When our Lord made Bygdsiljum

In the fall of 2024, fiddler and storyteller Thomas Andersson is back at the Västerbottensteatern! "When Our Lord made Bygdsiljum and all the rest" is the story of how it all began and how it could happen that it turned out the way it did. The performance partially follows the course of events in the creation story, but is set in our Västerbottnian reality.

The performance is performed in the form of a folk story as it is usually told in our part of the world. In it, between
stars, suns, moons, angels, devils, gods, people, plains and mountains – there is room for music. And of course it is
it is partly written and performed in peasant language.
- In my worldview, the world did not come into being as it says in the Bible's book of Genesis. But when our Sunday school miss
at home in Bygdsiljum told the creation story in his lively way, then it was true. You saw exactly how Our Lord shaped mountains, fields and streams with his mighty hand. He advanced as a giant bulldozer.
And it wasn't in the Middle East or anywhere else. It was at home. And that was the plain truth. I was 7 years old and the Sunday school teacher's name was Nancy Tjärnström, says Thomas Andersson.
Thomas says that he eventually understood that the fields were created by human effort. And the fact that he now wants to tell this story fully grown, he says, is due to an attraction to fantasy.
- I believe in evolution. However, I consider the creation story to be a beautiful, powerful and poetic story
- as long as you can do what you want as far as believing in it is concerned. And thank God we have freedom of religion in our country.
So you can believe in evolution and be open to spirituality at the same time.