Embracing Kinship: A Scandinavian Perspective

Kinship as a lived experience

In some corners of Scandinavia, kinship doesn’t seem like a ‘concept’ —it’s a lived experience by the inhabitants, the ‘scandi-natives’ (as Per Espen Stoknes called it at Grasp Festival 2025 a couple of weeks ago).

For some people it is woven into the way we greet the forest, how we light candles in the dark months, and how we speak to the animals that share our land. And this is something I have been urging to look into, something that’s calling me back to my heritage, back to my roots, after I have been feeling that something is missing for a while. Like there’s some parts of me that want to remember something forgotten, something ancient

After diving into Module 1 of Carina Lyall’s Earth Medicine Mentorship, I’ve begun to see kinship not only as a relationship between humans, but as a sacred bond with the more-than-human world and maybe remembering can be the answer to all our climate change problems, sparking climate action by honoring and remembering. I think it’s worth a try.

Kinship as a Nordic Memory

Growing up in Denmark, even in my family home for generations, kinship was present in the rituals my family carried. The way we gathered around the table, the stories we told about the sea and the land, the reverence we held for the changing seasons. These small acts were never labeled as “rituals,” but they were. They were our way of staying connected—to each other, to our ancestors, and to the Earth.

In Scandinavia, kinship often shows up in subtle ways:

• The lighting of a candle during mørketid (the dark season), as a gesture of warmth and presence.
• The tradition of friluftsliv—open-air living—as a way to stay in touch with nature.
• The constant presence of the forest and the sea in North Zealand where I live
• The reverence for animals like the elk, fox, squirrel, jackdaw and raven, who are not just wildlife but kin, messengers, and teachers.

Small Rituals, Big Shifts

Since beginning the mentorship, I’ve started incorporating small rituals into my daily life that deepen my sense of kinship:

• Whispering gratitude to the mother and father appletree in the riotgrrden.
• Leaving offerings such as herbs in the friendly fires—for the land and sea spirits
• Walking barefoot on the grass, to the l’atelier in the bottom of the riotgrrden remembering that I am not separate from the Earth, but of it.

These rituals may seem small, but they shift something profound inside me. They remind me that I belong—not just to my family or community, but to the web of life itself.

Kinship with the More-Than-Human World

I have researched a bit and in Scandinavian folklore, animals are often seen as carriers of wisdom. The hare is a symbol of intuition, the wolf of wildness and loyalty, the owl of deep knowing, and my favorite, the squirrel symbolizing preparation, ressourcefulness and mischief. .

Earth is not a resource, but a relative. It means honoring the rhythms of nature, the wisdom of the seasons, and the stories held in the stones, trees wind and streams.

A Call to Remember

Kinship is not something we need to learn—it’s something we need to remember. It lives in our bones, in our breath, in the way we instinctively reach for the sun on a cold morning. In Scandinavia, we have a deep well of ancestral wisdom to draw from. And through small rituals, we can begin to reclaim it.

So light a candle. Speak to the jackdaw. Walk with the forest. These are not just acts of reverence—they are acts of resistance. They are how we come home. For me they become acts of climate action and deep remembering