Collections & Things

— in memory of A —

So many things are happening in the world. UK is struggling to get hold of Norwegian gas because of a leakage on a gas exporting platform. Japan is busy explaining why their proud car markers are cheating on safety tests. While some of my friends and colleagues decided to travel to Svalbard to see the midnight son and dangerous animals. on my side, things have been a bit too quiet in the past weeks. 

Speaking of Svalbard, I was reminded that the last time A flied to Svalbard to collect sea water for the Mini Museum Oceans collection project. He's been collecting the various versions of the mini museums since the whole things started in the first place. He was even invited by the founder once to visit his studio in Washington D.C. as well as a smithsonian museum tour. The founder is Swedish and I guess they found lots of Nordic connections during the whole trip. A got to hand make his own mini museum and even sealed his and the founder's hair in the block. It does not look as neat or nice as the standard version, but the scrawled hand written title texts revealed a man's ecstasy when he was making it.

In addition to the mini museums, A have collected various things over the years. He did not collect anything for their monetary values of such, but more for his own fascination on nature and culture, as well as for the sake of valuable memories.

DVDs. A have collected over 2500 DVDs, many of which were bought from HMV London. I have visited the HMV shop on Oxford street once with him, Karo and Nina a few years back. It was very fun visiting the shop even though we did not buy a lot of DVDs that time. Who still watch DVD today! Not even A did that. A started a few years ago to transform his DVDs to a digital form, and shared the films through ReadyCloud NAS service with me. Movies and a few tv series plays a big part when he was alone, and helped him vent his emotions especially when he was down. He was getting too busy to get the transformations done and the convenient NAS service was shut down by NetGear. I guess it ends up on my desk now. I do like his taste on movies. Maybe one day I will continue the tasks he left half way.

Minerals and fossils. They do look cool. To have something so old and outstanding as that on your finger tip is actually a very intimate and intriguing experience. A obviously loved them so much that he collected quite actively for a long period. As I am aware, most of the minerals, fossils and materials were bought from the internet, who know which sites. Some were bought in the flee market in Stavern, where his family cabin locates. A found a fossil once outside of the cabin. The stone had some black traces on it and suggested some sort of ancient shell animal. However, it turned out that the black traces were from a car tire rubber, after he tried to wash the "fossil" with water. Jokes aside, some of the things I am also fascinated from the collection are: the lightest material (graphene airgel) made for spacecrafts, a natural iron crystal, shark teeth, freeze dried mammoth flash, and a fossil of ancient poop. I am happy that Christian gives them a new home, takes care of them, and exhibits them in his new cellar living room. They look great there. 

Cartoons. There had always been quite a number of mysterious boxes of things in the place we lived. I never really tried to figure out what they were. It turned out to be his collection of cartoons that he grew up with as well as after he was finished growing up. His favorites include: "Spirous by Franquin, Tintin by Herge, Milo Manara, Dany, Watterson and others" (as per A's own words). I will also add Donald Duck. I spent a whole day sorting all the boxes of cartoons a few weeks after he passed away. Those cartoons have given him so much comfort in the earlier years of his life before me. I can feel him somehow through the cartoons. Some of them have become part of who A was. Myself is not a big cartoon reader, but I love Tom og Tigern very much and felt an instant connection to the rebellious boy and his tiger toy. I got a stuffed tiger toy from A for my birthday in 2018, and it is the best gift I have ever received. He lays beside me almost all the time and even went on to the Gothenburg trip earlier in 2024 with me. Most of cartoons have been handed over to the rest of the family, but I kept a few Spiros, Ole Brumm, and the most Tom and Tigern to myself. 

Buttons. A does not have many "buttons" himself, but he is a big time button collector. The Xenu tshirt has been functioning as his canvas to display the collection. I managed to sneak in some Man City buttons that I hoped that he did not notice. I thought the light blue color somehow enriched the collection color-wise so he should not be too mad at me. The collection has its fair share of political statements, some xenu stuff, some witty words, some arts, some memes and some just cool patterns. 

Board games. This is a rather new collection series, inspired by Ralf and Inger-Anette's huge passion on it. As usual, A started to collect them, despite that we did not yet have time to play everything we had in the end. Not a complain this time, but just a fact. Anyway, there were numerous lovely and fun days and evenings we enjoyed playing them, just us or with friends. It was not necessarily the games, but the intimacy we got from playing them.

Un-functioning gadgets. A is the biggest kickstarter fan I knew of. "I am an early implementer", as he always told others. There is not much regret in him when things he supported and got (or did not get) did not work as well as intended. If it were me, it would have been so frustrated. For him, «it was a nice idea» and "let's try again" next time with something else. One of the un-functoning gadgets was called OLO camera, which was a very lovely owl shape camera, with moving eyes following wherever you go, and make funny emoji-like expressions. Lovely product, except that it is not working at all as a camera. An expensive and lovely paper weight, as it turned out to be. And A ordered 10 of them. Another product was a smart speaker. Remember that was way before smart speakers we see today were invented. The concept was, very fancy, to detect your mood and play relevant music accordingly. How cool that was, A must be thinking. And the thing he got would not even turn on, due to lack of software support. Anyway, he did get many really cool stuff as well, Tesla, among the top of his list. He was one of the first ones in Norway who ordered the car, before electric car became the norm here. He and us had so many good memories together with the car, and all around Europe. 

Some honorable mentions: expired spices dated all the way back to 1995 and empty wine bottles. No, just kidding. Some other collections are: used telephones (mostly HTC and Samsung, only Android), music CDs (that he actually managed to get all of them to his iPod digitally. Phew), stuffed animals, Scientology technical guidance and various weird tools for the cult to lurer people with, travel souvenirs, etc. The list can be longer, but I will end here. 

Love

D