I grew up by the coast. The sea was always present. In my family there are sailors and fishermen. At my grandparents´ house the walls were covered with ships on stormy seas. We never thought about nature much. It was just there. My grandparents had a sailing boat that they lived in during the summer. When I came with them my grandmother and I went to pick blueberries when the boat was in harbour and my grandfather tried to teach me how to row. It was hopeless though. He said think about the oars instead of looking at the water. You’re just whipping up foam now. Nature was beautiful, but we never mentioned that to each other. I felt it as an extension of my body when I was floating on my rubber ring warm summer days. I existed merely in my body, and in this moment. It was impossible to think about the future or the past.

When I got older I moved to a fjord landscape. I thought I sensed the infinite when there suddenly were mountains behind the sea. It was as if that feeling of here and now was dissolved and my consciousness moved out and up in to the air like in a church. I spoke to many Norwegians about the fjord, but they always referred to other parts of the country. It was as if the fjord they had grown up by always was the most beautiful one. It didn’t matter which part of the country they came from. The most beautiful fjords were always left in the land of childhood.
My fjord lay there like a ship, solid and over dimensioned it radiated security. As if it had already seen and been through everything there was. The most important thing about fjords didn’t seem to be the bay itself but the size of the surrounding mountains. I often went to sit by the shoreline and looked over to the other side. I suppose it was something about the perspective that puzzled me.

The fact that it didn’t look so far away though I knew it was a long way there. Like death can be present and a big part of life even to a child. You know it’s there waiting by the end. I thought that the mountains I can count on.
But then I realised that behind the fjord was just another fjord and another and then it went on like that endlessly like a screensaver. That fjord had only been fooling me. They should cover the fjords in asphalt, so that they can be a part of the road forward.

I lived in Holland for a while. There are no mountains in Holland. The country is constantly about to sink back into the ocean and the nature preservations that there are you have to pay a ticket to get into. Then you walk around in a planted forest that is kept so that the trees don’t grow too big and heavy. If they did, the sandy earth they were planted in will erode from the pressure and the whole forest would collapse. The trees aren’t supposed to be there. The land has been reclaimed from the sea. People spend their time looking in through other peoples’ windows instead of putting their faith in the landscape outside. Nature is more present when I recycle my garbage than when I go for a walk.

I couldn’t make sense of the thoughts that where spinning in my head. Maybe it was too much to ask that the fjord I had watched should be special. But I felt so cheated. The fjord had promised that everything was going to be alright, meaning nothing.
I tried to tell my grandfather about the asphalted fjord but he did’t understand what I meant. He said that fjords have water, not asphalt, but then again, some people have wavy hair.