I’m getting into the Christmas spirit – this’ll be my first Christmas in the UK in more than ten years. I’ve been enjoying the decorations when I’ve been out and about. The most amusing so far was this reindeer. It’s got its tail up, so presumably it’s about to poop!
There are some lovely wreaths as well. Like the reindeer, this was in the Folly – a gentleman’s residence built in 1679 – now a museum and coffee shop. Very cosy!
But I wanted to carry on my advent crown tradition – though I rarely stick to the Norwegian purple candles. I found these lovely nisse candles online and couldn’t resist.
After days and days of rain, I woke last Saturday to one of those beautiful wintery days when the fields are pale with frost and the low sun glows golden over the world. Triar and I set out to walk along Watery Lane, which as you can see, lives up to its name.
Watery Lane runs between two, mossy dry stone walls and is lined by trees, which were mostly bare, though the floor of the lane was thickly strewn with fallen leaves.
We turned past the barns onto Lodge Lane and as we descended towards the road, a farmer drove by in his tractor. To my surprise, he grinned and waved cheerily as he passed, which improved my day even more.
I had asked my parents to take me to a garden centre. I wanted to grab a bit of Christmas spirit before the end of my time off, so they took me to Holden Clough near Clitheroe. Having previously visited Stephen H. Smith’s Garden Centre in Otley, which was filled with baubles and tinsel, like a series of Christmas grottos, Holden Clough was distinctly up-market, but cheery nonetheless.
Tuesday was another fine day and Triar and I walked through Settle, which by now, had a few decorations of its own.
We then headed up Constitution Hill and along the aptly named Highway, which runs along the side of the valley with views over Ribblesdale.
Dad took me to look at a car on Wednesday. It was an X3 like the one I had to leave behind in Norway, but I took it for a test drive and although the engine sounded sweet, the steering was behaving very oddly. I suggested I would go back and test drive it again, once they’d fixed the tracking (which was his theory as to what the problem was) but was told the car wouldn’t be fixed up until someone bought it. As I was unwilling to buy a car that I wasn’t certain would be fixed by the proposed changes, I decided to pass. On Thursday, I had planned to have a nice, easy drive to Dumfries before starting work on Friday, but having found another X3 for sale in Glasgow, I took a detour there to look at it and this time, I decided to go for it. It went for its MOT yesterday and will be serviced next week and hopefully, I will collect it next weekend.
Yesterday was my first day in my new job. I met my new boss, K (though she corrected me to line manager when I asked) who helped me with getting set up on my new computer and together, we made a plan for the coming months. There are some courses I will be taking before I start to tackle the challenges ahead. There’s a lot more work with notifiable disease in Scotland than there was in my remote corner of Norway, so I’ll be learning how to tackle bird flu first and then TB. It sounds like there will be a lot to get my teeth into. I met G, who’s an animal health officer of eighteen years standing. He seemed very knowledgeable and also makes a mean cup of coffee, so I quickly felt at home. I also met L, another animal health officer, and she’s in charge of the stores. She has sorted out my new kit for me. It looks quite extensive and I am very glad the car I’ve bought has quite a sizeable boot.
There was also this rather scary looking hood, which I will have to use if I’m on a farm with suspected or confirmed avian influenza, until I get a properly fitted mask. After watching the horror show arguments about equipment in the UK during Covid, I’m very pleased that the agency seems to take my protection very seriously.
I went to Donna’s house after work. Donna and I met thirty years ago when we were both working in Stranraer, so it was wonderful to catch up and I immediately felt at home, which is just as well as I’m staying with her and her husband, Will, next week. My furniture is still somewhere wandering on the other side of the North Sea, but I’ve been offered a comfortable bed in her lovely cottage, so I’m already looking forward to going back.
For now I’m back in Yorkshire and Triar is asleep on my feet. It feels like a good start to the weekend.
It’s been a gentler week than last week, thank goodness, though there are still challenges coming my way. The pipes under the house still need fixing, but I think they’ll need to wait until spring now as the hole that leads into the house foundations is now under a metre of snow. John managed to get the snow blower working, but having cleaned a fantastic area of snow, the handle broke yesterday. To be fair, it’s a sturdy snow blower that we bought for 5,000kr (about £400/500US$) and it’s twelve years old, so it’s only to be expected that there will be problems. John’s friend is welding it for now and we will be able to buy a replacement part in the new year.
It is typical that, in the year I bought a house, there has been an incredible amount of snow so early in the winter. I think it was last year that I was worrying that we wouldn’t get a white Christmas. No fear of that this year. I made a new friend a little while back and she commented that having been in her house for twenty years, she and her husband had a good handle on everything and we are in the opposite position. Right now, there are a huge number of unknowns. The drains are the perfect example. Even though we have a surveyor’s report that says they’re fine, they are not. Still, if that’s the only nasty surprise, we will be doing well.
And it is in my mind that this will probably be the worst time period. If we can get through this winter, next year, we will probably be better prepared. For now, it seems that just keeping the snow at bay might be a full time job over the next few days. There are yellow snow warnings for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we’ll probably be doing some work to keep everything working. I know, in Scotland, I would probably just let it lie and clear it another day, if I didn’t have to get the car out today, but as more snow falls, it weighs down the earlier snow, and you can end up with huge weights of heavy snow to move, if you leave it too long, especially if the temperature drops and it gets icy.
There’s also the rather vexed question of snow on the roof and when you have to remove it. Having read around the topic, it seems our house lies just on the edge of two different time periods of building controls. From 1950 – 1979 the regulations were much less stringent and rooves didn’t have to be quite so strong. The recommendation is that you should remove it if there is 40 – 50 cm. From 1980 onwards, it would be able to carry more than twice as much. There appears to be some uncertainty about when our house actually was built. The estate agent’s brochure said 1979 when I bought it. Having taken over the house, I found an older sales brochure that said it was completed in 1983. Anyway, to be on the safe side, we bought an Avalanche roof rake yesterday, so yesterday evening, having seen the forecast, John, Andrew and I spent several hours outside wielding it, or at least John and Andrew did the job, while I dug away some of the fallen snow from the sides of the house.
Having cleared quite a lot of it, but having been unable to get the last couple of metres cleared, right up toward the ridge, we came back in. It was then that I read up more thoroughly on something I had read earlier about clearing the roof in stages and not leaving it unbalanced. Apparently, leaving a layer along the centre is exactly the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, the pole with the snow rake isn’t quite long enough. We might be able to get an extension, but of course it’s Christmas and finding things in the shops might be challenging. Some of them are open this morning, but not all. Still, having read an awful lot, there are none of the signs of impending doom listed on those advisory websites. The doors all still open normally and there has been no creaking or cracking. And having a bit more snow built up around the base of the house seems to have warmed up the “crawling cellar” as it’s called. For the first time in weeks, it was above freezing down there (there’s a thermometer in the kitchen). I have no idea whether the drains are likely to freeze in there, but it’s a certainty that they’re less likely to do so at 0.5° C than at -10° C.
As I said, so many unknowns. This is all new to me and perhaps there are things I ought to know but don’t. Still, yesterday, as John and Andrew cleared the roof, it was wonderful to watch them working as a team. Whatever else I’m getting wrong, I’m very proud of the wonderful young men they’re becoming.
I had a trip to Tromsø on Wednesday for an x-ray on my toe. The result came in startlingly fast and I got a message when I was on the boat on my way home. It’s not arthritis apparently, so goodness knows why it’s red and swollen, though it’s been like that for several months. My money is on it being gout. I’ll have to lay off the sherry over Christmas! It was quite nice in Tromsø though, so I took a few photos.
And I had a mince pie for breakfast on Thursday. I thought there was something hard in it, but had swallowed the mouthful before I had a chance to react. A couple of minutes later, my tongue discovered that part of one of my teeth had sheared off. It was one that had broken before on one corner and now a second one was gone. Still, I rushed into the dentist’s and he managed to fit me in there and then, so I now possibly have more filling than tooth, but it will do for now!
Anyway, it’s Christmas Eve. Today will be the last episode of The Julekalendar on Norwegian TV. I feel it could become a new Christmas habit. And the title of todays blog is inspired by a line said by Hermione in the first Harry Potter film. John and I have been watching them all in sequence over the past week. Hopefully, we will watch the final one tonight. Anyway, I have to go now. The shop which might have an extension for the roof rake seems to be open, so if we can get the drive cleared, we might be able to buy one.
Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. See you next week.
When I left you on 21st December, I had only a faint hope that there would be a white Christmas. It had turned cold after the thaw and at some point, a tiny potential snowfall had appeared on the weather forecast. Only a few millimetres, but perhaps it would be enough. But when I checked again on the twenty second, this was what greeted me.
I texted Charlie. After all, he was supposed to be flying up the next day, and the forecast for Tromsø was much the same. Clicking on the yellow triangle told me that this was a warning for a Polar Low – otherwise known as an Arctic Hurricane.
Early on Wednesday afternoon, the sky had turned to a brooding shade of grey with edges of lilac. Already, there were a few snowflakes in the air.
The wind never really got up, but it did snow. Fortunately the airport in Tromsø was unaffected and Charlie arrived from the fastboat right on schedule.
We went for a drive on Christmas Eve so that John could knock some of the snow off the roof of his caravan. One of the thing that daunts me about buying a house here is that you have to know when to knock the snow off your roof. To an extent, the snow insulates your house, but if there’s too much, the roof can collapse. This was a picture I took along the way.
We made (and ate) a chocolate log on Christmas Eve.
And despite all the rain, we awoke to a beautiful blue-white morning. I got my white Christmas after all.
Though it was cold outside, inside it was warm and cosy.
Triar was wearing his Christmas hoodie to open his presents.
Perhaps My Norwegian Christmas is an imperfect title, because though we were in Norway, we have never got into the local habit of eating our big meal and celebrating on Christmas Eve. I did cook ribbe though, instead of turkey. Ribbe is pork, taken from the flank of the pig, over the ribs, as you might expect. It’s very tasty and forgiving meat, but for Norwegians, ribbe is all about the crackling. In order to get it right, you have to salt the joint two or three days in advance, then you have to roast it in steam for the first hour, then roast it uncovered until it’s finished. I was pleased with the finished result, which was properly crispy and light.
There’s lingonberry sauce instead of cranberry, but other than that, our dinner will probably look familiar to most Brits.
One day we will perhaps cross over to cloudberries and cream, but for this year, we celebrated in true British style with a traditional Christmas pudding.
Anyway, as you can probably see, we had a very festive Christmas. I am very much aware that we were lucky that everyone arrived safe and healthy. I know that some of my friends were not so fortunate. But wherever you are, I hope you managed to find some peace and joy.
And if not, and you ended up going to hospital, I hope your ambulance station was as tastefully decorated as the one here in Finnsnes. Merry Christmas all.
My last advent post and with it, another tour to the south of Senja. With the snow melting at speed, it would be easy to lose the Christmas feeling, but we were determined to enjoy our trip. Anna, Triar and I seized the moment between rain showers to explore a not-too muddy track that went down to the shoreline.
Though the snow was mostly gone, the distant mountain top is still covered.
There, we found a wonderful decorated hut, obviously someone’s barbecue place for summer days. Despite that, the decor seemed to fit so well with Norwegian Christmas vibes, I thought I’d share it with you.
There was sleet hammering on the windscreen when we arrived at Senja Roasters. It was empty as well, but no less welcoming for that. I had come with the intention of trying the nussecken I had seen when I went before, but this time there were three kinds of Christmas cakes lined up on the counter, so Anna and I decided we would share a piece of each between us.
From left to right, gløg cake, Greek biscuits and nussenecken.
We sat down and enjoyed the cosy decorations against the backdrop of the half light outside the window, where the wind was flitting across the bay, stippling the water in wild flurries.
A tealight and a lantern light up the pine cones in the window.
The cakes were as wonderful as they looked. As well as the nussecken, there were soft Greek Christmas biscuits and a gløg flavoured sponge cake. They went perfectly with my Christmas spiced latte.
A triplet of Christmas cakes from round the world.
We came home and put on the Christmas tree lights and it wasn’t too hard to forget the weather.
Yesterday was a hard day to follow, but this afternoon, we put on some Christmas music, cracked open the Red Velvet Cupcake Baileys and made the Christmas pudding mixture. Usually I leave it a in the fridge for a few days before cooking, but as I’m so late this year, it’ll be done tomorrow. But for now, the kitchen if filled with the wonderful scents of spices and rum.
Of course, it’s traditional that everyone in the house has to stir the pudding and Triar put on his special Christmas jumper before he took his turn.
And now the last of the advent candles is lit. Soon Christmas will be with us. John is coming, as is Charlie (John, Anna and Andrew’s dad, for those who don’t know). My next update will be on Boxing day. And so for now, I will wish all my English speaking friends and relatives a peaceful Christmas. And en riktig god Jul to all my Norwegian friends.
I was sure we were going to have a white Christmas this year. There has been snow on the ground for weeks and the temperatures were securely in double minus figures, or so I thought. And then a day of rain appeared on my weather forecast app. The temperature was to bounce right up, round about the date that Anna was due to come home on Wednesday the 15th. When the first day appeared, I hoped they’d got it wrong. And the temperature wasn’t to go that high. Wholly possible they’d be out by a couple of degrees and we’d have snow instead.
But then another day of forecasted rain appeared and another. The temperature was higher too. This was the screenshot I sent to Anna last Sunday.
They don’t use much grit on the pavements and roads round here. Mostly they concentrate on keeping them relatively clear of snow. So when I went out on Wednesday morning and saw that the pavements, roads and carparks were densely strewn with the small stones they use in place of salt and grit, I knew that they thought that a major thaw was on the way. This was the carpark at work. They may not grit often, but when they do, they do a proper job!
Still, life had to go on. Monday and Tuesday this week were a little hair-raising. On the Friday of the week before, I felt like everything was well on track. I’d done three visits and written two reports. We have to send them past a colleague first for quality control and then an official quality control team checks them. After that, they go to my boss, who sends them out. These two reports were past the checks and I’d sent them to Hilde, so all I had left was one report to write. It was complicated and I would need help, but I had four days to do it. So when Line sent a shout out to see if someone could translate an official document from Norwegian to English, I said that I would be happy to do so. Kristen, my colleague in Storslett had got in first, but I indicated that if anything cropped up, I would be more than willing to step in.
My peace was slightly disturbed late on Friday afternoon when, for the first time ever, Hilde sent back my two reports for amendment. It didn’t sound like anything too major, but I had to include a short summary of what Gry had observed. Still, hopefully Thomas would help me with that.
So I wasn’t too worried when I opened up my case inbox on Monday morning. I had two reports to amend and the complicated case to write up, but I had until Thursday. But when I looked through the list, I saw another case had come in. Some cases you can leave for a few days. For example, if someone isn’t walking their dog often enough, it’ll probably be okay if you leave it a week or two. But if someone is leaving their animals outside in all kinds of weather, without food or water, then “It’ll be fine, I’ll leave it until after my holiday,” really isn’t an option. And of course, it was one of those cases.
To make matters worse, Kristen had bowed out of the translation. So now I had three reports, a new case, and a complicated document to wade through.
Thomas came to the rescue. He could fit in my new case on Tuesday, if I wanted. Hilde was on holiday by now and he was having to sort out all the paperwork around an outbreak of strangles in a horse in our region, but he could fit me in between that, a bunch of reindeer rampaging around a housing estate over Tromsø way, and a case of his own that he was tackling on Wednesday. He also found the time to help me sort out my two returned reports.
Anyway, all’s well that ends well. I stayed late on Monday evening to get the translation done. I asked Line to help me with my complicated case report and she made everything so wonderfully clear that by the time I sent it off for the first check with another colleague, there were almost no errors. Hooray for that! And to my relief, the case on Tuesday turned out to be much less complicated than I had feared. So I was able to collect Anna from the airport on Wednesday afternoon.
And all this was going on against the backdrop of increasing rumblings about locking down again due to Omicron. From next week, Andrew will be homeschooling. Working from home is now the norm again. And when I went to the gym, I was surprised to see notices on some of the running machines that said not to use them. For a bizarre moment, I wondered whether they had been contaminated somehow. Had someone with Covid used them? Should I leave quickly and rush home? And then I remembered that it was nothing to do with that. It was just a return to the stricter distancing rules. The machines were too close together. Similar notices will have reappeared on pub and restaurant seats and in the waiting room at the doctors. Life can continue for now… but don’t get too close.
So there are no lovely pictures of pink and blue skies this week. The garden is a muddy mess. There is a tiny ray of hope on the weather forecast. It’s to turn cold again from Monday and there might be a little snow on Wednesday. I live in hope! Even if it doesn’t snow, Anna got here safely from the UK. And I’m on holiday for a week and there are presents to wrap and cakes to make.
I’ll leave you with a picture I took on Thursday evening when I was out walking Triar. It had been raining, but the ground has had weeks to become very chilly and huge chunks of ice take a long time to disperse. The sky cleared briefly and the moon was shining through. I loved the way the blue moonlight gleamed on the frozen waterfall. Whatever the weather, there is always beauty to be found somewhere.
The third purple candle is now lit on the advent crown.
Not really a Christmas thing, but the sledge-like object in the picture at the top of the page is a spark, or sparkstøtting. As you can see, it has a handle at waist height and long runners behind the seat, so you can walk and push a child, or carry something. It’s not uncommon to see people taking them to the shops and around the town and children sometimes play with them on the road to our apartment. The pavements are rarely gritted, so sliding about isn’t too difficult. That said, at minus ten, there tends to be less ice and even though the snow is hard-packed, it often has powder on top. When the temperature rises above zero and it begins to melt, that’s when it is at its most treacherous.
The office is now filled with Christmas cheer. These three nisser look a bit more cosy than the one in the hotel last week. I was hoping to bring pictures of our Christmas lunch, but I ended up working elsewhere on Thursday. I did take pictures of some of the most common Christmas “biscuits” though. On the left are kokosboller, top right are pepperkaker and bottom left are havreflarn.
And this is risgrøt – basically rice porridge. This is what the nisser should be fed on Christmas Eve (Julaften). I had mine with butter, sugar and cinammon, but John tells me they eat it up here with spekemat – dried meats and sausages. One day I’ll have to give it a try.
As in the UK, there are lots of Christmas sweets and snacks in the shops. Many are marzipan based, with a particular slant towards marzipan pigs. There is also the delicious sounding Juleskum though, if you’re feeling brave. I also had to take a photo of a packet of salted caramel crisps. Salted caramel is lovely, but this is one of those moments when even I think they’ve taken it a step too far!
If you’re thirsty, the classic drink is gløg, which is a warm, spiced wine drink, a little like mulled wine, though there is an alcohol free version for children.
Alternative drinks include Christmas beers, made by all the bigger beer-makers and also Julebrus, which is a sweet, fizzy drink in either red or brown flavours. Mack is our “local” brewery (it’s in Tromsø) and it’s the most northern brewery in the world. As you can see, they make Julebrus as well as beer. The Julebrus here is different from the brands we used to buy when we lived much further south.
I’ll finish off with a few decorations. These are from a cafe we visited yesterday in Bardufoss. I was hoping they’d have some more Christmassy food, but nothing was leaping out at me, so I had a coffee instead, which was very pleasant.
And these are from my own Christmas tree. My mum sent me these tree critters, so they’re not actually Norwegian, but they are definitely now part of my Norwegian Christmas.
Christmas in Norway wouldn’t be complete without Nisser. There’s a programme on Netflix about them at the moment, and the name has been translated into English as “Elves”. But Nisser are nothing like the elves in British and American tradition, which assist Father Christmas or Santa at the North Pole. Nisser are definitely not helpful. Indeed if you forget to give them rice porridge on Christmas Eve, they can apparently become cantankerous. I should imagine they’re a bit like John when he’s expected to put up a Christmas tree with insufficient Pedro Ximenes. Anyway, I found one in the hotel up in Storslett. The poor critter has been given uncooked rice, which will probably give it a terrible stomach ache, but at least they tried.
I have a few more photos from Storslett. The candlelit lavvo we ate in was beside a beautifully decorated Sami shop. The log cabin at the top of the page (under a sky that was green with aurora) was nearby too.
We’re a few days into the polar night now and when the sky is clear, it is layered with pale blue and pink. The temperature has remained low all week and the snow creaks when you walk on it. Often you can smell wood smoke in the crisp air as you walk. This is the view from my garden at eleven o’clock in the morning.
Another snow picture for you, this time from a drive inland, where it’s generally colder. My car reminds me that its battery isn’t happy as soon as it drops below minus twenty, and here it was nine degrees below that, but fortunately, despite the objections, the car brought us safely home.
And just in case you were thinking that Christmas in Norway is all tasteful (Nisser aside) here’s a wonderfully over the top display I found, in the toy shop in our local shopping centre. I took a still photograph, but if I say there was plinky-plonky music playing and they were swaying their heads in time, you’ll be able to imagine the scene in full.
Given all the uncertainty at the moment around the pandemic, I thought it would be nice to share some images from my life over the next four weeks in the lead up till Christmas. I had hoped to spend Christmas in the UK with my parents this year. It wasn’t to be but Christmas in Norway is beautiful, so hopefully I can share some of it with you.
Back in Scotland, in the lead up to Christmas, we used to go round the village where we lived to find the “crazy houses” – those wonderfully over-the-top places where there were inflatable snowmen in the garden, where a spotlit Santa was ascending the wall on a makeshift ladder and the entire house was lit up with flashing lights that would put Blackpool Illuminations in the shade.
Here in the north of Norway, there are a lot of lights, but most of them are warm white. The painted wooden houses look very cosy in the darkness.
In the town centre yesterday afternoon, my eye was caught by some lovely shop window displays and by a rather drunken looking Christmas tree, lingering beside a door. There was also a stall in the local shopping centre, selling cured sausages.
We decided to take a walk in Ånderdalen national park and then have coffee at Senja Roasters but our plans were foiled by the cold temperature. It was minus twenty two when we set off for our walk. Triar has always been surprisingly resilient in the snow, so it hadn’t crossed my mind that perhaps minus twenty two might be a step too far. We managed less than two minutes before his natural enthusiasm left him, and instead of racing ahead, he came back and walked in front of me looking very uncertain. We carried him back to the car and he seemed relieved. I paused to take a photograph of the fjord, which was already starting to freeze in the shallow bay.
We weren’t sure whether we would be able to go into Senja Roasters. We did contemplate leaving the car running for Triar while we galloped in for coffee ( it was a balmy minus eleven in Stonglandseidet – the temperature changes as we drove around were astonishing) but happily, they allowed us to take Triar inside, so we could have a somewhat more relaxed lunch.
It was beautifully decorated with candles and coffee beans, and a few other cosy Christmas touches.
The food was great, of course, as well as the company.
And happily for Triar, we have hopefully found a solution to the cold-toe problem. See you next week!
A Vet’s Life 