, minnen, identitet och tillhörighet. Valborg påminner oss om att vissa kartor är säsongsbundna. Vi bär alla våra vintrar. Vi väntar alla på våra vårar. Vi behöver alla platser där vi kan stå tillsammans med andra och känna ljuset återvända.

I kväll kan du kanske fråga dig själv:

• Vilken vinter lämnar jag bakom mig?
• Vilken ny årstid börjar stilla ta form?
• Vilken eld inom mig brinner fortfarande?
• Var behöver jag mer värme, sång eller tillhörighet?
• Vilket hopp kan jag hjälpa till att tända för andra?

Så i kväll i Sverige, när lågorna stiger och körerna sjunger in i skymningen, gör vi kanske det människor alltid har gjort: Vi finner varandra vid tröskeln. Vi välkomnar ljuset. Vi skrattar högre än trollen. Och vi minns vägen hem.

References

Om Valborgsmässoafton
Om Harald Blåtand
Gammalt firande av Valborgsmässoafton från 1936

Om Novisali 

Novisali (alias Liselotte Engstam) är, vid sidan av sina roller som professionell styrelseledamot och rådgivare, en multimediakonstnär med ett nyfiket och utforskande sinne.
Hon strävar efter att lära och utvidga konstupplevelser för både nuvarande och nya publikgrupper, genom att använda både traditionella och nya digitala medier.

Mer information och utställningar finns på Novisali.com.
Detta blogginlägg delas också på www.liselotteengstam.com.

The post Walpurgis:– Fires of Hope for a New Time first appeared on Novisali.

(På Svenska Nedan)

We live in a time rich in information, yet often poor in orientation.

Never have we had greater access to knowledge, more intelligent tools, or more ways to connect. Yet many people describe a growing sense of fragmentation: uncertainty about the future, fatigue from constant noise, loneliness amid hyperconnection, and a quiet feeling that technology may be advancing faster than meaning.

Perhaps what is missing is not intelligence. Perhaps what is missing is hope. Not passive optimism. Not denial. Not the comforting belief that someone else will fix things for us. But something deeper and more courageous: radical hope.

This is the spirit of Hopepunk — the idea that hope is not a mood but a practice. Not something we wait for, but something we choose to build.

Why Hope Matters Now

We are living through a period where multiple transitions are unfolding at once. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how work is done, how decisions are made, and how value is created. Geopolitical tensions, climate pressures, demographic shifts, and economic uncertainty are increasing volatility. Many people experience a sense of acceleration without direction.

The World Economic Forum has highlighted rising systemic risks and major workforce transformation ahead. Its work on the future of jobs points to changing skill demands, new forms of work, and the need for continual reinvention. The Institute for the Future describes an age of chaos in which old assumptions no longer hold, making foresight, adaptability, and resilience increasingly important.

Yet many of today’s deepest challenges are not only economic or technological. They are emotional, social, and existential.

The Atlantic has explored what it calls an anti-social century, marked by loneliness, declining civic connection, and fewer informal gatherings that once created belonging. We may be digitally connected, yet still feel socially fragmented.

This matters because people and organizations do not thrive on efficiency alone. They need trust, meaning, belonging, and the belief that tomorrow can still be shaped. That is why hope matters now.

Hope is different from optimism. Optimism often assumes things will work out. Hope chooses to act even when outcomes are uncertain. Optimism can depend on circumstances. Hope can endure despite them.

As Rebecca Solnit has written, hope is rooted in uncertainty. If the future were already decided, hope would not be necessary. Emily Dickinson’s image of hope as “the thing with feathers” reminds us that hope is often quiet rather than dramatic—less visible than fear, yet more sustaining.

In uncertain times, cynicism can look intelligent and pessimism can seem realistic. But hope is often the more courageous response. It keeps people learning, rebuilding, connecting, and creating what does not yet exist.

Hope as Strategic Capacity

Hope is often misunderstood as softness or wishful thinking. In reality, hope can be one of the most practical strategic capacities available to individuals, institutions, and societies.

When conditions are unstable, hope sustains the ability to move before guarantees exist. It allows people to persist through ambiguity, recover after setbacks, and continue building when certainty is unavailable. It is not the opposite of realism. It is what enables realism to become action.

Optimism says: things will probably improve. Hope says: we can help improve them. That distinction matters greatly for leaders and boards.

The Institute for the Future argues that in times of chaos, organizations need foresight, adaptability, and the ability to imagine multiple pathways forward. Research such as Experiencing Utopia: A Positive Approach to Design Fictionsuggests that people become more capable when they can envision constructive futures rather than only dystopian ones. The futures we imagine influence the strategies we pursue.

For governance, this is increasingly relevant. INSEAD Knowledge has highlighted how AI can strengthen boards through better insight, stronger analysis, and improved decision support. At the same time, its work on the tensions of human–AI collaboration reminds us that technology does not replace judgment, trust, or responsibility. It increases the need for them.

Listen to a discussion by Harvards Institute of Coaching on how to be a resilient and charismatic adult

Hope supports exactly these qualities. It encourages experimentation without recklessness, confidence without arrogance, and persistence without denial. It helps organizations invest in people during transition, explore new business models before crisis forces them, and sustain purpose while methods evolve.

Hope also has a cultural dimension. Both Museum of Modern Art and Smithsonian Magazine have explored the healing power of art—how creativity can restore perspective, resilience, and connection in difficult times. What is true for individuals can also be true for institutions: renewal often begins where imagination returns.

The most future-ready organizations may not simply be those with the fastest tools or the most data. They may be those able to combine realism with possibility, discipline with imagination, and performance with humanity.

Hope is not a decorative extra. It is strategic energy for uncertain times.

For Leaders, Boards, and Builders

As AI and other powerful technologies reshape the world, leadership will require more than technical fluency. It will require discernment. The future may belong to those who can combine intelligence with wisdom, speed with reflection, innovation with responsibility, and realism with hope. That balance does not happen by accident. It must be cultivated.

Find an insightful discussion from Institute From the Future with some new usable frameworks and perspectives.

From Idea to Experience: Spatia Spei

This belief inspired my current exhibition, Spatia Spei — Space of Hope — in Old Town, Stockholm.

Rather than presenting art only as something to observe, the exhibition invites visitors into something to experience. It is a space for pause, reflection, and quiet reorientation. The works move through inner and relational landscapes, through balance and emergence, through small sparks that suggest new beginnings. Some include digital or augmented dimensions that allow still images to come alive. This mirrors a larger truth of our time: much that matters remains invisible until attention reveals it.

In a distracted age, art can become more than decoration. It can become orientation.

Why Spaces Matter

We live with many platforms for reaction, yet fewer places for contemplation. We have systems designed for efficiency, but fewer rituals designed for meaning. That is why spaces matter.

A gallery, a boardroom, a coaching conversation, a walk in nature, a shared meal, a moment of silence before the day begins — these can all become spaces of hope. Places where something quieter, wiser, and more human has room to speak.

Civilizations endure not only through power or technology, but through memory, symbols, beauty, and shared imagination. Hope is often carried culturally before it is carried economically or politically.

What Hopepunk Looks Like in Practice

Hopepunk is not abstract. It is visible in daily choices.

It appears when people choose contribution over cynicism, dignity over expediency, courage over resignation. It is present when leaders protect humanity during transformation, when organizations create cultures people can believe in, when generations mentor one another, and when artists continue to create in uncertain times.

Hope is not naïveté. It is realism joined with courage.

A Quiet Invitation

Hopepunk does not ask us to deny difficulty. It asks something harder: to meet reality fully, and still choose to create possibility.

Sometimes that begins with strategy. Sometimes with conversation. Sometimes with an act of courage. And sometimes it begins in a quiet room, before a painting, where something inside us starts to move again.

If you are in Stockholm April 18-25, you are warmly welcome to visit Spatia Spei at Kompani Kolibri in the Old Town, Stockholm, Sweden. 

A small space of hope in an age of acceleration.

References & Further Reading

• The Atlantic — The Anti-Social Century
• The Atlantic — Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
• Experiencing Utopia: A Positive Approach to Design Fiction
• INSEAD Knowledge — A Revolution in Governance: How AI Will Make Boards More Effective
• INSEAD Knowledge – Unravelling The Deep Tensions of Human – AI Collaboration
• Institute for the Future — Strategy in the age of Chaos
• Institue for the Future – Navigating the Age of Chaos (YouTube)
• The Marginalian — Emily Dickinson and the Practice of Hope
• The Marginalian — Hope and the Antidote to Cynicism
• The Marginalian — Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Dark
• MoMa – The healing power of Art
• Navigating the Age of Chaos (book)
• Smithsonian Magazine — The Healing Power of Art
• Smithsonian Magazine — What It Will Take to Inspire Hope for a Better Tomorrow
• World Economic Forum — Global Risks Report 2026
• World Economic Forum — The Future of Jobs Report 2025
• Finding Possibility in Uncertainty with Nathan and Susanna Furr

Related Work

• Original article: Hopepunk: A Vision of Radical Hope for the Future
• Finding Possibility in Uncertainty with Nathan and Susanna Furr
• Current exhibition: Spatia Spei by Novisali
  

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com.

Hopepunk i Praktiken: Att Bygga Rum för Hopp i en Tid av Brus

Vi lever i en tid rik på information, men ofta fattig på orientering.

Aldrig tidigare har vi haft större tillgång till kunskap, smartare verktyg eller fler sätt att knyta kontakt. Ändå beskriver många en växande känsla av splittring: osäkerhet inför framtiden, trötthet av det ständiga bruset, ensamhet mitt i hyperuppkopplingen och en stilla känsla av att tekniken kanske utvecklas snabbare än meningen.

Kanske är det inte intelligens som saknas. Kanske är det hopp.

Inte passiv optimism. Inte förnekelse. Inte den tröstande tanken att någon annan ska lösa allt åt oss. Utan något djupare och modigare: radikalt hopp.

Detta är andan i Hopepunk — idén att hopp inte är en sinnesstämning utan en praktik. Inte något vi väntar på, utan något vi väljer att bygga.

Varför Hopp Är Viktigt Nu

Vi lever genom en period där flera stora förändringar sker samtidigt. Artificiell intelligens förändrar hur arbete utförs, hur beslut fattas och hur värde skapas. Geopolitiska spänningar, klimatutmaningar, demografiska skiften och ekonomisk osäkerhet ökar volatiliteten. Många upplever en känsla av acceleration utan riktning.

World Economic Forum har lyft fram växande systemrisker och stora förändringar på arbetsmarknaden. Deras arbete om framtidens jobb pekar på förändrade kompetenskrav, nya arbetsformer och behovet av ständig förnyelse. Institute for the Future beskriver en kaotisk tidsålder där gamla antaganden inte längre håller, vilket gör framförhållning, anpassningsförmåga och motståndskraft allt viktigare.

Men många av dagens djupaste utmaningar är inte bara ekonomiska eller teknologiska. De är emotionella, sociala och existentiella.

The Atlantic har beskrivit det som ett antisocialt århundrade, präglat av ensamhet, minskad samhällelig samhörighet och färre spontana möten som tidigare skapade tillhörighet. Vi kan vara digitalt uppkopplade och ändå känna oss socialt fragmenterade.

Detta spelar roll eftersom människor och organisationer inte blomstrar av effektivitet ensam. De behöver tillit, mening, tillhörighet och tron på att morgondagen fortfarande kan formas.

Därför är hopp viktigt nu.

Hopp skiljer sig från optimism. Optimism antar ofta att saker kommer att ordna sig. Hopp väljer att agera även när utfallen är osäkra. Optimism kan bero på omständigheter. Hopp kan bestå trots dem.

Som Rebecca Solnit har skrivit är hopp rotat i osäkerhet. Om framtiden redan vore avgjord skulle hopp inte behövas. Emily Dickinsons bild av hopp som ”det med fjädrar” påminner oss om att hopp ofta är stilla snarare än dramatiskt — mindre synligt än rädsla, men mer bärkraftigt.

I osäkra tider kan cynism se intelligent ut och pessimism framstå som realistisk. Men hopp är ofta det modigare svaret. Det får människor att fortsätta lära, återuppbygga, knyta band och skapa det som ännu inte finns.

Hopp som Strategisk Förmåga

Hopp missförstås ofta som mjukhet eller önsketänkande. I verkligheten kan hopp vara en av de mest praktiska strategiska förmågorna som finns för individer, institutioner och samhällen.

När förhållandena är instabila bär hopp förmågan att röra sig framåt innan garantier finns. Det hjälper människor att hålla ut genom tvetydighet, återhämta sig efter motgångar och fortsätta bygga när säkerhet saknas. Det är inte motsatsen till realism. Det är det som gör realism handlingskraftig.

Optimism säger: saker blir nog bättre.
Hopp säger: vi kan hjälpa till att göra dem bättre.

Den skillnaden är avgörande för ledare och styrelser.

Institute for the Future menar att organisationer i kaotiska tider behöver framförhållning, anpassningsförmåga och förmågan att föreställa sig flera möjliga vägar framåt. Forskning som Experiencing Utopia: A Positive Approach to Design Fiction visar att människor blir mer handlingskraftiga när de kan föreställa sig konstruktiva framtider istället för enbart dystopiska. De framtider vi föreställer oss påverkar de strategier vi väljer.

För styrning och governance blir detta alltmer relevant. INSEAD Knowledge har visat hur AI kan stärka styrelser genom bättre insikter, starkare analys och förbättrat beslutsstöd. Samtidigt påminner deras arbete om spänningarna i människa–AI-samarbete oss om att teknik inte ersätter omdöme, tillit eller ansvar. Den ökar behovet av dem.

Lyssna gärna på ett samtal från Harvard Institute of Coaching om hur man blir en motståndskraftig och karismatisk vuxen:

Hopp stödjer just dessa kvaliteter. Det uppmuntrar experimenterande utan vårdslöshet, självförtroende utan arrogans och uthållighet utan förnekelse. Det hjälper organisationer att investera i människor under omställning, utforska nya affärsmodeller innan krisen tvingar fram dem och hålla fast vid sitt syfte medan metoderna förändras.

Hopp har också en kulturell dimension. Både Museum of Modern Art och Smithsonian Magazine har lyft fram konstens läkande kraft — hur kreativitet kan återställa perspektiv, motståndskraft och mänsklig kontakt i svåra tider. Det som gäller individer kan också gälla institutioner: förnyelse börjar ofta där fantasin återvänder.

De mest framtidsredo organisationerna är kanske inte bara de med snabbast verktyg eller mest data. De kan vara de som lyckas förena realism med möjlighet, disciplin med fantasi och prestation med mänsklighet.

Hopp är inget dekorativt tillägg.

Det är strategisk energi för osäkra tider.

För Ledare, Styrelser och Byggare

När AI och andra kraftfulla teknologier formar om världen kommer ledarskap att kräva mer än teknisk förståelse. Det kommer att kräva omdöme.

Framtiden kan tillhöra dem som kan förena intelligens med visdom, hastighet med eftertanke, innovation med ansvar och realism med hopp.

Den balansen uppstår inte av sig själv. Den behöver odlas.

Lyssna gärna på ett insiktsfullt samtal från Institute for the Future med nya användbara perspektiv och ramverk:

Från Idé till Upplevelse: Spatia Spei

Denna övertygelse inspirerade min nuvarande utställning, Spatia Spei — Hoppets Rum — i Stockholm Gamla Stan.

Istället för att presentera konst enbart som något att betrakta, bjuder utställningen in besökaren till något att uppleva. Det är en plats för paus, reflektion och stilla omorientering.

Verken rör sig genom inre och relationella landskap, genom balans och framväxt, genom små gnistor som antyder nya början. Några innehåller digitala eller förstärkta dimensioner där stilla bilder får liv. Det speglar en större sanning i vår tid: mycket av det som betyder mest förblir osynligt tills uppmärksamhet gör det synligt.

I en distraherad tid kan konst bli mer än dekoration. Den kan bli orientering.

Varför Rum Är Viktiga

Vi lever med många plattformar för reaktion, men färre platser för kontemplation. Vi har system byggda för effektivitet, men färre ritualer byggda för mening.

Därför är rum viktiga.

Ett galleri, ett styrelserum, ett coachingsamtal, en promenad i naturen, en gemensam måltid, en stunds tystnad innan dagen börjar — allt detta kan bli rum för hopp. Platser där något tystare, klokare och mer mänskligt får plats att tala.

Civilisationer består inte bara genom makt eller teknik, utan genom minne, symboler, skönhet och gemensam föreställningsförmåga. Hopp bärs ofta kulturellt innan det bärs ekonomiskt eller politiskt.

Hur Hopepunk Ser Ut i Praktiken

Hopepunk är inte abstrakt. Det syns i vardagliga val.

Det visar sig när människor väljer bidrag framför cynism, värdighet framför opportunism, mod framför uppgivenhet. Det finns när ledare skyddar mänsklighet under transformation, när organisationer skapar kulturer människor kan tro på, när generationer vägleder varandra och när konstnärer fortsätter skapa i osäkra tider.

Hopp är inte naivitet. Det är realism förenad med mod.

En Stilla Inbjudan

Hopepunk ber oss inte att förneka svårigheter. Det ber om något svårare: att möta verkligheten fullt ut och ändå välja att skapa möjlighet.

Ibland börjar det med strategi. Ibland med samtal. Ibland med en modig handling. Och ibland börjar det i ett tyst rum, framför en målning, där något inom oss börjar röra sig igen.

Om du är i Stockholm den 18–25 april är du varmt välkommen att besöka Spatia Spei hos Kompani Kolibri, Köpmangatan 4, i Gamla Stan, Stockholm.

References & Further Reading

• The Atlantic — The Anti-Social Century
• The Atlantic — Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
• Experiencing Utopia: A Positive Approach to Design Fiction
• INSEAD Knowledge — A Revolution in Governance: How AI Will Make Boards More Effective
• INSEAD Knowledge – Unravelling The Deep Tensions of Human – AI Collaboration
• Institute for the Future — Strategy in the age of Chaos
• Institue for the Future – Navigating the Age of Chaos (YouTube)
• The Marginalian — Emily Dickinson and the Practice of Hope
• The Marginalian — Hope and the Antidote to Cynicism
• The Marginalian — Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Dark
• MoMa – The healing power of Art
• Navigating the Age of Chaos (book)
• Smithsonian Magazine — The Healing Power of Art
• Smithsonian Magazine — What It Will Take to Inspire Hope for a Better Tomorrow
• World Economic Forum — Global Risks Report 2026
• World Economic Forum — The Future of Jobs Report 2025
• Finding Possibility in Uncertainty with Nathan and Susanna Furr

Related Work

• Original article: Hopepunk: A Vision of Radical Hope for the Future
• Finding Possibility in Uncertainty with Nathan and Susanna Furr
• Current exhibition: Spatia Spei by Novisali
  

Om Novisali 

Novisali (alias Liselotte Engstam) är, vid sidan av sina roller som professionell styrelseledamot och rådgivare, en multimediakonstnär med ett nyfiket och utforskande sinne.
Hon strävar efter att lära och utvidga konstupplevelser för både nuvarande och nya publikgrupper, genom att använda både traditionella och nya digitala medier.

Mer information och utställningar finns på Novisali.com.
Detta blogginlägg delas också på www.liselotteengstam.com.

Novisali Novisali

Art, photography, stories

The post Hopepunk in Practice / Hopepunk i Praktiken first appeared on Novisali.

When the Swedish visual artist died in 1944, she was convinced the world was not ready for her work—mystical, abstract paintings that seemed to belong to another time. Rather than seek recognition after her avant-garde visions were dismissed, she chose withdrawal. Her instructions were clear: the paintings should remain hidden for at least twenty years and never be sold.

Today, that silence has finally broken.

In Paris, more than eighty years after her death, af Klint is being given her first major solo exhibition in France. At the Grand Palais and the Centre Pompidou, her monumental Paintings for the Temple—created as part of her work with a spiritual circle of women—are now presented as a cornerstone of modern art. What was once considered incomprehensible is now seen as foundational.

But Hilma af Klint was not alone.

She lived and worked in the same era as Tyra Kleen, another Swedish artist drawn to symbolism, spirituality and unseen worlds. The two moved within overlapping circles and were in contact—part of a wider, often overlooked network of artists exploring ideas that did not yet have a place in the official story of art. Today, Tyra Kleen’s work is being shown in Halmstad, bringing her back into view alongside her contemporaries.

Their stories echo one another—parallel paths that history is only now beginning to reconnect.

And somewhere between these lines, I imagine my aunt, Engla Hägertz, moving quietly through time. Not as a historical figure in the same narrative, but as a witness of another kind. In my mind, she exchanges letters with both Hilma and Tyra—letters never sent, yet somehow received. They write about light, about symbols, about the strange persistence of vision.

In one imagined note, Hilma might confess her doubt: “Will they ever understand?”

And Tyra, perhaps from another studio, might respond: “Understanding is not ours to decide.”

Engla, with her camera and her patient gaze, simply observes—knowing that some images must wait before they can be seen.

Today, she, too, steps into the light. Engla is now part of Novisali’s exhibition at Hallands Museum and featured in Hallands Vårsalong, where past and present meet in quiet conversation. And this is not the end—a future exhibition with Novisali and Engla will be announced later, extending this dialogue across time even further.

Now, in Paris and Halmstad, across museums and imagined letters, that long waiting feels as if it has come to an end.

Or perhaps, more truthfully—

it has only just begun.

References

About Hilma in the Guardian

Hilma at Centre Pompidou in Paris

Letters between Engla and Hilma

Letters between Engla and Tyra

About Engla

About Hallands Spring Salon

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com.

Närvaro genom tidens lager

Hilma af Klint målade för en framtid hon själv aldrig skulle få se.

När den svenska bildkonstnären dog 1944 var hon övertygad om att världen inte var redo för hennes verk — mystiska, abstrakta målningar som tycktes höra till en annan tid. I stället för att söka erkännande efter att hennes avantgardistiska visioner avfärdats valde hon att dra sig tillbaka. Hennes instruktioner var tydliga: målningarna skulle förbli dolda i minst tjugo år och aldrig säljas.

Idag har den tystnaden till slut brutits.

I Paris, mer än åttio år efter hennes död, får af Klint sin första stora separatutställning i Frankrike. På Grand Palais och Centre Pompidou presenteras hennes monumentala Målningar för templet — skapade som en del av hennes arbete i en andlig kvinnokrets — nu som en hörnsten i den moderna konsten. Det som en gång ansågs obegripligt ses idag som grundläggande.

Men Hilma af Klint var inte ensam.
Hon levde och verkade under samma tid som Tyra Kleen, en annan svensk konstnär som drogs till symbolism, spiritualitet och osynliga världar. De rörde sig i överlappande kretsar och hade kontakt — en del av ett bredare, ofta förbisett nätverk av konstnärer som utforskade idéer som ännu inte hade någon plats i konstens officiella berättelse. Idag visas Tyra Kleens verk i Halmstad, vilket för henne tillbaka i ljuset tillsammans med sina samtida.

Deras berättelser speglar varandra — parallella vägar som historien först nu börjar knyta samman.
Och någonstans mellan dessa rader föreställer jag mig min faster, Engla Hägertz, som rör sig stilla genom tiden. Inte som en historisk figur i samma berättelse, utan som ett vittne av ett annat slag. I min föreställning utbyter hon brev med både Hilma och Tyra — brev som aldrig skickats, men ändå på något sätt mottagits. De skriver om ljus, om symboler, om bildens märkliga uthållighet.

I en tänkt anteckning kanske Hilma erkänner sitt tvivel: ”Kommer de någonsin att förstå?”
Och Tyra, kanske från en annan ateljé, svarar: ”Förståelsen är inte vår att avgöra.”
Engla, med sin kamera och sin tålmodiga blick, observerar bara — medveten om att vissa bilder måste vänta innan de kan ses.

Idag träder också hon fram i ljuset. Engla är nu en del av Novisalis utställning på Hallands konstmuseum och medverkar i Hallands Vårsalong, där dåtid och nutid möts i en stilla dialog. Och detta är inte slutet — en kommande utställning med Novisali och Engla kommer att annonseras senare, vilket förlänger denna dialog över tid ännu mer.

Nu, i Paris och Halmstad, mellan museer och imaginära brev, känns det som om den långa väntan har nått sitt slut.
Eller kanske, mer sanningsenligt —
har den just börjat.

References

Om Hilma i Guardian

Hilma på Centre Pompidou i Paris

Brev mellan Engla och Hilma

Brev mellan Engla och Tyra

Om Engla

Om Hallands Vårsalong  

Om Novisali 

Novisali (alias Liselotte Engstam) är, vid sidan av sina roller som professionell styrelseledamot och rådgivare, en multimediakonstnär med ett nyfiket och utforskande sinne.
Hon strävar efter att lära och utvidga konstupplevelser för både nuvarande och nya publikgrupper, genom att använda både traditionella och nya digitala medier.

Mer information och utställningar finns på Novisali.com.
Detta blogginlägg delas också på www.liselotteengstam.com.

The post Mapping Presence Across Time / Närvaro genom tidens lager first appeared on Novisali.

(Läs blogposts på svenska HÄR)

In an ongoing artistic exploration, I have imagined fictional correspondences between Engla Hägertz and other artistic voices from her time. Earlier, such imagined dialogues emerged between Engla Hägertz and Hilma af Klint, and between Engla and the Halmstad Group.

In this text, the focus turns toward a new possible meeting — between Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen.

As an artist, I have long been fascinated by how images can carry memory, emotion, and meaning across time. In this exploration, I have repeatedly felt a quiet kinship with Engla Hägertz, my father’s aunt, and Tyra Kleen — two creative women who, in different ways, worked close to the threshold between the visible and the inner world.

One worked from a photographic studio in Halland, letting light shape portraits, flowers, industrial settings and everyday rooms. The other moved between continents and expressed herself through drawing, writing, photography, symbolism, and studies of movement and ritual. Their lives most likely never crossed, yet their ways of seeing the world suggest a possible resonance.

This project is not a historical claim, but a poetic possibility. An imagined correspondence, with a reflective exploration of what might have been shared if two independent women — one working with camera and light, the other with line, symbol, and movement — had found one another along their parallel paths in early twentieth-century Sweden and beyond.

It is also an invitation to reflect on the subtle threads that can connect artistic experience across generations, forms of expression, and different ways of seeing. In these imagined letters, I hear not only echoes of their worlds, but also questions that continue to live in my own creative practice — and perhaps in yours as well.

— Novisali

Parallel Lives, Resonant Visions

Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen belonged to different artistic worlds, yet their lives overlapped in ways that invite reflection. One worked from a photographic studio in Halland, shaping portraits, flowers, and fleeting moments through light. The other crossed geographical and artistic boundaries, drawing, writing, and studying the symbolic, spiritual, and ritual dimensions of life.

Engla Hägertz

Engla Hägertz was a photographer and studio owner in Oskarström, Halland. Together with her sister Gudrun, she opened a photographic studio in 1914 and created portraits of local townspeople, families, and everyday life. Alongside this work, she also turned her attention toward flowers, landscapes, and quieter image studies, some of which later became postcards.

Her images often carry a sense of attentive stillness — a gentleness toward what might otherwise pass unnoticed. Light falls softly across faces, hands, and rooms, and the spaces in between are allowed to speak as much as what is visible. In her hands, photography became more than documentation; it became a way of holding presence and allowing the everyday to open toward something more contemplative.

Tyra Kleen

Tyra Kleen was an artist, writer, and traveller whose work moved between symbolism, illustration, spiritual inquiry, and cross-cultural study. She worked in international settings and travelled, among other places, to Paris, Java, Bali, US, Amsterdam and Egypt, where she studied dance, ritual, and bodily expression and exhibited her artwork.

Through books such as En Psykesaga, through her drawings, and through her travel writings, she sought to capture what lies beneath the surface — movement, soulfulness, atmosphere, and transformation. Her lines are often spare yet charged, and the empty space around them becomes part of the expression.

A Possible Nearness

There is no evidence that Engla and Tyra ever met, yet their lives suggest a quiet imaginative nearness. Both lived independently for periods of their lives and shaped their artistic paths on their own terms at a time when such possibilities for women were still limited. Both also seem to have looked beyond the visible toward something more subtle: mood, presence, and the inner life of form.

One worked in stillness with light slowly falling across the motifs of everyday life. The other followed movement, symbols, and cultural expressions across continents. And yet their sensibilities may be imagined to meet in a shared attentiveness — a listening for what has not yet fully taken form.

If They Had Written to One Another

If Engla had written to Tyra, it might have begun with quiet admiration — a letter from Oskarström to a more established artist whose work gave form to what could not easily be expressed. She might have asked how one remains faithful to one’s way of seeing when the surrounding world does not yet have language for it. She might have enclosed a photograph: a sister by the studio door, flowers by a window, a figure half-turned in garden light.

Tyra, in turn, might have replied not with certainty, but with recognition. She might have sent a drawing instead of an explanation — a dancer’s gesture, a branch with unfinished leaves, a symbolic figure at a threshold. Her reply might have affirmed that art does not need to explain all that it knows. Sometimes it is enough to remain attentive, and to trust what quietly wishes to be seen.

Their imagined letters would likely not have been loud or declarative. They would have moved slowly. They would have listened as much as they spoke.

They might have touched on grief, solitude, the discipline of making, travel, memory, and the strange responsibility that comes with working in images. They might have explored how photography can hold what is almost gone, while drawing can suggest what has not yet fully arrived.

And even though one worked with light caught in a lens and the other with lines shaped by hand, their sensibilities could still have met in a shared understanding:

Look closely. Create faithfully. Let stillness speak. Trust what moves beneath the visible.

When Light Travels Quietly

An Imaginary Exchange of Letters between Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen

Some exchanges leave no physical traces, yet seem to unfold naturally over time.
Between a photographer shaping stillness and an artist drawing inner journeys, one may imagine letters traveling quietly between Nordic studio light and distant horizons filled with movement.
Their exchange is less about biography and more about attention — how we see, how we remember, how images carry presence.

Spring 1914 — A Room at the Beginning

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I hope you will forgive a letter from someone you have never met. But sometimes one writes not because of acquaintance, but because of recognition.

My sister and I have just taken over a photographic studio in Oskarström. The house is carved in wood, and the windows gather the sky in a soft, diffused way. When the morning light enters, it moves slowly across the floor, as if first measuring the room before settling.

There is something deeply moving about stepping into a place that has not yet learned its rhythm. The chairs stand slightly apart, the backdrop is still folded, and the walls seem to listen rather than speak.

I enclose a small photograph of my sister and me outside the studio. We sit without pose or intention — simply present before something that is beginning. It is not a finished image, but perhaps beginnings rarely are.

Photography is often described as mechanical, yet I increasingly experience it as a form of listening.
Each portrait becomes a meeting between two silences — the sitter’s and my own. Somewhere between them something arises that neither of us planned.

I have read your En Psykesaga and often return to its inward tone. You wrote about paths that appear only as one walks them. This studio feels like such a path — one that must slowly unfold through attention rather than certainty.

Do you think the rooms we work in shape what we see? Or do we gradually shape them through the way we notice?

With quiet admiration,
Engla Hägertz
(Oskarström, 1914)

Tyra replies

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in my studio in Rome, where the light falls differently than in the north. Here the day moves quickly between the sharp streaks of the skylights, but when I read your words about the quiet morning light in Oskarström, I felt an unexpected recognition. There is something universal about rooms not yet filled with work — they carry an openness that is almost spiritual.

The photograph you enclosed of you and your sister holds this quality. You stand not as subjects but as participants in a moment just taking shape. I especially like how the light falls gently without dominating — it gives the image a tone of waiting.

You write that photography is listening. I recognize this in drawing. When I work with line, I try not to describe the world, but rather to follow a movement already present. In working on En Psykesaga, I often felt that the images arose as if they already existed in the room.

I enclose a small drawing: a window with silhouettes. I wanted to capture the moment when something is just about to reveal itself. Perhaps it is in such moments that our works meet — in what is not yet fully visible.

May your studio slowly fill with presence. And may the light continue to arrive gently.

Warmly,
Tyra Kleen
(Rome, 1914)

Autumn 1917 — What Remains

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I write to you in a quieter tone than before. My sister Gudrun is no longer here.

The studio remains, but the rhythm has changed in ways I had not expected.
There are moments when I instinctively turn to speak, only to meet silence.
But this silence is not empty — it carries memory.

I recently developed an older glass plate taken in the garden behind the studio. I stand half turned, as if about to say something to Gudrun. The light touches Gudrun’s white dress, while the rest dissolves softly. It feels less like a portrait and more like an opening.

I enclose a small contact print of the image. Not for likeness, but for the mood it carries.
It reminds me that presence does not disappear; it changes form.

Photography now feels less like capturing a moment and more like holding something fragile that continues beyond the frame.

You have often worked with symbols and inner journeys. Do you think drawing allows memory to move differently than photography? Perhaps drawing breathes, while photography lingers.

With quiet trust,
Engla Hägertz
(Oskarström, 1917)

Tyra replies from New York

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me after a long journey across the Atlantic, and I still carry it with me.

I now write from New York, where movement is constant and the sounds almost never cease.
Yet in the midst of this speed, I paused when I read about Gudrun.

I am deeply moved by your loss. When someone who has stood so close is suddenly missing, not only life changes, but also one’s gaze. What was once obvious becomes quiet, and in this silence, things appear that one did not previously see.

The photograph you describe — Gudrun in the garden, half turned — feels like an image that does not conclude but continues. It is as if the movement still remains, and perhaps it is there that memory lives most strongly.

During the crossing of the Atlantic, I often thought about how the sea carries both presence and absence. Waves come and disappear without trace, yet the rhythm remains within the one who watches.

Perhaps grief is similar — not something that disappears, but something that changes how one perceives the light.

I enclose a small drawing I made during the journey. A branch with two leaves — one clear, the other only suggested — surrounding a sunflower girl. I deliberately left it unfinished, for sometimes the incomplete allows what is missing to continue breathing.

You write that photography now feels like holding something fragile. I believe you have found a deeper part of your work. It is no longer only the presence of the moment, but what remains afterward.

Here in the city, the light is harsher than at home, but when I think of your studio, I see a soft light falling across the floor. I imagine it now carrying both you and Gudrun, as if the room remembers you both.

May stillness continue to follow your work, and may memory become a gentle companion.

Warmly,
Tyra Kleen
(New York, 1917)

1920 — Movement and Stillness

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

Summer has brought a light that changes from day to day. Sometimes it is clear and open, sometimes softened as if through a thin veil. I have begun leaving the studio more often to seek this shifting light, yet I always return with the feeling that the quiet room still follows me.

Recently I traveled to the coast. The sea lay almost silver, and the wind moved the grass in slow waves. I tried to photograph not the landscape itself, but the feeling that arose between movement and stillness. It was as if time both moved and stood still at once.

I enclose a photograph from that day. In the foreground the stone becomes a staircase, while the horizon behind remains calm. I also asked a model to carry an oriental parasol, inspired by your stories from your travels. It gave the image another tone, almost like a meeting between places.

When I work, I notice that I increasingly leave space in the image. What is not filled becomes as important as what is seen. Perhaps this is an influence from your drawings, where the line is often surrounded by silence.

I wonder how the movement you encounter where you are affects your way of seeing. Here the landscape moves slowly, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps it is different for you, where gestures and ceremonies carry greater dynamism.

Sometimes I think photography tries to hold a moment, while drawing perhaps follows it further. Yet they seem to meet in attention — the quiet listening before the image itself.

With warm greetings,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1920)

Tyra replies (from Java)

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in Batavia here in Java, where the air is heavy with warmth and movement. Everything here seems to carry a rhythm that is both slow and alive, as if time itself breathes differently.

I read your description of the coast with strong recognition, despite the distance between us. You write about grass leaning in the wind while the horizon remains still. Here I see the same meeting between movement and rest, but in the gesture of the human body.

I have spent many hours studying dancers in the temples. Their hands move in precise forms, but between each movement a stillness arises that is almost more important than the gesture itself. It is in this interval that I try to draw.

Your photograph, with the model and the oriental parasol, brought me closer to home than you might imagine. There is something in how you let the light rest around the form that reminds me of how the dancers move through space. The exterior is simple, yet the atmosphere carries something larger.

I enclose a small sketch made during a temple dance. The lines are quick, almost fleeting, for I did not want to capture the movement, but follow it. I left the arms incomplete, so the gesture can continue beyond the paper.

Here the light is different from home. It falls directly and creates sharp shadows, yet within the shadow there is a deep stillness. I believe this is what unites our works — not form, but attention.

You hold movement in stillness through photography. I seek stillness in movement through drawing.
Perhaps they are two paths toward the same center.

When evenings come and the sounds soften, I sometimes think of the Nordic horizons.
There is something in their silence that continues to live even here.

With warm greetings from Java,
Tyra
(Batavia, Java, 1920)

1924 — Images That Travel

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

Autumn has arrived quietly this year. The light falls lower across the fields, and in the studio the afternoons grow longer and softer. It is a time when I like to work with small arrangements — things that require little, yet still hold an entire atmosphere.

During a recent birthday gathering, some flowers remained on the table after the guests had left. They were not particularly arranged, rather left as they happened to be. But when the light fell through the window, something emerged that felt worth preserving. I took a photograph and let it remain simple, without moving anything.

I enclose this image for you. The flowers stand near the window, and the light fades gently toward the edges. There is something in such moments that feels more like an echo than an instant.

Recently I have allowed some of my flower photographs to be printed as postcards. At first it felt unfamiliar to let the images leave their place and travel onward. I wondered whether the stillness would be lost when repeated. But perhaps it is the opposite — that the image gains a new life in each hand that holds it.

I sometimes think of how your drawings, which move between different places and exhibitions, also change in meeting new viewers. It is as if each gaze adds something, without altering the core.

I also notice that I now leave more space in my images. What is not filled speaks almost as clearly as what is seen. Perhaps this is something that comes with time — a wish to let simplicity carry more.

I wonder how your works are experienced where you are. Do people see the movement in your lines, or do they rest in the stillness between them? It is curious how different paths can lead to the same attention.

With quiet greetings from the studio,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1924)

Tyra replies

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me here on Lidingö, where I remain for a time before continuing my journey southward. Everything is quiet here, yet within me there is already a movement, as if something is loosening and seeking its way toward another light.

I was especially touched by your photograph from the birthday. The flowers seem not arranged, but rather gathered in the light by themselves. There is something gentle in how you allow the edges to fade, as if the image does not wish to end, but continue in the viewer’s thought.

You ask whether images change as they travel. I believe they do, but not by losing their core. Rather, they gather new layers, as if each gaze leaves a trace. Here I see my drawings in reproductions, and sometimes I experience them as softer, almost more memory-like than the originals.

I enclose a reproduction of one of my dancer sketches from Java. When the lines are printed on paper, their weight changes, yet the movement remains. Perhaps this is what allows images to travel — they carry their silence with them.

Your flowers, sent as postcards, allow stillness to spread from hand to hand. My drawings, hung in exhibition rooms, attempt to bring movement into the same quiet space.

It strikes me that our works move in opposite directions, yet meet at the same point. You allow the everyday to open toward something larger, and I try to let the unfamiliar become still enough to feel close.

As I walk along the water here in the evening light, I think of how water reflects the sky without holding it. Soon, other waters will meet me, other skies be reflected. Perhaps our images function in the same way — they reflect, but do not bind.

With warm greetings,
Tyra
(Amsterdam, 1924) 

1926 — Light and Distance

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I have heard that you have traveled south again, to a landscape I know only through stories and images. I imagine a light different from ours — clearer, more direct, yet perhaps also quieter. It is curious how one can sense a place through the way one imagines its light.

Here in the studio, the days have grown calmer. I often work with small arrangements, almost unnoticed. A chair, a few flowers, a window letting in the afternoon. It is as if the simple motifs hold more the longer one stays with them.

I enclose a photograph from such a moment. The flowers stand on a table near the window, and the light falls diagonally across them. The shadows are soft and almost transparent. It felt as if time rested there for a while.

I have begun thinking about how places carry different forms of stillness. Ours is gentle and muted, but I wonder if the stillness of the desert is different — perhaps larger, more open.

When I look at your earlier drawings from travels, they often seem to leave much space around the form. It is as if the empty space is as important as the line. I recognize something of this in photography — what is not filled, yet still speaks.

Sometimes I think that work changes with the years. One searches less for the unusual and more for what already exists, but needs to be noticed.

I wonder how the light in Egypt affects your gaze. Do you see forms more clearly there, or does the empty space grow larger?

With quiet greetings from the studio,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1926)

Tyra replies (from Luxor, Egypt)

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in Luxor, where the light falls differently than anywhere else I have been. It is almost white at midday, and the shadows become sharp as drawn lines across the sand. Here the landscape feels both still and infinite, as if time itself has come to rest.

I read your description of the still life in your studio with great reflection. The flowers and chair in your photograph seem to rest in a light that does not hurry, and it reminded me of the temples I have walked through here. Despite their weight and age, they carry a curious lightness, as if each stone is still listening.

I have spent several mornings by the Nile. The water moves slowly, almost imperceptibly, and yet everything nearby changes. It made me think of your images — how they hold stillness, while allowing time to pass through them.

I enclose a drawing made at dawn. A simple horizon line across the desert, and a small bird just lifting. I left large parts of the paper empty, to allow space itself to become part of the image.

Here the colors are few, but the nuances many. The light of the sand changes from hour to hour, and in this restraint there is a stillness that I experience as related to your work. You find it in flowers and rooms; I find it in stone and sky.

When the sun sets behind the mountains, the air becomes cool and quiet. It is then I feel most clearly how travel is not only about moving through space, but about slowly changing one’s gaze. Your photographs seem to do something similar, without leaving their place.

With warm greetings from the banks of the Nile,
Tyra
(Luxor, Egypt, 1926)

Later in Life — Light After Sunset

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

The days have grown quieter here. The light moves more slowly across the floor — or perhaps it is I who have learned to follow it more carefully. I no longer work as much, yet I often step into the studio anyway, as if to listen.

I have begun placing older photographs on the table, without arranging them. They seem to speak to one another in ways I had not previously noticed. A portrait beside a flower, a hand beside a window, a shadow beside a gaze. It feels less like a collection of images and more like a conversation that has been ongoing for a long time.

Recently I took a photograph in the studio, but this time I turned the camera toward myself. The large wooden construction stands as a quiet frame, and my hands rest upon it, as if still listening for the next image.

It was not planned as a self-portrait. I simply sat for a moment behind the camera and let the shutter fall.

When I later saw the image, it struck me how curious it is to stand both behind and in front of one’s own work. The camera that for so long had been my way of meeting others suddenly became a mirror of the life that had passed through it.

It felt as if time gathered in the image — not in movement, but in a quiet presence where both the work and the person behind it could rest together.

I enclose this photograph for you. Not as a conclusion, but as a quiet greeting. It holds both what has been and what still is.

When I think of your travels — Paris, Java, Egypt, and now Lidingö — it strikes me that our paths have been different, yet the attention the same. You have sought it in movement and symbol; I in light and everyday life.

I believe work changes with the years. One no longer tries to hold the moment, but rather to let it rest. There is a gentleness in what comes with time.

Perhaps this is what I have learned most: that it is not always the clear that remains, but what almost disappears.

With quiet greetings,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1947)

Later in Life — Tyra writes from Lidingö

Dear Engla,

Your latest letter reached me here on Lidingö, where the days have grown slower and the light changes almost imperceptibly from hour to hour. I work less now, but perhaps I listen more. It feels as though time no longer moves forward, but rather spreads outward.

The photograph you enclosed — your image from the studio — stayed with me for a long time. It carries both presence and distance, as if you stand simultaneously within the room and outside it. I think this is how we experience our own lives toward the end — not as a line, but as layers.

I have gone through older drawings. They seem simpler now than when I made them, yet perhaps simplicity was what I sought without knowing it. The forms have become fewer, and the empty space larger.

I enclose an image from my home. I sit at the table, and the flowers stand between the room and the light. Behind me hangs a painting whose surface captures reflections that change with the day.

It is not a dramatic motif — only a quiet presence. I wanted to let the everyday carry what otherwise easily disappears: the light across the wall, the silence of the flowers, the time resting in the room. Most of the image remains untouched, without movement. Precisely for that reason, it felt as though stillness itself became part of the composition.

When I look back at our letters, I think they were never truly about places, even though we wrote from many. They were about attention — about holding what almost disappears.

You have done this through the light in your photographs. I have tried through line. And somewhere they meet.

I do not believe the work disappears when we leave it. It continues as a quiet resonance — in someone who pauses, in someone who sees a little more slowly. That is enough.

With warm greetings,
Tyra
(Villa Brevik, Lidingö, 1947)

Prelude

Some letters are never written, yet their echoes remain.
They arise in the quiet spaces between images, in the pause before a line is drawn, in the soft light that settles across a studio floor. What is never sent may still travel — carried not by envelopes, but by attention, memory, and a shared sensitivity to the world.

Between photography and drawing, between Oskarström and Lidingö, a quiet conversation continues. It moves across years and landscapes — from northern studio windows to distant horizons, from the stillness of arranged flowers to the gesture of a hand in motion. Each image becomes a letter of its own, each line and shadow a response.

What binds them is not proximity, but presence. A way of seeing that lingers. A willingness to notice what almost disappears. In this silent exchange, light becomes language, and time becomes a gentle messenger.

And so the dialogue endures — not in words alone, but in the spaces between them — where light travels quietly through time.

References

About Engla Hägertz

Hägertz Glass Plates at Oskarströms Hembygdsförening

Tyra Kleen at Svenskt Kvinnobiografiskt Lexikon

Välinege Gard About Tyra Kleen 

Masteruppsats om Tyra Kleen

Book about Tyra Kleen

Exhibitions

Tyra Kleen – Always Searching at Hallands Konsmuseum

Related Blogposts

Earlier Blogposts with imaginary Letter Exchanges and artifacts

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com.

The post An Imagined Exchange, a Quiet Kinship first appeared on Novisali.