Tag Archives: Folk High School

Trees, Trees, Trees – A Whistlestop Journey through Sweden

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

Sunrise/sunset: 05:10/20:22 Daylength: 15hr12min

This week started with dropping Andrew off at his new school. He has been updating me as the week has gone by and my opinion of the Nordic idea of Folk High School (already high) has gone up again. He’s ostensibly there to study film, but he only does that for eight hours a week. In addition, he has also to choose another subject. His first three choices were surfing, a walking group and racket sports. He got his first choice, so now he will learn to surf. In addition, he had to choose a second subject for Fridays and an activity. He chose learning the ukulele on Fridays and walking as his activity. It’s clear the intention is to get the students away from their screens and out and about, as well as socialising.

Half way through the week, they also had to make signs for their bedroom doors and Andrew and his roommate won a prize for “Most creative” signs. I was interested to see that Andrew’s was a Scottish saltire flag with his birth date in one of the four sections, and his birth place and the two significant places he’s lived in Norway in the other three, with an image representing each place. It’s a simple design and very attractive, despite the fact that he isn’t a natural at drawing. He’s spent the past couple of years studying communication and media and his creativity still surprises me. I was worried about leaving him there – what mother isn’t, when her child leaves home, but it seems like the school works really hard to make sure everyone is involved.

Andrew and Triar

I also left Triar behind. In two months, I am going to have to take him to the UK. I think I’ve mentioned before that I have to take him on a ferry, as I can’t accompany him on a plane. Logistically, the hardest part of the journey appeared to be getting Triar from Finnsnes to Kristiansand. There are no trains this far north, the Hurtigruten boat leaves Finnsnes at four in the morning, and arrives in Bodø (where I could get a train to Oslo) at two in the morning the day after, which was an unattractive start to a journey that will take several days. Taking a plane from here to Stavanger, followed by a much shorter train transfer to the ferry at Kristiansand is a much easier option. I had tentatively asked Charlie whether he might like to look after Triar for a couple of months and initially he thought he might not manage. It’s quite a long time and he travels a lot, so I wasn’t that surprised. It was a lot to ask. But when he saw Triar again, and how quickly Triar settled into his flat, and crucially, after he found a colleague was keen to help when he was away, he changed his mind.

So when I set off to drive back, the car seemed very empty. I had been trying to decide which route I should take as well, and with Triar gone, driving up through Sweden was a possibility, so that is what I did.

Getting out of Norway was the hardest part. Despite the fact that I set off on Sunday, there were long queues around Oslo, including half an hour stationary in a tunnel, with increasing signs of a carbon monoxide headache. The Google Maps lady then told me there were long queues ahead through the city centre motorway and tantalisingly offered to take me on a route that would cut twenty one minutes off my travel time. It all went well, until I came to the road block. I did a U-turn, turned on my car’s navigation system, which is well and truly out of date, then tried to work out at each junction, which system was likely to give the best advice. I suspect it actually took longer than the traffic jam in the end and was probably more stressful, but I finally emerged from Oslo, then started looking for somewhere to stay. After a failed attempt to get into a hotel (lots of small places have no manned reception, and phone numbers to contact that go unanswered) I finally found a campsite with very comfortable cabins, and ended the day watching bits of Hunger Games on the TV.

On the second day, I crossed the border into Norway. There was a customs toll on the Norwegian side, but no sign of anyone monitoring anything. The road changed from grey asphalt to older looking red, but otherwise there was no great fanfare that I was now in a different country.

As I drove up though, it was interesting to compare the scenery with the Norwegian landscape we experienced on the way down. Here, there were no mountains and twisting roads, only miles and miles of trees with long straight highways, often with a 100km/h speed limit. Periodically there would be a break in the trees, with an expanse of water behind it, but otherwise there was little change as I covered the long miles from south to north.

A lake near Vilhelmina

On the second night, having found the campsite I was aiming for closed, I took my second choice, which was accommodation at the ski centre in Åsarna. This was something of a revelation. I chose to stay in the vandrarhem (hostel) rather than a cabin. It felt rather comforting – a bit like being back in halls of residence at university. My room was basic, with two single beds and a small table, but there was a comfortable kitchen and sitting area. Rather than eating out, I decided to buy something from the supermarket. I got something that I assume is traditionally Swedish. Kåldomar seemed to be some kind of minced meat wrapped in cabbage leaves. It came with mashed potato and gravy, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I went outside briefly after I had eaten it, and realised as I came back in that I had achieved the dubious feat of making the entire vandrarhem smell of boiled cabbage!

As I drove north, the trees began to thin out and it started to look more like the kind of arctic tundra-like landscape, with sparser, stunted looking trees. There were reindeer too, one of which was a wonderful chocolate brown colour from the tip of its nose to its tidy little hooves. Sadly I didn’t get a photo of that one, but I did take a snap of one I came across later.

A reindeer in Lapland. What could be more appropriate?

It was autumn up here too. The leaves were beginning to turn and the forest floor was ripe with berries and fungi.

Another cabin and two more days driving took me to Kiruna, which my phone told me was only four hours and twelve minutes from home. I stayed in Malmfältens folkhögskola, which was, in effect, another hostel, though this time there was breakfast thrown in and I didn’t have to make my own bed. It was a lovely little room with a peaceful view of trees (what else?) from the window.

So now I am back in Norway and wishing I had longer to visit Sweden, but there it is. On Monday, the estate agent is coming, hopefully to allow some people to look at the house. I should probably ask her how much interest there has been, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. If there are people interested, there will probably be bidding within a couple of days, so then I will find out if the house is going to sell easily, or not. If it does sell, everything will be a lot clearer, if it doesn’t, then we’ll have to do it all over again.

And so, I’d better go. I have work to do, getting the house ready. I started staining the terrace yesterday and repainting the white paint on the balustrades. I need to finish that off, then tackle clearing the garage and cleaning the windows. Lovely views are all very well, but it’s much better if people can get a clear view of them.

So goodbye for now. I will leave you with another picture of a tree and a link to the estate agent’s listing for my house. Have a good week.

https://www.finn.no/realestate/homes/ad.html?finnkode=316713475

Super Blue

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

Sunrise/sunset: 09:08/14:56 Daylength: 5hr48min

I’ve seen the sun! I wasn’t even looking for it, but went outside at work on Monday just after ten o’clock and, to my amazement, there it was!

I don’t think the feeling of joy this gives can be understood until you’ve lived somewhere where there is a significant period when the sun doesn’t come over the horizon at all. Long cloudy spells, even in the south of Norway, were not the same. I had a visceral feeling of joy at this moment. When the sun isn’t out, the light here is still super blue. I will add some other photos later, taken on a couple of different days this week, and you will see what I mean.

This winter has been hard. The snow came early and there has been a lot of it and on top of that, the temperature changes have been crazy. One day it’s minus twenty, the next it can be above zero. We badly needed the wood that Ann brought because this year has demonstrated that our house is not really insulated well enough. At super-cold temperatures, even the lovely new, powerful heat exchanger I bought doesn’t really cut it and the electricity bill last month was heinous. On the coldest days, when we come home, it can be thirteen or fourteen degrees in the house, which isn’t super-freezing, but isn’t comfortable to sit in. The wood stove solves the problem, but it takes a couple of hours to really start warming the place up. Before next winter, I will be getting new insulation in the loft and I hope that will make a significant difference.

As regular readers will know, I am in the process of moving jobs at the moment, though still within the Norwegian Food Safety Authority: Mattilsynet. I have spent most of this week working in the abattoir, where I am rapidly learning how to do new tasks, in particular to do with administration. The two main aims are to ensure that the food produced is safe and to ensure that animal welfare is high and though the first is very important, it is the second that interests me more.

For the first time this week, I have come across a situation where I am going to have to issue a fine. In Norway, it is illegal to send cows to the abattoir within the last month before they are due to calve. As their pregnancy progresses, the ligaments around the pelvis begin to loosen, and obviously as the calf gets bigger, it’s more likely that loading and unloading and travelling in general can result in pain or injury. In an odd coincidence, having not come across a case before, this week there were two.

In one of these, in my opinion, the farmer seems not to have been careful enough, though I believe he does still care about his animals. It’s not entirely up to me and Thomas explained that I will need to involve the animal welfare advisor before I make the decision, but it seems likely he will be fined. The other case was even sadder to deal with. I called the farmer and he told me that he’d had a vet out to check the cow for pregnancy and that the vet had got it wrong. It happens, of course. Mistakes do occur, but for the farmer it was a significant blow. He won’t be charged a fine as he sent me evidence, but his cow was pregnant with twins and he sounded very upset as he told me she was a good cow. Farming has to be one of the toughest professions there is.

Andrew is in his last year at school. He has known for a while that he wanted to go to folk high school for a year (before probably going on to university), but this was the week when many of them started accepting applications for next year, and to his enormous delight, he got into his first choice of school to study film. We had previously looked at ones closer to home, but the courses local t ous didn’t seem as well suited to what he wanted, and so he is going to move back to southwest Norway for a year. It will be strange without him, but I am delighted with how excited he seems. Anna spent a year studying computer game coding near Trondheim and I think she would agree it was one of the best years of her life so far – an uncomplicatedly happy time. As well as studying computing, there was an unexpected sideline at Torshus where they sang sea shanties and the culmination of the year was to sail a tall ship from Bergen to Shetland and back. It will be very interesting to see how Andrew’s school compares.

Last but not least, my mum is eighty years old today. I hope you have something lovely planned and I’m looking forward to celebrating with you in March when we come over. Happy birthday Mum!