Yvonne Nimar has been many things. Today, though, she was an artist in sculpture and photography. We visited her exhibition, upstairs at Ekebyhov Slott. Her mediums were glass, stone, and clay. Each of her little figures has its own, delicate and exquisite face. I was sorely tempted to buy one.
We didn’t know there was going to be an exhibition at the slott. We were going for entirely different reasons. Fika, obviously, but also Mirinda had discovered that they were having a chamber music concert.
It was our first time at Ekebyhov though it’s not far from us – the satnav said it would take Max eight minutes, and it did. The slott was started in the 1670’s and looked particularly lovely against the gorgeous blue backdrop that was the sky today.
Ekebyhov came into being when two farms were combined by Claes Horn – Ekeby and Hovgården. Hovgården had been owned by Sten Sture who, while not the actual monarch, ruled Sweden for a while. He was also instrumental in breaking apart the Kalmar Union rather than try and fix it from within, so I guess he was a bit of a Brexiter. Or should that be Swedexiter?
Claes built a stone castle in the 1620’s, next to where the wooden slott was built later. The stone castle was pulled down in the 18th century. Ekebyhov was eventually purchased by Albrecht Ihre and it remained in his family for 190 years, when it was bought by the Ekerö municipality in 1980.
There are often functions held at the slott and, of course, people can just walk around the extensive grounds. The top floor contains a series of meeting rooms and there’s the café on the ground floor. Then, of course, there’s the room where we sat through the concert given by FNYKO, the Färingsö new chamber orchestra.
Färingsö is the next island, to the left of Ekerö so it is not surprising that most of the audience were related to the musicians.
It looks like they were all posing for this photo but they weren’t. It was purely accidental. The reason they’re smiling is because the conductor, Victor Elinder, had said something funny in Swedish. And, because everything was said in Swedish, we had little idea what was going on. I did hear him say Elvis just before they played Love me Tender and, before that, a Bach minuet but that was about it.
Now, Mirinda was quite strong in her opinion of the orchestra. To be fair, the woman playing violin in the centre of the photograph did grimace whenever a bum note was played by the brass section. And, to be honest, she did grimace quite a bit. But I was a little more generous.
I thought they were a group of people who liked to play their instruments and enjoyed playing together, working on both easy and difficult pieces. I enjoyed it. Besides, I’ve heard worse brass sections at amateur musical performances where the trumpet player is generally imitating squawking cats.
Meanwhile, upstairs, there was the Wall of Boobs.
What a lovely way to spend a lovely Sunday.
