Roses

One of our poets, Erik Axel Karlfeldt from the turn of the last century, wrote a poem that later became a well known song in 1949. My mother used to sing it for her own entertainment. The last verse starts: "I Arontorp där blommar en ros", In Arontorp where a rose flowers" and then the song describes how a sailor has to leave a girl behind. I always thought that was what the song was about. The song is called Vid Färjestaden, later I learned that Färjestaden is a small town on Öland, where the ferries from Kalmar on the mainland lands.

I've lived here on Öland three years now, not far from Färjestaden, where I buy my bread, and even closer to Arontorp, a very small village with a few farms and some houses. Over the years I've learned that the rose growing in Arontorp also can mean a girl living there. I imagined a pink rose looking like most roses do.

By chance I met a friend and his wife in Färjestaden today, who said they were on a foto safari to get a picture of the Arontorp rose that just started flowering. I never knew it was so special, they said it only grows in about three places on Öland and a few places on Gotland, another limestone based island in the baltic sea, nowhere else in Sweden. The rose needs limestone to grow. I went to Arontorp to look for it and eventually found it on a meadow in a National park, created more or less because of the flower. It was a beautiful walk there through a hazel, ash and oak forest with carpets of blue anemonies. In a few weeks people come here in busloads to see the flowers.

When  I got there I had to sit down for a while to digest all the events in the last hour. I felt transferred back in time, hearing my mother singing the song and remembering the images it created in me. Who would have thought I was going to live here, so close to the places I didn't even know if they existed when I was little. And the rose isn't pink at all, it's not even a rose! It's yellow and called Våradonis, Adonis Vernalis or, Arontorps ros, after the place where it was found by Linné in 1741, but really it's a Ranunkulus plant. I didn't know that either. 

The meadow is a really peaceful place at least this time of year before the visitors arrive. I was on my own there in the sun, sheltered by the large trees from the biting wind. The extra shows the entrance to the meadow.
A wonderful moment.