Solar - Terrestrial Data

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Living in a World Heritage to be.

The Kvarken Archipelago, the archipelago located between Sweden and Finland where the Gulf of Bothnia is at its narrowest, is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative list.
I was born and raised out there on an Island named Björkö. My mother is still living there at her own at the age of 85 and I have a small summer-house at the waterfront out there on one of the thousands and thousands small islands.
This landscape is said to be unique and nothing similar is found anywhere else in the world. Or at least we are told so...
This landscape was shaped by the withdrawing glaciers from the last glacial era some 10000 years ago, leaving huge moraine- formations and giant blocks of stone at the rim of the withdrawing ice-masses every summer, later, when the ice had completely melted away, the depressed crust of the earth started to raise again and we still have a raising of the land at a speed of som 8 - 10 mmm/a in this region.
When I was a little boy, we could row a boat in places that nowadays are completely dry!
These watery landscapes are continually changing when the land rises and new islands are emerging out of the water and soon will be populated by grass, bushes and trees.
I have posted some photos earlier and here are some more!



The author "on the rocks" :

A view from the backside of our summer-house:

A view towards one of the neighbour islands, the typical moraine- formations are seen here:

Another view from "our island":

Jonathan Livingstone I presume?:

Another view in another direction:

The flora and fauna is very rich, the dragonflies are common because they thrieve on mosquitos and there are a lot of mosquitos...

Some dragonflies decided to have a lunch-break on my chest and my nose! :)

9 comments:

Dale said...

Hi Hans

Your photos are really quite fabulous!
You live in a wild & wonderful place.
Is that your sauna I see next to your summer house?

I, too, live in an area carved out by the advancing then retreating glaciers, but the scenery is much different. I live in the Rocky Mountain Trench in western Canada - no ocean till 600 miles to the west...

It was fun chatting with you the other day.

Dale

Hans said...

Hi Dale

No Ocean...? :( I hope you at least have some other watery-resources close by...? :) Well I think that your surroundings are at least as amazing as my surroundings. My wife has been visiting the state of Washington, US, and the mountain-areas there when she was young and she has a lot of amazing photos from over there.

No it is not the sauna, the sauna is integrated into the summer-house because there are heavy restrictions on how close to the waterfront one can build something there. It is a shed where i store wood and stuff & things.
Originally it was a small barn used to store hey for the winter, similar to that one you see in the other blog but smaller in size.

It is really fun to chat with the people watching the ITA and the Who online. I hope you will have your computer-related problems solved soon, I remember you did not see a thing the other day!

see ya!
Hans

E.L. Wisty said...

Hi Hans,

You are lucky to have been born in Bjorko (sorry, umlauts not working in the webcafe) and to have the summer place on one of the islands. *THAT* is something to be envious about as it really is a unique landscape. I can imagine sitting on those rocks in perfect peace, what with the heat and pollution here in London. You don't own that island where you have the summer house, do you??

Maria

Hans said...

Well... I have found that one always wants to be in som other place where the people/placer are som much cooler and everything is so fab and blah, blah....
I is hard to appreciate what you have and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and the water has a deeper shade of blue in Oulu than in Bjorko... :)
No, I don´t own that place, it is own by the community and my lot is rented. Most all of the beaches and small islands is own by all the people in Bjorko through that community and nowadays most all of the place is inside the Natura 2000 preservation programme so ther are applied very hard restrictions regarding what you can do and how.
Have a nice stay in the UK and send Rachel, Pete & al my regards if you bump into them again!

Hans said...

aargh... a lot of typos in my last posting... How could one edit your own comments here?

Anne-Marie said...

Hi Hans,
What a lovely place you live in. There is something stunning about the more northern countries.

If you want to edit your comments, just hit the preview button to see what it will look like and make your corrections there.

Are you going to any Who shows this summer?

Cheers,
AM

Hans said...

Hi anne-marie!
Thank you for the info re editing comments, I will try tor correct my typos now.
I like your surroundings very much as well, I have been visiting Guelph many times and also the Kitchener and Cambridge area. And Sleemans Honey-Brown is the best beer ever made on the surface of the earth!
I have no possibility to go and see tho Who play this year, they don´t come close enough to Finland and I do not want to leave my family behind and travel to Berlin or Bonn in Germany to see them.
Sweden or Denmark would be an option because we have good connections from this area and possibilities to stay by friends there but they will not come neither to Sweden nor Denmark.

Dale said...

Nice to hear you have good taste in beer, too, Hans!

I have the same isolation problem as far as being to be able to see a Who show.

Hopefull they'll play somewhere within traveling distance.

Hans said...

I have to start lobbying the Who into participating in the "Provinssi-Rock" festival that is taking place annualy in June only 50 miles from here... :) This festival usually attracts a lot of big names, I have seen Lou Reed, Gary Moore, REM, Red Hot Chilipeppers, Bjork, The Cramps, Transvision Vamp and a whole lot of others perform there and it is very comfortable when you can go home and sleep over nite in between the bands.

My workmates from Canada Ray D. and Jody P. helped me create the taste for Sleemans Honey Brown and the Sleemans Brewery was located ther in Guelph so you could only drink Sleemans I suppose! LOL!

 
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