Landscapes 6 essays.

Nordic landscapes may be mountains, hills, fields, valleys, forests, but also heath, bog or tundra and certainly islands. The landscapes may be almost natural or highly shaped by culture. The differences within the Nordic region are considerable, especially between the north and the south. A landscape is expansion, depth and horizon; it has its particular visual and natural rhythms, and it consists of various natural and architectural elements. It provides the conditions of life, it forms and is formed by ways of life, it may be gazed upon, and bodies may move through it. Landscapes contain memories and myths, ideas of belonging or not belonging, of nation and identity, images of hardships and bliss. Literature provides landscapes with all these symbolic forms, infusing literary commonplace with historical place. As landscape becomes more and more inhabited, it turns into cityscape, as just as island and coastal landscapes literally border on seascapes.

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