“Hembygden är mig kärast på jord” *
The words had been neatly and carefully embroidered on the wall hanging and though it seemed to picture a landscape far more north than my own grounds, I suddenly felt an ache in my chest.
I travelled to my home town to try and portray my “Hembygd”. However, the places from my childhood looked different, the trees were bigger and the roads were wider. My old school was demolished and rebuilt as a bigger school to fit more children. The places in my memory does not longer exist in a physical plane. I started to realise that my “hembygd” is something that lives inside me. The place where all the memories are.
The thing I found most different from where I now live is the nature. I decided to bring pieces of the nature with me. Bark from an oak tree outside of my parents house, heather from the raised bogs that can only be walked on when frozen and naked branches of the lilac bush that brought scent to my childhood summers.
I dyed fabric with the plants and brought it with me to my new nature. I chose scenes of nature very typical to my current living area. It’s a way of incorporating my “hembygd” in a new place. As a kind of wall hanging for the nature.
* Hembygd is a concept in Swedish and other germanic languages describing a place or area in which a person feels deeply connected to. It can be the place you are born in or a place where you live or have lived. In incorporates not only a physical space but also the nature and culture. The quote would loosely translate “The hometown is the dearest place on earth”
