ArsBioarctica Residency

Summer came suddenly just when I was leaving Kilpisjärvi. When I reached Rovaniemi there was 20 degrees at the railway station, and trees were already green.

On my last day I still walked up in the birch forest to be for a while with the trees. They did not have leaves yet, but they were flowered with birdsong and there was a river on the place of my skiing path. I was not alone with the trees, there was the rabbit as well. Maybe, or not, one of those whom I saw almost every morning eating and jumping around and chasing each other outside of Kiekula. Anyhow this rabbit was one that had already an almost complete summer dress. The rabbits were all different, one was still white a couple of days ago, and the other was beautifully spotted with grey patches on white and then this.

The reindeer’s fur does not change this radically by the season. The reindeer are light, greyish or dark ‘by nature’ and are also named by their looks. In the reindeer’s colouring I see almost a picture of the landscape, the fur being constantly in synchrony with the nature with the reflections of the light and the soft fading of the colour. From far away it is difficult to distinguish the reindeer. They might first look like stones, until one understands and sees the slight movement. And the birch forests on the slopes form lines and a sense of rhythm and movement that resembles the forms of a reindeer herd.

I understood from what Leena told me that traditionally the reindeer come to Kilpisjärvi landscape in the heart of summer, so midsummer time. Yet I already met some of them here. There was the small group on the slopes of Saana and a big herd on Malla. I met the Malla herd twice, first when they were higher up and I could only admire them from far and later again a week after when I bumped into them on my way up.

First time I noticed them was when I was coming out from the birch forest that covers the lower parts of the northeast slope of the smaller Malla coming up the route from Siilasjärvi. Earlier in the day I had been drawing beside the river and among the shadows of the birches on the other side of the lake and the road, on the lower slopes of the Jehkas-mountain. The place where I had met a whole group of willow grouse the other day, all performing their short flights and throat-sounds and talks. I kind of hoped to meet these birds again, but now the forest had been silent.

The afternoon was warm and beautiful so after crossing the road and coming down to the lake I decided to continue up to Malla. I was following the tracks of former skiers and had to pay attention, since the snow was already quite soft here and there. At one point there were big footprints of a beast crossing the tracks that I was following. They also seemed rather fresh, fresh enough to give me the shivers, for the first beast I thought about was the bear. Then I tried to imagine the bear walking about in the open mountain landscape and it didn’t quite seem likely. I thought about the wolverine and decided it was it. It was after the reindeer, maybe especially the calves that are born all the time now. It wouldn’t be there anymore now, in the warm afternoon, and it most probably wouldn’t be interested in me… Going through these thoughts and thinking about the beast I could somehow feel its presence there. Was it a former or actual presence remains a secret, but there was something, since just then a single willow grouse appeared beside me and stayed there looking at me as if trying to connect with me. We became acquainted and did not think so much about the wolverine anymore. I continued my way up and found a good place to draw.

Second time I already waited for to meet the reindeer. They were on the lower parts now and on both sides around the route I was following. I skied slowly towards the herd and they looked slowly at me and started to move. I thought I could notice how they organized themselves, there was one who told the others what to do and where to go. Then they went, following one another. I continued further up and just there was one very white reindeer separate from the others. She was indecisive, made odd noises, turned her head about and finally just started to run in a circle around me thus joining the other herd. I suspected she had a calve, but since I didn’t first see it I thought she maybe just felt somehow trapped between the steep slope and me. I stopped and remained silent to follow and feel her beautiful circle. When I continued upwards I saw the little one. It was trying desperately to get out of my way in the thick snow. Instinctively I started to talk to it as if it was a baby and changed my course so as to give it peace. From further away I detected that everything was fine again. After that I started to see other calves as well, dark and light-coloured, some moving already quickly about their mothers.

I have thought about the circle of the white reindeer very much. I was mesmerized by it, the circle was so perfect, and the reindeer was so vast. I don’t quite know why I have to think about it. Maybe there was something about the wildness of the animal that showed. Anyhow I felt this reindeer’s presence very strongly and maybe it was also her moving so fast, which was so captivating.

Later, up on the highland I started to follow the paths of the reindeer. I enjoyed this very much and it made my skiing a bit easier, at least I was prepared for the deeper snows since I saw where they also had had more difficulties with proceeding. I went criss-cross admiring landscapes and smelling the plants on the bare spots where the reindeer had eaten. Me too I stopped to eat and drink and feel the earth. And later to draw, to let my eyes wander from near to far, thus wandering myself, half imaginatively half truly, on the smooth slopes, feeling the slight rocking movement that their lines create.

I came to these parts first in March, taking part in a workshop that combined the biology of snow with the arctic experience. Everything was shiny and blue then. Although not only blue as we were later to notice. The snow in its whiteness did show all the colours, the warmth of a purple and the yellows so pale and yet so strong and a brownish cream white that cannot be described since it is almost only to be felt with the entire body.

I thought then in advance much about the phases of the snow. How it develops in the air, floats down and joins with other snow, becomes snowdrift and starts a slower change, becomes denser, heavier, more concentrated for then to become ice. Or the forming into ice of water, its flexibility, the moving of it. But there were at that time not so much of these processes visible, even though we saw all kinds of weathers. The changeable nature of the snow hid itself in the silence and smoothness of the all-covering snow blanket. The snow was solid and firm. I was, and my thoughts were, moving on the outer shell of the snow, the snow cover took my gaze and made it glide on the slopes until the furthest point.

Well, now it is changing and it is different. When I came almost two weeks ago, the silence was still there and the snow was still there. But there was something else as well, a softness about everything and yet a delicate sharpness that expressed itself in the emerging black patches on the white or the sound of the snow on the lake’s ice that I skied on. I was starting to look closer and I also had to, because moving around requires more effort now.

After there has been days with a lot of moist in the air, some of it also coming down. The fog reveals and hides the landscape in a sudden way that seems unlike to fogs nature, since it feels quite heavy and slow. I’m wrapped in the fog, this time sensing the air bordering the room around me. The landscape-views in the fog make me feel as if I were in an ink-painting, in which the mountains look like they were two-dimensional layers one behind another, like flat scenes.

Yesterday I still started with the skis and up on the highland it went well enough, although I was occasionally reaching quite far in the depths of the turquoise crypt of the snow. That is when I was going off-track. Consequently I start to listen to the snow (as if to detect it’s consistence) and start to hear: there is waters flowing, invisible, not underneath but up above me, everywhere, somewhere. This is different. One other day last week I was also listening, to the snow itself. It had a faint but precise sound, it was melting but not yet becoming water, it was a sound of a metamorphosis. Now it is the braking of water.

On the way down, still yesterday, I ski into the garden of streams. Suddenly it is a whole symphony that I’m in. Waters flow everywhere and I ski on it. I also ski, gently, on the ground and plants, for snow has disappeared. Proceeding downwards I enter and exit in the more silent spheres of the presence of the “woods” – the birds, the smell of the brush, the sound of the birches -, and in the more or less enormous volumes of the water sounds.

The phase changing of the snow reveals itself now and it does it the other way around. I think about the ice age, the powers of the waters, the ice, the movements, the formation of formations and the events of appearance and disappearance in the landscape.

The landscape seems to be moving constantly, slowly, slowly . Yet it is still and silent. For it is I that am moving and the mountains , they follow me and are present. I look at them and they look back at me as living creatures do.

One day last week I walked up to Saana. It was cloudy but very, very bright and I began my walk with no wind at all. First it was only I and Saana and the traces of the others who also had walked forth and back. After I got more company, soon there were all the other mountains in Sweden and Norway, looking back at me, coming and becoming closer. Yes I am like the romantic traveller in Caspar David Friedrichs paintings feeling tiny and overwhelmed in front of the vastness and beauty of the landscape, at the same time being a center of it. But yet, that is just a picture. For anyhow, in my way, I’m taking part in this entity, I am here, my substances connect with the substances I’m walking on and I feel, somehow, the flood or flow or simply movement that has its roots somewhere deep in the earth and in the depth of time. A movement that manifests itself also in the smallest detail .

I’m thinking about the space. High up on the top of Saana the whole total almost endless space for a moment becomes my room. There is the lower Kilpisjärvi to sleep on, just the size of my body. There is Malla that I can touch and almost feel in the palm of my hand. But wind has started to blow harder on the top and I seek myself towards a more solid and closer sheltering element. The landscape as a room is a room in my imagination, it is a reflection, a combination of reflections, a space that breathes around me. It is created partly of my perception, sensations, partly by losing sense of scale and partly by the attempt to a dialogue between the matters inside and the matters outside.

Descending I’m suddenly in the middle of a whiteness so white that I see no objects, nor a slightest form on the ground. It is as if there were no dimensions. I can only feel my standing on something and I can see that there is a line where this nothingness of the whiteness ends. One could lose oneself here, even though it is but a rather small area. Just very close by, at my feet I can faintly detect the path, the traces of other feet, and it gives me safety. Just there the snow has a slightly different complexion and I’m glad that the snow has this memory that here reveals itself.

Going further down I meet the reindeer again. They seem to be home in the wind. There is a calmness and warmth about them.

All right. I’m searching for a language to speak or write about the experiences of space, and being in or part of or beside it, a language that could maybe also reach beyond the too poetic description – though going through it. There is the outside world I’m in, the movements in the space, the time, the volume – like a light transparent tent – around every creature. Then there is the life and home here, in this place, of which I am outside, the occupation in the space that I can, if I can, only see from outside. Still, maybe, some themes we can share.