The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about libraries. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!
Seventeen and sophisticated.
At least that’s what I thought at the time.
It was the age I took off on an adventure. A Rotary exchange that took me to a group of islands between Sweden and Finland. The Åland Islands. Swedish-speaking but belonging to Finland; As dark and cold in winter as my home in Australia was light and sunny.
I stepped off the tiny plane onto the tarmac with jeans and no socks. Australia in summer had seen the temperature a brutal 42 degrees Celcius and I hadn’t prepared for the minus temperatures of my destination.
My adventure had begun.
What does this have to do with libraries?
Everything.
The year was 1991. Pre-internet. The 1900s. Pre-email and video calls. Back in a time when an international phone call cost a kidney. Where letters and stamps were a weekly thing.
Arriving in a country where English wasn’t widely spoken had its challenges. There was no Babble or Duolingo. I’d never heard a Swedish word spoken and had my school German tucked away in my brain.
It was a complete immersion.
Mariehamn, the town I was to spend the following twelve months in, had a population of just under 10,000 and seemed big for this country girl from South Australia. I guess most people assumed I’d come from a big city because they asked me things like “Don’t you think it’s small?” My reply was always, “You have traffic lights! And car phones!” Little did they know I’d grown up ten kilometres out of a town of about 350 people. And it had no library.
This new town, on the other hand, had the most amazing library! A beautiful building, curved, with lots of large windows you could sit in, a high ceiling, lofty and light even in the cold winters.
To this bookworm, it was heaven!
I’ve written about my love of books. A love so deep that I became an English teacher. I’ve escaped to Narnia, journeyed with Bilbo and Frodo, dealt with a cement garden, solved crimes with Trixie Beldon, and cried in The Silver Brumby. As I got older it was DH Lawrence, Austen, the Brontés, and Shakespeare.
So to find the most incredible English language section of the amazing library in Mariehamn felt something like a miracle.
I spent hours at the library. Immersed in all kinds of books. It was where I found the wonderful Anita Brookner. I loved Latecomers so much, I bought my own copy—and I still have it! It’s a long-time favourite. (I sometimes wonder how a book about two rather dissimilar German refugees brought to England from Nazi Germany and how later in their lives they confront their past, would interest a seventeen-year-old. Perhaps I was a little sophisticated after all.)
I found solace between the pages of these books. Peace in the bookish space full of light. An escape from a language that I came to learn but needed respite from as one does when you’re learning to understand. I laughed and cried. Walked beside detectives, travelled in time, and peeked into the lives of others as I sat and read, thousands of kilometres away from the country I called home.
The library was a refuge. A haven. A gift.
I remember going to the library in the last week of my exchange. Soaking in the atmosphere. Remembering the details. And then I went home, back to Australia. To uni, life, and other libraries.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be back again. That I would live in Mariehamn. That I would build a new life in the place I called home for a year in 1991. Life is full of surprises!
And what did I do when I arrived in Mariehamn again, mid-forties with a deep love of books? I went to that magical library, got myself a library card and borrowed books.
More on books by me:
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You never know the circuitous path life will weave. I never expected to retire from the school district where I began my teaching career. But quite a few moves, different districts and state agencies fell in-between those two bookends. The crazy part is that when I left, we lived 70 miles away from that district. Then I went on for another eight years as an independent consultant. Now, I find myself in the career I dreamed of when I left college--writer and photographer. All that happened because I paid attention and noticed the world and opportunities, often with a leap of faith and a willingness to jump in the middle of uncertainty. Who knows what's next? And...I adore books and libraries!
I love that you ended up back there, almost as if the library was calling you home!