At what point did you start feeling lonely

I travel north.

First Umeå.

Capital of Culture 2014, whatever that means. There’s a fine art museum, at least. Free, too. So: good values from the powers that be. Or patriotism, which I suppose is what art used to be for.

An AI exhibition on the upper floor. Films from Kenya where people annotate video clips. Marking and describing, tirelessly, what the objects in front of the cars are. The dream of a new, more objective way of seeing through AI feels further away than ever.

The sun is shining. The evening turns wet. First at Bodegan, then a late-night sauna.

I take the hit the next day. Tell myself several times it was worth it.

Next stop is Skellefteå.

A relative of mine founded the town. Nils. Priest, banker, family man.

I hold a dialogue with myself about how to brag about it. How not to brag about it.

I settle on silent genealogy.

Go to the town museum. Find a few things. Say nothing.

Two hours before the bus to Piteå, I sit down at a summer café near the church where he preached.

A little way off I see a priest on a bench. He’s reading a book but looks up at regular intervals.

I walk over.

He tells me he sits there for anyone who wants to talk.

Now I say it.

And he knows very well who Nils was.

Everything I want to say, I let seep out carefully.

In the end I’ve said it all.

We talk in the sun until he needs the bathroom. Then we walk together to the vicarage. He shows me the room where his daughter Anna painted. We go to the back room of the church. He shows me where Nils stood.

By the time we shake hands, I’ve missed the bus.

Gotten my ego stroked without having made a fool of myself.

Or so I think at the time.

Piteå next.

The town that turns out to have had too much expected of it.

At the guesthouse where I set down my bag, the restaurant is closed. The host is over-friendly, as if she sees the disappointment in my eyes.

I end up on the kind of main street every Swedish town has.

Stockholm has a Drottninggatan too. The difference is that here, there’s nothing outside it.

The host gives me a lift to a concert.

Older people. Wood. Wall hangings.

“At what point did you start feeling lonely?” a friend asked after I’d made a solo trip to Tromsø one summer.

This time it arrives during the only dark hour, between midnight and one, in Piteå. The walk back to the guesthouse.

It culminates on the bus between Piteå and Luleå.

When the vacation days and hotel costs don’t turn into the rest they reasonably should.

I compare it to a cottage down south. In the company of someone I like. Fewer travel days.

I console myself that Stockholm gets better when I see something else.

A strange consolation.

In Luleå I end up in yet another high-rise.

It seems every Norrland town has to have one.

From the window you see the jagged spruce forest and the dark-blue Bay of Bothnia.

When I leave the town, the building stays behind me.

Like a modern shepherd over its flock.

I travel home with more of the Norrland beauty than I had when I came.

But also with another thought.

Stockholm’s true identity has very little to do with Central Europe or New York.

Stockholm is southern Norrland.

The same spruce forests.

The same dark waters.

The same loneliness.

The difference is that in Stockholm it’s better hidden by the people.