impulse
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What is Home? Scandinavia to Scotland isn’t the wildest journey ever travelled, but when I arrived in Edinburgh from Denmark, I couldn’t have felt further from home. Until I reconsidered what ‘home’ actually means. Words by Tobias Nørgaard
the family farm, where my little sisters would harmonise songs of Adele in perfectly -sepa nowing the number of steps on therated triads.Does family make a home? staircase down to the local Lidl. “Here’s your key”, a girl said, handing me a Recognising the faces of the couple black plastic chip, clipped onto a red hanger. I living in the window across the courtyard.rolled my suitcase into the lift, pressed my key Sliding the credit card out of my black against the digital lock, and walked in. A long, leather wallet before tapping it on the bus as white painted hall with eight doors and yellow if I had never done anything else. Finally, I’d light falling from the ceiling. I held my breath. think, closing my eyes after collapsing intoOnce I entered my narrow, IKEA-furnished bed. Finally, I’m home. room, I sat down on the But what is home? bed with thoughts and Edinburgh has been feelings spinning faster and my ocial residence faster inside of me. Empty for the last few months. shelves, empty drawers, Home is where my empty hangers. It even mail is delivered. But smelled empty. o H spitalhome means some room clean. If bacteria thing dierent. It’s not can’t live there, people can’t an address line, it’s a either. Does comfort make a feeling. An invisible, home? unfathomable force ffree days prior, I’d screening you from found myself sitting in my the dangers and inse best friend’s garden, on a curities of the chaos perfect late August evening outside the walls. So with lled wine glasses. It how did I suddenly was one of those evenings shape that word in my where you grow into each mouth without travother, become closer than elling 10,608km to ever before. As the sun set, Denmark? I had to go back to my Two months ago, I apartment, pack my clothes pushed a 21kg suit in the black suitcase. If we case in front of me didn’t embed ourselves into down Dalry Road from Haymarket. I was our environment, our belongings would have optimistic, I was curious. I imagined going no meaning other than their entirely practical out the same night for beers with my newvalue.Do possessions make a home? atmates, the rst of many good memories ffe rst few days, I felt terribly foreign to to come. My phone gave me directions. Justevery single part of Edinburgh. Everything a couple of hundred meters left. Do people repelled me. It wasn’t right, or maybe I was make a home? wrong. But then I fell asleep, and then I woke My entire life in Denmark was woven into up, and it felt a little better. ffen I repeated my old street-level apartment in Aarhus.it, repeated it, repeated it, and suddenly – one It was hanging on the wall, in the form of day – I woke up without remembering what polaroid photographs of Julie, my girlfriend.that rst day was like. ffrough a constant It was on my bookshelves where my friends’ exchange between my surroundings and my favourite reads lay. It was standing in thefeelings, I’d become a part of this place, and corner in the shape of my electric piano andthis place had become a part of me. guitar, synonymous with my upbringing on A home.
K
An invisible, unfathomable force screening you from the dangers and insecurities of the chaos outside the walls.
Tobias’ arrival in Edinburgh
