doings

January - February 2012

1 January - Happy new year! Our local vicar - who is excellent and very well liked - is a large man (diameter, not height). A year or so ago, an elderly lady who was visiting the church in connection with a funeral remarked: "they get a lot of vicar for their money here, don't they?". But he was ill on New Year's Eve and Tracy stood in at short notice to take the service. She opened with the customary "grace and peace all round" and then went on to explain why she was there. She intended simply to say that those who were expecting their regular vicar were only being half-way obliged (in the sense that Tracy is also a local vicar but the wrong one). What she actually said was "for those who are expecting Leif, you've only got half as much". The whole place fell about, and conversation afterwards ran along the lines of "... more like a third of the amount, really".

2 January - Dogs on the beach. Went to Sola beach with the dogs. Lots of hurricane debris, but the sun was out and everyone enjoyed a good blow. (click photo, right, for a larger picture of the beach).

3 January - Office finished. We mentioned on 3 December that we were making a door from the lounge into Tim's office (mainly to save having a heater there). All the work is finished (including re-arranging the office and building new bookshelves) and it looks a lot better there - see new picture and "before" picture here. It's now a great place not to work.

4 January - Back to school. Dragged ourselves out of bed just before 6 (except for Thomas Andrew who'd already been up for hours, milked the goats and all the rest of it) - and then piled back into bed again to enjoy an unexpected lie-in. During last night's rough weather (a visit from hurricane Emil) an avalanche buried the road in rocks so we're officially marooned until further notice. They'll probably manage to clear it during the day, sadly.

7 January - The address. We've mentioned before that individual houses here don't have an address. The name of the village is enough: the postman knows perfectly well where everyone lives. So our address is just "Hovland" - but that's hardly a challenge for the postman as Hovland only contains four farms. But some civil servant in Oslo has decided that every house in Norway should have a street number - just in case - and has instructed every local authority to sort it out. It's something of a problem, of course, that we haven't got a street. In order to solve this difficulty, the civil servant has come up with a splendid plan. Houses are to be numbered according to how many metres distant they are from the beginning of the road. Of course, our nearest road junction is 12 miles away in Malmei, but - not despairing - the authorities have decided in our case to start the numbering system at the �rsdalen tunnel. So out of the four houses in Hovland, our house is now to be number 852. The fourth farm is another 7 km up the road, so it's anyone's guess what their number will be (presumably seven-thousand-and-something). We're intending just to keep our heads down and hope that they forget about it once they've got some new plan to keep themselves occupied.

8 January - An evening ski trip. Katie and Tim went out for a moonlit ski trip just the other side of the �rsdalen tunnel. Click photo, above left, for set of four pictures.

9 January - You can now leave comments if you wish (box at the bottom of the page).

11 January - Keeping warm. We're still enjoying a very warm winter - this week's average is somewhere around 0 degrees. A lot warmer than it was thirteen years ago this week. We were living in Innfjorden at the time and the deep snow was frozen through. Tim was in Troms�, working at the university. Not far from Troms�, in Karasjok, the temperature fell below -50°C (-58°F) and the forecast was that it would continue getting colder. It looked like being a new European record and journalists flocked to the weather station at Karasjok to catch the event on camera. But it never got colder than -51.2°C and they all went home disappointed. It is only now, thirteen years later, that the awful realisation has just hit the Met Office. When half of Europe's press and TV stations gather round and film a thermometer it's not likely to show a very low temperature. It probably was a record after all.

13 January - A light snack. We described on a previous occasion that in order to keep track of Fudge on dark winter nights we have fastened a pair of tiny flashing LED lights to his collar - one red and one white. These are fastened on with elastic. Fudge's favourite occupation, of course, is eating and everything he finds goes straight in his mouth. He's now worked out how to reach the lights. Chewing on them turns them on, which can create an interesting effect. Just imagine walking through a dark forest, late at night, and meeting a three-foot-high, dark dog which opens its mouth to reveal a red flashing light ... Click photo, right, to see effect in daytime (the night-time effect is too scarey for this website).

14 January - A teenager's wild weekend. Thomas Andrew was, as usual, up with what would have been the lark had it been around at this time of year and went up to Stavtj�rn to drive the track-laying vehicle that prepares cross-country ski tracks, together with the farmer who owns the land there. Thomas was navigating with the GPS in order to make sure they stayed on solid ground rather than straying over onto the snow-covered ice of the lake. Unfortunately the farmer swung a little too far to the right, so that the machine slid on the icy banking and ended up partly on the lake. This would normally not have been a problem, but due to the warm winter the ice on the lake was not as thick as usual and broke, leaving the vehicle dangling. They had to call in the vast snow-pressing machine from the ski centre up the road, but in order to get this down to the cross-country tracks it had to be driven along the road, at its maximum speed of a couple of miles an hour. This in turn meant that Thomas Andrew had to park his snow scooter across the road and stop the traffic for a good while. But all the drama ended happily. He's now back home, decorating his bedroom together with Siri Elin (who had tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to paint it pink). And tomorrow he's off to learn snowboarding.

SAS this evening flew a mouse from Stockholm to Oslo. The reason was that a mouse had got into one of their transatlantic planes and refused to be captured in a mouse trap. Apparently, the only way to catch a mouse in an airoplane is to use glue mats. These are illegal in Sweden, but legal in Norway (amazing what you learn). So the mouse was duly flown to Norway (as sole passenger on a special flight) to be captured. It is unsure whether it will now be extradited back to Sweden.

19 January The public meeting. Lots of people turned up to the public meeting in the town hall this evening, to discuss matters of local interest. Someone wanted better play areas for children, someone else wanted a footpath round the lake at Vikes�. Most people had opinions about where new houses should (or should not) be built ("that field's no use - don't you remember rowing across it in the Great Flood of 1958?"). But the hottest topic was the New Road. The E39, which is the main road from Oslo to Stavanger and on to Bergen and which runs past Bjerkreim and Vikes� - the very road that we use to get to Sandnes and Stavanger - twists and winds its way through the countryside, up and down steep hills and round badly-placed rocks, and in some places narrow and with restricted visibility. So it's all being re-built, a mile or two at a time (despite objections that it would be much cheaper and easier just to do the whole lot and have done with it). The section that passes Vikes� is being discussed at the moment, and in particular the route that an enlarged road should take. The much-loved Highways Authority asked the local authority to choose from ten possible routes.
After consultation, number 4 was chosen as the least disruptive.
"Sorry, you can't have number 4", said the Highways Authority.
So after new consultation the choice fell on number 8.
"Sorry, you can't have number 8", said the Highways Authority.
Then it'll have to be number 2 or number 6.
"Sorry, you can't have numbers 2 or 6", said the Highways Authority.
Which one can we have?
"You're to choose number 9", said the Highways Authority.
So number 9 was chosen, though it was the least-favoured option (especially in the view of some of our friends who live twenty yards from the chosen route).
But it's probably going to be all right, because it now looks as though they're going to have to build the whole road with two lanes in each direction, in which case they'll need to find another new route further from the village, maybe amongst the windmills up on the moor. But the most pleasant thing about the meeting (apart from the good cakes and coffee) was that the mayor (who was leading) knew absolutely everyone in the room and addressed us all by first name.

21 January - A snowy weekend away. Tracy, Tim and Katie are enjoying a weekend away "in the mountains" (12 miles from home as the crow flies but much further by road), while Thomas Andrew is looking after the dogs at home and presumably working at the ski centre. Here (photo, left - click for nine snowy pictures and some descriptions) is where we are.

23 January - Why does it all happen at once? I (Tim) was in Stavanger today, working at the university, and set off homewards at 3pm. Not far along the dual carriageway out of Stavanger, there was a traffic queue. This happens (it's not like real Norway, where the only queues on the road are caused by goats), but today the traffic just stopped. And didn't start again. An hour and a half later I'd talked to Thomas Andrew on the phone and he told me that a lorry full of rocks had laid down to sleep on the dual carriageway a bit further on (photo, right). I managed to sneak off the dual carriageway, get to an exit and leave, heading out to Sola airport (a very long detour in completely the wrong direction, but I thought I could at least get home from there). There was a lot of traffic heading that way, too (other people with the same idea) but I got there eventually and set off along a series of back lanes to avoid the trouble spot. By 5.30 I got as far as �lgard (the little town of mini-roundabouts and petrol stations that marks the end of "towns" and beginning of civilisation) and was just beginning to relax when ... there was a tremendous squealing and groaning from under the car, as though a dozen hungry pigs had got tangled up in the axle. Suspecting brake trouble (mainly because the pigs squealed louder if I pressed the brake) I was reluctant to try to drive home in what was by then a very heavy snowstorm, down some extremely steep hills. I decided I'd make it to my "local" garage who normally service the car - because the garage is located before the hill down to Vikes�. Just to make matters worse, of course, there'd be no-one there so late in the evening, and no apparent way for me to get home again - I couldn't even call Tracy because she's away. Happily, the manager of the garage was just leaving as I pulled up. He took the keys and has promised to look at the car first thing. We walked together down to Vikes� (only a mile or two) where we parted company - and I set off towards �rsdalen (another 20 miles). After only a few yards a van passed me and then pulled over. "Not walking to �rsdalen are you?", asked the driver - a man from Vikes� who I recognise but don't really know. When I told him he said instantly "I'll just put this ice cream in my freezer and then I'll drive you home". A 40-mile round trip in a snow storm to deliver a half-stranger home was absolutely no trouble at all. There are some nice people around.
PS - 24 Jan The garage reports that it wasn't the brakes at all but something to do with linkages, axles and bearings. They wouldn't tell me exactly - probably wanted medical supervision on hand before they tell me what it's going to involve/cost.
PPS - 25 Jan They told me today that they want to re-build the 4-wheel-drive system (as well as the brakes, as it turns out) for �1500 or so. But after all the build-up I was expecting worse (that was probably the idea) so it was almost a relief.

24 January - The Norwegian laws on drink-driving are very strict. A while ago, [you're not going to belive this, but I am assured that it's true] an elderly lady was stopped, breathalysed and had the keys to her vehicle confiscated ... while driving her wheelchair down the corridor of her old people's home. Unlike in the UK, the Norwegian police can and do set up random roadside checks in which they breathalyse all motorists who pass by. At one such, yesterday in Finnmark, the police saw a car drive rather slowly towards the checkpoint, stop, turn round and drive slowly back the other way. They immediately dropped everything and followed. The guilty party continued to drive painfully slowly and soon picked up a long queue of other cars behind, none of which overtook (perhaps because there was a police car following). The police managed to get past the whole line of cars and stop the driver at the head of the queue, demanding a breath test. The test turned out to be negative and the driver turned out to be an undertaker who (having dropped off someone who had a bus to catch) was leading a procession of mourners to a churchyard. Ah well, can't win them all.

26 January, 6.15am - The road out of �rsdalen is closed this morning "due to bad weather" (left). Andrew's on his way home after leaving for school a quarter of an hour ago, and the rest of us are on our way back to bed.

27 January, 6.15am - The road re-opened yesterday evening, just in time for Tracy to get back home after a couple of days' absence. Discussion about whether the road would actually remain open produced cries of despair from Andrew and Katie. "It's got to stay open: we want to go to school tomorrow". Do you detect a note of irony here? Then you're mistaken. They both wanted to go to their (different) schools today rather than have another snow day at home. "Norwegian schools are fun", said Katie. "There's a lesson I really want to do", said Andrew. Wierd, isn't it? But both are disappointed this morning: the road is again closed until further notice.

"Selling Bokm�l milk from Nynorsk cows", reads one of the headlines in today's news (picture, right). As we've mentioned earlier, Bokm�l and Nynorsk are two alternative forms of the Norwegian language. Norway was ruled by Denmark for some centuries and the Norwegian language became heavily influenced by Danish. During the nationalism years of the second half of the 19th century there was a desire to get back to Norwegian's Viking roots so a group devised a re-construction of the historical language, shorn of all the Danish elements. Nowadays, both languages are in use. Generally, "Nynorsk" (the re-constructed Viking Norwegian) is used in the Western half of southern Norway, as far over as parts of the Gudbrandsdal Valley, and Bokm�l ("Book Language" - the Danish variety) in the rest of the country and in cities. So where we live, the language is "Nynorsk" but in Sandnes and Stavanger (cities) it's "Bokm�l". Schoolchildren have to study both, and all official forms and things have to be available in a choice of languages. Confusing? Yes it is - but also bitterly disputed. It's Norway's pro-Nynorsk "Language Society" (shades of "Cymdeithas yr Iaeth", for our Welsh readers) that is "furious" today that Tine, the national dairy, are actually printing milk cartons in Bokm�l even though the cows from which the milk has come are "Nynorsk cows". Isn't it wonderful to live in a country where there's nothing better to complain about? (If you want to do some homework, here is information about Nynorsk and Bokm�l, though there's no mention of cows.)

The strong winds that have closed the road (due to the danger of avalanches being blown down the mountain) are giving quite a Christmassy feel to the garage this morning (photo, left - click for enlargement).

Afternoon. Our neighbours wanted to get out of �rsdalen in order to catch a flight, so Thomas Andrew and his friend Kjell Arne took a tractor each and dug the road free of snow, meeting the snow clearers from the other side half way, and opening the way out. I (Tim) took advantage of this to go and collect my car (now ready) and to stock up at the shop. During the course of the day, Thomas has driven two different tractors, three different snow scooters, a neighbour's car, pulled the postman out of a ditch with another tractor, and finally arrived home on a snow scooter from the ski centre. He's had a good day.

31 January Still rather warmer than it's supposed to be for the time of year, it's at least feeling chilly: it's been -7° outside the house all day and -9° just up the road at Stavtj�rn. A healthy -37° just down the road in Telemark - which may make you feel glad that you're not moving there!

Back on 13 October last year we wrote about "Moose envy and super-intelligent sheep". If you remember, people in the North of Norway saying how much better their moose were than the pathetic southerners reminded us of the time when Arfon Borough Council, in a moment of idiocy, had invested in plastic sheep dogs and the Welsh patriotic newspaper Y Cymro - not wanting to write a negative story about one of the most Welsh of all councils - had to attribute this failure to "the extreme intelligence and abilities of the Welsh mountain sheep", in contrast to the wooly-brained creatures over the border. Ever since we wrote about it I've been looking out for the newspaper cutting in question. Today I found it, together with a few more snippets cut out of other newspapers at about the same time (either it was a good period for that sort of thing or I was better at spotting them in those days). So if you'd like to read about the sheep and a selection of other newspaper stories from the 1980s, click here.

1 February Any idea what these people are doing? One of the several destructive hurricanes this winter - Dagmar - destroyed the only road out of a village about half way between us and Beth's. It will take the best part of a year to build a new road, which will need a long tunnel through a mountain. Of the couple of dozen people who lived in that village, some have chosen to stay - and row over a couple of miles of lake whenever they want to get out - whilst others have moved temporarily into the larger village at the other end of the lake. Whichever they did, their problem was that their cars were now stuck in a village without any possible means of getting them out for the next year. Economical on petrol, but not very convenient. So it was that a private individual came up with some Norwegian creativity. They constructed a wooden raft, drove the cars onto it and towed them over the lake with a small boat. It doesn't sound entirely risk-free, but it worked and the cars are now liberated. Click photo to see two pictures

2 February - The sheep rabbit. It being a slow news day we can almost see shades of Wallace and Gromit here, in this seemingly robust little rabbit. (Click picture, right, to see a film clip).

3 February - Parcel post. We ordered a package that was to be delivered by post today. But it was too large for the normal mail van, so it was sent today in the big parcels van. If you've followed these pages right from the start - over two-and-a-half years ago now - you may remember that when we moved here there was trouble because the removals van was larger than the height of the tunnel was supposed to be (see the full story under "moving" on the Summer 2009 page). Today we had a phone call from the post-van driver. "My van's too big for your tunnel - how are we going to get your parcel to you?". To cut a long story short, the parcel's last few miles were done by Thomas-Andrew-post (click photo, left, for enlargement).

4 February - The sledging party. Katie's birthday party with friends from school is tomorrow (Sunday) in the old school. Today, though, she was having a sledging party with assorted friends she's picked up in the "city" and one or two non-school locals - as well as Uncle Bob and Auntie Pat (who are keen Alpine sledgers). We've borrowed a tent with a wood-burning stove inside in order to provide a warm haven for people who've ended up in snowdrifts. The "city" friends, though, are not used to winter weather and, seeing today's weather forecast for snow and -14° have all decided that a couple of hours' journey out into the mountains to visit us is just not possible. Illness is rampaging in both the local families who were going to drop in, so they've dropped out. And Auntie Pat and Uncle Bob are snowbound in Amsterdam. Shades of Luke 14 here, except that rather than going out into the hedgerows (where there are not many stray people to pick up at this time year anyway) we're just having a quiet day in front of the fire.

Want a piece of birthday cake? Click photo, right, for a choice of an English or a Norwegian cake (apologies to the "Language Society" - see last month's news - but this is a Bokm�l cake even though any milk and butter it contains came from Nynorsk cows).

5 February - The other party. Auntie Pat and Uncle Bob were dug out of Amsterdam and arrived today - minus luggage which is to be delivered as soon as the huskies get here. They had fun driving here from the airport (film clip of the road here). Tim and Tracy were both out at their respective churches this morning (photo, left, of Tim's car when it got home - click for enlargement), while Thomas Andrew was on tractor duty, keeping the road open and pulling people out of ditches. But during the afternoon the wind picked up, the snow started to blow and the phone calls started to come ... "don't think we'll get to �rsdalen today - or if we do we might not get home again". Once we got down to three guests still coming we abandoned the party, used the pizza base for something else and promised to re-schedule the event for a warmer season.

7 February - The sun arrived for Katie's birthday today (photo, right - click for enlargement), as did Bob & Pat's missing suitcase, which arrived in a little van from the airport. The van driver unloaded two large black suitcases and was about to leave when I asked him to check - I had thought it was supposed to be one brown one. "Oops", he said, "those are for someone else. This one's yours". No wonder they loose baggage. Don't know whether it was a good investment to tell him, though - who knows what the two large suitcases might have contained?

10 February - the hymn. It was an interesting day at work. There was a funeral in Bjerkreim church and the family had booked several soloists, all of whom needed accompanying on the organ. There were lots of complications (not helped when one of them set off in the wrong key which meant a few emergency swerves from the organ). But at least the hymns were straightforward. Or at least, they should have been. One of the hymns that we had is quite often sung in funerals, but always - so far as I know, in every church in Norway - to a particular tune that isn't in the hymn book. This is fine because I've played it so often before that I know it off by heart. So I set off happily into the first verse. But as the verse continued I realised that I just couldn't remember the last line. It was getting closer and closer and I had no idea at all what notes I was going to play. Usually such problems solve themselves and the right notes just pop into the mind at the appropriate time. But not today. I arrived at the last line and had not the faintest notion where I was going next. What do you do? You can't just stop and say "ahm, how does this bit go?" So I just made up a last line. I knew it was nothing like the correct tune, but it wasn't a bad last line, as made-up bits go. And surely it would come back to me in the second verse. Unfortunately, when I got to the last line of verse 2, not only had the tune not come back to me but I couldn't even remember what on earth I'd played in verse 1. So I had to make up another new last line. And by the time verse 3 came around I was so befuddled that this one ended up as yet another new creation. Thank goodness there were only three verses, otherwise I'd have been in danger of repeating myself before the end. Have to keep them guessing - it doesn't do for congregations to get too complacent.

13 February. We regularly check (and quite often report on) the "give away" website, where all sorts of useful (and useless) articles can be had for free - everything from passport photo booths (they're still trying to give that one away) to whole houses (buyer collects). Today has one of the more unusual items - a snowman (dimensions 160x60x60) (advert, left). It doesn't say anything about delivery; nor, I imagine, does it come with a long guarantee.

20 February. The police stopped a car which was being driven in Finnmark with several reindeer on the back seat (photo, right - click for enlargement).
There are regulations about most things, but when they checked they found that for some reason there is no law that says you can�t drive with reindeer in the back of the car.
The policeman was interviewed for the news:
�What happened to the driver who was transporting the reindeer?�
�We let him drive on. If I can put it like this, he wasn�t very interested in talking to us�, said the inspector.
�Did it seem as if the reindeer were all right?�
�O yes: it was minus 26 outside but nice and warm inside the car. Besides, he was playing music for them�, he said.

21 February. Thomas Andrew has been up at Stavtj�rn today (just the other side of the �rsdalen tunnel), driving snow scooters and snow ploughs as usual. He regularly clears and lays tracks on the cross-country ski track there. Here (click photo, left, to watch a film on YouTube) is a film of his clearing route.