Tag Archives: Storm

Hot and Cold

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

Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.

John and I went swimming in the sea last Sunday. It was after midday and the knowledge that we had to get up soon after 4a.m. the next morning was hanging in the air, but the sky was a wonderful clear blue and the air was warm. It seemed a shame to waste it. So rather than spending the day lounging around, we set off and drove to an isolated beach up on the north-western tip of Senja.

Golden sand at Skaland, Senja.

John had been to the area before, having walked up the hill in the photograph above with a colleague from work. We might walk up it together some day, but for now I was content to kick off my sandals and walk across the soft sand. The water was a chilly nine degrees, but we took the plunge anyway. There weren’t many people there, but there was a boat anchored in the calm waters of the bay. Its owners were also enjoying a day in the sun and it struck me, not for the first time, that having a boat would give a whole new perspective to exploring the area.

Moored sailing boat in the bay at Skaland.

At the other end of the bay there was a building, jutting out on stilts over the sea. With the backdrop of turquoise sea and yellow sand, I was reminded of the Caribbean shacks in the TV series Death in Paradise (filmed in Guadeloupe) though there was also something distinctly Norwegian about it as well.

Beach at Skaland, southern aspect.
Building on stilts at the water’s edge.

It got very warm on Monday and Tuesday. Thirty degrees is not something I expect here, though when the sun is up twenty four hours a day, it does allow a lot of hours for the heat to build without the cooler evening and night to offset it. There was a thunder storm forecast for Wednesday night, and I found myself contemplating whether I might find a way to capture a picture – you know the type – a perfect bolt of lighting on a backdrop of darkness. I confess I thought about this more than once before I remembered the inconvenient facts that

a) By ten or eleven o’clock in the evening, I would have already been in bed (and hopefully asleep) for a couple of hours.

And more profoundly

b) That it wasn’t actually going to get dark – well not that proper kind of black darkness I had been considering – for at least two months.

I’m not sure whether the storm ever actually arrived. If it did, I slept through it. It definitely rained and was cooler afterwards, but I had to content myself with a picture that reflects the perfect stillness of the air in the early evening leading up to it. I was hoping that in the morning, it would have been stripped, but it wasn’t, so I’m guessing it didn’t even rain that hard but in my head, I’ve given it the portentous title “Before the Storm”. I’m not going to change that, just because events inconveniently didn’t unfold in the way they ought to have done!

See you next week.

Before the Storm!

Not Going Out

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

Sunrise/sunset: 10:07/ 13:53. Daylength: 3hr 45min

Another week working from home. It was only to be expected as the coronavirus figures, though steady, hadn’t begun to drop. The Norwegian government announcement was made on Monday, but they have promised to review it again next week. Numbers are now falling, so I’m hoping that next week I will be able to join some of my colleagues in the office.

That said, working from home has its advantages. The drive to work is shorter and the coffee is better. Aside from that, for the past two days, Storm Frank has been battering the Norway coast and going out hasn’t been so appealing. Luckily our apartment was protected from the worst of the wind by the steep slope that rises up behind it, but minus ten gusting up to sixty miles an hour is really quite chilly!

The company at home is furrier, though the conversation is less varied. Triar looks wistfully out of the window as Frank’s chilly blast keeps us sitting inside for another day.

There is now ice on everything. There is ice on this football field on Senja.

Ice on the pitch. Football… or curling?

There is ice in the ditches and escaping from rocks.

Frozen waterfall.

Even the snow is covered in ice. It cracks as you step on it, the deep sound echoing through the air trapped in the underlying snow: very satisfying to jump into!

All this is treacherous of course, but going out is still sometimes necessary. As well as boots with spikes on the soles, we have a bucket of stones in the porch that we strew on the driveway. These are not like the mealy, red grit-mixed-with-salt that they use in the south. These are serious stones and at minus ten, salt has no benefits. With excellent foreplanning, Anna and I covered the driveway when there was something of a melt last week and now they are well embedded in the minus ten ice.

I had my five month assessment at work this week. It went well. In spite of coronavirus, Hilde is satisfied that I am picking things up quickly enough and working well. My ongoing aims are to start to take the lead when I go out on visits with colleagues and to put forward my opinions more in meetings. I am definitely guilty of not speaking up in meetings. This quotation from verse 27 of an old Norse poem, Hávamál, the Sayings of the High One is pertinent here:

Ósnotr maðr
er með aldir kømr
þat er bazt at hann þegi
engi þat veit
at hann ekki kann
name hann mæli til mart
veita maðr
hinn er vætki veit
þótt hann mæli til mart

Translation by Olive Bray

For the unwise man
who comes among men,
it is best that be he silent.
None know
that he knows nothing,
unless he should speak too much. *
The man does not know it,
he who knows nothing,
whether he speaks too much.

Not that I am especially unwise, of course, but until I have a full understanding of what is going on, I always tend to listen more than speak. Silence among crowds comes naturally to me. But given that a few days back, I heard in a meeting that Anja would be conducting the visits to hens and chickens, and rather than speaking up at the time to say I was interested in chickens, I stayed silent and e-mailed her afterwards to ask if I could accompany her, there are definitely some changes I can make that shouldn’t be too difficult.

And I will leave you with two more pictures I took in the tail end of the storm (the first being at the top of this post). Removing my gloves to take them was painful, but definitely worth it.

Uneasy water in the fjord as back-lit clouds race across the sky.
The bridge to Senja.