2025-01-10 20:16:51
The snow has been taking its time here in the southern end of the Swedish mountain chain this winter, and in lieu of skiing and winter camping, I got around to building another free WordPress theme.
It’s called Spiekermann and is designed with blogs and portfolios in mind, but like most block themes, it can be used for pretty much anything. You can download it from WordPress.org, read more about its features here, or check out the demo.
The most eye-catching features in the theme are the asymmetrical grid on archive pages, and the offbeat typeface used for headings, Alpha Lyrae, which blends pixelated characters with sans-serif ones. Alpha Lyrae is prominently featured in the footer of the theme, where the site title is scaled up to fill the entire width of the screen. Spiekermann includes other type options if you don’t like your headings chunky, as well as ten different color schemes to choose from.
Spiekermann is named after German designer Erik Spiekermann, who in addition to designing FF Meta and writing Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works designed a print that’s been hanging in my office for the past couple of years. I’m a big fan of his.
That’s Spiekermann! I have some other theme designs in the pipeline as well, but I hope you won’t get to see any of them on the WordPress.org theme directory for a while. If you do, it will have been a very disappointing winter.
PS. I’ve deactivated my Twitter account. Long overdue. You can find me on Bluesky these days, although I likely won’t be very active there either.
The post Introducing Spiekermann appeared first on Anders Norén.
2024-12-18 17:50:46
Our original hiking plan for this August was a one-week trip to Jotunheimen national park in Norway. With the start date only days away, me and my partner Rebecka decided to heed the weather warnings and change our plans. We’ve been looking forward to visiting Jotunheimen for years, and we didn’t want to do it during a week of constant downpours and non-existent views.
Instead, we set our sights on Vålådalen nature reserve, just three hours from home, where the forecast looked much better. Vålådalen is a classic hiking destination in the Swedish mountains. At its heart lies a large valley with old-growth forests, surrounded by some of the most beautiful fjäll in Scandinavia, and the large tourist station that serves as the starting point for most visitors is easily accessible by car and bus. Despite that, neither of us had visited it before. I’ve become a little bit obsessed with visiting all of the cabins belonging to the Swedish Tourist Association (STF), collecting a cloth cabin patch as a memento from each one, and I drew up a route that would allow us to visit four of them on our hike in and around Vålådalen. Five, if you count the Gåsen cabin, which was shut down last year.
The route is a variation of the classic route Vålådalsfyrkanten, with a detour to the closed Gåsen cabin to the west, and a loop around the Anaris mountains to the east. It looks like a fish on the map, so we’ve dubbed the route Vålådalsfisken (the Vålådalen fish).
We got going around three in the afternoon after lunch at Vålådalen mountain station, where my mother worked for one season in the early 1980’s. After one kilometer, we realized that we had hiked in the one direction and had to double back. Once we got on track again, I tried to catch a piece of cheese Rebecka tossed me with my mouth, and managed to punch myself with the grip on my hiking stick, giving me a split lip. Not the most auspicious start, but all was forgiven once we reached the tree line and got views over the Vålådalen valley behind us. To me, lush forest valleys are best experienced at a distance. At least during mosquito season.
We arrived at the STF Stendalsstugorna cabins just past seven, after 14 kilometers of hiking. The main cabin was rebuilt from the ground-up in 2014 after the old one burned down. It seems comfortable and convenient with its multiple modern gas stoves, solar panels and a massive deck facing south, but it lacks the coziness of the classic STF cabins. I added another cabin patch to the collection and got a quick chat with the cabin host before we continued.
West of Stensdalsstugorna, the trail climbs up to a 1 000 meter plateau between the peaks Tobbege and Stäntja, with beautiful views on all sides. On our left, Lill-Stensdalsfjället basked in the last sunlight of the day as we made camp. The clear sky meant that we could spend the evening with the vestibule of our Hilleberg Helags 3 tent rolled up and tucked away until it was time for bed. Neither of us had any regrets about our change of plans.
The 14 kilometers from Stensdalsstugorna to the Gåsen cabin are some of the prettiest 14 kilometers I’ve ever hiked. From the moment we packed up our tent east of Stäntja to us arriving at Gåsen a few hours later, we had stunning views over the surrounding mountain tops, culminating in the panorama you get over Helags and Sylarna from the shoulder of the mountain Gåsen just northeast of the cabins. Lovely stretch of trail.
The Gåsen STF cabin closed permanently on January 1 this year, to reduce the disruptions to the reindeer in this part of Jämtlandsfjällen. One room in the main cabin is still left unlocked for emergencies, so we had a peek inside. Seeing Gåsen for the first time made me regret not visiting it while it was still open. It’s a spectacular location, and still well worth a detour for the views alone, even if you have to spend the night in a tent instead of a cabin.
From Gåsen, we turned east into the Härjångsdalen valley and started the descent back into Vålådalen, with more great views over the pearl necklace of lakes in the bottom of the valley. We hiked a little too fast and too far, though. I wanted to get to the Vålåstugorna cabins before seven to make sure I’d be able to buy my cabin patch before the store closed for the day. We made it just in time, but it wasn’t worth ending the day with a relentless march to meet a self-imposed deadline. The keepsakes from the hike aren’t more important than the hike itself.
The cabin host in Vålådalsstugorna recommended tent sites a few kilometers further down the trail, but when we got there, they were already occupied. Then the rain caught up with us. Faced with the choice between a tent site right next to the trail or a potentially nicer tent site further ahead but with a wet Shiba Inu in the tent, we chose the former. By then, we were all pretty wiped. Fortunately, a patch wasn’t the only thing I picked up in the cabin shop. When you drink it in the tent after a long day on the trail, Carlsberg is, in fact, Probably The Best Beer In The World.
As you can see by the number above, day three went long. Too long. Vålåstugorna to the Lunndörrstugan STF cabin was a pretty stretch of trail, especially with the view into the U-shaped valley Lunndörren towards the end. We arrived around lunch and discovered that the cabin host was out on a hike, so I missed out on my cabin patch from Lunndörrstugan. Probably karma for my insistence on us arriving in time for the previous cabin the day before. The cabin hosts are always present in the morning and evening to help visitors, but can be out exploring in the middle of the day. Me and Rebecka have talked about volunteering for it some future summer season.
After Lunndörrstugan, the trail continues to one of the most famous locations in Vålådalen nature reserve: The gravel pyramids in Gröndalen. The landscape here has to be seen to be believed. It was formed during the end of the last ice age, when the ice sheet covering Northern Europe melted. The entire valley looks like a sandbox for giants. As we entered Gröndalen and took aim on the mountain pass that would take us to the Anaris cabin, we passed near the site of the 1978 Anaris disaster, in which eight skiers lost their lives to a sudden winter storm. There’s a commemorative cross marking the site of the accident by the old winter trail, but we left that for another visit to Vålådalen.
Instead, we took on the 300 meter ascent to the pass between Stor-Anahögen and Aaresketjahke. After a short break to admire the view over Gröndalen behind us, we continued south into Hällådalen and towards Anaris, which had already started to don its fall colors. I did get a cabin patch there (depicting a trout – fitting given what we’ve named our route), and we had a chat with the very friendly cabin host. I read a feature recently saying that Anaris is one of the least visited STF cabins, where days can pass without any visitors, but this evening, there were no less than eight hikers there at once. Me and Rebecka were the only ones not staying the night.
We wanted to be back by the car pretty early the next day, so we continued a few kilometers up to the pass between Kraapa and Kruptjie, where we set up our camp. The smart move would have been to make camp before we reached the pass, to get more shelter from the wind, but we were too tired to care.
We had planned to make an early start on the fourth and final day, but not quite as early as 5:30, which was when Rebecka woke up to rain splashing her in the face. The wind had turned during the night and was pummelling the tent from the north with gusts up to ~20 m/s, pulling one of the ground pegs lose. The large stones I had placed on the south-facing pegs, now downwind, helped little. We decided to skip breakfast in the tent and quickly packed up. Taki, to his immense credit, was the least stressed of the three of us.
We followed the summer trail to the Staalavielie rest hut where we planned to have breakfast, but it was occupied both by a German couple that had spent the night and an army of midges. Instead, we continued south on the winter trail towards the Issjödalen valley up to the tree line, where we found a lovely spot with a view over the forest.
I say winter trail because it’s marked as one on the maps provided by Lantmäteriet, the Swedish mapping agency, but the sign by the Staalavielie hut put it down as a summer trail as well. I suspect there was a summer trail there at some point, since the path following the winter markings was pretty well trodden in spots, but there were no traces of wooden planks covering the many marshlands we had to cross.
It was a relief to reach the proper summer trail by Issjön, where we took a moment to inspect the royal hunting cabin before we followed the luxurious forest trail back to our car by Vålådalens fjällstation.
Do we recommend the Vålådalsfisken route to others? Yes! We got to hike through the old-growth forest in the heart of the nature reserve, but also experienced the wide-stretched views from Gåsen to the west (head of the fish) and the dramatic mountain passes around Anaris to the east (tail of the fish). Our big mistake was to do it in just four days. According to our phones, the route is about 120 kilometers. Five to seven days would have made more sense, and been a lot more enjoyable.
Still, Vålådalen nature reserve made a good first impression on us, and we’ll definitely be back. Maybe in winter next time.
The post A summer hike in Vålådalen appeared first on Anders Norén.
2024-06-28 00:42:04
For Midsommar this year, me, my girlfriend Rebecka and four of our friends stayed at the STF Grövelsjön mountain station. One of those friends, Wilda, was there to start her Green Ribbon – the same hiking adventure I went on last summer. Rebecka and another member of the gang joined Wilda for the first section of the hike, and I took the opportunity to go on a little hike of my own.
My route took me from Grövelsjön to Fjällnäs through Femundsmarka national park in Norway, which I’ve heard a lot of about but never visited. One of the things I’ve heard is that there’s great fishing in the park. I’ve had poor fishing luck so far this season, and figured if I can’t catch something during four days in Femundsmarka, I should probably hang up the rod for the season.
In hindsight, I should have opted for a shorter route (probably by staying further west, passing Røvollen and skipping the Skedbro cabin entirely), but I still had four lovely days in the mountains with great fishing.
You can find my pack list for the hike here, an approximate trail here, and more photos and videos on my Instagram.
After saying goodbye and good luck to Rebecka, Wilda and Malin in front of the blue door at Grövelsjön, I headed west up to the Norwegian fjäll on the Linné trail. It was sweaty work beneath the nearly cloudless sky, and more climbing would follow. I had my first coffee with a view over the greenish gray face of Grøthogna (1402m), which was my goal for the day.
I continued down to Sylen, the Norwegian settlement north of Grövelsjön, and said hi to people I recognized from the breakfast buffet who had taken M/S Sylöga across the lake and were hiking back. From Sylen, I followed the DNT signs up towards Svukuriset and lake Rønsjøen. It was a beautiful lunch spot, but I decided to try a few casts with the fishing rod before I got the water boiling. A few throws turned into a full hour when I got my first catch after just a few minutes.
At Rønsjøen, I left the trail heading north up into the cauldron next to Grøthogna, where I found a rock-free spot next to one of the unnamed lakes (1109). The lakes didn’t show any signs of life during the evening, but it seems wrong to complain when I got to end the day with the view over Grövelsjön, Långfjället and Rogen from the peak of Grøthogna. My plan for tomorrow: less hiking, more fishing.
I woke up at eight after eleven hours of sleep. It had rained during the night, and a thick fog had settled above the cauldron, hiding the peaks of Grøthogna, Sylfjellet and Rønsjøruten to the north, east and west. I think I like the fjäll best like this. When it’s a little bit grumpy.
As I descended the cauldron to the north, I had a stunning view over the wide-stretched rocky moor surrounding the triple peaked Stor-Svuku in the northwest. It was pretty, but also completely devoid of fishing lakes, so I took aim on the river Grøtåa on my right and followed it through birch and pine towards the lakes in the north. It was a wild and pretty landscape but also completely mosquito infested, so I headed back up above the tree line for lunch. From there, I had a clear view over the lakes where I hoped to find fish in the afternoon.
One of those lakes was Frysihjeltjønna (“Freeze to Death Lake”…?), and when I passed it a few hours later, there was lots of activity on the surface. Within a few minutes, I had a decently sized perch on the hook. 45 minutes later, I had pulled up five or six more. None of them huge, but all of them fit for the campfire on a hike with proper cooking. It was difficult to leave the perch-filled lake behind, but I wanted to cover some more distance before I made camp, so I continued on.
I found my campsite on a small peninsula by Litlbuddhåen an hour later. It was a lovely spot almost completely surrounded by the lake, but the fish were less cooperative than in Frysihjeltjønna, so I settled for a dip in the evening sun. That’ll teach them.
My campsite was only a few kilometers from the Swedish border, so I started the day by passing a yellow “Riksgrense SVERIGE” sign close to the Reva break cabins. There was a scattering of tents by the cabins, but the people they belong to were probably out in fishing boats. I continued to STF Skedbrostugan where I stopped for lunch. It was a detour, but it’s always cozy to stop by a cabin when it’s nearby. The cabin host season hasn’t started yet, so the cabin was empty.
From Skedbro, I followed the signs towards Røvollen which led me west over the shoulder of Skedbrofjället where I once again crossed the Swedish-Norwegian border. The views were spectacular in all directions. Just beyond Skedbrofjället, the trail took me to the Fautbua overnight cabin. A sign inside told me that the timber cabin was built in 1918 by Femundsmarka reinoppsynsman Jens Jensen Langen, to be used for gathering, fishing, and hunting. It also said he shot more than 87 moose during his life. Seems excessive.
It was a warm day, with few clouds to give shelter from the sun, so my feet appreciated the series of river crossings just before the trail reached the lake Nedre Muggsjøen. Nedre Muggsjøen tried to entice me with its sandy beaches and well-worn tent sites, but I wanted to get a bit further and continued on. (It seemed like a nice place for packrafting.) I made camp by Halvortjønna a few kilometers further south, which instead of sandy beaches offered a great view over the mountain Storviglen, which I’ll pass on my way to Fjällnäs tomorrow.
I was pretty tired by the time I made camp, but I figured I couldn’t go to sleep next to a lake without at least trying to reel in something. I’m glad I did. The trout wasn’t big enough for a frying pan, but with it, I’ve managed to catch something every day during the three days I bought a fishing permit for. Femundsmarka definitely lived up to its reputation on that front.
25 degrees celsius is too hot for any hike, but it was especially grueling during my climb up the mountain Storvigeln from Ljøsnåvollen. By the time I reached the 1340 meter mountain pass, 500 meters of elevation gain later, I was drenched in sweat. At least I could take my hard-earned break with a great view. Over Jämtlandsfjällen to the north, and Femundsmarka to the south. On my right, I had the Storvigeln peak another 200 meters of elevation above me. An adventure for another day.
Aside from the views from the Storvigeln pass, the last day was pretty unremarkable. I knew Rebecka was waiting for me in Fjällnäs, so I quickly made my way down to lake Bolagen and back into Sweden, up the Bolagskammen ridge, and then down through the birch forest to road 84 next to lake Malmagen where Rebecka met me. My salt stained sun hoodie got some side eyes when we stopped at Hamra Livs for some much needed ice cream.
Femundsmarka made a great first impression. I’ll have to drag Rebecka with me for a future visit – I’d like to spend some more time around Svukuriset and Stor-Svuku. But first, we have another Norwegian national park hike planned. We’re going to spend around a week in Jotunheimen in early August, with our shiba Taki along for the ride. Very excited for that.
The post Four days in Femundsmarka National Park appeared first on Anders Norén.
2024-05-13 01:01:20
If you want to make a designer cry, tell him or her to redesign their website. I’ve made three attempts since I did my last redesign two years ago, and every time, I’ve procrastinated by releasing another free WordPress theme instead. I find that designing for others is a lot easier than designing for myself. I think I’m a bad client.
A silver lining is that I got a lot of free WordPress themes out of it. My most recent one, Pulitzer, served as the starting point for my fourth attempt, which you’re likely looking at now. Like Pulitzer, it’s a straight shooter with small font sizes and simple layouts, partly inspired by the new design that Rich Tabor is rocking on his blog. After running a theme with massive headings for two years, it’s a nice change of pace with text sizes that max out at 18px1. I like this trend.
Another thing that the new design has in common with Pulitzer is the Block Bindings API introduced in WordPress 6.5. The redesign uses it to output the download and demo links as well as the metadata on the theme pages, and being able to do all that with a tiny amount of code and no custom blocks is huge. In a way, I’m glad I waited with building a block theme for the site until 6.5 was out.
Here are some other changes in the redesign:
Between work, Pulitzer, Vermeer and the redesign, I’ve been pretty busy with WordPress stuff these past two months. With hiking season soon starting, a trip to Austria in early June, and me and Rebecka moving into a house of our own in Vemdalen this August, I’m looking forward to less time spent in front of screens for a while.
The post A new coat of paint appeared first on Anders Norén.
2024-05-07 21:39:14
I have a new free WordPress theme out today! It’s called Pulitzer, and it’s a minimal blog theme designed for writers. You can download it from WordPress.org, read more about its features here, or check out the demo.
If you follow me on Twitter, there’s a chance you’ve seen Pulitzer already. I usually don’t write about my themes until they’re live, but I decided to try something new this time. Rebecka was in Stockholm for the weekend, so I challenged myself to build Pulitzer before Monday rolled around, all the while live-tweeting my process for building block themes. If you find that sort of thing interesting, you can check out the Twitter thread here.
The TL;DR of the thread is that I submitted Pulitzer on Sunday afternoon that weekend. While getting it ready in time was my main goal, I also wanted to explore the Block Bindings API that was added in WordPress 6.5. If you haven’t heard about it, the Block Bindings API is a new way to include dynamic output in blocks. You can find a good introduction here.
Pulitzer includes three uses of the Block Binding API:
The kicker? Adding all of these took me no more than an hour, despite me never having used the API before. It’s shockingly intuitive if you’re used to block themes already, at least on the developer end. There’s still work to be done (and being done) on how this is presented to the user in the interface, but it’s undeniably going to lower the bar for building complex block themes. What previously required custom blocks written in JavaScript, or PHP based workarounds with third-party plugins like Advanced Custom Fields, can now be done with a tiny bit of HTML block markup and good ol’ PHP. I love it.
It also raises the question about what is and isn’t theme territory (again). If a user switches theme from Pulitzer to something else, their typography and color settings will (theoretically) come with them, but they can’t bring along the Pulitzer reading time indicator without digging into the theme code. That was business as usual back in the classic theme days, but block themes have started to move towards a complete separation between design and functionality. Adding the reading indicator to Pulitzer knowing the feature is locked to the theme felt like I was doing something illegal. I’m glad it’s allowed on the theme directory, but I hope it doesn’t end up being abused.
Anyway. Pulitzer is out now! I hope you like it. I have been tinkering with another theme design, but it will probably be a while before I get around to building it. And I definitely won’t do it over a weekend.
The post Introducing Pulitzer appeared first on Anders Norén.
2024-02-23 03:12:11
Since me and Rebecka moved to the Swedish mountains in September, we’ve been lucky to see the northern lights dancing on the night sky a couple of times. It’s a marvelous spectacle. Even though the camera software in iOS is pretty aggressive about exaggerating the intensity of the green rays and spirals, the photographs can’t capture the feeling of standing beneath a black sky illuminated by light particles colliding in the upper atmosphere.
Neither can a WordPress theme, but that didn’t stop me from trying. My 30th free theme on the WordPress.org theme directory is called Norrsken – the Swedish word for the northern lights. A more literal translation would be the northern shine, and doesn’t that sound a lot more poetic? Maybe it’s because I’m a Stephen King fan.
You can read more about the features in Norrsken here, and download it for free from WordPress.org.
Norrsken is a simple blog theme with white text on a black background and colorful gradient accents inspired by the colors in the northern lights. If you prefer your blog to have a black text on a white background, there’s an inverted style variation in there as well. The monospace typeface used throughout Norrsken – Geist Mono – contributes to its stark style, while also being highly readable. Geist Mono is loaded as a variable font consisting of a single 53 kilobyte file. Combine that with the small amounts of conditionally loaded CSS and the complete lack of JavaScript, and you get a very fast theme. To be fair, it’s become pretty difficult to make a slow block theme.
The most interesting thing about Norrsken is probably not any of the features in the theme, but rather how fast it was to build. I started building it by forking Twenty Twenty-Four on Friday, February 2. I worked on it a little bit that Saturday and Sunday, and didn’t touch it at all on Monday. The next day, Tuesday, it was ready to be submitted to the directory. In total, I probably spent eight to twelve hours on development. You can track the transformation from Twenty Twenty-Four to Norrsken in the GitHub commit history, if you’re into that sort of thing.
It’s heartening to see how much the experience of creating block themes has improved between every one of these I’ve released. Kudos to all of the people who put in hard work in the Gutenberg repository to keep that momentum going.
The post Introducing Norrsken appeared first on Anders Norén.
︎
