Norway update: Högfeldt, Lidberg, Larsson and a vimpel

In the summer of 2018 Frog and I travelled to Norway, the land of my mother’s mother, to attend the seventy-fifth birthday of my aunt who lives there.

    When I was a child we used to travel there as a family every summer and in my teens I went there several times in both winter and summer to stay with relatives, but I hadn’t been back for nearly half a century.

    In my youth I took the country for granted but now I was bowled over by it – its natural beauty and wildness, the lack of commercialisation, the sense that here was a fairer and more egalitarian country than poor old Britain.

    Since then, having decided that Frog and I are too old and poor to emigrate, I’ve been grasping for any connection to that gorgeous land, in particular two Scandinavian artists Robert Högfeldt and Rolf Lidberg.

Robert Högfeldt and Rolf Lidberg

Högfeldt (1894-1986) was a Dutch/Swedish cartoonist, a print of whose hung in the family kitchen for as long as I can remember.
    Swedish Lidberg (1930-2005) is best known for his enchanting troll paintings, two small posters of which Frog and I had come across and bought long ago.
    With our new enthusiasm for all things Scandi, we began to hunt for proper prints of both artists but to date all we have found is two postcards, one of which arrived in the post this morning. So here they are.

First, one by Högfeldt entitled ‘Glädje och Sorg’. ‘Og’ is Norwegian for ‘and’, so ‘och’ may be the Swedish equivalent, which may mean that the other two words are names. Are they people Högfeldt knew, one wonders.

'Gladje och Sorg' by Robert Hogfeldt

The card below (published 1984) is called ‘The Bookworm’ and is from a watercolour by Lidberg.

'The Bookworm' by Rolf Lidberg

Judging by the delightful write-up on the back of the card, Lidberg was a much-loved man.

The back of the Lidberg card

Carl Larsson

And while on the subject of Scandinavian artists, here are two cards from a box that my brother J found in my mother’s effects and gave to me. By the Swedish Carl Larsson (1853-1919), they are perfect portrayals of the relaxed prettiness of Scandinavian interiors, and remind me of my aunt’s house. The original watercolours can be seen in Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum.

'The Studio' by Carl Larsson

'Cosy Corner' by Carl Larsson

Incidentally, my aunt is now apparently plotting her eightieth-birthday celebrations. Whatever they are, I hope Frog and I are invited.

The vimpel

And here is the vimpel (the triangular version of the Norwegian flag which we discovered flying from so many houses during our visit), which Frog bought when we were in Norway and which is now flying proudly from our new flagpole.

A Norwegian 'vimpel' and our new flagpole 

Links

For more on our visit to Norway, click here.

For more on Högfeldt, click here.

For more on Lidberg, click here.