The large number of photographs necessary to visualize this text has compelled me to include them as thumbnail pictures since otherwise the page load time could become prohibitively long. The same photos can be viewed upon clicking on a particular thumbnail picture. This will launch a corresponding separate page from my photo gallery of Kullaberg. I advice the readers to close the separate page with a photo in order to avoid a congestion on the screen.

I invite and encourage the readers to visit the entire gallery using the menu in the left hand side frame on the screen.     (AMK)

---

THE   KULLABERG   DIARY   (2001 – 2002)

ANDREW M. KOBOS

To Peter Kobos,
my son in Edmonton,
with the loving thoughts
from a far away country.

Initiation

July 2000

I visited Kullaberg for the first time. On a cloudy day, Barbara and I hiked the red trail to the lighthouse and a part of the blue one, exclusively on the top of the ridge. I was struck by the beauty of the forest, particularly the beech part.

Beech forest

From the top next to the lighthouse, we saw two coves enclosed in cliffs, whose beauty was apparent even from the distance above. – "I've got to come back here and go down to the coves, if one day I return to Sweden" – I decided.

The Diary

October 8, 2001

Having married Barbara, I moved to Sweden from Canada, relocating from Edmonton, AB, to Lund - a city approximately 100 km south of Kullaberg.

October 13, 2001

On a sunny Saturday, less than a week after my arrival, I am back at Kullaberg. Confused by the fuzzy trail markings and equally fuzzy memories from more than a year ago, my intended shortcuts turned into "long cuts". Finally, I reached the blue trail. Here I was again, amid the beautiful autumn forest, beech-trees, moss covered tree trunks and boulders.

Beech trees

My Nikon's shutter clicked frequently as I was yet again immersed in the beauty of these surroundings. My long term spiritual bond to Kullaberg has begun. Immediately, I realized that it was to become my retreat.

I walked steeply down to three coves, Käringmalen, Josefinelust, and Djupadal. Even with artificial trail aids such as wooden steps, metal railings and fixed ropes, the steep descent on the wet gullies and cliff slopes required some attention. However, once I reached the bottom, the pebble beaches of the coves, the view of the cliffs and the sea, became absolutely breathtaking. The rocks, like a reef, spread far into the sea. Despite a sunny day, I found the coves in dark shadow. The southern ridge appeared too high and too steep for the low October sun to let the sunshine reach the beaches and the cliffs. However, I noticed that the colours of the rocks laden cliffs varied distinctly from cove to cove, despite their proximity; the coves are spread not more than a kilometre apart, along the same shore. Käringmalen had the predominantly brownish, Josefinelust reddish and Djupadal (the deepest-lying cove) bluish and yellowish rocks.

Western cliff Käringmalen

Western cliff with the "Dog" Djupadal

Although the shades would change, the differences in colour would persist even in the spring and the summer time. Also, the colours of the pebbles on the beaches differed, from the very bright, fading-pink in Käringmalen, to red in Josefinelust and bluish in Djupadal.

When I arrived home, I discovered several quite dangerous and potentially deadly ticks on my body. Next day, a doctor surgically removed them, prescribing an additional antibiotic.

May 7, 2002

It was spring in this windy and mostly foggy place in wintertime . The sky was sunny, as I reached the blue trail at an earlier hour. The sun shone on the shallow-lying coves, the colours of the rocks were brighter than during the previous fall, but the most impressive was the forest on the top of the ridge. The buds on the trees had just burst with tiny leaves, whose fresh green colour was wonderful. The moss on the creased old stems and small forest boulders was also green in colour, getting rid of the winter browns. The nature had just been awakened and the life returned to Kullaberg in its perpetual annual cycle.

"Back to Life I"

"Back to Life II"

My major discovery occurred at the woods-clearing at the mouth of the descent into the Josefinelust cove: a "colony" of stems densely covered with polypores, i.e. bracket mushrooms growing both in downward and outward direction on dying trees as well as on already dead and decaying ones. Most of the fallen stems were rotten, but one of them still stood up high, with its top broken off. It looked like a Haida Indian totem pole on the Canadian Queen Charlotte Islands in the Pacific. What a feast for a tree-loving photographer such as I!

"Kullaberg's Totem"

Bracket mushrooms

Nonetheless the early May appeared to be still too soon for the sun rays to reach the Djupadal cove. Its name quite appropriately means "deep valley". The cove was covered in shadow, but its majestic details were clearly visible. At its entrance, there was a huge stone, while an adjacent magnificent brown-reddish rock looked like a gigantic head with a clear facial profile of an old sage. An obvious magic!

"Djupadal's Magic"

"No entry!"

The bluish colours of the previous fall became more brown, and the beach pebbles were bleached. To the west, on a tower-like sea line cliff and on small rocks sticking out of the water, sat big seagulls like albatrosses, their croaks audible on the beach.


"The Tower"
Djupadal

The dog-like rock on the western edge of the beach had changed from bluish to deep brown. The cliffs continued to look menacing. Under the water, they immediately fell sharply to the deep-lying seabed. To the east, a large fist-like boulder lied on the beach, as if broken off from the cliff and tossed away by an awesome force.

"The Dog" Djupadal

"The Fist" Djupadal

On the eastern cliff, a vertical rock was speckled with dried-out yellow algae, forming a tiny paddle with a pebbled bottom. This was a miniature of a majestic place, for me a reminder of a lagoon in the Fitzroy Range in Patagonia.


"The Lagoon"
Djupadal

I climbed back to the forest trail and headed west to Josefinelust. The rocks of its western cliff were distinctly reddish. At a short range, the face of one of the cliff’s components resembled the solid rock face of a peak in the Italian Dolomites. The eastern part of the cove beach was covered by large pieces of rock rubble, while the outward eastern cliff had a steep and smooth slope, made of large brown slabs.

"The Dolomites" Josefinelust

"The Dolomites" Josefinelust

The slab slope Josefinelust

In the shallow-lying Käringmalen, the cliff coves as well as the beach, received a lot of sunshine. On the stony beach, the embedded rocks of water-eroded, elaborate forms were clearly discernable, covered with fresh sea algae or weeds.

Embedded beach rocks Käringmalen

Embedded beach rocks Käringmalen

In front of the eastern cliff, there was an island-like a cluster of rocks. One vertical rock was particularly striking, resembling a square-edged profile of an old man's head.

Käringmalen

"The Old Man and the Sea" Käringmalen

"The Beachhead" Käringmalen

The sunlit small rocks embedded in the beach, with deep shadows of their intricate folds, looked like a sea monsters run aground: a straddled octopus, a shark with a fearsome eye, or a lobster’s claws. A small nearby rock in the sea resembled a large Galapagos tortoise surrounded by seaweeds, as if with its food supply.

"The Octopus" Käringmalen

"The Shark" Käringmalen

"The Tortoise" Käringmalen

To the west, the top edge of the cliffs portrayed a sea monster's comb. In its foreground, a huge rock lied, like a giant bowl with a mangled rim.

"The Comb" Käringmalen

"The Super Bowl" Käringmalen

A web of the contiguous bedrock mini gorges looked like a time-tunnel from a science fiction movie.


"The Time Tunnel"
Käringmalen

The colours of the doughnut- and egg-like pebbles on the beach ranged from pink to blue, with their darker streaks embedded into their surfaces. The particularly charming was the border between the land and the sea, altering its location with each wave reaching the beach.

"Twixt Land and Sea" Visitgrottan

"Twixt Land and Sea" Käringmalen

The pebbles looked very different dry than when they were wet. In contrast to the dry stones, the wet ones had a vivid intensity of colour, much nicer to the touch. The sunrays played a mysterious game of colours, flickering refractive patterns on the thin film-like layer of water over the beach stones.

"Twixt Land and Sea" Käringmalen

"Twixt Land and Sea" Djupadal

Further west, I descended from the trail into the next cove called Visitgrottan. I took pictures of a huge trapezoidal boulder resembling a rubble container lying on the beach, and big offshore rocks. One of rocks looked very much like Matterhorn's south face.

"The Rubble Container" Visitgrottan

"Matterhorn" Visitgrottan

On this beach, just at the seawater, the effect of fresh algae was an incredible sight to see, particulaly on one rock sticking out at the sea line. I called it "The Sentinel." The colourful beach pebbles bordering the sea were surrounded by foam bubbles of seawater.

"The Sentinel" Visitgrottan

"Twixt Land and Sea" Visitgrottan

I did not continue westward along the sea line to the grotto. It was getting too late.

June 18, 2002

I paid another visit to the gigantic rock head in Djupadal. This time, around the Midsummer Day, the sun flooded Djupadal with its rays. In the sky and over the sea, there were small cirrus clouds. The polarizing filter helped me to take impressive pictures of this magic head of a sage into stone.

"The Sage" Djupadal

"The Dog" Djupadal

The contrasts were very high on the sunlit pebble beach. My favourite dog-shaped rock looked black this time.

And here I was in Djupadal, taking pictures of the dog rock as a man arrives from the trail with a real, big yet friendly black dog of his own. Apart from two of us, there was nobody else in the cove. We started a conversation in English.

- "Well, now, we have two big dogs here" - I told him with my stony dog behind me.
- "Where is your dog? - the man asked, looking around somewhat concerned.
- "There" - I answer, pointing my thumb backwards, over my shoulder.
A minute or two passed, and the man asked again.
- "Is your dog a he or a she?"
- "I wish I knew" - I answered.
The man becomes totally baffled and perplexed.
- "So, where is your dog?".
Finally, I turned around and showed him my rock solid black dog.

* * *

In general, at the coves and on the trail, I did not notice many man-made things, apart from those to make the descent and climb to and from the coves more safe. I did see a little bit of garbage left on the cove beaches, a few benches and directional signs on the northern trail, and, although very sporadically, a sawn-off tree branch. In every cove, however, I saw doughnut- or egg-shaped, almost white pebbles deposited on larger rocks or onto natural small shelves in the cliff walls. Clearly, these were mementos of someone's presence here or token assurances that someone would return here. In Djupadal, I, too, put such a pebble. Also in Djupadal on a beach rock, I saw a lone and particularly large such a pebble, standing upward like a gigantic Columbus egg. Perhaps, it was to be an offering to a pagan god.


"The Offering"
Djupadal

* * *

Later that day I hiked to the western-most tip of the peninsula, to the cape one might say. My aim was to take pictures of groves of small trees, like dwarf mountain pines. On the barren, wind swept open plateau, among boulders, low, bush-like trees, much tilted inland by the pounding gales, formed on the ground an unusual creeping tangle of bare, twisted boughs. Illuminated by the early-evening sun, they looked quite reddish.

"Gale pounded"

"The Creeping Tangle"

July 23, 2002

My next trip to Kullaberg, this time with Barbara, ended in Mölle. The unexpected and rather heavy storm made us to retreat by the next bus to Höganäs (a town, world-famous for the beautiful and durable ceramics manufactured there) and further on to Helsingborg, right across the straight from Danish Helsingor known from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

August 5, 2002

I started from Josefinelust. I took more pictures of the western cliff rocks resembling the Dolomites.

In Käringmalen where the sea was exceptionally quiet and extremely blue, I took more pictures, too. Then, my hike brought me to the Visitgrottan cove. This time, I walked further west amongst large boulders on the shore, up to the grotto.

Among the boulders, I continued west. Suddenly, a magnificent view opened to my eyes. In the sea, there were several big rocks of more than usually regular, quite trapezoidal shapes, their walls rising vertically. On the shore, the bedrock was fairly smooth, but several rocks stuck out. One of them, conical or perhaps phallic in shape, was particularly impressive.

"Born from the Sea" Visitgrottan

"The Phallus" Visitgrottan

The whole scenery was ideally sunlit and on the sky white clouds were sparse; all that offered a photographic feast. At the end, somewhat higher in the almost red, intricately cracked cliff wall a fairly large grotto opened; this one much more spectacular, particularly when I looked out from its interior.


From the Grotto
Visitgrottan

I got back to the trail. Through the forest, I continued west past the Kullen lighthouse. Not far from it, holding to a thick rope that was simply fixed to a tree and thrown freely on the muddy ground of the wide but steep gully, I lowered myself into another cove, whose name was not quite clear to me, perhaps Kullalå. It turned out to be a broad and long one, untypically for Kullaberg coves. I got to the beach littered with large, almost black boulders. Very close to the shore, an island, a solid rock, almost pitch-black against the setting sun, rose from the sea.

Kullalå cove

"The Rock", Kullalå

Along the sea line the cliff had several cracked levels as if floors. Walking one of such shelves, close to the intrically cracked, almost red rock wall to the left, and somewhat uphill, I reached the grotto in the fairly grassy northern slope of the ridge. It appeared to be wide open, more like a rock shelter, and not as impressive as I had expected.


"The Crack Network"
Kullalå

To the right, somewhat further to south-west, the cliff's shelves seemed to lead to another cove that might be inacessible, at least easily. I have left my exploration of this region for the next year, 2003.

Before I climbed back to the lighthouse area, I reached the cove1s eastern edge as well. A huge vertical boulder resembled a leaning tower.

"The Leaning Tower"
Kullalå

September 21-22, 2002

On the occasion of "Kulturnatten" (The Culture Night) in Lund, I had a large photographic exhibition, entitled "Den Magisca Skåne", (The Magical Scania), sponsored by Anders Ekström and his "FotoFort" (my local photo lab). After Hasse Aarenstrup had taught me the intricacies of operating their sophisticated print processor, I made the large prints myself. Approximately one-half of the 71 colour enlargements portrayed Kullaberg, the remainder were the pictures of other places on Scania's shore, as well as unusually looking trees, mostly in detail. I heard many praises and questions such as: "Where did you come from?" Why are you interested just in Kullaberg? "Why do you take such pictures?" "What do you see in the subjects so chosen?" "What an unusual and refreshing look you have!" "Why are these mostly austere details and nothing of the idyllic landscape for which Sweden is known from the postcards?" Well...

Photo Exhibition "The Magical Scania"
Lund, September 2002

October 7, 2002

On this beautiful though cold and windy day, my early fall trip to Kullaberg, the last one in 2002. I carried a tripod. This time, I decided to try to get to a cove called Sockertoppen, west of Djupadal, reportedly a very beautiful and isolated one. There is no trail that would lead to it from the top, while climbing across the cliff from Djupadal, along the sea line, would be too dangerous. I reached the mouth of Djupadal and headed northwest, uphill through the forest, in the hope of finding at least the top of Sockertoppen, and exploring the possibilities of descending into it. Struggling through the bush and thorny scrubs, I crossed the shoulder of the ridge and began descending somewhere, but after an hour I gave up. High from the slope, I could only see Djupadal's western edge from the "outside". I saw the sea waves breaking heavily on its cliffs.

Djupadal's rim

It has become clear to me that I would not be able to reach the Sockertoppen cove from the top, at least without the help of a guide and an experienced climber. I am already making plans for hiring next year a motorboat to get there from the sea. I want to see and photograph Sockertoppen's rocks of amazing shapes, like the "Napoleon hat".

For now, however, several great pictures of very impressive dying or fallen trees had to compensate for my unsuccessful efforts.

"A Slow Death"

Dead Tree

Rather than going again from the trail starting point downhill to the shadowed Djupadal, I decided to go once more to Käringmalen, hoping to get good photographic conditions there. On my way there, in the forest, I photographed moss covered tree stems, tangled branches, rotten fallen trunks, and sunrays getting trough the autumn leaves. One place in the forest looked quite like from a fairy-tale or the Tolkien novel.

"The Mould"

"Light in October"

"The Tolkien Kullaberg"

Indeed, when at 3:30 pm I arrived at the Käringmalen beach, I still found some sunshine on the upper parts of the eastern cliffs, although most of the cove was in deep shadow, The cliffs to the west were very dark. But this time I had the tripod. The sea was quite rough, roaring in the strong wind, deep blue-green in colour, almost fluorescent in the low sun shining from the west. What a contrast to the smooth, almost motionless sea two months earlier it was!

"The Twilight" Käringmalen

"The Dusk" Käringmalen

The turtle- and seal-shaped rocks in the sea were now midnight-blue, their top edges glowing against the rough yet brighter sea. The octopus- and shark-like bedrocks on the beach had all but disappeared under a thick layer of dark, dead sea grass. The whole scenery looked totally different than that in the summer; now being extremely austere and quite menacing. "This is like the landscape on the Moon", I kept saying to myself. Except that the sea was real and wet.

"The Tortoise" Käringmalen

"The Seal" Käringmalen

"A Moonscape with the Sea" Käringmalen

Struggling in the cold wind to level the tripod head, I suddenly got my hiking boots full of cold Kattegat seawater. My soaked boots would have almost dried with my body heat before I reached home four hours later, but after two more days I would pay for this with a bronchitis.

I had never encountered many people in the coves, particularly in those somewhat afar from the lighthouse. But interestingly enough on that October day on a two mile stretch of the trail I did meet not a living soul, even a bird. What a splendid isolation!

Why Kullaberg ?

Why do I go frequently to this rather desolated place?

The most straightforward, short, and immediate answer would be "to take pictures there", for the sheer pleasure of taking pictures that I know only too well. But after all, I will never take pictures of all amazing rocks and trees in the world.

However, I keep returning there more in order to be among the menacing rocks that change their colours depending on the season, weather, lighting conditions, and the position of the sun; to be in the deserted coves, on the empty, stony and rocky beaches; to look at the fine texture of the cliff rocks and the beach pebbles; to touch the dry and wet pebbles of many exquisite colours and shades; to see the sun setting over the seascape, to listen to the colour changing sea that at one time may quietly whisper, or roar at another; to be in a beautiful, old, and differentiated forest; to admire the austerity of tree shapes and rock forms.

To me, it has been a great yet humbling experience, mostly a spiritual one, to be there with Nature, in a way to talk to Nature, to talk to life. And through my camera, to extract, or even somehow transform the Nature’s natural beauty, its unspoken mysteriousness, and powers.

And above all I visit Kullaberg to find solitude, to restore my soul.

All photographs by Andrew Kobos;   © 2002

Copyright © 2002-2004   Andrew Kobos