Operation Aurora - Juxtapositions Part I

Getting out of Stockholm was a lot easier than getting in. I was sad to leave, as I'd come to enjoy my time there, which is a good thing since I ended up spending a couple days more than I had first planned---the timing of the Mastodon concert threw things off a little. Regardless, it was time to move on so I did. The snow of the day before had put a nice, light blanket of white across the countryside. The road wound around low hills and cut through some of the bigger ones. It actually reminded me a lot of driving through areas of Kentucky. The foreign road signs and lengthy place names full of umlauts and overrings dispells that illusion pretty quickly.

The drive from Stockholm to Oslo is only about six hours, a relatively short drive compared to several of my roadtrips, but I quit for the day in the small town or Årjäng, Sweden. Just outside of Årjäng, in the tiny community of Båstnäs, is the Båstnässkroten---it literally means the Båstnäs junkyard, but it's more commonly referred to in English as the Båstnäs Car Cemetery. Directions to this place absolutely suck. Most sources give an address that's about 10 or more kilometers off. I spent nearly an hour driving back and forth across the same three roads trying to find this place. I decided to venture down the main road until me and a logging truck slid to a halt as we nearly became one. I gave up and stewed over my failure while eating yet another McDonalds meal (notice I haven't been talking much about food this trip? Yeah, there's a reason.) I took advantage of the free wifi while eating my sad Quarter Pounder (A QP with cheese, though the boxes clearly say Quarter Pounder) and found that Google Earth had a different address, and called it Ivan's Junk Yard (Ivan and his brother supposedly own the place) and decided to give it one more try. I went down the same road, passed the skid marks from where I nearly became one with the trees, and about 4 kilometers further I saw the first definitive signs of the dead.

Across several acres of densely wooded Swedish countryside are the final resting places for hundreds, if not thousands, of old Scandinavian cars from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. There are two common stories for the origins of these cars. The most popular is that Båstnäs was the resting place of car from US soldiers leaving Europe after World War II. There are several problem with this story, mainly that Sweden did not have a US base or contingency of US soldiers at the time and Sweden is a stupid place for everyone to leave Europe. The other story is the cars were cast aside when the country switched from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right. This has its own issues as many of the cars, including some of the oldest, are correctly configured for driving on the right. At the time of the change, in 1967, 90% of Swedish drivers already drove vehicles with steering wheels on the left. Why, I'm not entirely sure, though Norway and Finland already drove on the right so that may have something to do with it.

Regardless of the reason, the forest and a large, open field are full of classic cars rotting and rusting away and slowly being reclaimed and overgrown by nature. Some are stacked three high in rows creating industrial walls, some are thrown in piles haphazardly, some have fallen into small recesses of water, currently frozen and dusted with snow. Some have trees and shrubs growing through them, many have thick, lush carpets of moss or are covered with liken like forest barnacles. I've  seen pictures of the car cemetery in the summer and it's a seemingly benign, almost pleasant juxtaposition of nature and mechanics. In the winter, with a coat of snow and long shadows from the low sun it becomes somber, gothic, even melancholy. Ever since I was a kid I would see faces in the fronts and backs of cars. Tail lights making the eyes while grills and bumpers make mouths. These rotting, rusting vehicles often had ghastly faces. Some resembling metal skulls seemingly shocked to find themselves dead, some even managing to look grotesque with headlights hanging out like dangling eyeballs and grills that looked like pained grins. I found it all oddly beautiful and spent well over an hour walking through the frozen forest. I likely would have spent longer had I not slipped while trying to climb down a large, snow covered rock and landed on my wrist trying to break my fall. I continued on for another 10 or 15 minutes before it became painful just to hold the camera or try to navigate around the stacks of cars. Finally I called it quits, packed some snow in a plastic bag that I wrapped around my wrist, and cussed continually for about two hours as I made my way to Oslo. (Continued in Part II)