Header picture - Ørsdalen's river in summer clothing
2 June - passport time -
Now less than three weks until the end of term, we're beginning to think about our summer holiday on the German lakes.
Thanks to Schengen we don't need passports — but Katie's guinea pig does.
So today's challenge was to get a guinea pig to look straight at the camera and not to smile ... (photo, left - click for enlargement).
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7 June - Pellworm -
Katie and Tim are on the tiny but fascinating island of Pellworm at the
very top of Germany, just under the border with Denmark,
for a concert on the famous 1710 organ by Schnitger.
The island is fairly flat and much of it lies 1 metre below sea level, but it is protected by a 25-foot dyke all around the perimeter (to prevent the rest of it being swept away as happened to the greater part of the island in 1634, when 1000 people drowned).
Other catastrophic floods were in 1216, 1230, 1362, 1436 (when it became an island), 1550, 1657, 1663, 1672, 1687, 1697, 1701, 1703, 1717, 1718, 1719, 1720, 1729, 1743, 1756, 1825 (the last time the whole island was under water), 1831, 1911, 1936, 1962, 1976 and 1981.
You get the idea.
I fastened my life jacket and took a few pictures of the island (click, right, for enlargements) before the tide comes in again.
8 June - In a jam (thanks to Thomas Andrew for pointing this one out) - An armed police response team was called out in Tana (northern Norway) this morning to shoot ... a tub of jam. It had started fermenting and there was a risk of an explosion, so the police had to put a couple of bullet holes in it to release the pressure. See photo here and/or news story here (in Norwegian).
9 June - early start -
Last night's concert was pleasant and well received (the organiser said he's been running these concerts for years and it was the first time people seemed to be actually enjoying themselves) and I'll certainly be taking them up on their offer of an early return.
For a few pictures of the organ, click organ picture, left.
This morning we were up with the cockerel and in the car before 5am to catch the 5.45 ferry.
The sun was just edging up over the horizon and all the fields were blanketed in thick mist (through which we could see the top half of the lighthouse); it was spectacularly beautiful.
We were at the ferry with the required half hour in hand (sunrise photo here).
No-one else was.
About 5 minutes before departure there was a sudden rush of activity.
Crew members arrived on bikes and started loading bits of cargo with the tractor.
A few rather bleary-eyed passengers turned up and lurked, waiting to be let on board.
Our host was telling us last night (over post-concert drinks in the pub by the church) about island life, which sounded very much like our time in Lurøy.
For instance, a couple of years ago a young policeman from Hamburg was sent on a placement to the island, to mutual dismay.
Amongst other things, German law makes it illegal to leave your keys in an unattended vehicle (it encourages criminality),
so every car-owning resident of the island was given a small fine by the temporary policeman.
"But I can't take the key out of the car. Where would I put it?"
"My key has rusted in place"
"If I took the key away, how would my neighbour be able to borrow the car if he needed it?"
Further travels - very much further, in fact. Tracy is (hopefully) off to Cambodia tomorrow. I say "hopefully", not because we're anxious to be rid of her, but because there is a chance that her journey will be disrupted due to various airport/airline strikes. You can follow her progress — or lack of it — on her usual Cambodia blog.
10 June - Thankfully, airport and SAS strikes seem to be off, so Tracy should be able to leave as planned. Follow her blog for updates.
Busy time for the police - The Norwegian police are not only required to shoot unarmed tubs of jam (see the day before yesterday) but are also called out for other emergencies. Today's NRK news reports that they had to deal with a disturbance at a hotel in the centre of Oslo, where they had to evict an agressive duck from the entrance lobby. It proved to be a challenging job for the Old Bill.
16 June - The End of School -
The past 20 years have seen a lot of end-of-school-terms, but there's a finality about this one that is reflected in the capital letters.
When we moved here in the summer, seven years ago, we had to get into the routine of getting two children onto the school bus at 10 to 7 every morning for their hour's ride to Vikeså (photo here from August 2009).
Those days came to an end today with Katie's final exam at Vikeså (in maths).
Other than a formal farewell on Monday she has finished.
16 August marks the beginning of 6th-form college, hopefully at "Hogwarts" (the Cathedral School) in Stavanger, which we described last October.
It's a small and strongly academic school, so she needs exceptional grades to get in.
The Norwegian "GCSE-equivalent" focusses more on the average across-the-board grade in all subjects than on the individual's best subjects.
This grade is given as a number between 0 and 6, where we can give as equivalents:
0-1 - F
1-2 - E
2-3 - D
3-4 - C
4-5 - B
5-6 - A
Katie's across-the-board average (including today's result which she got straight away) is 5⅓,
which puts her well up in the "A"'s and we dare to say should hopefully ensure a place even at the Cathedral School.
Well done!
19 June - End of term also for churches -
(this time, just for the summer holidays!)
Tracy's and Tim's churches both had their end-of-session outdoor services today, marking a reduction in activity until after the summer.
As the pictures show, Tracy's end-of-session service was more active and dynamic than Tim's (though thanks to different start times, Tim made it to both).
Dog and new owner - Thomas Andrew and Duracell (right - click for enlargement)
20 June - The End of School: ceremony - Katie and her class received their certificates at the "final farewell" at Vikeså School this evening (photo here).
23 June - We've already had the longest day and tonight is "Sankthans"-Eve, when all of Norway celebrates midsummer with bonfires and community picnics — our eighth such event in Ørsdalen (photos from our first one here). While the British news is dominated by one issue (Norway welcomes the UK to life outside!) you can take your mind off it all with the Norwegian news, which is dominated by more run-of-the-mill stories:
- When passers-by found a dead body in a west-coast village, they naturally rang the police. The police, however, just replied "Just send us a photo of the person and we'll see if we can identify him". And they sent an undertaker round later in the day, but never actually went themselves. After all, it's not like it's a place where crimes ever happen, so they didn't really need to get involved.
- People in Tromsø are offended because Norway's Minister for Employment, safely tucked away in Oslo, made a statement to the effect that job seekers might have to move to find work. Perhaps — in the most dire circumstances — even up north to somewhere like Tromsø, although while "it is worth living there for a while, naturally you wouldn't want to live there for the rest of your life".
- The Post Office seems to be working on the same principles: a man in Langfjordbotn (in roughly the same part of the country as Tromsø) complained about a note that the postman left in his letterbox, inviting him to collect his parcel from the post office in Tana. Tana is a 6-7 hour drive eastwards (and naturally the same again to get home afterwards). The parcel had come from a northern suburb of Oslo, so perhaps it was carrying a bit of that same attitude with it.
- Some American tourists were surprised when this stone came knocking on the door of their holiday house by the Hardanger Fjord.
25 June - Aros mae’r mynyddau mawr -
"Get lost: this is my garden" I said to the insects that were crowding around as I tried to thin the undergrowth a little at the foot of the mountain, behind the barn.
And then it struck me — as has many times before — that this was completely untrue.
I often feel that we don't really own the mountain: it owns us.
After all, it was there long before anyone claimed ownership of it, and it will remain unchanged long after we've ceased caring about it.
And I found myself reciting a poem from many, many years ago about the mountains remaining even though the shepherds on them keep changing.
(Norah knows this poem, even if some of our other readers don't).
The second verse:
Eto tyf y llygad dydd
O gylch traed y graig a’r bryn
mentions that the daisies are still growing at the foot of the rocks and hillside —
and indeed Joanna will be pleased to note that the dog's breakfast is again thriving and, in line with the poem,
a generation (of dogs) has indeed gone since last year and a new generation arrived.
And the poem ends optimistically for a musician; that "yr alawon hen yn fyw" (the old songs are still alive), so that's all right.
And we can enjoy our mountain while we have it.
And it's never been in the EU.
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30 June - Beatles - Tracy was tidying the cellar today when a beetle came over to say hallo. Not Ringo Starr, nor an apologetic VW, but this psychedelic creature. Any beatles fans who can identify it?
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