Score #19: Imagine being a droplet of water

At the middle of the hillock, on our farm Øvre Ringstad, Skiptvet, Østfold, an hour’s drive from Oslo, we have a well. A small pond with algaes, sedge and yellow iris between three rocks where there always is water.

The hillock is a cornerstone in this landscape, with steep edges and cliffs. Our buildings are situated on the west-facing slope. Ravines and rivulets cut into the clay ground. The ground on the hillock is different and consists of silt, gravel and rocks. The flora is mostly heather, blueberries, moss, grass, but also juniper, willow and other deciduous trees. Spruce is in progress. Old pine trees grasp around the rocks.

Ground conditions cause the groundwater to reveal itself right here, at the highest of the land, 126m above sea level. The well and water is why there has been a farm here for at least 1,000 years. Why the settlement has been named “ring” is not known. But it gives a good feeling to think in circles and cycles. There must have been fences around all the small buildings an old farm could consist of. How to protect against precipitation, wind and changing weather?

When we were digging a site for a greenhouse by the rock that descends into the lawn, we found a round scraper made of flint. So here someone has scraped skin, perhaps from a seal, for clothes, ropes and boats perhaps as much as 10,000 years ago. Our hillock then stuck up like an island in a fjord. The sea was high and some tried to live as hunters and gatherers here at the edge of the ice sheet.

At the time, the waters provided opportunities for movement and nomadism, the salt sea provided fish, shellfish and marine mammals. Many thousands of years later, the water gave possibilities for settlement, fencing and animal husbandry. The water gives movement and residence. Now we have an electric pump 90 meters below the house which vulnerably ensures that we have water from the tap.

Before I do anything else, I fill the kettle with water and make myself a coffee. While the coffee water is boiling, I take a glass of water to wash down medicines and supplements. After that I sit down and look out of the window and wake up. The sun is glimmering to me in the foliage. The birds get seeds and fat. The rain pours heavily down. And when the snow comes, it settles like white fury edges on the pine trees, bushes, rocks, tufts of grass, the greenhouse and garden furniture. Snow gives me peace and my thoughts go to the plants and all the life under the surface that gets a gentle cover.

Score and text by Geir Tore Holm, living in Skiptvet, Norway
Collage by Turakella Edith Gyindo, living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Acrylic paint on cut out paper, background paper, glass, water and flower.

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