Riding trains in Norway

In Norway they know how to make something solidly real. Norway, with is mountains, fjords, and trains in gorgeous places.

Here is a clip from a 10-hour riding-the-train-through-the-seasons movie (thanks PP):

17 maj - A day of celebration!

Happy birthday LS and Norway! (It would be great to visit Oslo on this day.)

 I hope you, dear sister, have a great day! Have some bacon for me as well! Hugs!!

Sunrise over Norway in winter

Sunrise over Norway in winter, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Norway looked very cold and very wintry when I flew home to USA in January. The sun is just rising and hitting the highest peaks of the mountains of Hardangervidda and the fjords stretching their fingers into the mountains.

Stamp of the day: The most amazing creatures...

Have you ever seen a live nudibranch in the wild open sea? (nakensnäcka in Swedish).  I think I might have seen one once, off the coast of Norway on the island of Runde.  I know I definitely saw a squid there, swimming in the kelp, while I was kayaking on the sea surface and being amazed at all the amazing sealife we didn't have in the biodiversity-poor Baltic Sea.  Anyway, nudibranchs are so incredibly cool. They swim, sail, change shape, and have the most amazing colors and patterns.  If I am reborn as an animal I often think I butterfly or cross beak (bird) might be fun, but recently I have been thinking nudibranchs might have a really interesting life too.  Some float around in the sea as plankton until they find an interesting place, others eat algae until them themselves become photosynthetic.  Life is truly amazing...

Stamps are from Australia and all about nudibranchs...

OK snapshot: Skandinaviska (Scandinavian)

Nu med egna vokaler...
a new language, Scandinavian, now with its own vowels? The umlaut o got
both dots (from Swedish and Finnish), and a slash (from Danish and
Norwegian). Well, whatever works, right?
What is in the bag? Strawberry-flavored candy that looks like long string.

Stamp of the Day: Frans G Bengtsson

In Swedish literature there is ONE great book about the Viking age you should all read if you like reading.  Röde Orm (Red Orm = Red Snake, but also known as The Long Ships in English).  This is a tale of vikings as traders as well as marauders, and it takes place all across Europe and is supposedly rather historically correct.  Part of it takes place when one of our (possible) ancestors Harald Bluetooth was King of Denmark.  This book has been elected as one of the top ten best books in Sweden, ever.

The author was Frans G Bengtsson, and he is depicted on this Swedish stamp together with typical Viking longships. The book, which is in several volumes, was written during World War II and Frans made a political point in the book on how the Vikings allied themselves with Jews over a thousand years earlier. He tried to simulate the language in the book after the old Nordic sagas, with their terse sentences and usually not very elaborate descriptions of people and places. 

The 1960s movie Long Ships was partly and loosely based on this book, but I haven't seen it.  But they are planning a real movie on the book now, and the director was quoted as saying "It will be like Lord of the Rings".  Except of course that Vikings did happen. And Vikings had gold rings too, and there were smart women with long fine hair (but no pointy ears) not only in Tolkien's books.  I hope they get a huge Hollywood budget to make this Viking movie. 

It runs in the family II: Harald Hårfagre (Harald Finehair)

This old possible ancestor of ours had many names, Harald Hårfagre (Harald Finehair, Harald Fairhair, Harald the Fairhaired, Harold Haarfarer), Harald Halvdansson, and Harald I of Norway. He was born in 852 and died in 933, at age 83. These old Vikings had great names, such as his father, named Halvdan Svarte (Halfdan the Black) Gudrödarson. Harald had several wives, including a 'Snøfrid' (‘Snow peace”).

His most famous claim to fame was as the winner of the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872, which united Norway as one country for the first time. There is a giant sculpture at this place in Norway commemorating this event shaped as three swords stuck in solid rock, with the tallest sword representing Harald.

The long-haired tale is that the woman that Harald wanted to marry said she would not marry him until he was king of all of Norway, so then Harald vowed not to cut his hair until this was accomplished. This took a few years, so he got known for his long, blond hair, and earned nicknames such as "Shockhead" or "Tanglehair" (I think there was a lack of shampoo back then…).

Harald left a mess after himself, with something between 11 and 20 sons with 7 mothers (one of them a maid) fighting over the inheritance and the kingdom, and sometimes the sons were killing off each other. Over half of them considered themselves kings at some point in their lives, and the son our family traces back to is Olav Haraldsson. Olav died only one year after his father, in 934, at a battle in Norwegian Tønsberg, which might be the first founded city in Scandinavia. Both Harald and his half-brother Sigrød Haraldsson are buried here, and their killer was their half-brother Eric Bloodaxe, who again united Norway under one ruler . These Vikings really have a bloody history, and we haven’t even gotten to the arrival of Christianity around 1000.

Of course Harald and Snofrid have a Norwegian stamp – but look at them, don’t you think they are arguing? Over what? And that is that man behind them doing with his finger on his nose?

Previous blog posts on this topic:
Finding your (possible) roots in deep time

It runs in the family I: Finding your (possible) roots in deep time

My mom (AnS) and her sister (MB), our aunt, have been digging deep into the genealogical online mines of Swedish historical documents and found some amazing tracks back in time.  As you go back in time you of course have more and more ancestors, and if you are lucky some of these were historically important enough to have been part of the record-keeping for centuries.  First AnS e-mailed me and told us that, in fact, we had royal blood in the family down there in the medieval 1400s.  “1400s!” That was before Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the Caribbean, Galileo, and da Vinci (well, Leonardo was born 1452).

A few days later and a new e-mail from mom revealed lineages even deeper in time – now back in time from a princess of Sweden in the early 1200s (Brigida Haraldsdotter).  From her, the old histories and folktales lead the genealogy of our family far back in time into Viking Age (which was approximately during years 700-1100).  Not only that, the old Icelandic sagas and other historical documents trace the family lineages of these famous Vikings all the way back to, you guessed it, the Nordic Gods. 

These mythological and folktale texts, poems, and documents (often called Sagas) provide genealogies like the Bible, but more exact with birth and death dates, which of course might be wrong.  But so far, mom and MB have traced our family back to Yngvi Frej Odinson Tyrkjekonung (year 125-214), son of Odin and Freja, two of the Gods in Nordic mythology.  How is that for amazing genealogy?  It is like being able to trace your family back to Abraham in the Bible.  Do you think the Mormons would be jealous of us?  For Mormons genealogy is very important for religious reasons, while I just think it is interesting and curious, and it roots you in a place and time.

So, we can trace our family nearly 1900 years back in time, and so can probably most Nordic people, since nearly everybody is at least distantly related to some old royal nobleman.  In our case these relationships are directly back in time, based on direct bloodlines not some 'third cousin twice removed' or anything.

In a little series here on the blog we will highlight some of the ancestral people of the family, directly related to us even if their DNA by this time is pretty diluted, maybe 25-50 generations later. This is based on historical documents and who knows who really slept with who (which undoubtedly sometimes led to pregnancies outside of marriage), and it doesn’t help that sometimes kids got adopted, two children could have the same name, cousins married cousins over and over, and so on. It is often unclear who the mother was, and that was less important since only the sons inherited the father, and mothers and daughters were less important (except as marriage material).  It is a tangled but interesting web of stories, people, and places. 

 And, for Stamp of the Day, some viking stamps from Isle of Man.

Chicago memory, part 1 - Norwegian adventures

In the taxi van at the airport and on my way to downtown Chicago, a Norwegian couple enter the van, with the man furiously angry at his wife because she had no small dollar bills available as a tip to the guy carrying their luggage.  I turned around, said, in Swedish - "you can pay later, he is our driver ", and the man cheered up and the wife smiled. Then the man said - "I know, I get so angry and frustrated when I shouldn't" - in Norwegian of course.

They had just landed after a long trip from Stockholm and the next day a rental car would be dropped off at their hotel for their 14-day trip driving old Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Route 66 is the old classic route across America that many people drove in the 1950s... it is lined with classic but rundown hotels, scenery, and has become popular in recent years as something to do on vacation, apparently especially in the Nordic countries, said the Norwegian, who also said the REAL way to do it was on a Harley-Davidson, but he was too old for that. Plus he had no license for a motorcycle, he told me regretfully.

But first, the retired man informed me, "there will be spare ribs for dinner! American ribs, yeah!". He continued "all food is good in America", and "we are going to drive and drink Jack Daniels".  When I asked how far they had to drive he said -" I don't know, but I think 14 days is enough". I hope they are having fun and I hope they save the Jack Daniels for the evenings. They were a funny couple, the kind that made you laugh all the time, and I wonder what the other passengers were thinking hearing the Swedish and Norwegian languages mixing in the van. God tur, Norwegians!

World record: Smallest orchid flower...

This orchid flower is so small that you can barely see it (2.1 mm across), and the petals are just one cell layer thick (just like moss leaves). Read more here.  Discovery and photo by Lou Jost, in Ecuador.

Oh, and in case you wondered, the world record for the tallest dandelion is from Norway, with 108 centimeters.

Happy birthday LS!

Picture borrowed from http://moefamily.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/congratulations-norway/

Today is Norway´s national holiday and the birthday of LS. I don´t know if this has formed a closer relationship with Norway for her, but I suspect so. Me on the other hand, having the same birthday as the national day as Laos, feel no such connection ;) (smiling)

I hope you have a great birthday LS!

All our love from Sweden to you!

Spring has sprung

The Gods must have gone crazy.  First we have two giant storms and hundreds, maybe thousands of trees fall down and most people get flooded, and a week later or so, we have 98 degree heat (that is 37 degrees Celsius).  It has cooled down since then, but the spring took off with an explosion.  My photos are still in the camera, so you just have to imagine green trees, purple lilacs, daffodils and cherry trees, all at once.  We have already cut the lawn (with a mower that started on the first try after the winter rest, that was a record too!).  A new fence is up around the garden, photos will come later.  Inside, all my tomato seedlings are up, as are onion shoots and cucumbers.  There is still lots to do before they can go outside, and the last frost date hasn't been yet.  If we get snow now, a lot of plants would be really, really unhappy. And people too.

I have a somewhat adventurous cousin who lives in Tromso (Tromsø), the northernmost part of Norway.  If you want to see how spring windsurfing is in a place where the snow never leaves and the ocean is ice cold year round, look below. This is filmed in March, a month ago, when they average about 4 hours of sunshine per day:


Windsurfing season opening, Tromsø 2010_03_07 from O Bra on Vimeo.

Landscapes in rain

Just a few photos from our trip to the Swedish and Norwegian mountains this summer. These are from a lake in a valley somewhere close to the Norwegian-Swedish border in northern Värmland, but I have forgotten exactly where. Even if it was cloudy and rainy the scenery is gorgeous.

Wonderful news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the next Peace Nobel Prize winner is: OBAMA. YES!!!! First Al Gore for his environmental work, and now Obama, oh, happy days! Here is some eye candy of our president.

He got it for his efforts: "to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" less than nine months after he took office. The Nobel committee believe in him too! Thank you Norway!

Arctic Adventures in Abisko

My mom AnS and brother OK are in the very north of Sweden this week, in the province called Lappland (=Lapland, of course), and I thought you might like to see how this area north of the Arctic Circle looks like. They landed in Kiruna today, and are now driving to Abisko, near the Norwegian border. Here are photos taken by OK on his iphone. (Note, this is the time of year for midnight sun, so these photos could have been taken late at night or 4 AM, who knows).

Torne Träsk, aka "Torne lake" is a big lake near Abisko. I am glad to see that it has no ice on it. When I was here in 1986 or so, during the last week of June, the whole lake was covered with ice. Global warming in action... This is looking north, so if you take a boat across the lake and walk north you will end up in Finland. I think, maybe it is Norway. Maybe even Russia after a while, not really sure. The borders up there aren't that exact :)
The giant U-shaped valley in the distance is called Lapporten (the Laps' portal), and is probably the most famous valley in Sweden. It is a textbook example of glacially formed valleys, where the sides have been carved out as a half circle by the moving ice during the ice age.
The trees are birches (fjällbjörk) and small and cranky, the views are vast, and the snow are still on the mountain sides. That is indeed a small rental car, but in this landscape everything looks small. The bogs are full of cloudberries later in the season. The poles are for the electricity and telephone lines. This road was only built a few decades ago, before then all transportation was done on the railroad, which was originally built to ship iron ore from Kiruna iron mine to Narvik in Norway. Some of the most fierce battles in Scandinavia was in Narvik, because the Allied wanted to stop the Germans from shipping out iron and steel to Germany. The Swedes stayed out of the war by shipping iron to whoever paid the most and was winning at the time (I know, a horribly dark period in Sweden's history and shameful).

A tiny little rental car on the highway. This is really the E-10 highway, the only road between Sweden and Norway in northernmost Sweden. Not much traffic.... You have to watch out for reindeer of course.

Book Review: Berlinerpopplarna av Anne B. Ragde

Just after forcing myself to finish Heat, I picked up a Norwegian book in Swedish called Berlinerpopplarna (The Berlin Poplars) by Anne B. Ragde that I got from my best friend KV (it is translated into English, aren't you lucky!). What a joy! The story is about three brothers and what happens when they are called to their mother's deathbed. One, the oldest at 54, runs the old farm that is still owned by the mother. The middle boy is a undertaker, and the first chapter made me cry because it describes grief so well. The youngest son is gay and lives in Copenhagen and hasn't been home to his parents home in 20 years. The oldest son has a daughter, 37-year year old Torunn, that he has never met and nobody except his mom knows about, but calls he calls her when her grandmother gets a stroke, and she also shows up at the farm.

This is a great book, with vivid, descriptive language and it is obvious that the author knows a lot about people, psychology, and dysfunctional families. Despite all the despair in the book it ends on a positive note, and I really liked it. The author has a way of describing the complexity of people and their faults and strengths in a non-judgmental way I really liked. This could have been a real story, and I wonder if someone is planning to make it into a movie, since it seems to fit so well for that. Oh, I just found out it was made into a TV series by Norwegian public television. I always read when I go to bed to go to sleep, and most books I read 1-2 pages and then I am out. Not this one, I finished it in 5 evenings! Heat took me forever.

Need a new home?

I came across these unconventional homes, pretty inspiring! How about that Ralph Lauren Airstream with antlers inside? Or the inside-out treehouse in Colorado?

Stamp of the Day: Norwegian lighthouses

Living in lighthouse, now that would be a tiny place, but maybe you might have lots of space for bookshelves?

Stamp of the Day: Norsk fisk

Just to show you that Norwegians can have real names on their animals too :)

Here is a makrell (mackerel). If you know anything about these fishes, inform us in the comments, please.

Stamp of the Day: "Piggsvin"

There IS always something fun going on with Norwegians! Look, this poor little hedgehog is misidentified as a 'piggsvin', which means porcupine in English, and literally 'spiny pig' in Swedish. The Swedish word for hedgehog is 'igelkott', which comes from German and means sort of "cone with lots of nails on it". So, if the Norwegians calls hedgehogs piggsvin, what do they call the porcupines?

Note also, the stamp says NOREG, which is not a misspelling, only the spelling of Norway (Norge) in nynorsk, a different variant of Norwegian.