2. May 13, Home Made

 2. May 13 Home Made

The older I get, the more Swedish I feel. The nostalgia for unique Swedish traditions and cultural habits that were set during childhood is in the front of my mind rather than a few layers back the way it was in the past. Over the years, at times when homesickness would be too hard to ignore, usually around Easter and Christmas, I’d pick up the Hemslöjd (“Home arts and craft" in Swedish) catalog and indulge in hours of browsing the pages for home décor, music, books, and candy that could relieve the feeling of feeling disconnected from my heritage. I would always call in my orders, secretly hoping that the voice on the other end would speak Swedish.

Yesterday, as I was following behind Gary and the motorhome in the truck, I suddenly spied a sign for Hemslöjd on the side of the road. But, of course, the reason I had advocated for us to stop overnight by Lindsborg, Kansas, was because the name of the city seemed familiar! The name seemed familiar because of the sender's address on the yearly catalog. I had never imagined shopping at the actual physical store where all my orders had been filled.

After parking the rig at Dan’s RV Park, we drove two blocks to Main Street to find a place for dinner. As Gary parked the truck, I saw the Hemslöjd storefront sign. Seeing that sign felt like putting something on my Bucket List real quick-like only to predict that the opportunity would go away before I could get to it. It was past 6 p.m. so the store was closed by the time my foot hit the cobblestone. The tempo of the road trip had disturbed my equilibrium enough that I thought the following day was Sunday. What if the store was closed on Sundays? I decided to make peace with the potential reality that I would just place yet another order by phone again this year. Even when getting close enough to get our photos taken on the bench outside the store by a local jogger with a sweet dog, and grab the latest edition of the catalog from the stand by the door, I still did not dare check the open hours.

It wasn’t until the following morning, a Saturday, that I committed to checking if the store would be open during our stay in town. Gary and I made plans to start the day at Hemslöjd as they opened at 8:30 a.m., the earliest of all the attractions in town. Gary is a great explorer, so we drove in all four directions to see the town while waiting for the store to open. Almost every house had an orange horse with the last names of the residents dangling by the porch. These orange horses, “Dala hastar,” are symbols of Sweden. Pre-electricity, when the men were forced to stay inside because of cold and darkness, they would spend the time whittling these horses and local artists would paint them in the kurbits style. Downtown Lindsborg, large horses were placed in front of the various establishments.

My favorites were the “Dala Dala” painted as a dollar bill and the “Dali Dala” sporting Salvador Dali’s moustache and a melted watch. We came across the preparation for an estate sale which included items that harkened back to the Swedish immigrants who settled here: a huge, ornate Swedish bible; a crest-looking tin emblem with the name “Dalarne,” the province in Sweden from which the “Dala” horses and my maternal grandfather hails and where my father was born; and a placard with traditional kurbits-painted flowers and a prayer. Had the sale not been auction-based, these items would have gone home with us. I told Gary that missing out on the last find was okay because similar items would be available at Hemslöjd.

Entering the store was magical, perhaps even sweeter than walking into an IKEA store that has been dressed for Christmas. The walls and displays were teeming with the stuff that means home to me. There is A LOT more in the store than is included in the catalog and online. It was amazing. There were entire walls of trolls (we thought them friendly prior to the horror movies were released!), gnomes (we had them first!), and, of course, an entire wall of Dala horses. The displays were well-crafted and appropriately Swedish. For example, the door opening to the in-house Dala horse carpentry workshop was built with a slight porch roof held up by traditional, white, wooden bric-a-bracs.

As we browsed through the store hand-in-hand, I would sometimes stop to point things out to Gary. Pointing at a collection of flags, he asked why they had different colors. I explained that they were the flags of the different Scandinavian countries. It was a good question, but also a reminder that the world tends to lump Scandinavians together. But, of course, even a store with a Swedish name in a city that proclaims itself to be “Little Sweden” needs to offer some shelf space to the rest of “them.” I was too busy being nostalgic to offer Gary any kind of context, so I’m sure Swedish culture is a total jumble for Gary now amidst Norweigan rosemaling, Danish last names, Icelandic Vikings, and self-deprecating jokes by Finns.

Shortly after the flag encounter, we stopped by a display of candles in elongated drop shapes, and I pointed and said, “70’s.” Sure enough, the sign on the wall read, “Vintage.” I know my Sweden, Baby! Turning the corner, I nearly wept. Laying haphazardly on top of some shelving brackets, I spotted a Julbrev, a large envelop containing the instructions and supplies for kids Christmas arts and crafts. I was immediately transported to the 70’s sitting on the floor in my maternal grandmother’s beautiful flat in the light of her gorgeous Christmas tree. She’s slide out the bottom drawer of her secretary to take out the Julbrev and then commence to locate scissors and glue sticks so we could spend the chilly morning doing arts and crafts together in preparation for the holiday. I grabbed both of the remaining Julbrevs from the brackets. Next time I see a shooting star, I will wish that I can enjoy these crafts with a young child the way my grandmother enjoyed them with me. (Okay, time to pass the Kleenex). In light of today being Mother's Day in the U.S., let me also acknowledge that my mom also bought Julbrev.

Over the years, I have brought many books from the catalog. Of course, there are a handful of cook books in this collection. One in particular is “Fika” about baking and adding polished touches to the Swedish ritual of social coffee drinking. True to form, I have only read the cover so far. I also bought children’s books for Malaren from the catalog. My favorite is “The Tomte,” an illustrated translation of a poem that means Christmas as much to Swedes as the Nutcracker means Christmas to Americans. I saw both of these books in the book section of the store.

The most expensive items I ever bought from the catalog was a seven-candle candelabra. Swedish winters are crazy dark and these kinds of candelabras are seen in the vast majority of the windows of Swedish households once the dark season sets in. I bought one many years ago for the house in which I raised Malaren. By then, I had fretted for years about wanting them in natural wood or painted Christmas red. I chose natural wood because it reminded me of the wooden kitchen table and ceiling in my parents’ house. That candelabra did okay for a few years but eventually shorted out leaving all seven candle bulbs burned. In the store, they offer a wood candelabra in brown wood. Ugh, that would have been a strong contender had I known they existed back when.

When our tour of my childhood ended at the cash register, I paid $104 dollars for a Christmas garden flag for Treasure Hill, old-fashioned Marianne hard candies with caramel filling, Dala horse socks for M (don’t tell her), a bag of Kex mini chocolate bars (KitKat is very similar), a bag of soft licorice for Gary; a large candle ring with plastic lingonberries, white-dotted red mushrooms, and mini pine cones; and a sticker for the motorhome depicting one Swedish and one American flag.