Northbound

I was supposed to have visitors from the south of Sweden today but they arrive next week instead so I had a day to myself to explore some of the activities that happens in the northern part of my island. A couple of friends have an art exhibition there and after seeing it I went on a trip around the north tip of Öland, where I haven't been since 2005. 

That's fifteen years ago soon but considering the geology of this place, nothing much has happened. The main Blip is from a part of the coastline where the past comes to life in a stunning way. Here are Sea stacks, "Raukar" in Swedish, formed 490 million years ago, when our coast line was situated just south of the equator, being a shallow sea with coral reefs. Today they look like this. Waves and wind has formed these formations and this is what's left of them. The extra, with the shell in it, can give you an idea of what's been going on during those years. A shell of some kind has sunk to the bottom and over time has been put under pressure by sediments and formed the limestone we see today. I walk around there feeling very small and insignificant as a minute part of  that vast time span. It's a very humbling place. 

In the background you see the island "Blå Jungfrun" which was believed to be one of the places our witches went on a broomstick to feast with the Devil on Maundy Thursday (Blåkulla). All this happened in the mid 16 hundreds and is really a very tragic story. You can find more details on Wikipedia, should you be interested.

Going home, I passed Bengts Camel ranch. He's loved camels since he was a child and when he moved here and looked at the landscape of Alvaret he thought it looked like a desert and thought of bringing camels here. Now he's got lots of them. They like being here and are used by tourists for riding on when doing excursions through the barren landscape. He runs an ecological farm with all sorts of animals, cows as well as camels and lamas.