Tag Archives: North Norway

Last Things Over and Over

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Sunrise/sunset: 04:11/21:29 Daylength: 17hr17min

Things are going well. This week I have painted the last wall of the garage and made concrete for the second time. I am gradually filling a hole in the wall under the veranda, left open when the old air conditioning unit was moved. The house brochure still isn’t done, though I did get the survey report back. The surveyor didn’t find anything nasty, which is a relief, and he’s valued the house at more than I bought it for, which is brilliant. I’m looking forward to seeing the photos. I’ve contacted some removal companies as well, and done my first video survey. Keep on going, one foot in front of the other.

One of the pleasures of working at the abattoir is spending time with Trude. She was born and raised here and properly embraces the lifestyle, making the most of the wildness, living on the edge of the world. She owns and breeds hunting dogs and though she obviously loves hunting, she also works hard to do it ethically. She was recently involved in taking a survey of how many grouse there are in the area where they hunt, so that they know how many birds (if any) they can take this year. On Thursday, she told me that she was going away for the weekend, but that she couldn’t go until Friday as she was involved in judging dogs in a course where they were trained to be frightened of sheep. Picking berries and living close to the land are second nature.

I love listening to it all and it sounds wonderful. Part of the fascination for me, is catching a glimpse into a close knitted community, where the way of life is so different from my own. When I was much younger, I felt a similar pull when living on the edges of the farming community in south west Scotland. Back then, I wanted to be part of it. Now I just listen, enthralled and admiring, as I know it’s not for me, but hearing about it is like a tiny window into a different world.

And of course, in addition to all of that, Trude knows all about maintaining Norwegian houses. One of the challenges for me, in living here, has been that people tend to be very self sufficient. Getting people in to decorate or do work on your house costs so much that most people learn how to fix things early. There’s a whole lot of maintenance that needs to be done though. Wooden houses in an Arctic climate need to be looked after. There are also some short-cuts that make doing that work faster. I mentioned last week that I had cleaned and stained the decking and the steps up to the front door. It took me quite a long time, spraying on the cleaning fluid that loosens the old stain, scrubbing the wood with a brush, then washing it all off. It was physically hard going and my arms have developed semi-permanent aches and pains. Trude has been keeping track of all the work I’ve been doing on the house (I think she approves) and when I said that, though I wanted to finish the garage, I probably wasn’t going to get the veranda done before my holiday, to my surprise (and happiness) she offered to come round and give me a hand.

I expected she would come round and we would do the job together, but once we had applied the cleaning fluid (with mops on sticks, instead of spraying it on) she brought out her secret weapon, which was a brush attached to a pressure washer. To my bemusement, I was actually left just watching her as she cleaned my entire veranda in double quick time. If I was staying, I would definitely be investing in one of these!

As I go about my life though, I am constantly aware of the changes that are coming. The bank of wild flowers outside my house is in full bloom at the moment. I know, when they die, I won’t be seeing them again, or at least not on a daily basis as I go in and out. The season in the abattoir is almost upon us. I am on holiday now for two weeks. When I get back, Vaidotas and Ernestas, will have arrived and there will be seven Mattilsynet meat inspectors working every day, instead of three of us, working between three and four days each week. I love the life the season brings and the changing of the seasons of the year that goes along with it. By the time I leave in November, it will be cold again and I will probably have seen the first snow. And while it will be wonderful to go home, it is also going to be tough, tearing myself away.

Anyway, I had better go. When I said I was on holiday, what I’m actually about to do is take a road trip, taking Andrew down to his new school year in Stavanger. It will be Andrew’s last time in this house, probably. How odd to be leaving home, to have no home to come back to. I will build a new one in Scotland, hopefully, but obviously it won’t be the same. Before I leave him, I will probably try to buy him some plane tickets so he can come to me over Christmas. Planning and planning and planning. I’d better go and start packing the car. Have a good week all!

Keeping Track

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Sunrise/sunset: 03:42/21:59 Daylength: 18hr16min

I had hoped to share my house sale brochure with you this week, but it hasn’t gone live yet. No word from the estate agent or the surveyor on what they think the house is worth either. Though I probably should have chased it up, it’s just another thing on my enormous list of things to do. I haven’t taken many photos this week, but I did send some to the estate agent: pictures taken from around the house during the year I have been here. If you read regularly, you will have seen them before, but I will scatter them through this post as a reminder of how beautiful it is.

This was taken shortly after moving in, before all the snow came

Things I have achieved this week include painting the third wall of the garage, getting the front door steps and decking around them stained, preparing the house for photographs and having the photographs taken and booking two ferries, to get me from Norway to Emden in Germany and from Amsterdam to Newcastle. I’ve also booked an AirBnB in Amsterdam for two nights and the woman who owns the house we will be staying in has supplied me with the name and address of a vet in Amsterdam. Though Triar has a pet passport and has had his rabies vaccination, he needs to be wormed by a veterinary surgeon between 24 and 56 hours before entering the UK. Doing it myself isn’t enough. I need a different vet and a signature. I haven’t rung the vet yet, nor have I made final arrangements on how to get down to Kristiansand, or all the transfers. Still, at least I have made a start, and the best news associated with that is that Anna has agreed to come over and make the trip with Triar and me. We would have probably managed alone, but it would have been a challenge every time I needed to buy food as there’s no way I would leave him tied up outside a shop and he almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed in most of them.

The whole process of selling the house is further complicated by the fact that I am on holiday at the end of next week and will be away for a fortnight. The estate agent said they normally try for a visning (open house session for potential buyers) a couple of weeks after the brochure goes live. John is coming back from his holiday the day before Andrew and I go away. I don’t want to have a visning when I’m absent, so it will have to wait until I’m back, but the idea of arriving straight back from being away, to get the house organised immediately is daunting. In effect, I have to try to get as much done as possible before I leave. So painting the fourth wall of the garage is non negotiable. It has to be done this week. If I experience a rush of energy from somewhere, I may get the veranda cleaned and stained, but that is a much bigger job, and one that isn’t started yet, so possibly best left for now. I’m having to accept that I’m not going to get everything done, so prioritising is the name of the game.

Polar night over a snow covered mountain scene. Taken from the garden.

Though the house is tidy, inside and out, the garage and the room beside it are in chaos. Some of it will go away with Andrew. When I said I am going on holiday next week, what I’m actually doing is driving him down to Stavanger, to his new folk high school, where he starts on 26th August. We have quite a lot of sports gear, such as skis and diving gear, and he will be taking some of that with him, which is good. Unfortunately, the garage and its attached storage room are also where we have been dumping everything as we gradually did the house and garden up. There is old wood from some horrible decking we removed and a large wooden toy van that was also in the garden. I looked into hiring a skip this week, but it seems the decking wood was impregnated with nasty chemicals and therefore can’t be put in normal waste. I’ve taken some of it to the dump in the car, but am considering how to get the rest of it away.

From inside the house, there are various shelves we have taken down and all the tools that have been used are scattered around. There is John’s shearing equipment and an old mattress from a bed that I need to throw away, which is blocking some other shelves. There’s also the air conditioning unit, that I had vaguely thought we might use in the garage store room, before I realised it had a heated floor.

My favourite shot of the aurora over the barn next door to the house.

When we moved in, the previous owner had left various things that matched stuff in the house, such as tiles and flooring. There was also a bunch of paint tins, a few of which contained viable paint (I have painted the garage without buying new paint, for example) but most of which I have been gradually taking to the dump as the paint has solidified long ago. I guess any of the decorating equipment that she left might be left as it still matches the things in the house, but it very much depends on the new owner. If they demand I remove everything (as is their right in Norway) then I will have to do it. Depending on when the house sells, doing so might be complicated.

Things I haven’t started yet include getting quotations from international removal companies. I need to get three and getting them is quite complicated. The companies require a fairly detailed list of what you want to take, as well as an address where they have to deliver it, which I can’t supply yet and probably won’t be able to do until I actually arrive in the UK. What I want to take is also up in the air. John will want some furniture (probably) as it makes sense for him to move into an unfurnished flat, but exactly which items isn’t certain. The estate agent wants me to leave the white goods, but I won’t know if the new owner will actually want them until we get to the point of selling. I guess I just arrange to go without them and we can dispose of them if necessary. That isn’t especially complicated, at least.

Sunset shot over the late winter snow. Taken from behind the garage.

At least I am looking forward to being on holiday next week, though it suddenly dawned on me properly yesterday that it’s not just a holiday, but is Andrew leaving home. It’s odd for him too, as he will leave and once he’s gone, the house will most likely be sold and he probably won’t ever return. All this feels very odd and still somewhat unreal at the moment.

One thing that past couple of weeks have brought home to me is how much I am going to miss the colleagues I have been working with for the past three years. I have been moving around my whole life. You’d think I would be used to it, but I guess most times I have moved, I have had family with me. This time it will be a complete break from everything and though I am going somewhere where there will be other family and friends, it is going to be hard to make that break.

Anyway, as planned, Andrew and I did go camping again this weekend. We had intended to go for two nights, but ended up doing only one, back in the same place as last week. As we drove back up, I was very much aware that I was driving through another farewell. Next time we go camping (if we do) it will be in Scotland. I will probably be here to see the start of the winter snow, but the short Arctic summer is already showing signs of coming to an end. There are going to be a whole lot of goodbyes and a lot of last times coming up. Next weekend’s blog might be delayed as there will be a lot to do, but I will try to record some of the journey so I can share it with you. Have a good week, all!

More breakfast toasties from yesterday.

Painting, Pets and Pizza

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Sunrise/sunset: 03:05/22:31 Daylength: 19hr31min

It feels like a long time since I wrote my last post. Events are whizzing by and I’m just trying to keep up.

Firstly then, the house. The estate agents have been helpful. After weeks of trying (unsuccessfully) to get hold of a plumber, the recommendation from them came up trumps and the plumbing is now (mostly) fixed. There’s an unpleasant aroma in the utility room, but the surveyor, who came on Thursday, located the problem. The drain in the floor should have some kind of cap on it and doesn’t. The plumber had already fitted a new u-bend and now will have to come back to fix the drain, but hopefully that will be it.

Fortunately, the process for selling the house seems to be coming in bite-sized chunks. We cleaned everything inside for the estate agent visit and she gave me various tips for making the house look good when the photographer comes. When I mentioned painting the garage, she said to paint the front first, as that would be in the photographs. The rest could be done later, she pointed out, so it’s now half done and looks a lot better than before. I need to retouch the white paint, but I’m pleased with it.

The surveyor came out on Thursday, so I had to fill in loads more paperwork. Norway brought in a lot of rules a couple of years ago about houseowners having to declare everything they know about faults and problems, as well as about all work that’s been done over time. Fortunately, I knew about the requirement to provide receipts and proof of work done, so I was more or less prepared for that aspect, but it was still a tortuous process.

Before he came, I wanted to get the mouse-brushes in place. I thought it would be a very minor job, but it was a little more complicated than I had expected. Houses in Norway are (mostly) constructed quite differently from the houses I grew up with in the UK. Mine has a small “creep cellar” underneath, walled with breeze blocks, which are covered with a thin layer of cement at the front, but are just painted at the back. There are wooden plugs in the low walls of the creep cellar which are more enough big enough to crawl through. You can’t access it at all from the house, but only from the garden, so when it’s decked with snow, that’s it for the winter. Above the creep cellar, the main walls are made of wood. I’d say the majority of the houses in Norway have the planks laid horizontally, but mine are vertical. There is an overhang with a gap between the wood and the breeze block wall and the mouse brushes, each of which is about a metre long, are usually inserted into that overhang.

Most of the instructions I’ve seen have been for houses with horizontal planks. The mouse brushes are just pushed lengthways up into the gap and that’s the job done. But when I tried to do that, it turned out the overhang on my house was too small, so that the bristles of the brush stuck out the bottom. On inspection, it turned out that, because of the upright planks, there were actually smaller holes that could each be blocked individually, but that meant we would have to cut the brushes into shorter lengths. None of the tools we had were working to cut the wire along the centre of the brushes, so we had to buy a new cutter. Anyway, in case that’s all as clear as mud, or you can’t visualise the brushes or the planks, I took some photos. Cutting the brush first, then looking up under the wall at the hole to be filled, then finally the brush being pushed into the hole.

We also had to pull out lots of furniture and all the white goods so that the surveyor could look behind them. I’m hoping he didn’t find anything too awful, other than the things I already knew about. He and the estate agent will decide between them how much they think I should ask for the house in the first instance.

Early next week, the photographer is coming out. Before she comes, we will need to clean again and there is a bit of “dressing” that I need to do. We have to take down the curtains in the living room and rearrange the furniture, both of which seem rather odd to me. The curtains are cosy and suit the room well, but we have to maximise the light, she told me. The furniture is perhaps more problematic. I forgot, when she said that we had to pull the sofas out into the middle of the room, that the backs of both of them are somewhat damaged. They’re leather sofas, generously given to me by a colleague, and I like them a lot, but having them close to the wall is covering a multitude of sins! I’ll have to pull them out today and have a look. A black marker pen might be my best friend!

One of John’s friends, Bowen, has been coming to cut our lawns once a week. My original plan was to buy the equipment to cut it myself – probably some kind of ride-on mower as it’s big. However, by the time summer came, I knew I was thinking of moving, so I didn’t want to invest in any more equipment. Bowen has been doing a great job and better still, he has now given our lovely guinea pigs a new home. That was one of my biggest concerns as I didn’t want to hand little Brownie and Millie over to strangers, but I know Bowen will take good care of them and he has children, who hopefully will love them lots.

Beyond the photographer, still seemingly a while away, will be the “visning”, when the house is opened up for an hour or two for people to come and look around it. By then, I will have to have the garage finished. In addition, I want to stain the doorsteps and the veranda. I started outside the front door last night, where there are some steps and a raised wooden area beside the driveway. Norwegian weather is hard on wooden verandas, as you can imagine, so I want to do it right. Before you stain the wood, you have to remove any old stain so the new can sink in. This involves spraying on some special cleaning fluid, then removing the stain. I wasn’t sure if there was any stain left at all on the platform. To me, it looked like old wood that had long been bleached, but after the cleaning fluid had been on for fifteen minutes, I noticed there were areas of wood that suddenly appeared to have stain on them.

I started to scrub, thinking I would remove that small area, only to find that my brush was revealing more and more of the original, honey-coloured wood. I don’t know how long it was since it was done, but I feel like I removed about ten years worth of ingrained dirt, revealing some much nicer wood underneath. I sent photos to Wivek, as I was worried that I would have to start again, now the dirt was gone, but she assured me it now looks as it ought to after the cleaning process. Buying my own house in Norway, even for only a year, has been an enormous learning curve. Anyway, front doorstep cleaned, much larger veranda still to go. I know I could just sell the house as it is, but it seems stupid not to have it looking as good as I can manage, before going ahead.

Anyway, with all the work on the house ongoing, it’s been hard to relax, so when Andrew asked me if we could go away for a night camping, I almost turned him down. I like camping, but it can be quite a faff, getting everything into the car and putting up the tent and so on. However, it’s his holiday and the last one before he leaves home and I wanted to spend some quality time with him, so on Friday night, we headed out onto Senja to find somewhere to spend the night.

We had hoped to have a spectacular dinner at Senja Roasters. I’ve often posted about them before but, to our disappointment, they seem to have stopped cooking and now have turned into a glorified coffee and cake cafe. The only savoury food on offer was quiche, which didn’t even come with salad. We were a bit sad, having driven all the way to Stonglandseidet in anticipation, but fortunately, I had spotted a cafe attached to a cabin and camp site along the way. We drove back, fully expecting a fairly typical Norwegian roadside food menu, with burgers and hot dogs, so we were very pleasantly surprised when we saw the menu board.

Andrew suggested we could share a reindeer pizza, so that is what we did. It was delicious!

We drove back down to Songlandseidet to camp. A good while back, I spent a whole day exploring that part of southern Senja with Thomas, looking for reindeer and I had noticed this place when I was there. It was windy and so camping in a field with plenty of shelter from trees was a good plan.

Though I had been unsure about setting out, once we were there, in beautiful, peaceful surroundings, I felt more relaxed than I have for weeks. When I’m in the house, I am constantly aware that there are lots of things that I need to get done.

Lying in the tent, with Triar snuggling beside me, I felt free of all that. We are now planning another trip for next weekend, so there might be another late blog.

On the way home yesterday, we decided to stop for breakfast at the same café to try the toasties. It was a lovely end to our night away. Anyway, bye for now. Hope you all have a good week.

The Beginning of the End

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Sunrise/sunset: 02:12/23:29 Daylength: 21hr17min

You know, it’s odd. For the past few weeks, it’s been difficult to write this blog because there was something I wasn’t telling you. Starting this is actually hard as well, but it has to be done because this week, I handed in my notice at Mattilsynet. I guess some regular readers will be surprised. As you know, I love my job here, so it has been a difficult decision to make, but I am moving back to Scotland.

This decision has its roots in a number of factors. The main one is that I want to be nearer to Mum and Dad. Last winter, round about Christmas time, my dad was not well. He was having trouble breathing and they rang 111 for advice, only to find that an ambulance had been sent. Dad didn’t go to hospital in the end, but the most difficult thing for me was that I didn’t hear about it until several days afterwards. When I asked my mum why, she told me that they hadn’t wanted to worry me. That was understandable, but frustrating. In Norway, there is a lot of flexibility over time off in emergencies. Had I known, I might have been able to fly home, although it probably wasn’t necessary in this case. But if it had been more serious, I have no doubt my boss would have allowed me to go.

But the not telling threw up all kinds of complications. If I did have to go home without much warning, it could take than twenty four hours to get there. In winter, if the weather was really bad or there were no flights, it could be much longer. And anyway… it also crossed my mind that the not telling wasn’t going only in one direction. A long time ago, in my first years at university, before the age of mobile phones and easy communication, my mum joked that she knew things were going well when she didn’t hear from me. When I was intensely homesick at the start, I called them every day. I spent many hours on that little-known payphone in the basement of the halls of residence. When my social life took off, sometimes there could be days and weeks when she couldn’t get hold of me. But the situation is reversed now. Knowing that my parents are physically out of reach, when things are going badly, I don’t ring them, because I don’t want to worry them. In this age of communication, we are failing to communicate.

But my parents aren’t the only factor. Anyone who has been through the last half year with me on this blog will know that last winter was just too much. And (final straw time) it would all have been bearable if Mr Abusive and Husleietvistutvalget (HTU) hadn’t done their worst. The (to me) incomprehensible decision taken by HTU, to believe him when he was exaggerating and actually lying, even though I pointed out some very obviously fraudulent behaviour, has made me feel differently about how well protected I am in Norway. I always thought that the system here would protect me and it didn’t. There’s no doubt their decision has been significant in the north of Norway losing someone who was performing a useful function.

So what happens now? I have three months notice to work, so I will be here through much of the busy season in the abattoir. And then after that, I have to get some of the contents of the house over to the UK, as well as Triar and myself. It is unexpectedly difficult, importing a dog into the UK. Given that pet passports have made quarantine largely a thing of the past, I thought he and I would just bob on a plane and would go together. But it seems that dogs entering the UK on planes have to go as cargo. You actually have to hand them over to a carrier who puts him on a plane you can’t travel on and they have to be met at the other end by someone else. From here it would be at least two flights and I can’t be at both ends. The idea of Triar, on his own, through two flights, and being met at the end with people he’s never met just seems unbearable. And so he and I will go together to the UK on trains and boats.

And where are we going? I am moving to Dumfries. Back in the nineties, I worked in both Stranraer and Castle Douglas, so the area is quite familiar. I have already been in contact with a friend who lives there and I know I have other friends who are not far away. And I keep looking things up and feeling excited about things that I would have taken for granted before. For example, Dumfries has a hospital and it has an accident and emergency department. It has always concerned me, living here, that the nearest hospital is a two hour drive away. There is a library in Dumfries as well. I mean, there are libraries here, of course, but they are full of books in Norwegian. I read to relax, and despite being fluent in Norwegian, reading anything still requires a fully switched on brain. It’s not the same.

And of course all those laws and instructions I have to read at work and all the reports I have to write… all of it is hard for me. I write in English with a fluency that has allowed me to have books published. I told one of my new colleagues that the very idea of doing it all in English instead is just amazing and she made a face, but she just has no idea. I guess I should add here, that the new job I will be doing is, on paper at least, almost the same job I was doing in Finnsnes when I arrived here. There will be welfare visits on farms and monitoring and dealing with any outbreaks of notifiable diseases. As I said at the start, I love my job. I have long thought I would love it even more if I could only do it in English, so now I’m going to give it a try.

So here I am. The house is being prepared for sale. Selling after only a year isn’t necessarily going to be plain sailing. I bought it for less than the asking price because it wasn’t selling. I had really thought I would be here for years and years and could sort out all kinds of things and grow bushes to hide the sound of the cars passing on the road nearby, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

So now, I am preparing everything, and just hoping someone likes it enough. We’ve done a lot of work in the last year, building a fence, fixing the hole in the roof and so on. The estate agent put me in touch with a plumber, so now that job has been done at least. But other faults have cropped up. We discovered a cracked plank on the edge of the roof a couple of weeks back when the gutters were being checked. I got a quotation, thinking I could fix it, but it’s too expensive. And having done that, I will have to let the surveyor know. If I know about a fault, it’s fraudulent not to declare it. I just have to hope that the surveyor doesn’t hit me too hard. And there are other things that weren’t checked because of the snow. He’s coming out on Wednesday, so once he’s been, I will have a better idea of the value of the house.

So a large chunk of this weekend will probably be taken up painting the garage. I have also bought mouse brushes to put in the gap underneath the wood on the sides of the house. I will try to take pictures to explain that for next week. The day after I put everything in motion, I had to finish painting the ceiling in the hall. We took down a wooden partition and it had left a mess and I had been putting it off for weeks, but now it’s done and it looks great. I don’t know if you have watched Dexter, but I really felt like I was in Dexter territory once I had the hallway prepared!

And after the garage is painted and the mouse brushes are in place, there’s just the front steps and the veranda to clean and stain. At least, if I buy a house in Scotland, I know how to do a lot more DIY than I used to!

Outdoors, it’s still very beautiful. Here are some photos from the last week.

And finally, for the foodies amongst you, John was on holiday in Paris for a few days. Obviously he’s becoming a chip off the old block, because the only photo he’s sent, as evidence that he was having a good time, was of some pastries from a lovely bakery they found for breakfast. So here you go fellow foodies. Feast your eyes on this.

See you next week!

Colour, Light and Sound

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Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

We are into the last few days of the midnight sun. Andrew is away at the moment and John is about to go on holiday for four weeks, as are many others who work at the abattoir. Next week the abattoir will be closed, so Friday had a real end of term feeling. So much so that I almost forgot that I don’t have holiday until John comes back.

The reality is that I’m going to have a few days here on my own. It feels rather odd: a taste of things to come I think. I don’t know how I feel about living alone again after so many years of having family with me. Sometimes I think it will be great to be able to do what I want, but I know I am going to miss them. Moving on in life can be difficult. I don’t often talk about my marriage on here, but though I know leaving was the right thing to do, the part of my life once all the children have left is much more of a blank canvas than it would have been if I was still in a relationship with a committed partner.

Andrew is going to Folk High School down in the south of Norway, and after giving it a good deal of consideration, I’m going to drive him down. So in four week’s time, when my own holiday actually arrives, I will be taking a major road trip. We may take Triar with us. I’m not sure, as yet. A lot of things are still up in the air at the moment.

With buying the house and all that’s been happening through the winter, we haven’t been out and about nearly as much as I would have liked, but last Saturday, John and I decided we were going to have a day out. We drove down to Andørja, which is an island that can be reached by a bridge from Senja. Had we driven further, through the tunnel that links to Rolla island, we could have taken a ferry to Harstad, but that might be a trip for another day. For now, John and I just went to see the mountains of Andørja and though they were lost in the clouds, because it wasn’t a picture perfect sunny day, they were still spectacular: rocky mountains that fall steeply into the fjord.

The bridge to the island is somewhat brutalist, being made of concrete with no additional supportive structures or suspension. It is spectacularly high though, to allow ships to pass underneath it. Here is a photo, taken from a distance.

And here’s John, looking good in amongst all that scenery!

And a random shot of a tree stump, that I just liked the look of!

On the way back, we went to Patricia’s Gatekjøkken for a delicious burger.

I am not very good at checking Facebook, so when I went on it on Thursday evening, I was surprised to see an invitation to a blues concert from my colleague Kaj. Kaj has been working with me a lot at the abattoir lately and is a great source of information, both about how things function at work and about Norway and Norwegian life in general. I knew that he played drums in a band, so I decided I would ask him about it the next day. I thought though, in general, that it would be lovely to get out for an evening. So I was very pleased to discover, when I spoke to Kaj at work on Friday, that he would indeed be playing. There were three bands performing and Kaj’s was up second.

The venue was intriguing. The concert was at Moen Kulturlåve, which I had never heard of. It’s actually a barn, where there can be cattle on the ground floor, though I don’t know whether they would be outside at this time of year. Kaj told me that the farmer has assured him that the cows seem to milk better after there’s been a concert, which is intriguing, if true. Certainly, cattle do sometimes seem to like having a radio playing when they are inside, so who knows?

Anyway, John and I drove over and bought tickets on the door and I’m very glad we did. Certainly it’s a very different venue from any I’ve ever been in and there was a wonderful atmosphere, even before the band arrived.

John and I had a couple of beers. Mine was alcohol free as I had to drive, but it felt great to be out doing something so very different.

And here is Kaj’s band, who were fantastic. I don’t know how long the concert went on, as John and I left as it was approaching midnight, but it was a brilliant night out for both of us.

And I will leave you with a few flower pictures, because there is so much colour in the world at the moment and it’s an amazing contrast after so many months of snow and ice. Have a good week all and thank you for reading.

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!

Gimme, gimme, gimme…

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

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

Anna and Lauren arrived on Monday afternoon as planned. There were a few things to juggle while they were here. Andrew’s oral exam was on Tuesday and he had a concert on Wednesday evening, when he would be playing piano. Brownie the guinea pig also had a lump under her chin, which I had hoped would be seen on Monday, but the earliest they could fit her in was Thursday. And I was working Wednesday, but I hoped we would fit a few other things in and the end of the week would be clear.

We decided to meet up with Andrew after his exam and have a picnic lunch out in nature. Given that the weather wasn’t entirely favourable, we walked up to a lake where there was a wooden shelter, but even there, the wind was blowing in straight off the water and though we managed lunch it wasn’t a day to linger. When we got back to the car, I asked whether everyone wanted to go home, or whether they would like a tour to see some of Senja and the consensus was that they would like that. Anna had asked the evening before whether I knew somewhere there might still be snow, as Lauren had never really seen any proper snow. As we drove across Senja, it struck me that the most likely place might be on the road to Skaland. There is a tunnel, right through a mountain, and to get to it, you drive high up to a bowl where there is a small lake surrounded by steep peaks on three sides. Most of the way up, everything was dauntingly green, but I could see the summits were still snowy and, to my pleasure, though there was not a complete covering, the lake was still mostly frozen. The mountain tops were wreathed in clouds and the bare trees made a kind of sepia wasteland that, if not a classic winter wonderland, was certainly distinctly arctic, given that it was the middle of June.

As you can see from this second photo, the melting ice was still very thick in places.

Having taken photos, we got back in the car. I didn’t want to drive much further, but Anna suggested we should go through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain. It was worth it to see the contrast. Everything here was green, though the mist still shrouded the peaks.

On Wednesday, I had to work and on Thursday, I took Brownie to the vets. The lump, which I had suspected might be a benign fatty lump, turned out to be an abscess. The vet lanced it and gave me antibacterials to give her. With hindsight, a surgical approach might have been better than lancing, but for now, I’m giving the medicine and trying to keep the hole open so it doesn’t refill.

With a clear weekend ahead of us, I was looking forward to Friday. I went to bed and went to sleep, only to be disturbed at midnight by Anna knocking on my door. Sorry to disturb, she said, but Andrew was having an asthma attack and was struggling to breathe. There are some words that, as a mother, certainly wake you up quickly. I made a very quick assessment (concerningly wheezy: still pink) threw my phone at Anna, asked her to call the legevakt (emergency doctor’s clinic) and got dressed. There was no reply from the legevakt, so I bundled Andrew into the car and broke the speed limit as I drove into Finnsnes.

I managed to stay surprisingly calm. I guess several years of working in emergency and critical care back in the UK has had an effect. They hooked him up to a machine, and when I saw his oxygen sat. was 87 (ideally it should have been between 97 and 100) I merely commented that it was a bit low. They hooked him up to a nebuliser and gave him ventolin (which acts to open up the airways) twice, but even then, his oxygen levels were still less than optimal and his heart rate was much higher than it should have been. He also had a temperature.

The doctor was very good, at least. Having listened to Andrew’s lungs, he made a tentative diagnosis of pneumonia. There was then discussion about whether Andrew would have to go to Tromsø or whether he could be treated locally. By now, it was around 4am and if Andrew was transferred to Tromsø in an ambulance, there was no way I would be fit to drive behind them, so I was very relieved when we were told he would be kept in overnight in a short-stay unit in Finnsnes and x-rayed there in the morning. I left him in a very pleasant single room with a very attentive nurse and a nebuliser on the stand at the side of the bed. He was also given penicillin V and prednisolone tablets, and was already looking significantly better than he had when we arrived.

I drove home and slept briefly and he called me at quarter to ten to say he could go home. Friday was a write off. We had intended to go to Polar Park to see the animals, but it wasn’t only Andrew who needed a day of recovery. Yesterday, John took Anna and Lauren to Tromsø, while Andrew and I stayed at home. Unfortunately, I seem to be coming down with whatever virus it was that triggered Andrew’s pneumonia, though I am hoping the effect on me is a bit less dramatic. I think John, Anna and Lauren might make it to Polar Park today, but I won’t be going with them. If I rest plenty, I might be well enough in time to return to work on Tuesday! Ho hum!

And if, at the end of all that, you’re still wondering about the title, last night, shortly after midnight, we had a visitor in the garden. I heard him when I went to bed as he was so close to my window. I went through and told Anna and Lauren, and so Lauren, on the second last day of the holiday, was introduced to a moose after midnight.

Light Nights and Shearing Sheep

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

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

I scrolled back to last year to find out how I had formatted the immortal words “Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.” and I see that this time last year, I was excited, having just found an agent for my book. It seems unlikely at this point, that Ger will find a publisher and I haven’t made much progress in writing anything new. There has been altogether too much going on and I haven’t been in a good frame of mind for writing. It’s always hard to write without deadlines anyway, but there has been way too much time spent clearing snow and on other distractions. So for now, there’s not much likelihood of publication any time soon, though several of the publishers said they’d like to see new things from me. There was, in fact, quite a lot of good feedback, but it seems that, without romance, women’s fiction of the type I’ve written is difficult to sell. At some point, I will get started again, but I will need to work out a new strategy.

Returning to the north was difficult after a week of sun and warmth in Yorkshire. I arrived back in Bardufoss at 11:30 at night. It wasn’t dark, of course, but it was very chilly and raining. At one point, as I drove back, my car pinged me to give the ice warning it gives when the temperature is 3.5°C. I had taken Monday off, so I drove Andrew into school. He is doing his final exams at the moment. All the written exams are over, so now he is waiting to do a final, oral exam. Both John and Anna did International Baccalaureate, so this is our first experience of the Norwegian exam system, which seems to be somewhat bizarre. I knew from before, that the written exams are oddly long. You can come in any time between eight and ten, then sit in them all day, if you like, though you can walk out after ten, all of which sounds enormously distracting.

But the oral exam tradition is even weirder. Over the course of three weeks, all the students will have one oral exam in one of their subjects, but they are not told the date or the subject in advance. At Andrew’s school, all the students who haven’t yet had their exam, have to go in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. When they go in on Monday, some of them will find out that they have an exam on Wednesday, and in which subject. Those who have an exam stay and get some general extra tuition from the teacher on the Monday. On Tuesday, they are told the topic within their subject that they should prepare for and on Wednesday, they sit their exam. The rest of the students who weren’t selected for an exam, are free to go home, but of course for Andrew, this means waiting for a bus as there are only a few each day. Why they can’t just alert the students by text the night before, or early enough in the morning that they can go in if they need to is beyond me.

We’re currently at the end of the first week and happily, Andrew found out yesterday that he has been selected to have his oral exam in history, which is the subject he wanted. It also means that, once his exam is over, he will be finished and won’t have to go back in. There will be a graduation ceremony, but for me, as well as for him, it really will be the end of an era.

On Wednesday, John and I went to Ann’s to shear her sheep, at least John sheared them and I started and stopped the shearing machine. Despite it being quite chilly in the barn, John was quickly sweating. Shearing sheep is a very physical job. Goodness knows how it feels to be a sheep with winter-thick wool that is taken off all at once, but I should imagine it is both something of a shock and a relief at the same time.

Anna and her girlfriend Lauren are coming here on Monday, which I am very much looking forward to. I considered taking time off as flexitime, but having had to work the last time I booked that, I decided to take a holiday, just to be sure! It was odd being back at work for four days and hard to get my teeth into anything, though it’s great to see that my new colleague, Ingrid, is settling in well and picking things up very quickly. It looks like it is going to be a bit warmer this week, at least, which is good as it would be a sad introduction to the North of Norway for Lauren if it was still snowing in June, as it was on and off, right up to the end of May. And so, I am going to sign off as there is lots to do. I hope you all have a good week.

Happy Place

Holiday, In Darkness and In Light, Travel, , , ,

It’s been an interesting week. I’ll start with an update on the water situation. The temporary fix with the tank and pump failed on Sunday due to an airlock. Sunday wasn’t great, but the main concern was still that it might be tough and costly to get the problem sorted out.

On Monday, the representative for the insurance company came back and quickly fixed the airlock (this time I remembered to ask him how he did it. After that, he went off to speak to the owner of the house nearest the well. He called me back about an hour later. Apparently the other house owner had actually begun to run out of water on Friday evening, but despite having our phone number, he hadn’t thought to tell us. There was an ice bridge blocking the stream further up, which meant the well had gradually emptied. Our water disappeared first because our pipe was highest up. So the mystery was solved and (thank goodness) no major digging works were required. So all in all, a bit inconvenient, but several lessons learned about where everything is and what to check if it happens again!

We had an interesting case at the abattoir on Wednesday. Some animals were sent in that were thin enough to set the alarm bells ringing, not only in me, but in the abattoir workers that work with the live animals. It’s almost a physical punch to see animals that are so obviously struggling. It’s quite a big job when we start to document such a case. I took a number of photographs while the animals were still in the pen, though I was worried enough about them that I didn’t go in and stir them up. The last thing I want to do is cause any additional distress.

I asked the animal handlers to call me back when the time came for the animals to be slaughtered. That way, I could photograph and handle them when they were already restrained. I then went back and sent messages to Hilde and Thomas. This case was serious enough to warrant immediate follow up.

I came back to examine the animals as they were being brought onto the line. It wasn’t reassuring. Close up, the animals were distressingly thin. The animal handlers obviously felt the same as I did and while it was upsetting, at least I was doing my utmost to make sure we had plenty of evidence.

The farm where the animals came from has been on our radar for a while, but things had been improving, so this was a real blow. But there was a curveball on the way, because after the animals had been killed, it was discovered that quite a large percentage of them had very unpleasant looking lung lesions.

Having spent some time inspecting the lungs, it was obvious we needed to find out what disease this was. So having photographed the carcasses and the lungs (evidence of everything must be recorded) I sent off various samples to the lab. It doesn’t sound so much when I write it down, but with all the extra tasks in addition to my normal work, it ended up being a ten hour working day. I spoke to Hilde and Thomas after I had finished and Thomas had already set up a visit for the next day.

I had been planning to catch up on some paperwork on Thursday as Ann was coming in to cover my morning shift, but I really wanted to be involved in the follow-up and so, mentally casting aside the reindeer overtime fees calculation checks I had been sent, I asked Thomas if I could join him and he agreed.

Though the thinness of the animals had been distressing, the farm visit was actually somewhat reassuring. There were thin animals there as well, and though things weren’t perfect, various steps were being taken. The grass is starting to grow now, so some of the problems will resolve once the animals are back outside and major plans for improvement are under way. But now we also have to throw in the possibility of some kind of infection on the farm. Once we know what caused the lung problems, then we will have to work out how to manage the problem. That could involve anything from a new vaccination program, right up to mass culling. Either way, we will be offering whatever support we can to the farmer, who has already expressed himself as being very grateful for any insight we can give on what’s going wrong.

This is the kind of work I signed up for when I chose to be a vet. I know there are times when it is incredibly heavy work, but at the end of the day, this really is what I want to be doing.

But as you can see from the photo at the top of the page, I am now a very long way from all that. I flew into Manchester yesterday, into the chaos of a failure in the electronic passport system. Having survived that, I am now back in beautiful Yorkshire, where the summer is coming in. There are fat, healthy cattle in the field behind the house and everything in the garden is beginning to bloom. And now I can hear that mum and dad are up and the kettle is on, so I will drop a few photos here and then go and join them. Have a lovely week everyone!