In the village of Bergkvara on the edge of the Baltic sea I find a history that is half buried. Here is a place that it is possible to hide in. The distant past is remembered with great clarity, the more recent past is strangely indistinct, overlooked. I also nearly ignore this almost completely overgrown small hill with two enigmatic steel bound doors. Curious, I begin to ask passers-by, what is this place? But no two people told me the same story about this underground bunker.

The stories I was told ranged from offhand to complex and richly imagined. One gentleman assured me that there were many similar bunkers along the coast and they were related to a paranoid defence against Danish retaliation since 1640. One suggested that perhaps the reason could be found in the first world war, another thought the second war more likely. One person thought it may have had crates of tinned food, guns and socks locked in it, for whose army unclear. Another man I asked imagined with inspired detail that it would have housed an officer with a radio and a roomfull of maps, perhaps machines that go ping, but once again with no clear idea which conflict the maps would have charted. Yet another just wanted to tell me about how he played here as a boy with no thoughts of war, only solitude.

To me it doesn't matter what the factual history may be, if any or none of those stories have truth in them. What did seem important was the layer of willful social and historical forgetfulness and invention that the site was attracting. This social veneer is found in some form everywhere there are people, we all present the best face we can, the face we most want to be like. The picket fence and the begonias in the flower basket represent the desire to look well to our neighbours. They represent the idea of a need for defence against an enemy that is not clearly defined, and also the small fictions we tell ourselves and the occasional curious stranger. History lives here, showing us more than one face. The door is open but there is no gate so you may not enter.