Ådne Dyrnesli

Skuggane av lauvet (2023)

Exhibited as part of kissing_smiley_with_kind_eyes, KMD, Bergen

Some would say it’s overgrown, the grass too long and the trees blocking out the sun – which is already blocked out by the mountains in the winter months, casting a cold and damp shadow over the valley – some would say it’s impractical, the stones in the lawn making it hard to mow, the old apple trees not always bearing fruit – and some only see a white house behind some trees in the middle of nowhere on their way to catch a ferry.

To me, it’s arriving at a cold house during winter, my dad lying down on the warm bathroom floor. Going out with a flashlight in the dark to look for deer, their eyes glowing back at us in the light. Mild summer days, cycling down to the fjord to swim.  Moving here – after living in the city for some years – planning to stay half a year but staying for three, moving to another city, and then one cold winter while I was here – the water in the creeks freezing and spilling out over the fields in big lumps of ice – I started photographing.

I was born after my mother’s parents died, but while they lived, they lived here. I only know what I've been told about them. My grandfather loved animals and was allergic to onions and bacon. In the summers he would sit by the kitchen window – a string in his hand attached to a bell in the bushes outside – to scare the birds away from the bright red berries. My mother was embarrassed when he brought a record player with accordion music to social gatherings. My grandmother always wished the kitchen faced towards the fjord, not the forest, and she dressed up every evening when the day’s work was done. She died while picking raspberries – and was found by the neighbor who still lives next door. My grandfather died three months later.

The property has been called many things, most of them descriptive, and one of them being “a pile of rocks”. These rocks were lifted up – by my great grandfather, known for having big hands – from where there are fields today, and laid in dry stone walls around them. Fruit trees and berry bushes have been planted, and potato fields dug up, later to be paved over when the road was built. Sheep and cows used to graze here, and in their absence the birch trees have grown tall, some of them cut down for firewood. Garden plants, rose bushes and apple trees have spread into the fields and the forest. 

The soil so dry and full of stones, and the sunny summer days so long that you have to water before the sun is up, and in autumn the damp shadows of the mountains never allowing the dew to leave the grass.

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