Who was Hilding?
I have written once before here in the blog about my collection of old journals. Sometimes there is a box in some vintage shop full of them and I can rarely resist going there and reading them. Sometimes I find a journal filled with notes and then I buy it. It’s a year of someone’s life I buy for ten Swedish crones.
Finally, I found a journal from 1928. On the front, it is noted that it was a “Christmas present at Folkhögskolan Christmas 1927” and I understand that the owner lived in the area of Färgelanda in Dalsland, Sweden. I get the feeling from the notes that the owner was a young woman.
On the third of April, there is a longer note about a visit by a person named Oskar. She writes that in the evening they went to a study circle together but that she left early because of another meeting with Hilding. It then says that “he got his pen”. The note ends with the enigmatic: “That was the last time he was at my place. Then we went out for a walk for a while. There was something strange about Hilding!”
Not a word is written about Hilding and I as a reader am left with a hundred questions. Who was Hilding? What was so important about his pen? Why was that the last time he came there? And above all – what did she find so “strange” about Hilding?
In May, I further read that she fell ill and had to go to the hospital just as she was about to travel to Skara for further studies. The application was already sent, but I don’t get to know more about this. On the September sheet, it says: “Don’t forget October” which seems to me like an unnecessary reminder, since you don’t forget October in the first place.
Yes, you probably understand. These old journals are a real gold mine for the imagination! Right now I’m writing a script where information from another old journal is allowed to slip in and out of the text as it pleases. The question now is if and when the enigmatic Hilding will appear in my script. I can see in front of me how they walk in the spring evening. It’s the 1920s. What are they saying? Hilding is evasive and enigmatic. They will never see each other again.
–
Mattias Kvick is an author and illustrato