Suddenly a snowfall – out comes the camera

After weeks of what feels like unremitting rain, and short dull days under heavy grey clouds, suddenly a snowfall. The first of the year here and, I think, only the second of the winter. It never fails to fascinate me what a difference a little snow can make to the quality of light. All the little details of things that jump out at you now they are unexpectedly highlighted.

My camera was in hibernation, but I woke it up and took it out and this little photo essay is the result.

On the mountain

Out the door and up the mountain, my local mini-mountain anyway. The last time I published photos from Ramberget it was summer and green. Now the leaves are gone, most of them, and you can see further into the woods. The rough tepes of storm-felled branches that kids have built, suddenly stand out. Pine needles trap snow.

Up on the top of the Ramberget, along the parapet by the panorama road, a series of sentinel snowmen have appeared. They’d given up on this winter, but the snowfall – and busy-body human intervention – has them them up and on guard. Grit for eyes and twigs for arms and looking a bit surprised actually.

From the top of the mountain there’s a view across the city, sometimes clear, sometimes fogged. There’s still snow in the air it seems. Coming down from the mountain, the precipitous face of one cliff looms threateningly over a house on Gamla Rambergsvägen.

To Sannegårdshamnen

Crossing the main road to the northern islands and the rail-track that serves Gothenburg harbour, a footbridge gives some height for photos away from Ramberget. We’re in uncertain territory here. Neither park nor wilderness; not industrial, not commercial, not residential. Not yet. This used to be part of Gothenburg’s shipbuilding district, but that was long ago. Some areas – the area around Sannegårds harbour in particular – have been redefined and repurposed. That will happen here too, eventually, but for the moment a snowfall makes it visually interesting.

In Sannegård, when we get there, where once ships were built and raw materials offloaded, now there are jetties for pleasure boats. Sifted over today by the snowfall. (I remember thirty years ago, walking here when it was a park for containers. I also remember rock salt stored here before being process for spreading over winter roads.)

Now the windows of waterside shops, closed against Covid and the winter, reflect apartment buildings on the other side.

Lindholmen and the river

Beyond Sannegård harbour is Old Lindholmen. This used to be an island in the River Göta. You can probably see it, looking at it from this angle. Later, as the land was drained and industry moved in, it became a island of residential houses occupied by workers employed around about. When the industries collapsed Lindholmen was threatened with demolition. It was saved and preserved by the efforts of local people. Now it forms the core of a new, much larger residential district along by the river.

And from the mouth of Sannegårdshamn, we come to the River Göta itself. Across the water the city’s western districts, Masthugget and Majorna, and Sjömanshustrun, The Seaman’s Wife, on her tower where she watches for sailors lost at sea

Here are totems that hark back to the commercial voyages to the orient made by the Gothenburg East India Company.

And that’s the end of our little camera safari. My hands are damn cold now and the camera has managed to discharge all of its battery in just two hours. Let’s call it a day and go and get in somewhere warm!

Visit Gothenburg? Not at present, perhaps, but later on…

---

Read more…