I was commissioned by DIS Copenhagen to create a media package covering sustainable, “slow” travel. I traveled to a small coastal town in Sweden and photographed both the vistas, the architecture, the historical monuments, and the personal experience of my friend and I. Below is the article I wrote summarizing the trip with attenton to the company’s tone.

TAP TAP TAP TAP. We woke with a start to make eye contact with a seagull perched outside our window. The Swedish Skåne region’s famous sunlight washed over our AirBnb like a gift from a morning star. It was as if our bird friend noticed and rushed to wake us so we wouldn’t miss it. We had decided to travel to Simrisham because we share a love for nature and mystery, and this South Western tip of the country seemed to host both. Known for its soft and clear light, as well as the variety of ancient ruins and carvings from coastal people that lived hundreds of years before us, Simrisham seemed to contain a certain magic. Being awoken by a sea bird our first morning was just our first evidence.


The night before we took the train from Copenhagen, switching to a bus in Mälmo and listening to the earnest folky poetry of Tiger Milk by Belle and Sebastian. We arrived in Simrishamn and walked four minutes to our AirBnb. It was like arriving in a dreamworld. The bus station felt quiet but familiar, so that when we emerged from the tunnel our map took us through, we were left gaping at the cobblestone streets lined with pastel painted fairytale cottages, windows lit by candles and cats peeking through. At our AirBnb, our host brought us through a wooden door to a small house in his backyard. He spoke slowly and simply and explained the lights and keys and the small photography gallery his wife and he ran in their backyard. We promised we would love to see it. After he left we put on a Norah Jones CD and began exploring the property as “Sunrise, sunrise, looks like morning in your eyes” set the tone for the trip, outdated and corny and calm. We looked through the guest book and noticed we were their first English guests. Other ephemera like sun-faded maps from 2008 and pamphlets from exhibitions no longer on view sat cluttered on the bookshelf. The two room kitchen and bedroom house was lined with olive oil wallpaper and smelled like the abstracted idea of a grandma. We decided to walk outside for a bit and explore the cobblestone streets. Away from the infinite plane of dark seawater stood a church lit up with the shadow of an angel, its figure ricocheted by a lifted stature. We went to bed sleepy and eager for the next day.

After breakfast, we ran into our AirBnb hosts who offered to show us their photography gallery. It was a small room covered with framed over-saturated photographs of the surrounding region, and the floors were made nearly invisible because of stacks of decaying Agatha Christies and Swedish children’s books. They explained the husband’s love for photography, eager to go out into the world. “I much prefer traveling around here. I like to get to really know the place I’m in,” the wife told us, and we shared a look as we heard her describe slow travel, the very reason we were here. They let us choose postcards from a large box they had collected, then wished us a good afternoon.


We decided to walk forty minutes to some Bronze Age stone carvings, called “Rock of Axes,” along the beach. The walk became more of a meander as we climbed over rocks and ran down a dock to glimpse ocean swans. When we reached the carvings, a large flat light gray slab of rock with carved geometric patterns of 50 ceremonial axes, 45 ships, animals, and men. We stared at the art made 3,500 hundred years ago and contemplated what it could have been like, scraping with intricacy through the hard material, the wind from the sea at your back, all for some deeper purpose and belief in that which is bigger than the individual. We sat and quietly ate a packed lunch of rolls with goat cheese and prosciutto, staring out at the expanse of water and history in front of us. We realized that we weren’t too far from some runestones, so decided to walk another half-hour to reach them. Sweden has a law that distinguishes farmland as public-access, so we were able to walk through rich green fields, in the center of a flatness neither of us had experienced before. Large wind turbines loomed to our left, reminding us of a computer screen-saver, cementing us in the present day during our journey through time. The runestones were located in a church yard. The church itself was foreign; white plaster with cascading steps in the steeple, typical of Scandinavia. There was a graveyard surrounding it, empty of visitors and lush with greenery despite the cold temperatures. The two runestones, ancient headstones themselves, stood solitary off to the side. One depicted a serpent, wrapping itself along the edge of the rock with rune symbols carved over its body, and the other one mirrored this, only with  added intricacy and knots carved into the center of the stone. This one, we read, was a tombstone for a man named Hrafn, “Raven.” My last name is Ravenstar. Looking at the icon in front of me I felt a sense of connection to the man buried somewhere below.”These two stones were from the 11th century, and one of them is notable for being one of the earliest native Scandinavian documents to mention Sweden. On our walk home, about an hour, we stumbled upon a large spiral river along the side of the road. It was placed in a miniature valley outside a development of houses. There was no indicating signage, so the mystery of it felt somewhat magic, the spiral being a recurring motif in my life, the name of my first cat and the only tattoo on my mother.


We decided to grab a cinnamon roll for a snack and sit by the water. As the sun set, the full moon shone over the water a bright vermillion, larger than any typical moon. A black animal slinked by the water, creating a new mystery for us, too pointed of a face to be a cat, likely a mink of sorts. We went to dinner at a small restaurant and ordered a local dish, an egg pancake served with bacon and lingonberries. Our waiter told us they were throwing a party starting at 10pm, with a live DJ. We stayed at our seats but bobbed our heads to the music playing in the bar, laughing at the remixes to familiar songs from our childhood. On our way out of the restaurant two young girls called out to us in Swedish. We admitted we didn’t understand, and they told us they were worried about going inside because of the bouncer, as they weren’t 18 yet. They were so excited to hear we were American, and immediately insisted on showing us their high school. They took our hands and had us perform a traditional Midsommer dance around a traffic pole and told us that we must return in the summer to stay with them and swim in the ocean. It started to rain, so we walked them back to the bar and went home to bed.


Our last morning we woke early and made eggs for breakfast. We wrote a thank you note in the guest book, then went to a local bakery for black coffee, a cream puff and some carrot cake. We melted at the sweet freshly made desserts, and, renewed with energy, began our next trek through the countryside. We were intrigued by a small fishing museum in the town over. It was another hour walk, but we stopped halfway at a small nature reserve of flat, moss covered rocks. We ate the same lunch as the day before, as a murder of crows danced and flew around us. The walk continued down a dirt road, lined with scraggly trees that looked out of a fantasy novel. When we reached the fishing museum, we realized it was just a shed in someone’s backyard. Their house seemed empty except for an unseen dog, who barked at us. The shed museum, also empty of people, had a donation box, so we figured we could enter. It was two rooms, cluttered with old hooks and vintage fishing magazines, the walls covered in paintings and knickknacks. It was clearly an artist’s studio, left unkempt. A coat lay on the floor next to spilled paint, and a doorway led to a blocked off room that appeared hoarder-like. It was eerie, uncontrolled, and ever-mysterious. A mutual silence fell over us as we explored the unknown artist’s space.


We walked home drinking a local spruce lager, laughing at how serendipitous our trip had been. We noticed a large mound in the distance and decided to explore it. It was at least three times our height, and the circumference must have been half the size of a tennis court. We saw a sign a ways away, next to another, smaller mound. We were delighted to read that these were ancient burial sights. The mound was Grostorp’s Stone House, 4,500 years old, built by Stone Age farmers. The sign told us of the region’s legend, that a giant was buried beneath the land, and this specific spot formed its heart. Perhaps our serendipity could be explained by some ancient magic here. We left after that, eating at a local Thai restaurant on the water for dinner, and took a night bus back to Copenhagen, a little changed by the mystery of Simrishamn.