Reading-spots, part 8

 

Earlier this month, I was in Trondheim for a conference and also to perform a kind of personal pilgrimage. I went to university there, and spent seven formative years in the city, and there are numerous places where my own past comes closer and where I notice this release of pain and joy that we call nostalgia, which is memory filtered through our later knowledge of what has been lost and of what might have been.  

Last time I was in Trondheim for several consecutive days was in November 2018, a time in my life when everything seemed uncertain and where I knew I was barrelling towards the end of an era. In some ways, my latest return to Trondheim was marked by several of the same aspects, such as uncertainty, and a sense of loss. But it was also a joyous return, as I met loved ones and walked familiar streets, and as I saw that some of the old places where I left part of my past were still standing. One such place was Baklandet Skydsstation, a cafe housed in the premises of an old house - mainly from the nineteenth century - which has served as a house for manufacture of different kinds throughout its history. It is a quiet and lovely place, with the right kind of old-fashioned atmosphere, namely one that does not feel constructed or contrived.  

In many ways, the quiet, very Norwegian surrounds provided a notable contrast to the book I was then reading, Myriam Moscosa's wonderful novel León de Lidia (Lion of Lydia), which is a reflection on the history of her family and the collective memory of Ladino Jews who migrated from Bulgaria to Mexico in the wake of World War II, a memory that captures a lot of the fissures and faultlines of the twentieth century. Yet as I was there to reconnect with my own past, it also felt like very apposite reading. 

Perhaps a more notable and incontrovertible contrast was provided by the writing which I set out to do after I had finished eating. As I moved to a smaller table in a corner, I sat down to outline a new structure for a co-authored article that deals with the role of violence in medieval and early-modern utopian thinking. The topic is horrifyingly relevant in today's world, but in that particular corner of both the world and of the building in particular, the contrast between subject-matter and place was particularly notable.