Tag Archives: Senja

Keeping Track

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

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

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

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.

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.

What a Difference

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Sunrise/sunset: 08:03/16:02 Daylength: 7hr59min

Last week was all about the snow. When it was coming down and down and down, it was almost as if it was lying heavily in my mind, rather than just on the roof; there was a real feeling of never-ending work coming at me. I took a photo of a snow drift that had formed beside the garage, that was both beautiful and daunting in its sheer volume.

Large snow drift that formed beside the garage, during last weekend’s storm.

As you can probably see, the drift reached almost to the roof. There are still huge piles of snow along the front and back of the house. It gathered on the roof, then partially melted and fell off in huge quantities, to the point where we couldn’t keep up with it. Doubtless there will be more before the winter is out, but as summer time comes nearer, and the sun returns it has begun to feel less daunting.

It’s been very much milder this week and though there is still a thick covering of snow, the relentless feeling has gone. Quite apart from anything else, Andrew and I are going on holiday in two week’s time and it’s finally close enough that I can begin to properly look forward to it. We are heading to the UK. I expect there will be signs of spring there, in the south at least. We are also meeting Anna and Lauren, as well as my parents and hopefully, my sister Helen. I expect it will whizz by, but by the time we return, we will be well into March.

I had an interesting case at the abattoir this week. A batch of pigs came in and two of them had clear signs of a bacterial disease: erysipelas (rødsyke in Norwegian). I’ve never seen it before, but some of its symptoms are so distinctive that I remember them from university. The pigs I saw had very classic, diamond-shaped, raised red patches on their skin. The other thing I remembered from university is that it is a zoonosis – it can spread to different species, including people. The bacteria can survive a long time in infected meat, even if it’s kept chilled, so it’s important that infected pigs are kept out of the food chain. I also had to call the farmer and make sure he understood the risks and would take suitable precautions.

There was also an article on the front page of Mattilsynet’s intranet this week about the fact that tuberculosis had been picked up a some time ago in an abattoir further south. The investigation and (hopefully) eradication process is ongoing, but the article pointed out that though meat inspection is often seen as the poor relation in terms of importance when it comes to animal health and welfare, it can play a hugely significant role in keeping people and animals safe.

I have also been out on some welfare visits this week for the first time since the autumn. It was good to get out and about, and happily both the animals we went to see were not at risk. Thomas and I also went out to pick up a stray cat, only to find it had been picked up by Dyrebeskyttelsen (a Norwegian animal welfare charity) two hours before we got there. Our travels took us over to the far side of Senja, where the snow was largely gone at ground level. It is amazing how much difference in temperature the gulf stream brings, even this far north, though you can see the thick ice on the left, where the snow has been flattened in a car-parking area. Ice takes a lot longer to melt than snow.

Skaland, Senja

With the higher temperatures outside, the temperature in the house has also been more stable. The larger, more powerful heat exchanger I bought on moving in still wasn’t enough to keep the house properly warm when it was minus twenty outside. The wood stove has been wonderful though, and has been of particular interest to Triar. For most of his life we have lived in apartments in the cellars of other people’s houses, which is relatively common in Norway. Neither of our flats had fires or stoves and so he has always curled up on the couch beside us. But I had begun to notice that, now and then, he would go and lie in front of the wood stove when it was on. He didn’t lie there for long though and it crossed my mind that, in the UK, almost everyone I know has some kind of rug in front of the fire and a rug would be much more comfortable to lie on than laminate. And so, we have got Triar a sheepskin to lie on near the fire. As you can see, he loves it very much. Hope you all have a good week.

Blood Tests and Welfare Cases

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Sunrise/sunset: Down all day

It’s been a busy week this week. There was lots of work to catch up on, on Monday as well as a couple of meetings. For animal welfare cases, I often work with Thomas and he’s often a source of great advice, but recently we have both had so much work to do outside the office that it hasn’t been easy to keep that contact up. This week, with his help, I’ve finally resolved a query that has been rumbling on for a while. I say I resolved it, but actually it was him that ran the meeting I set up. I was watching and learning though, and next time I would be able to tackle it myself.

On Tuesday I was out taking samples from goats. Our team are sent lists each year of tests we should carry out, checking for various animal diseases that cause a lot of distress or present a public health risk (part of the OK program). As well as taking blood samples, which will be tested for brucellosis (which can affect different species, including humans) I tested for mites by swabbing in their ears and paratuberculosis by taking samples of poo. At least, in theory I took poo samples. In reality, it was far harder to extract faeces from goats than I had expected. Next time, I will have to find a better strategy as my sample pots were definitely a lot less full than they should have been. Nevertheless, there is pleasure for me in blood sampling because it’s something I’m good at. That said, crouching down and standing up again forty times was a stark reminder that I’m not as young as I once was!

Thomas and I also worked together on Wednesday, meeting about a police case that we’ve been working on. There, both of us were learning, in particular regarding how to build up an evidence file to make sure everything is documented well enough that someone reading the file for the first time can fully understand the situation and where each piece of evidence was located. We also went through a lot of photos we had taken in the course of the meeting. Those photos were powerful evidence, I think. Seeing them afresh created quite an impact. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know how much I like to take photos and I pride myself in taking good photographs at work as well. If you are taking a picture of a thin animal, for example, the result is very dependent on the angle you take it and the clarity of the image. When you can see all the ribs and the bumps along the spine, you know that animal is painfully underweight.

On Thursday, I was out on another long-rumbling case with Birgit. More learning, because Birgit is great at her job as well. I even got to put some of the tips the police contact had told us the day before into practice. Birgit is good with animals and people and also compassionate towards both. The case in question will benefit from her steadiness and experience.

And yesterday, Thomas and I had a meeting with someone who may apply for a licence to process moose that have been run over and killed (to use for meat). The law regarding such premises changed drastically in the summer, and unless you are computer literate and know where to look, it can be difficult to navigate the process. Fortunately Thomas is fully on board with those changes too. Much of my job revolves around knowing where to find relevant information. Keeping up with so many different strands is one of the challenges of the work we do. Because we are in a rural area, we have to tackle a very wide range of issues. One moment, we could be assessing guinea pigs to see whether the conditions they are being kept in are adequate, the next we are deciding whether animals brought in from Ukraine are being kept in compliance with the modified quarantine rules, and the next again, we might be checking whether a reindeer carcase is fit for human consumption or whether the facility where that is being done has taken all the appropriate steps to ensure that those working there are safe. One thing I will say is that my job is rarely boring!

I am hoping to take most of next week off. It’s not a holiday. Rather it’s time that I have built up over recent months working long hours. I now have enough hours to take a week off and hope that I get to do so. I have already made plans to sacrifice Tuesday to another goat blood test (the cut off date for sending is the 15th December) and there was news yesterday that the police, very sadly, shot a man who is a farmer in our area. It was in one of the newspapers that Mattilsynet are involved and my boss was asked to comment, so the information that it’s in our area is not confidential information. It’s possible there will be some work involved with that case next week, or even during the weekend. If I am asked to go in at short notice, I will do so willingly. This is a very unusual and tragic incident in Norway and if there is need for an assessment of animal welfare, then Thomas and I are on the front line, alongside our boss, Hilde. I think we are a good team.

Finally, I hope you are enjoying my Advent photos. Hopefully I will be out and about next week to take some more. If there’s good weather, so much the better!

Triar enjoying a walk in the park

Cosy Lunch at Senja Roasters

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It’s a while since I’ve made a food post, as my friend Vicky pointed out in an e-mail a couple of weeks ago. I’m hoping to meet her in a few days’ time, so this one’s for you, Vicky.

There weren’t many choices on the menu, but that often goes hand in hand with excellence. Better to use great ingredients to produce a couple of incredible dishes than to try to do too much and dilute the effect. Both John and I chose Spanish meatballs with mash. It had a wonderful, rich flavour. The potato was topped with tiny pieces of crispy onion and the meatballs were given extra texture and taste with a sprinkling of chopped smoked nuts. It really was delicious.

Spanish meatballs with rustic mashed potato

Outside, the autumn weather was stormy, but as usual, it was warm and welcoming inside, with a wonderful view over the harbour at Stonglandseidet.

For dessert, we both had vanilla and lemon tart, to which I added a cappuccino. I might have preferred a slightly stronger element of lemon, but all in all, it still tasted as good as it looked.

Vanilla and lemon tart with cappuccino coffee

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. See you next week!

Next

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

Sunrise/sunset: 02:22/ 23:20. Daylength: 20hr58min

And so the months of perpetual daylight have passed again for this year. There’s a feeling of change in the air as we move towards the autumn. There’s change coming up for me too. On Monday I should get the keys to my new house. I am feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness. The mortgage payment went out of my bank a couple of days back, and my account, which was replete with the deposit, suddenly looks very much emptier, and the limitations on what I will be able to buy and do with it came into focus. There are a few things I urgently need to fix. There was snow in the loft last winter, so the hole that let it in needs to be fixed. Also the heat exchanger (which most Norwegian houses use as a significant part of their heating in winter) needs fixing or (more likely) replacing. On top of that, we need, as an absolute minimum, beds to sleep in. My kind colleague, Øivind, has offered us some furniture, including sofas, so at least we will have something to sit on.

In addition to the furniture, there are various other things I had to do, including arranging contents and building insurance, and letting the post office and National Population Register know I will be moving. There was a close call yesterday when the estate agent rang me up in the afternoon to say that the insurance for legal problems with the exchange hadn’t been paid, by my bank, with the mortgage. This was apparently serious enough for her to suggest that the exchange might not go ahead on Monday. I presume that might have set me in breach of contract, but fortunately they allowed me to make the payment and send evidence I had done so. Everything to do with the bank is done online here, so barring further problems, hopefully everything will go ahead as planned.

It’s been a mixed week at work. The first half was spent out on the road with Gry. Always a good thing! As usual, she had some very interesting snippets on sheep farming. The most interesting, from my point of view, was that in the past couple of years, she has started breeding her first time ewes with Norwegian Villsau rams. This means that the first time they give birth, they will have relatively small but hardy lambs, which are more likely to thrive with a first time mother. She and her sons are so engaged in making improvements to the farm that it’s inspiring to hear, as well as fascinating.

Sheep on pasture near the road at Stonglandseidet

The downside of going out with Gry is that it means that once the visits are finished, there are reports to write. These are relatively straightforward in uncomplicated cases, but this week, for example, I went to a farm where there were some animals with no eartags. Norwegian law is very strict on traceability, and an animal without tags is much more difficult to track. They can’t go into the food chain, and of course, if there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, it potentially makes tracing which animals were in the area at the time much more difficult.

So if there are animals without tags, and especially if there are other traceability problems, such as not updating the Livestock Register regularly enough, I have to serve notice that those animals that can’t be traced must not be moved off the farm. In addition, I have to set deadlines for the farmer to have the animals properly tagged again, and explain which laws cover the problems I found, and what they mean on the ground.

In addition to the report writing, Line sent me notice that next week, I have to go out and certify a horse which will be travelling to Sweden. I’ve inspected many horses in the past that were travelling from Scotland to Ireland. The inspection itself isn’t complicated. But back then, the paperwork was just that: paperwork. Standard forms would be printed out and filled in. Now all the paperwork has to be produced through a Europe wide system called Traces. Not only is the system itself quite impenetrable, but everything has to be registered and double checked. The importer (who in this case was a private individual) has to be put in the system at both ends, so as the person sending the horse from Norway, and the person receiving it in Sweden. Putting someone in the system in Sweden has to be done by an official vet in Sweden. We can’t do it here.

Because I have barely used Traces, Line had kindly set up a meeting at twelve on Friday to walk me through it. After a long week at work, I had been hoping to get away early to go swimming with John and Andrew. I thought the meeting would take perhaps an hour and hopefully less, but it turned out to be much more complicated than I had realised. Not only did everything have to be put in place in Traces, but there was also information that had to be added in Mattilsynet’s own system MATS. I think Line had not realised just how unfamiliar I am with the sections of MATS that I don’t regularly use, and also perhaps hadn’t realised how difficult it still is for me to work in Norwegian, in any circumstance where the language is complex or unfamiliar. She was very patient, but by the time two hours had gone by, I think we were both pretty tired of the situation. I rushed away at the end of the meeting, hoping we would still be in time for an hour of swimming, but it was at that point I found out that there was a risk of the house sale not going through, which had to be sorted immediately, and by the time that was finished, there was no time left because the pool was shutting.

Still, every cloud, as they say. Having missed the pool, we decided to go out and see if we could swim in a lake instead, so this was where we ended up.

Lake near Silsand, Senja

We took some wood and had burgers and hotdogs afterwards. Obviously that doesn’t quite fit in with the low fat eating I’ve been doing for the past month or so, and I’m suffering somewhat in the aftermath, but by the end of the evening, I had certainly put the past two days at work firmly behind me.

A couple of pictures to finish up, from a walk last weekend, arranged by Ann. By next week, I should have a new house not too far from here. See you there!

Fish and Chips

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

Sunrise/sunset: 03:36/21:58. Daylength: 18h22min

I didn’t update last week. I was too busy wallowing in the nostalgia of my UK visit. The past two weeks have also been filled with movement and travel, some further afield, but others involving more local discoveries.

Ten days ago, I travelled back down to Rogaland, where I used to live. I was bound for a Mattilsynet meeting about the important communication on welfare between abattoirs and the vets out in the field that I talked about in this post: The Ever Changing Sky

I emerged into the 11pm darkness at Sola Airport to be greeted by the ever present smell of slurry. It’s a very famous phenomenon. Jo Nesbø even mentions it in one of his books. Anyway, I had completely forgotten until I stepped outside into the warmish night air.

Knowing I would arrive so late, I had toyed with the idea of staying in an airport hotel and travelling onwards on the morning of the meeting, which didn’t start until eleven. But I had found a bus that would take me to Sandnes – the number 42 – and so I thought I’d risk it. I remembered the airport buses from when I used to live there, so I assumed I would be able to pay on board, but when the driver only opened the doors in the centre of the bus, it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to buy one. Scrabbling online, I found I had the Kolumbus App already. Crossing my fingers that there would be no inspectors at that time of night, I finally bought a ticket for what I thought was the correct area, just as we pulled into Sandnes.

By this time it was midnight. Technically, I was still working, still on the clock, which I had switched on in the office when I arrived in the morning. Logging onto my computer to clock out, I thought I would check tomorrow’s meeting, so I opened up the Teams app to check the calendar. There was no venue listed. In fact, it was listed as a Teams Meeting. For a long, sweaty moment, I thought I had just travelled 2000km for a Teams meeting. A check of the e-mails confirmed that I had not. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had!

But the meeting was a success and I’m very glad I went. One of the tasks I struggle with at work is speaking up in meetings, but I had some valid points to make, based on both experience and reading around the topic. It was also great to meet some of the other Mattilsynet staff from other areas of Norway.

I flew back on Thursday afternoon and arrived home almost as late as I’d arrived in Sandnes. There was no rest though, as I had arranged an inspection with Gry on the Friday (post about Gry). The tour took me on an exploration of a part of Senja that I had never visited. Indeed it’s a small corner of the island that I had missed in all my driving around. We stopped in Gryllefjord for a surprisingly tasty chunk of pizza from the local shop. *

Surprisingly tasty pizza

Gryllefjord is an amazing place. It’s ramshackle collection of houses, clustered on the edge of the fjord, under a brooding overhang of mountains, with a small harbour. It was a cloudy day, and the tops of the mountains reached up into the mist.

We also drove to a nearby village, reached through a tunnel in the mountainside. The old road, which went over an exposed ridge, was often blocked in winter.

It’s always a joy finding new places near to where I live. There was also a restaurant in Gryllefjord, which was closed at the time of our visit. I had heard from others that it was a good restaurant, and when I checked online, it appeared that there was fish and chips on the menu.

For anyone living in the UK, that probably seems like a non-event. Fish and chips is the original British fast food. I can remember before Chinese and Indian takeaways became common, and well before the invasion of the US burger craze, that fish and chips was a staple. But in Norway, fish in batter is rare. So when John came over the next day, which was also his birthday, I suggested that we should take a tour out to Gryllefjord to try out the Skreien Spiseri and he jumped at the chance.

It was a much brighter day and we stopped along the way at Hamn to take a few photos. There were also some reindeer by the road, looking surprisingly defenceless without their antlers.

The fish and chips was delectable. We will definitely be back.

Fish and Chips from Skreien Spiseri

As you can see from the photos of John’s birthday, the weather was almost spring-like. I was hoping for a smooth segue from winter to summer, but it wasn’t to be. It started to snow again a couple of days later. I went to Tromsø on Thursday this week to go on an inspection with Line, who works there. Arriving back on the fast boat at five thirty in the afternoon, I walked back through Finnsnes centre and paused to take a couple of photos.

Still, I enjoyed the walk, even if it was a little more “refreshing” than I would have predicted a couple of weeks ago.

And as you know, there’s one member of our household, who always welcomes the snow! Hope you have a great week everyone.

Triar, looking cheery at the new snow fall

*I forgot to say that I also drank a cup of black coffee from the shop, when I was out with Gry. Perhaps, in time, I will indeed be truly integrated into Norwegian society. Maybe if I tell the authorities that I managed it without milk, they will give me a Norwegian passport faster.

Confidence

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Sunrise/sunset: Down all day.

It’s been a mixed sort of week. As there wasn’t so much to do here on the 26th and 27th of December, we drove around a good deal during the brief periods when it was light. Though the days are very short, what light there is has a wonderful luminous quality. Coupled with the landscape of Senja, it becomes difficult to know when to stop taking photographs.

I took Anna to the airport and Charlie to the bus on Tuesday. Both arrived home safely. Always a relief, particularly when travelling to somewhere outside Norway, as Anna was doing.

My return to work was abrupt. Anja phoned me on the afternoon of the 29th December. A difficult case that I had dealt with before (and which I believed was under control) has flared up again. I am frustrated not to be able to discuss it more. It comes down to a dispute, as do so many of our cases. And if I judge it wrong, then animals will suffer.

Though I’m not in the UK, I saw a lot about the recently on social media about another child who had been beaten and killed by her mother and partner. The press always goes to town on those cases and reports unquestioningly from all those related people who made reports that were ignored. The subtext is always that the social workers were stupid to ignore such clear evidence.

Though obviously the main grief is for the child, I have a degree of sympathy for those professionals involved. So many of the cases I investigate involve a judgement regarding who is telling the truth. If those reporting were always good people, then it wouldn’t be complicated. But through my work here, I am learning that it is rarely straightforward. Obviously there are those who mistreat their animals. But there are also vindictive people who use the authorities to make lives difficult for others. There are even occasions when those people send in their flying monkeys if they see that they have not been successful themselves. It really isn’t cut and dried that lots of reports mean that there is something seriously wrong.

And so it comes down to a judgement about who is telling the truth, bearing in mind that sometimes it might be both or neither, and that there can also be misunderstandings. I am lucky to have a supportive team around me. I had advice from Torkjell, the regional big boss, and he chatted to Hilde, despite the fact that she was on holiday. I feel fortunate to have had help.

Regardless of difficult cases, family life goes on. The pond in the middle of the town is frozen and a couple of days ago, someone came and cleared away some of the snow, making tracks for ice skating. John and Andrew went and bought some skates, and for the past couple of evenings, they have been out on the ice doing circuits.

Tracks on the pond for ice skating

And of course Triar also needs to go out. John and I took him out for a walk up on the ski slope a few days back. There was fog over the fjord, but as we drove upwards it cleared. It was another of those days when it was hard for me to keep going as the temptation to stop and take pictures was overwhelming.

Triar is wearing his winter boots.

I posted a picture of our kransekake on social media. It’s one of my favourite Norwegian deserts, chewy rings of almond flavoured deliciousness.

Kransekake with crackers and Norwegian flags

Usually, people say how lovely the photo is, but this time someone asked whether it was meant to look like a dalek. And now I’ve seen it, it’s impossible to unsee. Of course, the only thing to do with that kind of information is to embrace it. Next time, the crackers should be placed to point straight out in front, and if I’m feeling really keen, I will create a plunger out of chocolate to give the full effect.

Anyway, I hope that 2022 is a better year than 2021, and that wherever we find ourselves, we can find some brightness in the road ahead. Happy new year to you.

Strange Days

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

Sunrise/sunset: 02:31/ 23:11. Daylength: 20hr40min

It was on this day last year, that John and I set off to drive To The North. In a week’s time, I will have been here a year.

It’s been a strange time, all in all. Not that it hasn’t been wonderful in many ways; it has. But coronavirus has had an effect on all our lives that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago. In the past year, I have lost an uncle: a wonderful man, larger than life, of whom I have many wonderful and cheering memories, and also an aunt – not technically mine, but an aunt by marriage who was one of the kindest people I have ever met. I could never have imagined that I would be unable to attend their funerals. Nor that I would have been unable to visit my mum and dad for a year and a half, with no definite sign of an end to restrictions amid continuing reports from around the world that the virus is continuing to spread and mutate, despite (or perhaps even because of) the vaccine.

So here I am. Logically coming was the right decision. John has settled nearby and has a permanent job and friends with whom he goes climbing and walking. Andrew has settled into school and has taken up the piano. Anna has been with us since she came home for Christmas and wasn’t able to return to university in the UK. We have a lot of freedom to go out locally. The Norwegian government have done a sterling job in limiting the spread of the virus and we are so remote that often it’s hard to remember during everyday life that we are in the middle of a pandemic.

But it’s odd to think that I have been here a year, in an area I had never visited before I drove up here in a few chaotic days one year ago. I haven’t been home to Yorkshire or Scotland. I am hoping to see my parents at Christmas, but everything seems so unstable that it is impossible to make firm plans.

Still, life goes on. While on a grand scale, everything is filled with uncertainty, on a small scale, I am thriving. This week at work has been special. When I started work a year ago, I was given a list of tasks to complete. One of them was to engage with colleagues who worked in other sectors within Mattilsynet. We cover everything from drinking water to cosmetics as well as food safety on all levels between farm and plate. It had been discussed occasionally, but due to the strict coronavirus rules, where nobody was meant to go anywhere that wasn’t essential, it was always put on hold. But last Friday, alone in the office with Randi and Øivind, I decided it was time to seize the opportunity and I asked whether they had anything planned for this week.

The result was that I went out with Randi on Wednesday for some Smilefjes tilsyn and Friday with Øivind to inspect some waterworks.

Smilefjes is Mattilsynets system for inspection of restaurants and food outlets. When you enter an eatery, there’s generally a certificate on the door showing a happy Smiley. If the inspection didn’t go so well, the Smiley might be less cheerful, but the kitchen we inspected was well organised and clean. I was shown around the restaurant and communal areas of the guesthouse as well, while Randi wrote her report. It was a lovely place: an old building in an area where few old buildings exist. There was a huge fireplace in the restaurant and comfortable couches in front of a large television, which the owner proudly told me was the only one in the building. There were photographs too, black and white pictures of years gone by. I felt nostalgic for the times when staying in hotels was a casual weekend activity and I wanted so much to stay overnight. I took a photograph out of the window as Randi was finishing up her report. The book in the foreground is to record the weight of the fish you catch in the river outside.

On Thursday, quietly melded between the restaurant and water inspections, I carried out my first solo animal welfare inspection. I say solo as I had no other inspectors with me and the responsibility for the case lay with me, but I had support from a fabulous member of Dyervernsnemnda (a little about Dyrevernsnemnda here) called Berit. Berit drove down from Tromsø and she was wonderfully helpful and reassuring. Thanks must also go to Birgit, who made sure I followed the correct procedures beforehand.

Afterwards, I went out for some fish and chips with Ann to celebrate in the cafe that serves the ski slope at Fellandsby.

Yesterday, Øivind took me out to inspect some waterworks. If that word conjures up an image of a huge building with pipes and filtration, then like me, you will have to think again. We drove out onto Senja and headed south to a remote village, where we met the group of men who organise the water supply for the few houses in that area. We sat outside in the sun, as Øivind asked a series of questions about cubic metres of water per year and how many people are supplied. It was an interesting discussion, partly because of the logistics. In summer, there might be fifty people there, whereas there are only four permanent residents. But for me, it was a stark reminder of social changes and history. The four permanent residents are all over 80. The rest are a mix of tourists and very likely people whose parents used to live there, who have moved away, but return at weekends and for the summer. I found myself wondering about those still living there: all of them are in their eighties and nineties. It’s a very long way to the hospital if anything goes wrong.They likely still have families on Senja who look after them. But when they are gone, will the village only exist as a holiday place? There was an old schoolhouse, which is now used for social events. But once upon a time, there must have been families and people who worked the land and/or lived from the sea. Did the four people still living there attend the school, all those years ago? It was a reminder of how much things can change within a lifetime.

After the conversation, we walked up to see the water source. No filtration in sight and the small pipe that carries the water to the village was underground. The water comes from a river. I found myself surprised that it doesn’t freeze in winter, but the water must continue to run underneath all the snow and ice.

This was where we walked to. It was perhaps a kilometer up a grassy track from the village.

Such a peaceful place. I could have passed a happy few hours, listening to the water rushing over the rocks.

And here is the “waterworks” we inspected!

So the village is supplied from the water that runs down from the mountain. It’s not filtered or cleaned and technically, it is a water supply and not a drinking water supply. Øivind made some recommendations. The water source cover should be locked with a padlock, just in case. And the quality should be checked at least once a year. Likely times for the check would be after heavy rain, or when the snow is melting, preferably at a time of year when more people are arriving.

But those who run the system assured us that nobody had ever been unwell from the water in the fifty years since the pipes were installed. It was another reminder of the differences in the lives people in Norway lead. The idea that everyone in Norway should be treated exactly the same (one of Mattilsynet’s aims) is challenging, to say the least. There has to be flexibility when dealing with a country where the ways of life are so very diverse.

And to finish up, here’s are some pictures from Tuesday, when we met one of Anna’s old teachers, who was up for a holiday in the north. We took Triar for a walk in Ånderdalen afterwards. It really has been a very good week.