This is the last post about last weeks’ mountain ecologist meeting in Flen in Southern Sweden. Find a (new!) picture gallery here or click on it on the right of my website.

I experienced southern Sweden as a soft place. Soft rolling hills, splendid soft shades of green, and the softest meadows with freshly mowed hay. This omnipresent softness came as a big surprise to me, as I only knew Scandinavia from the harsh world above the polar circle.

It might have been hard for me to believe I was indeed in Scandinavia, if it would not have been for the scattered spots of roughness in the landscape. Some of them obvious, some of them not, all of them bringing the northern feeling to the countryside. Some mythical Northern God had dropped massive stones on the fields in his wrath and now they marked the hidden doors to the below ground mansions of trolls. That is the Scandinavia I grew up with!

It was an intriguing sight to face these huge blocks of granite in the middle of the fields. The must have been impossible to remove for the farmers, as they probably weigh several tons. Now they are lying there peacefully, in plain sight, as a warning that circumstances might not always be as mild here as they felt on this warm day in the end of spring.

Some of the bigger patches of roughness even hosted trees and stood as dots of diversity in the landscape. All together, these rough edges made for a much more interesting agricultural landscape than I had ever seen before.

Forest patch in a field

I could just wander around through these fields aimlessly for hour after hour, enjoying every new surprise behind every next corner.

A rock, a peaceful lake or a little Scandinavian farm house, just wander through the picture gallery on the right of my site and let Scandinavia amaze you.