HEIMBLIND (2021)

I grew up in a small fishing-village in Northern Norway with approximately 500 permanent residents. A place where everybody knows each other. All my teenage years I longed to move, and the first week after finishing high school, I sat on a plane bound for Oslo with a one-way ticket.
Childhood in my village consisted knowing every face you met in the local store. Driving boats long before we learned to drive cars. All our footballs eventually ending up at sea. Endless boredom. Drinking stolen booze under stockfish racks. Cold days at fish factories earning fast money cutting cod-tongues. Hitchhiking to the nearest town. And the unpleasant feeling of always being seen.

Heimblind (home blind) is a term about not seeing the beauty and qualities of your hometown. We were 12 in my class when I grew up, and none of us saw the value of nature and culture, the people and the sea. Many still don’t.

13. March 2020 Oslo went into lockdown, and I found myself on a plane heading north again. When Covid-19 hit the country, I ended up spending most of 2020 back home in my small hometown. The time I spent at home forced me to see my village with new eyes - as a grown up, as someone who moved and then returned.

Using both a documentary approach and staged photos I have looked into my personal associations to my upbringing and my hometown. I followed the kids that are now growing up in the village, and I realize that little has changed since I was the one sitting on the benches on the town square dreaming of another life far, far away.