Yes, that title is blatantly stolen from an orchestral piece by the Norwegian composer Edward Grieg (but he’s been dead for over a century, so he can’t complain much), but in a way it fits the location that I visited last weekend. The Tykarp Cave outside Hässleholm in the northeastern part of my home province Skåne is an old underground limestone quarry (that closed in the late 1800s) that you can visit year round as a tourist attraction, but this particular weekend they held their Christmas market.
I’ve never been to that particular place before so when I spotted the event on Facebook I suggested it to my photo buddy (a.k.a. Dad) and we said “why the heck not?”. So we packed our photo gear in the car and drove the hour north to get to the location. When we got there it turned out that it was a pretty big operation; the field that doubled as the parking area was at least half full already and we got there about two hours after they’d opened.
Looks like the guy is happy with his Christmas straw goat purchase!
That food truck sells fish stuff…so I was not a customer.
“I want candy!”
That torch was LOUD!
There were a few stalls and attractions (a very forlorn looking merry-go-round for instance) above ground and a few food places, but of course the main attraction was the underground areas. I had no idea what to expect, other than it being a cave (or so I thought at least…I didn’t know that it was man-made mostly), but it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was also nice to get out of the wind that was howling by above ground. I wouldn’t say that it was warm below ground (we all looked like we were vaping with the breaths coming out of our mouth), but it was a bit warmer than up top.
Into the underworld we go!
I was surprised that they were able to get as many vendors down there as they did, including people selling refrigerated delicacies like cheesecakes (yummy stuff by the way, I bought some), cheeses and meats. I asked one of the vendors how they managed to get that store-sized fridge down there and he just laughed and said that it had taken quite a bit of time and work to do so (and probably enough swearing to singe the beards of several Santas!).
Graffiti from over a century ago
It was nice exploring the underground areas (but sticking to the illuminated paths…wouldn’t want to wander off into the darkness) for a while and then exit via the ramp up towards the sunlight. Yes, we DID have a few moments of sunlight as we did our day trip. It’s hard to believe it, but we actually needed sunglasses during the drive up to and back from the market.
Back to the surface we go!
It’d be interesting to see the place without a lot of vendors, making for a much spookier scene I am guessing. I did process one picture to look particularly spooky…as if it’d been taken many decades ago and just now spotted in an old archive or something. I don’t think it worked quite that well, but when I show it to people they go…okay…wait a minute…what’s that? So I guess it does work…at least a little bit.
It could be a bit more spooky if I put in more artifacts making it look older I think…like an old wet plate shot.