![]() ![]() The arctic springtime migration pass the beaches of the Baltic sea when the sea birds stop over for a rest on their way north. Long-tailed ducks are migratory birds that migrate to the Baltic Sea during the months of winter, in order to move further inland during summer. The plants that withered and died a year ago lie like a brown blanket over all the plants that have just decided to start growing.” Freezing, wildly happy, you stand at the door and see the barren land and rock in the half light. You hear them when you get up to light a fire before dawn. “At night, the long-tailed ducks sing, always from an island farther out. The essay The Island continues with a lyrical description of the warm feelings of happiness caused by the chilly spring nights. “The girls”, as the locals would call them, went out to the island in April and usually stayed until September. For over 20 years she spent several months in the outermost archipelago at the island of Klovharu, with her life partner Tuulikki Pietilä. She spent almost all her summers in Pellinki archipelago in the Gulf of Finland – and preferably moved out there early in the spring each year. Jansson’s long life by the sea forms a clear basis for her texts. Tove Jansson has brilliantly described feelings as well as seasons in her prose. ![]() One moment you can plod along in the darkness over the frozen sea in thick snow – only to go for a moonlight swim at the exact same spot a month later, when seasons have changed to early summer. Both mind and art will be affected by the different seasons with their specific light phenomenons, temperatures and ambience. The quote illustrates how Tove Jansson describes spring on an island. ![]() In the essay The Island, first published in the travel magazine “Turistliv iįinland” 1961, republished in the collection Bulevarden och andra texter All is expectation, listening, with none of summer’s flirtatious charm.” Its colors are cold and serious, fragile as the ice on the potholes. The sand is untouched, and the island has taken a small, furtive step toward wilderness since you last were here. There are no boats moving among the islands. “The surest time is early spring, a protected space between city anxieties and full summer, which is green and contented and sociable. ![]()
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