It is all very rural - I describe it best by saying that it is a 15 minute ride by car whenever I want something from a shop. If I want a latte it's 45 minutes. There you have it.
I have lived here all my life, except 3 years in high school and 2 years away studying in other places. I choose to move out at age 16 thinking I wouldnt survive if I stayed. I assume I was right back then. In fact, I know for sure I wouldn't have emancipated the way I have now had I stayed.
Unlike others who moved out of here when I did, I always knew I would come back.
I look for houses now when I am on my way out again. Ask my father: who owns this? Who owns that?
I want to come back here with a caravan of people I have gotten to know while out and about in the world. I want to dwell here, bring my future partner and kids. Teach them about the bliss of silence.
Because it really is silent here, rigth now I only hear myself tapping the keyboard of my computer. If I listen carefully I can hear birds twittering. Nothing more. At night there's not even birds.
There are no street lights, no neon-signs, no cars roaming the streets. There is no street, mind you.
The silence is a bit of a fear factor for city people who visit my rural haven. They listen eagerly to hear if anybody's coming, when trees creek they jump high!
I laugh at the thought of silence being such a scary thing.
I have never been a city-girl. I have never enjoyed roaming streets for more than a period of time. Now, imagining myself living in the Capital, I must take this into consideration- it will never be silent.
How will I react to that? I have never lived in a city worthy of its name. I have always been a visitor. Always gone back to silence and untouched dirt roads.
Today when being out and about for one and a half hour I saw one- ONE- person. I know him. He has been around all the time when I grew up, he's the son of my neighbours. I said "Hi" he said "Hi".
Here no-one is anonymous. If you live here I know who you are. Who you parents are. Who their parents were. The chance is quite big they knew my grandparents, we might be related. In the end we all are. Unless you're a newcomer. Then I know of you as one.
To survive in the Capital I assume I will have to wear my rural identity on my sleeves occasionally. In periods, speak my dialect, sing my songs, wear my traditional clothing. I wouldn't talk about a Swedish identity since I don't what constitutes such a thing. But I would talk about being from Delsbo (or more so being a Dellbo) and being brought up in Hälsingland as my identity.
Language of course plays a big part in that. I didn't like my dialect when growing up, I didn't want to be made apart by it. I had a strong yearning to be a cosmopolitan person. Dialects don't fit that kind of personality, unless it's a cosmpolitan one, a mash of several ways of speaking.
In my posh, bilingual, high school English class I was asked how many languages I could speak. I said I spoke four. Swedish-English-French-and-Dellboska (my dialect). My teacher ,a scottish air-force officer made linguistic nerd was amazed. He wanted to know more about it and he encouraged me to ask my parents what their attiude to the dialect had been growing up, and if it had changed during the years. Never before had I encoutered a sincere interest in my rural identity, mostly since all the people I knew shared it.
Now I find myself an advocate for the children in my village and the area of our dialect, I speak our dialect with them, and I speak it anywhere I find fit.
I teach my brother's step-son words he has never heard of.
(He lives in the town 45 minutes away, so yes the area of the dialect is tiny)
Growing up I was always jelaous of children who could speak a foreign language, now I know I speak one. Below is a sample:
He gjänt nå öm du änt ferståår va jö sääger, ä.
Jö läär däg, ja'.
He ha vörte sa laangt mella' mäg å däg, hä ä f'att du änt ferståår va jö sääger.
Visseru!
(It's alright if you don't get what I am saying.
I'll teach you.
The distance between us is quite big, it's because your not getting me.
You see.)
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