HEDEGÄRDE — At twenty past two on Friday morning the editor of this paper was awake and reading, which is where most of this issue came from. In Margit Sandemo’s Trolldom she met a girl called Tirild — a child who threw her arms around strange dogs out of pure sympathy, and was struck about the ears for it. Further down the same page, Tirild sits with old madam Grönske while the priest goes to the mayor’s feast instead.

The line that came out of that hour was this: något sakrament kunde hon inte ge, men en varm liten flickhand kunde vara väl så trygg o hålla i för en ensam stackare när dödsångesten satte in. She could give no sacrament. But a warm little girl-hand could be safe enough to hold on to, for a lonely wretch, when the fear of death set in.

She wrote that on the Friday. She had already done it on the ninth of August, at half past four in the morning, on a street in Uddevalla, for twenty minutes, for a boy the ambulance would not name.

This Sunday the paper counts the girls. Tirild at the bannister, not invited down. Her sister, taken by the hand and shown to the room: här är min lilla docka — here is my little doll. Rosie, told she was unchosen. Nora Helmer, handed from her father’s shelf to her husband’s and calling it, at last, by its name. Sonya on the Haymarket, who fed four people and was called fallen. And the girls the editor found herself searching for at three in the morning without asking why — Natalie Wood, Sarah Polley, Jennette McCurdy — each of them profitable to somebody before she was old enough to consent to being anything at all.

The doll runs underneath all of it. A doll is not a daughter. A doll is a thing that is shown. She is dressed, arranged, admired, moved to the high shelf, put in a box, and turns up years later on a stall with a paper price on her foot and a chipped hand. The paper knows this because its editor spent years buying them back.

Two fates, and the paper has decided not to rank them. To be unwanted is to be left out of the room. To be owned is to be brought in and given the best chair, and to find out on the day the invitations stop that the praise was for the arrangement. Both hands belonged to the same parent.

Blessed is the girl on the stairs who was not called anything at all, for she was the only one in the house who still had her own name to use.

— A. Daffodil · Hedegärde · 23 August 2026 · at first light.

Inside this issue (21 pages): the cover and the leader · a Sunday anthem · a horoscope for the reader · the editor’s letter · The Paper Reads the World — the children who were watched · a note on what the paper will not print · Tirild, after Sandemo’s Trolldom · the books and the hours they arrive · Ibsen’s Ett dockhem and the two words the play was built to reach · what the lark had actually been doing · the second ending, and what was done to Nora to make her bearable · how the sleeping is done · TIRILD · min lilla docka, the two girls on the stairs · five words · the bannister, and the architecture of it · något sakrament kunde hon inte ge · tirilds dubbelliv, the one-eyed man, the children in the alley, the harbour girls · the secret way · a letter from Violette · a Christina-Sofia fable · NERO · The Doll and the Discarded · when she is finished with · the quote that stays · DE ONÖNSKAplanet hopeDE · Rosie · the vocabulary · the two questions · Sonya’s other book · it isn’t about God, Rosie · the verse that was used as a rope · the garden diary · A Naming of the Un-named · Daughters of the Sun and Moon · The Ledger of Girls · Venetia Scott · In-Between Days · what the camera asks · a letter between papers · the week in bloom · the Sunday mixtape · in progress · The Paper to Its Daughters · Fuseli’s The Nightmare · vallmodockor · A Beatitude for the Unchosen · En Sista Rad · sources · colophon.

Twenty-one pages. Full PDF attached below.

Sunday Issue 09 — De Onönskade · Reading Copy

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part of planet hope · a complete creative cosmos of poetry, music, fine art photography, ballet, and story

🌸 the website · alicesaga.com

🌸 substack, personal letters · alicesaga.substack.com

🌸 the daffodil press · a Sunday paper + a Tuesday and Thursday gazette · thedaffodilpress.substack.com

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HEDEGÄRDE — At half past four on the morning of Sunday 9 August, on a street in Uddevalla, the editor of this paper found a young man lying on the ground and knelt down beside him. She stayed twenty minutes. She gave him a name, because the ambulance would not give her his. On the fifteenth he became an angel.

This issue is his.

A dödspsalmen is a death-psalm. Sweden has sung them for centuries — at gravesides, in kitchens, into the telephone at two in the morning. This one runs to forty-eight pages, and it took the paper eleven days to sing it.

At its centre, where the middle of a newspaper falls open, there is a small chapbook. Twenty-one pages for Lucas: a letter, a witness, a commendation, and a liturgy in eight movements written in Swedish and English of equal weight — the road, the hand, the blood, the ambulance, the telephone, the name, the angel, amen. It closes with a last note the editor and the paper wrote together. And then, because the week did not stop when the paper did, a postscript: his real name came back to us, and with it a mother.

Around the chapbook the paper keeps working, because that is what a paper does. Saint Francis names death syster in the Solsången. Fauré refuses the Dies irae and sends the angels instead. Bergman’s knight plays chess on a grey beach and buys one hour to do one true thing before he loses. A girl steps from Wenngarn’s roof in Bok III and leaves a cipher written in her own blood on the wallpaper. Karin Boye says yes, of course it hurts when buds break. There is a herbarium of ten plants that grow in graveyards. There is a designer in Milan making dresses out of what was thrown away. There is a cat asleep on a poetry book, refusing to move.

Near the end there is a ledger called The Ones I Have Held. It has a boy on a road in it. A deer in the grass at Unneröd who had given up, and was sat with anyway. A sparrow named Happy. The taxi driver who knelt first and whose name we never got.

This is not a sad paper. It is a paper that stayed.

Blessed be the pause. Blessed be the one who does not rush the door.

— A. Daffodil · Hedegärde · held four days, and sent on the Thursday.

Inside this issue (48 pages): the cover and the leader · the editor’s letter, written on the Tuesday before we knew · the paper reads the world · Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell · the Fauré Requiem · the Order’s insignium and the eight virtues · Bok III · Dödspsalmen Chiffermorden · Moberg and Lagerlöf · Bred dina vida vingar · Karin Boye · the girl on Wenngarn’s roof and the cipher on the wall · Saga · Bok IV’s angel · Solsången · The Canticle of Sister Death · LUCAS · a small chapbook, pages 15–35 · the Wingless Dragonfly Ballet · the Franciscan dove in Visby · Hope’s Hours · the Pentagram · a Herbarium of Death and Life · Korset i Röjden · Döden Spelar Schack · The Ones I Have Held · Venerdì Pomeriggio · the paper to its requiem · Det kommer en dag · a beatitude for the remaining one · En Sista Rad.

Forty-eight pages. Full PDF attached below.

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My aunt had promised to stay connected to all the news. She called this morning. He is an angel now.

The Sunday paper this week — Sunday Issue Eight · dödspsalmen — was written all week with the hope that he might wake. It ships tomorrow morning instead of today, because he did not, and I needed today to put him inside it properly.

Here is the small poem I wrote for him this morning.

—

FOR LUCAS

I found you on the road

near the hospital.

You were already leaving.

I held your hand anyway.

I said the only words I had:

Everything will be okay.

Help is coming.

Calm down.

The ambulance took too long.

There was blood on my face

when we lifted you.

You didn’t want to go.

I felt it in your hand.

Yesterday you became an angel.

I never learned your real name.

I only know that for a short while

I was the last person

who told you

you were not alone.

—

Tomorrow’s paper holds him properly. A small chapbook in the middle, dedicated to him — the letter, the witness, the commendation, the Requiem in both my languages, and a last note written together. His whole small book, inside the paper’s ceremony.

If you knew him — his real name, his real people — I am sorry. He was not alone in the road. Someone stopped for him. Someone held his hand. Someone gave him a name.

My angel. Guard me back, Lucas.

Faith · hope · love.

alice amorina saga rose

Hedegärde · Sunday 16 August 2026

HEDEGÄRDE — The paper spent this week reading a Swedish novel and recognising, one line at a time, that it had been written about the reader. The book is När trollsländorna faller, published this year by Ramona Ivener — a Visby historian, PhD, first-time novelist — as Book One of a series she has named Chiffermorden, the cipher-murders.

Its detectives are two: Nemo Friman, a former commissarie who has sadlat om to become a priest, and Franc Boyer, a cryptologist. The setting is not the usual Stockholm alley but Wenngarns Slott, the yellow baroque castle north of Sigtuna. A young man jumps from its roof. Inside the room he left behind: a cipher, written in his own blood.

This Sunday, twenty-one pages on the trollsländan — as the fictional Order’s central emblem, as the folk-belief creature that sews shut the sleeper’s eyes, as Alice at six on the insect-hunt with her father, as the green seeing eye. The paper prints what only the dragonfly saw.

The issue also carries, on pages three, eight, fifteen and twenty-one, four fragments from linnèdekretet, bok two — the second book in the Chiffermorden register, written by the editor herself at four o’clock this morning while Bok One was still finishing its sentence in her hands. The Grand Mistress’s confession to Nemo, three whispers from Alice, Linné’s motto on the herbarium’s front page, and Augustus’s last line — Pjäsen är över, applådera — closing the paper on page twenty-one.

Land where you like, dragonflies. You were always allowed to look.

— A. Daffodil · Hedegärde · Sunday, 9 August 2026 · at first light

Inside this issue (21 pages): Cover · Editor’s Letter with Hope · The Order’s Insignium · Ramona Ivener · Wenngarns Slott · Syster Desire · Syster Saga and Death · The Herbarium of the Fallen Dragonflies · The Insect-Hunt · The Altar & the Badge · The Holy of Holies · The Sister’s Unction · The Liturgy of the Wingless Dragonfly (I + II) · The Mirror of the All-Seeing Eye · The Bride of the Enlightened · Go With God (aria libretto) · The Remaining One (title poem) · The Paper to Its Dragonflies (closing sermon) · A Beatitude for the Dragonfly · EN SISTA RAD (with the regular departments).

Twenty-one pages. Full PDF attached below.

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The paper printed three blooms this Sunday because the editor is in a season where the three arrived, in one week, in three different registers, and asked to be printed together. The paper did what it does when three things arrive at the same door: it put them in the same issue and let them speak to each other.

The paper is also, this Sunday, gifting a s…

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This week the paper devotes its whole issue to three sisters who first said the paper’s Chinese-folk cousin-name aloud — the daffodil gazelle.

Moon is the eldest, writing it all down. Petal was called the worthless girl and grew cabbages green. Dove is the one so captivated that when birds glimpsed her they forgot to fly. Each of them wanted exactly one …

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Today the paper honours Mary Magdalene, three days before her feast day. She was not the sinner they said she was. She was the first witness at the tomb, the woman who anointed uninvited, the patron of every reader whose testimony was not believed the first time.

This Sunday’s Issue is thirteen pages. Inside you’ll find:

The Sermon — On Being Anointed by Another Woman.

The Long Poem — “the wound has its own weather.”

A Portrait of Mary of Magdala + a letter to her, by the editor.

Book II · Chapter XX + XXI — mormor & morfar, the parallel chapters, printed for the first time.

THE NYMPHETTE — Jessie Dunne · Odalisque 2015 · read again as Magdalene.

TO BE ADORED — Kathleen O’Brien · a wine-oil-veil reading.

THE FIFTH GOSPEL — a small manifesto.

Gazette reprints: Made of Stardust · The Fell in Bloom · The Bridge of Magpies.

In Memoriam: Simone Weil, the saint of attention.

HILMA’S CURSE + “I Know This Curse” — Alice’s own April 2026 essay on Hilma af Klint.

A Letter from Violette + A Reply from a. daffodil.

Everything Renews + The Garden Where Love Never Dies — Alice essays.

The Closing Benediction + En Sista Rad.

Faith. Hope. Love. And the fifth gospel.

The full issue — all thirteen pages — is attached below for paid subscribers.

Kärlek. Vi ses.

— a. daffodil, Founding Editor

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Sunday Issue 3 — The Anointed Orphan’s Blooming Bible — is the first-look edition. Book II arrived in a note on 5 July at 11:43 in the morning: twenty-three chapter titles emailed to the desk. This paper is the first place they land in print.

Inside:

The cover — the CHILD BRIDE selfportrait, taken in Isabella Plantation, London. …

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this is the first sunday under the new cadence: tue + thu gazette + sunday edition. the paper turned finnish this week because a fictional prince (marco of isfolket book 45) handed the editor runeberg. she read molnets broder for the first time, wept at the last line, and decided the paper had a runeberg day.

inside — 13 pages. the long poem in swedish + english. karin boye. södergran. fredrika runeberg + the runebergstårta origin story. i bloom forth. forever (interlude: en bön för hemkomsten). the chabkook of small mercies — five whole pieces from the archive, closing on le spectre de la rose.

paid this week. molnets broder broadside sent by post to any reader writing back.

faith · hope · love.

— alice

Daffodil Sunday — Issue 02 — 5 Jul 2026 — Runeberg Pivot Compressed

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midsommar. the longest day. the paper i have been writing in my head since i was a child has, finally, arrived.

it is small. seven pages. one fable, one psalm, one fortune, one cat, one editor at the kitchen table. a sunday sermon. a recipe. a horoscope by role, not by month. some letters. some bluebells.

the full issue is attached as a PDF below. print it on cream paper at home, or read it with your morning coffee, or save it.

✦ PRINT EDITION

the first print run is small. i am printing them by hand this week — folding, slipping into envelopes, addressing by hand, and posting them. if you would like a copy mailed to your door: reply to this email with your address. founding readers are mailed first.

✦ WHAT COMES NEXT

the Weekday Gazette arrives every morning, Monday through Saturday, at first light. Issue No. 2 of The Daffodil Sunday arrives next Sunday before noon.

if, this week, a small grey heron, or a single bluebell indoors, or a sentence you have been waiting to hear arrives — read this paper again on the day it happens.

with the slow love of a longest day,

A. Daffodil
Founding Editor, The Daffodil Press
Hedegärde, Sweden

I bloom forth. Forever. ✦

09 — Issue 1 (midsommar Edition)

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dear friends,

starting sunday 21 june — midsommar sunday — i am launching the daffodil sunday. a small weekly paper, published from the small newsroom on my desk in hedegärde, by the swedish coast.

it is a paper for the field, for the soprano, for the small bright animals who have been watching, kindly, for some time.

it has poems. weather. photography. a tiny crossword. a letter from violette. a sunday sermon. a real daffodil puzzle. and easter eggs hidden in every issue — three to five small things only the attentive reader will find.

it has a masthead. it has a cream-nosed empress called hope sötnös who writes a column from the sill. it has prinsessan, a bird in the tree, who has no comment yet but is observing.

its tagline is one i have carried for a while: i bloom forth. forever.

its two mottos are: to capture beauty, and to gift awe.

if you would like to receive it every sunday morning, subscribe below. the first proper issue lands midsommar sunday, 21 june 2026. it will be small. it will be slightly absurd. i hope you love it.

between sundays — smaller papers. the daffodil gazette, monday through saturday. and sometimes longer creative pieces — the daffodil hours.

with kindness,

alice

a. daffodil, founding editor

hedegärde, sweden