Harvesting
For the last month I and my family have been somewhat occupied by harvesting the crop from our home garden. Not surprisingly, there are lots of stamps to commemorate the end of growing season. As I’ve been lately working my way through Swedish stamps, below are some absolutely fabulous harvest related stamps from Sweden.
Sweden 2003. Harvest. Sweden was one of earliest adopters of NVI / forever rate stamps. Since late 1990s domestic rate stamps have had the inscription Brev, Inrikes (Letter,Domestic) instead of value indicator.
Gathering natures own harvest is very important part of Scandinavian culture. A traditional Finnish legal concept of “everyman’s right” allows every man and woman a free right of access to the land and waterways, and the right to collect natural products such as wild berries and mushrooms, no matter who owns the land.
2004 Sweden. Harvesting berries & mushrooms. The stamps show regular print as well a known print variation, where the color of (red) berries and mushroom are paler due to low inking.
Finally one more snapshot from the summer gone by:
A picture of me looking at some of the latest tractor models, LOL... In reality this shot was taken earlier past summer while me and my family visited North Karelia open air museum. It is one of the largest open air museums in Scandinavia, and heavily focused on displaying development of agriculture and forestry. A highly recommendable place to visit.
Till next time, happy collecting!
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Hi Keijo-san
Then Finland and Scandinavia (I suspect that you’d claim they are separate) are very enlightened with regard to ‘food rights’. Here in Japan there is also a great culture of obtaining one’s own ‘mountain vegetables’. Interestingly, they get a mention in the short story whose link I sent you – the one on science-fiction and stamp collecting.
You appear quite healthy in the photo. I’m pleased to report that I completed a 7-km road race yesterday in bare feet in the heat. My first competitive run in about a year. I was starting to believe that in my mid-fifties I was getting past it (invitation for your readers to chime in with their anecdotes on aging).
It’s complicated on both matters… In a way it’s saddening that though we’re supposed to live in one of the most developed countries in the world, a lot of people eat “junk” either as they don’t care, or they are not given the option the choose to (thinking school food etc).
Hooray, eating 6-15 pills a day (to maintain some sort of status quo with my IBD/Ulcerative Colitis) has “some effect”
well…well…well, you people are living in a paradise…(Africa, Asia, south America, etc;) they don’t know what fresh water is…
let alone medicine and gyms…
A traditional Finnish legal concept of “everyman’s right” allows every man and woman a free right of access to the land and waterways, and the rest?…where in the world!!!??? Keijo! reserve a room for me!
By the way…hm… are you sticking ads about “business” on your shirt…tch,tch. LOL!
@Fred… I agree. This is a crazy world… It’s estimated that the number of cell phones overpasses the number of humans shortly. And at the same we still have over a quarter of worlds population living without electricity; not to mention the truly important stuff like fresh water etc.
Re, right to roam freely in nature… I know, I know. This is possibly the most underestimated “tourist attraction” Finland has to offer. Whoever needs a Guggenheim museum (they’re trying to get one in Helsinki) or similar to attract travelers; we have the nature where anyone can roam freely
Re, t-shirt…Actually it’s something that my wife’s parents brought when they visited NBC Studios at New York way back. Official “The Apprentice” merchandise with one of Donalt Trump quotes (’It’s nothing personal, It’s just business’) – a perfect match for small business owner like me
Going back to stamps… I visited a local library the other day, and picked up a copy of latest Facit catalog. Interestingly it had a note, that these (and several other post 2000) Swedish stamps exist as postal forgeries. No other details were listed.
After some Googling I found few handy references. The below pages are originally in Swedish, but the links below are using Google Translate:
- Kjell Arvidssons page about modern Swedish forgeries
- Posthistoria.nu wikipedia – about modern Swedish forgeries
Interesting stuff… Now I know what I’ll be doing during this weekend
Hi Keijo,
That were some interesting links. Didn’t about that much forgery going on with modern stamps.
Thanks.
Greetings
Paul
Hi Keijo, Very beautiful stamps. Makes me hungry. I think the idea of harvesting wild food even on other people’s land is an excellent idea, but I don’t think it would ever be accepted in the United States, unfortunately.
Your information on counterfeit stamps is very interesting. I have to find some time to look at it, though. Thanks for the interesting stamp information and a great website — from Southern California.
@Drew M… Agree.
I spend last night double checking the Swedish lot I acquired recently No luck with finding any forgeries
Here’s one more useful online resource about these fakes: Swedish Post image bank . There’s a lot of misc images on that page, but the dozen (or so) with inscription “falska” are about these forgeries.
Outstanding links! Years ago I had found some of these Swedish forgeries in kiloware, and at that time I was able to find some sites online that dealt with them. But that computer died and I lost some bookmarks, so when I thought about them again a while ago, I couldn`t find the pages I had found before.
The forgeries look like the graphics were copied, losing some fine detail, and the text looks like it was replaced using fonts that are often very similar but not exactly the same. The diecut perforations are also very similar but not exactly the same. I seem to remember reading in my original sources that the forged stamps were printed somewhere in SE Asia, maybe Malaysia. They used fluorescence similar to genuine Swedish stamps, but again it isn`t exactly the same. The forged stamps look different enough to the naked eye that I knew they were forgeries before I was able to find any info on them.
All I had been able to find recently was mention of an article in the Fakes, Forgeries & Experts journal.
http://www.ffejournal.com/articles.php?book=FFE+%2312
Ryan
@Ryan… Thanks for sharing. It’s kind of relaxing to know that they can be spotted by the naked eye.
The stamps very nice. What is the year of the publishing? I would love to having this in my collections
@Hut… The Swedish stamps above are from 2003 & 2004.