Yesterday night i had a new "house-dream". I often seem to dream of houses, they often start pleasantly, but then take another, more unsettling turn. This house was a weird mix between a castle, country cottage and those beautiful 18th century houses near Drottningholm. There were old, beautifully worn wooden floors, beautiful stained glass and sash windows, old artifacts and furniture, and a soft, beautiful light falling through the irregular glass of the windows. It resembled the summerhouse of Helena Ekdahl in Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander". There also was a conservatory and and many poky, little staircases with chiseled wooden banisters worn by centurie's of hands.
It was such a vivid dream! There's so much i remember, plainly, as if i just seen it on film or even been there. It started at night and pale moonlight seeped through the windows and in sconces on the walls some candles threw their flickering, sparse light in the rooms, nooks and crannies. I was at the upper storey and chased by something or someone i couldn't see, i ran down the stairs and through a door with many intricate locks and barres, i hastily slammed the door shut behind me and locked it carefully. Then i found myself in a quaint little country kitchen, with woodpanelling painted in limegreen and coral, ancient copperpots and utensils. Then, suddenly it was day and the sun pierced through the foliage outside and further through the windows, spreading a golden-green flickering pattern allover the room. I was no longer chased and the door i had just locked so carefully was wide open.
The kitchen led further on to a little bedroom with old torn wallpapers with a rustic, yet elegant printed pattern in dark blue beams on bone white, there were a fiew rustic pieces of furniture, a bed with a beautiful quilt, a dresser, a fiew simple chairs, the same golden green flicker from outside. I went up to the upper storey again and found a large room with walls covered in exquisitely and intricately carved woodpanels, seemingly they had been taken from a much larger, much grander house, they were painted in a dark blue, with gilt carvings and thousands of little flowers painted all over, the panels were divided by columns with corinthian capitals, cut, in incoherent bits to fit in here.
I went downstairs again and out. It must have been about the end of august for the verdure seemed faded and the leaves had a chapped, leathery feel to them and there was a cool breeze. I lay stretched on a table with flaky white paint and surrounded by tall birchtrees. I looked at the house, it must have been mine. It was a strange anomaly, a cluster of little cottages with high, steep roofs and many chimneys, an ancient, crooked, farmhouse in an idyllic, rural setting.
I walked around the house.
Then i suddenly found myself on a huge parkinglot with different monstrous industrial buildings around it, it was dirty and garbage scattered allover the place. I never found my way back to the house and started walking and walking as darkness fell. Then i was in a town, a big ruthless city and below it's townhall mixed with the Chiesa di San Marco in Venice, i was barefoot and wore a nightshirt stained with urin, feeling naked and unprotected.
Then i remember climbing on the outside of a giant dome of terracotta bumps sprinkled with crushed glass, trying to get down, wich was difficult. When down i remember getting down the entrance of the subway. And then i woke up-
In another dream i had just traded my cosy apartment for a dreary, depressing one-storey suburban house in the middle of a barren field of asphalt with some lifeless shrubs adorned with plasticbags, junk and some beige sparrows chirping depressingly. The house was appaling and smelled like a hospital or day care center, an uninspiring, clinical smell trying to cover that of urin and vomit. In the drawing room stood a horrible, settee covered in parched, worn-out leather with revolting, unidentifiable stains. Criminally ugly curtains and a view through the windows of a dull playground with lifeless lawns and a set of swings. Ew! And in the bathroom i found some horrible copies of bijoux and perfumes with boxes, saying "Doir" instead of "Dior", i recall. Fie!
But what can these dreams mean?!
In the end of october I, my best friend, her boyfriend, brother and his girlfriend spent a wonderful weekend at the most incredible hostel. It was in a former distillery, built in 1800. It was on the grounds of the country estate Nynäs, about an hour drive from Stockholm.
the distillery
It's an amazing building with thick walls and old wooden floors, recently refurbished into this lovely hostel, with reproductions of 19th century wallpaper and furnished with beautiful rustic 18th and 19th century furniture.
The house had the most beautiful and well equipped kitchen; and an equally beautiful diningroom where we had our fabulous dinner of toast Skagen, Cœur de filet provençal and a french apple tart with homemade vanilla custard and great wines!
Nynäs house, the countess' antechamber
An engraving of the house (right) and the distillery (left) from about 1815.
