Norwegian Saga

I’m sorry but I did not go on the stave church trip, hence there are no photos for me to put up in the gallery.

Winter draws nearer and with it the due date for my thesis outline, that would be 21 November. As you can see from the photo here, the leaves on the trees outside of my window have now completely fallen off. Just a few short days ago it was pretty and golden. The days are becoming incredibly short, already, it’s not even November yet. As soon as the sun peaks out from behind the clouds I will take a photo so you can see 3pm at this time of year in Norway.

Norway’s Forests

There are some very large forests that ring the city of Oslo. It’s a little bit strange to me because of where I’m from in Canada. The capital of Norway, as small as it is (not much larger than KW), has kilometres of forest surrounding it (like 10km on the “thinnest” side, go look on google maps). I’m talking thick, rocky, real forest, not planted. But that’s not all, hiking is allowed throughout all of them, even if they are privately owned. Norway’s laws make it illegal for a land owner to stop persons using their property. The laws make a distinction between a “garden” and a “property.” As a hiker you’re not allowed into a someone’s garden, or the property immediately surrounding their home, but you are allowed to hike and camp on privately held land that is away from the main home. So land that is privately owned can still be enjoyed by the public. If you decide you want to hike out to a given lake on a map, you don’t need to worry that you’ll get busted. It’s similar to the crown land concept in Canada. (Wiki even has an article on this).

That’s all for now.

I went to the Holmenkollen ski jump on the 16th of October. The subway-turned-street car took me up (200m) one of the hills surrounding Oslo. I stopped at the Holmenkollen stop to go see up close the ski jump that you can see from everywhere in the city. It was decided that the ski jump is to be demolished and a new one put up. I’m not sure if the new one will be located at the same place or elsewhere. At 16:30 they were to be removing the crown portion. As you can see from all of the construction work in the photos, it was fairly busy. As tempted as I was, I could not approach any closer for the fences they had erected. (The photo I’m showing here was taken when I was in Oslo during Christmas 2007. I wanted to show the prominence of the ski jump over Oslo. The white building to the bottom left is Oslo’s new opera house and just above that, in the line of trees, is the royal palace. NB: it’s a large photo.)

Though there’s a photo in the gallery of a sign that says Lillehammer ‘94, the winter Olympics ski jump event of 1994 was not actually held at this location, it was in Lysgårdsbakken.

I apologize for the photo quality, it leaves a lot to be desired I know. I didn’t have a great camera and the weather was perhaps the worst possible for photo taking.

Other news

In other news, I got my residence permit, valid until 31 August 2009, so now I don’t need to worry about getting deported. The next day I hustled over to the folk registry office (every folk has to be registered you know) to get my personal number. To my surprise, every woman behind the desk, that I could hear, spoke Polish. Not only that, all of the men waiting for their turn to apply for a personal number also spoke Polish. It was unnerving actually, I felt like I was in Poland. My number should get to me in a few weeks then I can do the other things regular Norwegians do such as: open a bank account and use a cheap monthly cell phone plan (not a contract though).

Tomorrow I’m going to visit those three stave churches. Photos will be up shortly afterwards.

One of Anne’s friends went to Iceland for a week, she brought back some coins and I got two of them. They were worthless then but now, with the market correction in full swing, they’re even more so. The value of these coins isn’t the point though, I just want everyone to see them.

First some Norwegian coins (50 ore, 1 krone, 10 kroner, 20 kroner; front and back photos):

See the cool stave church and the Viking ship on the 10 and 20 crown piece?

Ok and now the Icelandic coins (1 and 10 crown, front and back):

Do you notice anything about the Icelandic coins? How about the curious absence of any monarchical symbolism. It may not be entirely obvious because the Icelandic coins do have a face on them. However, that face is of a Viking, not a king. The pictures on the ten crown piece (tiu kronur) are a Viking ship bow, a bull, and an eagle. The bull was a symbol of wealth and often used in court proceedings as payment etc. The eagle… well like every other nation that uses the eagle. The fish on the other side are representative of the sea based society of the Vikings.

But to return to the concept of a kingless nation. Iceland, from its beginnings (c.900), did not have a king or monarch of any sort. It’s viewed as one of the few (or only depending who you ask) examples of a society that ordered itself without the need for a single supreme ruler. They had an elaborate system of courts that determined laws and settle suits. Iceland did fall under the Norwegian crown in about 1250, and later under others. The point being, that unlike even America, there was no ruler, no single office. All men were technically equal. Quite a feat for the 900s, if you ask me.

Alright, enough history. Things have been going very well for me. I teach English every Saturday for four hours and I tutor on Monday’s and Wednesdays. Manuscript class is fabulous, Old Norse is a little bit difficult and my thesis is coming along very slowly. I have to have a ten page thesis outline finished for 21 November and I’m getting nervous about it.

Fall has come to Norway and quickly at that. The days are getting colder and shorter. I have to run out and buy myself a comforter because the blanket I brought from Canada will not be enough for winter. Ikea: a student’s best friend.

More to come. In a week I’m going to visit three more stave churches, so there will be photos of that. And I’m planning on doing a walk about of downtown Oslo which will include photos for ya’ll.

Once again I’m grateful to the Solheims for taking me on another trip. Without a car, as I am, it would be almost impossible to see these places.

Heddal

This time we went to Heddal (see map) to visit, what Wiki says is Norway’s largest stave church (kirke is pronounced “hir-keh”). As you can see in the photos, the church is incredible. It was constructed nearly 1000 years ago in the style that was then popular. As everywhere in the medieval world, wood was significantly less expensive than stone and so was used to build the church.

It’s a gorgeous piece of architecture that’s in remarkably good shape for being 800 years old. Interestingly, there are pagan symbols all over the supposedly Christian building. You can see the dragon heads in the photos. Also note the saint’s head on an animals body carved into the church portal as well as the character Fafnir carved into one of the other church portals.

Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside the church. They close it up after 1 September. It has something to do with heating the structure, which they don’t do in the winter to preserve it. Temperature changes decrease longevity of most materials, especially wood. Amazingly, the church is actually still used for various functions during the summer. So it’s more than just a monument to the past.

Gaustatoppen

After visiting the church we drove a little way further into the mountains. Heddal is nestled in the foothills of Norway’s north-south mountain range so it wasn’t far to get to some cooler hills. We almost got to the peak of Gaustatoppen (see map). It’s a popular hiker’s destination sitting at 1800m above sea level. The road doesn’t reach the peak of course but does come to some 600m within it. People park their cars and hike up, it takes about two hours. Needless to say I’m planning on hiking it just as soon as I have the chance.

Norway, as I think you know by now, is a rocky place so vegetation has it hard here and this is even more true at higher altitudes where only scrub brush survives. Because of this there is nothing obstructing the view. The large open areas made for a very strange sensation, like I was standing on a different planet. I did my best to capture the scale by using a distant farmhouse so hopefully you’ll see what I’m talking about when you look at the photos.

Oh and the day we went, Oslo enjoyed 14°C while up on the hill it was 4°C with a very strong and cold wind. So if we look cold in the photos it’s because we were.

(Sorry that some of the photos look like they were taken by a drunk, I didn’t realize how off-level they were until I put them up and after that I didn’t feel like fixing them.)