![]() ![]() My deep appreciation for this Swedish mountainous area, the Hardangervidda in Norway and the Scottish Highlands falls into place. The mountainous border between Sweden and Norway is the so-called Kjølen – the Keel because it looks like an upturned boat. Creating an angle, the west side much higher than the east side. The mountains we see now were created between 300 million and 50 million years ago, when the west side of this plate was thrust up, just off the Norwegian coast. During the next 100 million years, the whole area was leveled, the resulting creation a flat plate. The Caledonian mountain range was created, with peaks much higher than today. With the Caledonian orogeny, 490-390 million years ago, mountains were built in the northern parts of Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia, Svalbard, eastern Greenland, and parts of north-central Europe. Deep Time changes with a name, the Caledonian orogeny. Mountain ranges formed, caused by the closure of the Iapetus Ocean when the continents of Laurentia, Baltica, and Avollonia collided. ![]() Rock, stones with a history that goes back some 400 million years ago. A closer look reveals what would spark the painter’s eye. My number one place is the Grövelsjön area (Sweden), followed by the Hardangervidda (Norway), The Scottish Highlands, and the North Sea coast (The Netherlands), the odd one out. Or the highlands, especially the highland plateau. A mountainous region, here it comes with the tundra vegetation. The features of these landscapes include the emptiness, bareness, spaciousness that is typical for what is called in Sweden fjäll. A place with the power to unlock your heart and stay with you, wherever you are. Soul landscape is the closest we can get to its meaning. The Finnish language has a word for it, silunmaisema. It is, obviously, a strong positive emotion – this is important because the feeling you belong somewhere doesn’t automatically imply it always feels good. It simply is ‘me’, that is how ‘being here’ is experienced. Not home as in ‘house’ but more a connection between place and the inner self. These landscapes made me feel I did belong there, it felt like ‘home’. Was there anything they have in common? There was. Trying to figure out why I prefer and treasure this particular part of the world, I took a closer look at the places that ranked almost equally high. Nine protected nature areas, covering 2105 square kilometers. It is the Grövelsjön area, in the Swedish province Dalarna, very close to the Norwegian border. Above, the big blue sky, sometimes veiled in grey or dotted with doodle-shaped clouds. The woods and the forests, the lakes, rivers and little streams, the mountains and the hills. My preferred world, the best of natural surroundings, is green, blue, and grey. The human activity that is concentrated in cities – economic, social, cultural – all the interesting and exciting opportunities, the buzz, they are important yet ‘means’ something to us on another level.įrom Grövelsjön to the Scottish Highlands Not that cities and urban environments make us feel bad, it’s only that here the ‘feeling good’ is obtained by other stimuli. From a rooftop terrace, a city park, the ten square meters that is your garden, national parks, to the grand and magnificent outdoors, it’s the natural surroundings that make us feel good. Peace and relaxation, fascination and devotion, stress-reduction and well-being. Hospital patients recovering in a room with a view, i.e., green, trees, plants, do better than their fellow patients who only had brick walls to look at. Overall, nature is beneficial for human well-being and health. The richness of green and the ‘I feel good’ of the brain Our brain, and especially the older parts of it, is responsible for what we go for, or run away from. ![]() It is a brain thing, emotions aren’t free running, haphazardly wild going currents, whatever happens. But did you ever wonder why a place, a landscape affects or even overwhelms you, to stay with you forever? Why do we feel like this? What is it that we find there? Above all, is there an explanation for the appreciation?Ĭertainly. Nature is good for people, to state the obvious. ![]()
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