White christmas

Green Christmas

DRESSED IN WHITE

In Gunilla’s home in Sweden, you’ll never find elves and red Christmas decoration items. She prefers discrete Christmas adornments and uses only white items and greenery from the forest such as spruce, box trees and wreaths made with lingonberries. She also adds lots of homemade paper stars.

Gunilla lives with her husband, Kent, in this big, beautiful, Swedish house from 1934. Their daughters flew the nest many years ago so now the couple lives in the house on their own. They bought the house in 1983 and moved in a week before Christmas when their youngest daughter was just six weeks old. They haven’t done much renovating work but they’ve painted and changed the wallpaper quite a few times, Gunilla tells us. Although it took a couple of years to convince herself, she’s very happy that she finally decided to paint the wooden floors white. With the help of Gunilla’s dad, the couple built a balcony that turns into a spare bedroom during the warm season. When they exchanged the windows in the house, they used some of the old windows for this project. The balcony is one of Gunilla’s favorite elements in the house.

no.23

Photographer Tine Gertsen, Text Vivian Møller Christensen, Location Sweden, Images 39

Published: The images have been published in Jeanne d’Arc Living’s special edition 2023, which is released in a limited print run of 6,000 to 8,000 copies in total. These editions are available in German, English, and Danish, with an equal distribution of copies across the three languages.

The images from this home are featured in a German book set to be published in 2025 with a limited print run of 2,500 copies.