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1 January - Happy New Year!
Our New Year's Eve was different from the past 27 ones. Other than the eve of the new millennium - which we spent at a memorable party at Bob and Pat's - Tim, Tracy or both together have spent the closing hour of every single year in a church service. This year we were for the first time at home in Ørsdalen (Sandnes church doesn't have a New Year's Eve service). Norwegians celebrate New Year with fireworks. Lots of them. It's illegal to import fireworks into Norway without a commercial license, and within Norway they can be sold only during the days between the 27th and 31st December. Letting them off is only legal between 6pm on New Year's Eve and 2am on New Year's Day. But for that brief period, people go wild and the skies are lit up with colours all over Norway. Except in Ørsdalen, we are told. No-one lets off fireworks there because it disturbs the animals, which messes up milking the next morning. So everyone goes out of the valley and up to the ski centre. Apparently. Our experience, however, was rather different. After a quiet evening at home, on the bang of midnight it was as though war had erupted in peaceful Ørsdalen. Bangs and flashes in all directions, from every house except for those funny people up the hill in Hovland who didn't let off any fireworks, out of consideration for the milking. After three-and-a-half minutes of intense warfare, Ørsdalen abruptly fell silent and dark again. But I'll bet milking was a mess this morning.
2 January - severe weather warning -
According to the police, we shouldn't be setting foot out of the house this evening.
Hurricane-strength winds combined with enough snow to level out the mountains, says the weather forecasters.
Katie and I have just been outside playing catch in the garden (in the dark) and cannot report either wind or snow.
The news, however, reports that even as I write there is a borderline-hurricane in Egersund, only a few miles away.
As so often happens, it seems that the mountains are protecting us here.
Tomorrow is a stay-at-home day, I suspect.
3 January - severe weather? -
The official advice is not to go out today - this morning at least - due to storms and snow.
The main road between east and west Norway looks like this and there is still a full storm blowing on the coast.
Here in Ørsdalen, however, large snowfalkes are falling gently and peacefully and the sun is shining on the top of our mountain (photo left).
We're looking forward to watching that line of sunshine creep further down the mountain as January progresses.
Some of us, however, took the official advice and stayed in bed (right). Any excuse.
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10 January - severe weather? - A week on, it's the same story again: hurricane warnings, all ferries and trains cancelled, trees and lorries blown over and police warnings to stay at home (see the county news just at the moment). All peaceful in Ørsdalen so far however - but this time it's to be a westerly hurricane reaching its peak on Saturday afternoon, so we'll probably catch it.
Here is what it sounds like from inside the house this evening; blustery, but manageable! 168000 households are apparently without electricity in the west of Norway - that's about a third of all households. You can see why from this photo of Bergen city centre this evening.
Sorry we've not written anything this week. We've all been busy in a routine kind of way. For Tim it was the first regular week in the new job, involving a lot of finding things out and organising. Also for Tracy, the first full week of the new year involves a lot of admin, so somehow we've not managed to do anything interesting. Even the Norwegian news has been quiet - in fact, for once the zaniest headlines of the week (both with an aquatic touch) have to belong to the BBC news.
15 January - While driving to work this morning, the road up the hill out of Ørsdalen put me suddenly in mind of Egypt. Not because there were camels on the road. Actually, had there been camels on the road I probably wouldn't have thought first of Egypt, but that's another matter. Nor were there pyramids, and certainly no desert. Yesterday evening the road up towards the tunnel and ski centre was covered in a good, even layer of ice, on which it snowed liberally. Once the snow had accumulated to a depth of a few inches it started to rain gently, with a side-show of thunder and lightning. This morning, the temperature was just an indecisive -1, with a strong wind and torrential downpour of 60% snow and 40% rain coming almost horizontally. The slush on the road was so deep that the spray was being thrown up higher than the car; occasionally lashing across the windscreen, causing those unnerving three or four seconds of complete inability to see which way the road was turning and whether I was turning with it. Thinking about it, there may well have been camels on the road: I wouldn't have seen them anyway. No, what made me think of Egypt was the 7th plague in the Exodus story (Exodus 9:14), where God says: "Right, this next plague is a real corker: I'm throwing the lot at you, all stirred together" (here quoted from the HPV - Heavily-Paraphrased Version). And they only got hail mixed with fire. But our exodus to school and work was successfully completed, and now we're all safely home again in front of the fire, so it's all right.
This picture is not the road to Ørsdalen - it's to another village - but it's very similar.
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16 January - There are some things Norway is pretty hopeless at, and others it's good at. One thing we appreciate every year, for instance, is the higher quality of Christmas carols. They tend not to be sickly-sugary-sweet, but rather to be direct, biblical and sound. The few English carols that have been imported and translated have undergone a good deal of remedial work: "Away in a manger", for example, gets its first verse translated, but the second and third verses (with the non-crying baby Jesus) just got completely ditched and replaced by something far better. The same has now happened to a new-comer to the hymn book, "Once in Royal David's City", which has thrown out all that stuff about being nice quiet, mild, obedient, seen-but-not-heard children, just like the child so dear and gentle who spent a wond'rous childhood in his mother's gentle arms (aagh! stop!) and replaced it with an Easter perspective. Which makes it all the odder that one of the carols (number 52 in the latest hymn book) begins "Good morning, you green, shining, Christmas tree" and goes on to describe Christmas decorations (including the Norwegian flag, of course) and not much else; all of it addressed directly to "you" - referring to the Christmas tree. Rather bizarre. In most countries, talking to your Christmas tree would get you taken away by friendly men in white coats, while singing to it ... But here, like everywhere else, Christmas carols become a part of the culture, as we see plainly on one of today's offerings on the "things given away" website. Under the heading "You green, shining, bathroom suite", the advertiser states that "With a sense of relief we are giving away the following to anyone who will collect them: a vomit-green bathtub, vomit-green toilet with a yellow lid ..." , adding that the bathtub could be useful trough for a farmer who wants to discourage his animals from drinking, but that on the other hand, these colours might come back into fashion one day if you've got the patience to wait. Here's the advert in case you want them. But remember that if you do take them, you'll have to sing to them.
18 January - cheese-making time! -
Just 60 miles over the moors to the north-east there is a huge amount of snow (this village has been cut off for a week).
One result of this is that the milk tanker that takes the goats' milk from Ørsdalen has been unable to get through,
causing a glut of spare milk here in the valley - and a flurry of cheesemaking.
21 January - Norwegian exam - Katie had a Norwegian exam today. She had to write a piece about being alone in holding a "different" view of some situation or another. The Norwegian teacher gave specific instructions that - much as she likes Uncle Bob - this was not to be an Uncle Bob story. This time, it had to be something different. So Katie wrote a monologue, being her defence to the judge on why it had been necessary to kill her Norwegian teacher with a poisoned currant bun. The teacher's offences were described in detail - everything from the way she wipes the blackboard and how she performs internet searches to how she can never find the right key to open the door - interspersed with comments about how the judge would surely have done the same thing under the same circumstances. The story was entitled "I'm now expecting a letter of thanks from the local authority". Katie is intending to take her teacher a currant bun tomorrow as a present.
22 January - No teacher - The Norwegian teacher (see yesterday) did not receive her bun today as she was off sick (so the bun was left on her desk). Katie is now quietly hoping that the teacher doesn't die of unexplained poisoning, as this could lead to awkward questions.
23 January - No ball - Tonight is the school ball. Katie went last year - in best frock - but wasn't deperate to repeat the experience, despite the "awards" part. Each year, the pupils select one from among their number for each of a variety of awards: best this or best that. This year, Katie was apparently in a very secure position to receive "greatest achievement" on account of swimming gold medals. But she won't be able to get it - because she's away Friday to Sunday, swimming. Our "little girl" (who actually will be 15 in little over a fortnight) is off on her own by train to Kristiansand for the weekend in order to compete in the qualifying rounds for the Norwegian national swimming championships. The club is not expecting her to qualify - this year it's about the experience - but it's still a great adventure.
No pipes = parish pranks - Police were called in to the church at Melhus (on the E6 just south of Trondheim, so some of our readers have been through it with us without really paying it much attention) when organ pipes to a value of almost half a million pounds were reported stolen. They were being stored in the church pending construction of a new organ there, and their absence meant that the official signing of the contract with the organ builders (the Swiss Orgelbau Kuhn) had to be called off. Curiously, the church was locked and showed no sign of forced entry - and there had been a dispute within the congregation over a proposal to get rid of those nice padded chairs (comfortable but acoustically dead) and reintroduce the old back-aching pews. After a well-publicised police investigation, the missing pipes have now been located - in a dark room in the tower of the same church. Stories of dark doings related to church pews: somehow it sounds like Tim's family in generations gone by.
25 January - Back home - We're all back home after weekend excursions. Katie caught the train from Kristiansand to Sandnes where she met up with Tim & Tracy, who had spent the weekend there doing job-related things. Katie had a good time (including a solo trip out to a bookshop in Kristiansand, so the train was groaning under the weight when it finally made it to Sandnes this evening); but she arrived home in Ørsdalen, said good night and promptly disappeared to bed, so we won't get a full report until tomorrow.
January this year has made up for last year's lack of snow.
The ski centre by the Ørsdalen tunnel has done a roaring trade, as have the snow ploughs on the road.
We mentioned on 18 January that villages have been cut off for long periods (the milk lorry is still not getting through!),
while at a village near Voss (inland from Bergen; we know the village well because a previous vicar from Måndalen lives there) buildings have been evacuated due to the pressure of snow and the family in this house (right, click for enlargement) describe how the kitchen windows suddenly broke and snow poured in.
"Even in the '60s it wasn't like this", they are saying.
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28 January - Deer, deer - Found a small deer in the garden this morning. Nothing unusual about that - we see them most days - but this one was in self-assembly-kit form. It had been caught and carefully dismantled overnight by some large animal - we assume by a lynx - so I had to gather in the remaining pieces and dispose of them before the dogs got an unexpected picnic.
Petrol and passport, please - I had another of those phone calls this afternoon. The man introduced himself (in rather broken Norwegian, so he was hard to follow) as a delivery driver for DHL couriers, attempting to deliver a package to me. I wasn't expecting anything, but on the principle of not looking gift horses in the mouth I invited him round with his package. "Yes, I've tried putting your address in my GPS, but it can't find it. I'm in Bjerkreim at the moment". I tried to conceal the bad news from him until he was too far on his way to turn round, but he must have sensed it. "OK, so I drive to Vikeså and then turn right at the petrol station: how far is it then? ... Half an hour, did you say? ... [shocked silence] I'm sorry, it must be on someone else's route." "What? A half-hour dead-end road into the mountains from Vikeså? I'm going to have to take this back to my boss and say that it can't be delivered". Later this evening I dropped into the petrol station at Vikeså where he deposited the packet (they obligingly signed for it and left it on the counter for me). It was the passport I'd ordered (it had needed renewing in time to get back into the UK for a wedding in a few weeks).
29 January - Ready for off - Tracy is off to Cambodia at the weekend for a mission trip with Normisjon. You can follow her adventures on www.pastornorkirkensandnes.blogspot.no.
30 January -
Deposited Katie in Stavanger this evening for another weekend away - this time at a church event there, so she's looking forward to another enjoyable weekend.
Snow had been falling heavily all day and Thomas Andrew had been kept busy with his tractor and snow clearer, keeping Ørsdalen open.
On Friday evenings there's always a queue of cars trying to escape town life and heading for the hills - more specifically for the ski centre and surrounding cabins.
These are "town drivers" who are not quite used to the road and tend to get into problems in bad weather.
So it was that as we were heading up the hill towards the ski centre on our way home, we found the road blocked by a long queue of stationary cars.
Someone had skidded into a ditch, then someone else had stopped behind and not managed to get started again, and spun round over the road ...
all city drivers who had gone into the hills to find snow, but not expected it to be falling on the roads as well.
So we waited around for an hour or so while our friend Nils was busy pulling cars out of the way (photo, left - click for a slight enlargement - shows Tracy's car in the queue and was taken by a neighbour on her mobile), then we went off for coffee with Nils' wife (who hadn't seen him all day because he'd been snow-ploughing continuously), returning when we saw a digger sanding the road.
Nils had somehow managed to organise all the waiting cars so that the Ørsdalen ones could go first (they were less likely to make a mess of it and block the road again) so we were rapidly on our way.
Nice forecast for the next few days, though (below right). We'll all be enjoying the sunshine - Tracy in Cambodia and the rest of us here.
31 January - Here comes the sun -
It should have arrived a couple of days ago, but was delayed due to bad weather.
But today we were able to welcome the return of the sun to our house after its annual winter holiday.
(photos, far left).
So, to celebrate, we went sledging on the field at the bottom of the garden. How did that go? Click photo (near left) to find out.
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