We have been lucky! Lucky to have been hosted by amazing people in the little vegetable farm in Bygdeå, been invited to their sauna, swimming trips and sharing rhubarb pie … crafting little bycicles with a visiting kid, piling fire wood and singing karaoke!
While our stay and preparation time in Bygdeå, we also fixed our bikes, sorted the communal equipment and had a few movie screenings of Sámi films. We enjoyed potatoes, parsnip and beet root from the farm and of course ate quite some knäckebröd.
When it was time to say good byes and head towards Ubmeje/Umeå, they were not forever good byes — we actually saw eachother the same evening again. That evening in Ubmeje there was a queer indigenous open stage event that we went to see. There we got to see amazing, powerful and tender performances by queer indigenous people from all over arctic indigenous areas.
The next days – thanks again to our hosts and their great connections, we were lucky to stay in a home of another welcoming person (who we unfortunately didn’t get to meet in person). We were lucky with the dumpsters as we found a lot of lentils, bulgur, candy and some dessert-baking kits… We visited Bokkafé Angbett and Umeå Cykeljunta (bike kitchen), baked for the midsummer picnic(s) and welcomed new people to our group.
For midsummer we got recommendations and invites: we attended traditional midsommar celebration in Gammlia: dancing around the midsummer pole, visited Tráhppie — the Sámi culture center and cafe, as well as the Västerbottens museum. We were invited to two picnics: one for midday and one for the evening (to midnight…). We shared pies, cakes, dumpstered goods, folk dances, music and had a good time at the beautiful river spot.
Our luck and people’s friendly invites didn’t end in Ubmeje though: we got invited to visit Olofsfors in our way, so there we headed next! From Ubmeje to Olofsfors we decided to split: half of us camped one night by the beach midway while the other half stayed in the city one night longer (with a movie night of the film Same blod / Sami blood).
On our way we were lucky again: we got only a little bit of rain and wet luggage, bearable amount of mosquito bites and treasure in unlocked dumpsters. We found huge amount of bananas, quite some bread and vegetables too (just to meantion a few examples). Unfortunately we just didn’t spot the street sign saying «Ubmeje» – we tried to spot it as we had just learned that the city had finally gotten the Ume Sami name as the other official name for the city, after 13+ years of struggle for it!
At our next stop in Olofsfors bruk area we were welcomed to stay in a worshop space of a person who we actually had met before already in Bygdeå and Ubmeje as well. Great queer connections everywhere we go! We made pizza in the pizza oven, got to see the historic forge, made good founds in the flea markets (loppis) closeby: big pot for 20 kronor!!, AND got invited to a lovely sauna! (Story tells there was even more saunas to come the next days… ;))
Pizzaaa
Dumpstered treasures