Tag Archives: Daylight

Heat!

Blog, In Darkness and In Light, Vet, , , , , , ,

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

We’re reaching the tail end of the twenty four hour sunlight. You might think that, as we live in the Arctic, that it would never get warm, but this week it was approaching thirty degrees Celsius. There’s no point in waiting for the cooler evening either, because there isn’t one. I have been woken at four in the morning most days this week. That seems to be the time when the sun reaches the side of the house where my bedroom window is. fortunately, we have an air conditioning unit, which gives us heat in winter and cool air now. The house has a tin roof, designed to hold some snow in winter as snow acts as insulation, to an extent, but in summer, having a house with a black tin roof obviously can have its disadvantages.

The heat can be very significant when considering the transportation of animals, so that has been an important part of my job this week. Several countries in Europe have actually banned animal transport this week, but sometimes when it’s warm, it’s possible for them to travel during the night, when temperature’s drop, but up here, that’s not really a consideration. We’ve not been at the stage where a ban was needed, but the drivers of the lorries that bring animals into the abattoir have been asked to ensure the animals have enough space in the containers and to make sure their temperature alarm systems are working and switched on. The lorries are fitted with thermometers which measure temperature and if it goes over thirty, the driver should receive an alarm on their mobile phone. I have been monitoring the logs all week. Though it’s actually the abattoir’s responsibility (the company owns the lorries) Mattilsynet can request the information at any time and it’s good to make sure, especially during the holiday period.

In Norway in summer, everyone is entitled to take four weeks of holiday in a single block. Most people choose to take at least three weeks and many take four. There’s often a rule that you have to choose whether to take the first four weeks or the second of a seven or eight week period, but what it means is that everything is running at a much reduced rate. In the abattoir, when the line is running fast, there are people at lots of different stations and each does an individual task, but in the holiday, they often have to double up. And if the person who does one specific job most of the time is away, then often the person doing that task will be less experienced. Of course, that means the vets and technicians at Mattilsynet have to do more monitoring, which would be fine if we didn’t also have the same holiday system! In short, in Norway you shouldn’t expect anything much to be achieved in summer.

There are compensations though. It is spectacularly beautiful with everything growing. There are lots of insects, including bumble bees, which I love.

There are also less attractive insects. I’m sure I have mentioned mega mosquitoes before, but this year has yielded a spectacular crop of evil, black horse flies. According to locals, this is because we had a cold and rainy May. Supposedly they are short lived, which is good because when they bite you, it’s painful. The locals also call them kleg, which might not be the correct spelling, but is a real blast from the past as in Scotland, horse flies are also known as klegs.

Anyway, despite the clouds of horse flies, John and I managed to enjoy a barbecue last Sunday, to celebrate Konstantin’s birthday. Konstantin had lit a fire by the time we got there and the smoke kept them at bay for a little while. It was a wonderful location by a lake, chosen by Konstantin.

There’s a notice on that board behind Konstantin that says you can hire canoes. There’s also a boat landing place with a ladder for swimming. We will definitely be going back sometime and hopefully, the flies will stay away!

Perspective

Blog, In Darkness and In Light, Life in Norway, , ,

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

I thought I’d start this week with a dog level view of the world. This isn’t exactly what Triar would see, because dogs don’t see red, so his world is probably toned in yellow and blue, but at least I got down to his level.

He spends a lot of time running through all those plants at the moment, which must make a change from sinking into deep snow!

When I was growing up, the world I knew was very much split in terms of east and west. There were huge chunks of Europe cut off from each other by the so-called Iron Curtain. Of course that’s a western metaphor, or at least I assume it is. I don’t know how we were regarded by those living within the Soviet Union (perhaps that’s a question for next week!) but I know that I was told that those living there had it a lot harder than us, partly because of a lack of goods and partly because there was an air of suspicion hanging over everyone and a risk of awful things happening if you were found to be in any way less than supportive of the regime in power.

Back in the south of Norway, one of my best friends had grown up in East Berlin. She told me that though there was a poorer selection of food and much less choice, there were things to value as well. Education for all was free at all levels, and everyone, whatever their job, could educate themselves to learn to do it better. And those jobs, though they might not pay brilliantly, were very secure and everyone had a job. There were free sports available as well. In some ways, life was less precarious and safer, from her perspective and my friend obviously valued that feeling of safety over the greater selection of goods available to those of us on the other side.

But I spent some time talking to Konstantin about his life within a very different part of the Soviet Union, living in Latvia. His story was very different and for him, the air of suspicion and the risk of awful things happening was very much more to the fore. Though he was born and grew up in Latvia, his family were Russian. Even back then, he says, there was huge tension between those who spoke Latvian and those who spoke Russian. He compared it to the tensions between the Sami people and modern Norwegians, though not as it is now, in Norway, but as it probably was thirty years ago.

He went to university in Moscow and while he was there, there was a war in Chechnya and a friend of his from that area was simply told one day that his family back home had been entirely wiped out and there was no point in coming back.

And now, with things becoming ever more unsettled, life back in Latvia for the families regarded as Russian (who may have never been to Russia) has become desperately difficult again. He tells me that some of the Russian speakers are now being forced to take exams in the Latvian language and that, if they fail, there is a thread to deport them to Russia. I asked him whether it was like the language tests in Norway for those wanting citizenship. There is a language requirement here, but those over 67 are not required to pass. That isn’t the same in Latvia, he told me. There are no exemptions, and of course those who have lived all their life there and are now old, are therefore the most likely to be living under this awful threat. Many of them don’t have passports and are not eligible to get one, a situation that seems unutterably awful.

Sometimes at the moment, the world seems very unstable to me, in comparison with how it was when I was growing up, but speaking to Konstantin brings it home to me that stability perhaps isn’t some kind of norm that we can expect. He also said that, given that kind of instability, there were a lot of people who might have been civilised in different circumstances, but were made worse by the hardships and would grab any opportunity that came, even if that meant killing someone. No wonder he has found such value living here in Norway, though he says, even now, he has to temper what he writes on Facebook as the authorities back home still watch out for anyone posting negative things and he could find himself summoned by police back there.

I am sorry that this week’s entry is rather bleak, but I am glad that those from the former Soviet Union are, at least for now, able to travel and I can meet them and try to understand better how it felt to be on the other side of that “curtain”. Though I grew up to the background of the Cold War, it was mostly a distant threat, with occasional crescendos of concern when faced with leaflets and information about what to do in the event of nuclear bombs dropping.

And I am also gradually finding out that Konstantin, who keeps a lot of things running in the abattoir, has an interesting history as a veterinary surgeon. He was obviously quite high up in the ranks back home, but values his current position with more limited levels of responsibility. He obviously finds a lot of peace in Norway, fishing and learning about geology. I hope that, in time, his position will be stabilised further.

Anyway, I have to go now and buy some fence posts and collect the long brushes to insert into the gap under the wooden walls of my house to stop all the mice in the region invading my loft next winter. I will leave you with some pictures of the incredible burst of summer as experienced in the far north under the twenty four hour sunlight. Have a good week!

Stinky Dog!

Blog, In Darkness and In Light, Life in Norway, , , , , , ,

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

I’ve been unwell and mostly at home for the past two weeks, so there isn’t much to write. I’m definitely on the mend now though.

I still haven’t managed to get a plumber out and now they are all going on holiday. It was similar in parts of Scotland when I was growing up. There were “trades holidays” when almost everyone involved in building work of any kind took time off and it became almost impossible to get anyone out. At least it’s for a set period, though here it’s four weeks, rather than two. I spoke to someone on Thursday who has placed me on a waiting list and said they will call when they get back. He seemed relatively reliable, so fingers crossed.

John’s friend Bowen has been coming round to cut the lawn. That is a huge boon as he has a sit on lawn mower and the garden is a bit too big to easily cut with a normal mower. When I moved in, the grass at the back of the house hadn’t been cut for a long time. John strimmed it before winter came, but now I’m hoping Bowen can get it back in shape. Now there’s a fence and a definite line between the cut lawn and the wild growth outside!

Unfortunately the fence is not animal proof yet. This means that I cannot, yet, let Triar run free in the garden. It also means that the beautiful foxes we see now and then can poo wherever they like. Triar has an enormous love for fox poo and delights in rolling in it whenever possible. The ecstasy on his face is quite a sight to behold. Not so much his face when he’s in the shower afterwards, but he does have a very compelling sad face when he’s all wet afterwards. Is it worth it? I guess it must be!

We have twenty four hour daylight at the moment. It’s quite difficult when you wake up and the sun is shining around the blind and you really have no idea whether it’s one a.m. or four or eight. Everything is now growing. The contrast with winter is incredible.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I don’t have much to say. Normal service will (hopefully) resume next week. Take care!