Harvest festival

Wednesday to Sunday is Öland harvest festival. At the same time as it is a big tourist magnet for the island it is also an ancient traditional week where the years harvest is supposed to be under roof and all sorts of crops are for sale in the marketplaces. The big symbolic festival crop is the pumpkin which you see everywhere anyone is selling anything at all from art to marmalade.

This evening is the "Artnight", meaning that all the galleries on the island, and there are LOTS, are open, exhibiting, selling or both. I can literally say that there has been constant traffic on the main road where I live from Wednesday afternoon till now, at half past midnight. The two extras are from a sculpture exhibition from somewhere along the east coast of the island  where a friend of mine has put her "little people" in and around a brook in a garden owned by an eighty year old artist who also puts her own work out all over the rest of the garden. You can buy or just be inspired or impressed by their work, nobody's forcing you into buying anything. It's all very friendly.

The main is from a place selling vegetables and their special crop; Sea buckthorn berries, which isn't a common crop, because it's quite a hard thing to grow and to harvest due to the long and plentiful thorns on the bushes. They make all kinds of things from the berries: Marmalade, drinks, salt, sugar, tea, powder and so on. The berry is very rich on C vitamin and a bunch of other healthy things. It was used during the Tjernobyl nuclear plant accident to help cure radiation damages on the skin. I'm using it to treat my psoriasis with good effect. The weather for the weekend isn't very good so I'm not sure I'll be visiting any more farmers.

This evening I listened to "The story of a soldier" by Igor Stravinskij at Kalmar theatre, played by musicians from the Camerata Nordica ensemble with the actress Stina Ekblad as the narrator. A very fine performance indeed.