The Sun, the Trumpeter and the Two Black Sheep

What will you remember from the inauguration of a national park in your own neighbourhood? A sunny autumn day? Absolutely. Some more or less pertinent phrases from your Minister of Climate and the Environment? Maybe, but mostly the fact that she wasn’t even born when the park was first discussed. A trumpeter and two slightly wayward sheep? Yes, the unexpected will always stick to your memory.

^{Text: Malcolm Dixelius}

The Nämdö Archipelago National Park is number thirty-one in Sweden. The second maritime national park after Kosterhavet in northern Bohuslän. It covers 253 km2 of the outer rim of Värmdö municipality. 97% of the surface is sea, the remaining 3% is made up of 1 353 islands, skerries and rocks. The park is uninhabited, save a few vacation homes and the island of Bullerö, which is the entry point. That’s where staff from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency live; how many depending on the season.
 
During the first week of September 2025 the focus has been on various events featuring the new national park to the public in the municipality, for vacationers, school children and visitors to the Nämdö archipelago; an exhibition in the municipal centre Gustavsberg, activities on social media platforms and a pub evening in the Nämdö community house.
 
The official inauguration is 5 September, a Friday. Three hundred guests have gathered on Bullerö, a well-known tourist destination in the Stockholm archipelago for decades. The central building is an old hunting lodge built by the painter Bruno Liljefors, who had Sweden’s artistic elite gathered here in the 1920s. Today it hosts an updated exhibition about the history of the island and its current status. Outdoors there are placards explaining the ecology of the park, hiking routes adapted for visitors with special needs; everything in preparation for an expected increase of visitors to the vast national park via the official entry point.
 
A generous autumnal sun shines over the whole event. Johan Kuylenstierna, General Director of the Environment Protection Agency bids everyone welcome by giving the concept “minute of silence” a new meaning. He asks us to sense the exceptional silence offered by a windless day in the outermost Stockholm archipelago. Kuylenstierna is internationally known as an environmental researcher – well aware of the fact that this kind of stillness is particularly precious and rare in the wake of the changing climate. While the warm September sun is a sign of the same change – in the opposite direction. It’s becoming more frequent.
 
What follows is a discussion and a number of speeches about the unique ecological values in the national park, about the yet-to-be-discovered ecosystems under and above the surface of the sea. Mussel banks, rocky seabeds, skerries honed by ice to host a rich variety of algae, moss and lichen. Grey seal of course; islands traditionally protected for their rich birdlife. Mayor Carl Kangas puts the new national park in the context of the “Archipelago Package” initiated by the local community under the heading of “sustainable hospitality business”, with the hope that the national park with offer positive opportunities for the islanders who live here all year round.
 
It is when the Minister for Climate and the Environment, Romina Pourmokhtari, has finished her carefully worded inauguration speech about the national park that was in the making before she was even born, that there is an unexpected moment. Patrik Skogh, the trumpeter, is quietly standing on top of a cliff behind the speaker waiting for the right moment to put the instrument to his lips and blow a flourish; that is when two black sheep, unannounced, step in and stand quietly next to him.n via den officiella entrén.

This gives the flourish an unexpected effect; like a happy signal, triumphant, yet accompanied by two question marks. It is as if the quiet sheep each have a question to ask. Sheep one: Why didn’t the king come? Sheep two: And why didn’t anyone from Nämdö get to speak? The answer is probably that the list of speakers was long enough as it was. Most of what had to be said was certainly said by the visitors who came for the inauguration.

A national park doesn’t disappear because it has been inaugurated. On the contrary. There will be a time both for the King and the Crown Princess to visit and the Nämdö islanders will talk about the park until the run out of oxygen. Right or wrong. Too many rules – or too few. Too many visitors – or too few. The mayor will be quoted for his optimism. And the Nämdö choir at least got to sing the Evert Taube classic Här Rosemarie, syns blåa Nämdöfjärden (Here, Rosemarie, you can see the Nämdö inlet). In fact, though, you can’t see it from the national park, but at least I can. That’s where I live.