It started, as many regrettable domestic situations do, with a trip to IKEA.
It was December, many years ago. I came home with two gnomes in red hats and magnificent grey beards. They seemed harmless enough. Festive, even.
I made two mistakes.
The first was bringing them home.
The second was bringing home a pair.
I never deliberately decided to become a collector of gnomes. There was no announcement, no carefully considered collecting strategy and certainly no designated shelf prepared for their arrival. One gnome simply led to another, as gnomes apparently do, until they began appearing in various corners of the house.
Then came Norway.
I travelled to the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter intending to reach Tromsø and see the Northern Lights. However, severe weather foiled my plans and I found myself stranded in Bodø for three days instead.
The weather never let up and I never saw the Northern Lights.
I did, however, come home with seven Norwegian gnomes.
Some people return from Norway with photographs of the aurora shimmering across the Arctic sky.
I returned with a small bearded delegation in pointed hats.
It was not the souvenir I originally imagined, but it was perhaps the more inevitable one.
By then, the situation had progressed beyond a harmless seasonal purchase. The original IKEA pair had become the founding members of a growing household population, joined over the years by gnomes of different sizes, shapes, and national origins.
They occupy bookshelves. They sit between books and boxes. Some stand alone with quiet authority; others gather in groups, presumably to discuss further territorial expansion.
I still maintain that I did not set out to collect them.
But I also admit that whenever I see another gnome with a particularly fine beard or an unusually impressive hat, I feel compelled to consider whether there might be room for just one more.
There usually is.