I'm back!

Safely returned from Norway with many tales and photos of it all. It was terrific and although my minimal command of Norwegian let me down a few times it also sufficed to negotiate the purchase of a pair of shoes, the tax-exemption on a gift and much beer.

I am, as ever, in a rush now, as I'm about to depart again for Dublin for Octocon, but once I'm back I'll be posting bits of my diary of the trip here. For now, you just get part 1.

I've aimed for a chatty travelogue sort of style rather than "What I did on my holidays by Liam Proven aged 36 11/12ths." (Spot the subtle hint-plug-thing in there, kids.) Please criticise it. Rip it to shreds if you feel it deserves it. I am after constructive feedback, as I've not attempted anything of this length - over 13,000 words so far, in toto - for about 8 years, since I spent 3wk in China. Then, I lost the lot in a Psion crash at 35,000'.

So... part 1. There are about 12 so far but I'm not done yet.

Suggestions of good easy free photo-hosting services, preferably with thumbnail generation, very welcome! I also have 6-7 rolls of film to develop, mostly black & white. Recommendations of decent inexpensive developers also very welcome.

Day 1: Bergen

Upstairs bar, Scruffy Murphy's, Stortorget, 10pm, 30 Sep 04

There is something about visiting a city for the second time, after a long interval, that is a little like greeting an old friend for the first time in years. It's a good sensation: they're familiar, yet there will be little differences. It's only possible to befriend a city by living in it, of course, although some can quickly become infatuations - but always unrequited ones. They only want you for your money.

I am in Bergen, Norway's second city, in the fjordlands of the west coast of Europe's longest nation. Pick up Norway and move it its own length south, and while the northern towns would lie within the same country's latitudes, Oslo would be as far south as Rome. I am travelling through Tromsø and Hammerfest, the world's most northerly city and town respectively, to Kirkenes on the Russian border, further east than Istanbul. I was last here, very briefly, ten years ago, on my first ever visit to this most beautiful of countries - for it has some of the most spectacular scenery Earth has to offer, matched with the highest standard of living there is, too. And, because every silver lining has a cloud, some of the world's highest taxes and the most expensive alcohol, as well. As a visitor – albeit a regular, if occasional one - for more than decade now, the former doesn't bother me, and the latter wouldn't nearly as much as it does if the beer was any good. Alas, it isn't. Here in a fake Irish pub, listening to Dire Straits - I yield to none in my pursuit of authenticity, and this city is a tourist trap par excellence - I'm drinking a pint (no, not some fraction of a litre) of locally-brewed Hansa lager. And it's dire.

But no matter.

A common element to many European cities I have known is that there is almost invariably some wide open space in the centre, ringed with large, imposing buildings - though often unlovely - which for some reason are consistently topped with huge neon advertising signs. It's something Britain doesn't really do - London's Piccadilly Circus is instantly recognisable for its signage, so rare is the phenomenon.

In Bergen, it's the old harbour, which is the end of a fjord - which as any GCSE geographer will tell you is a flooded valley carved by a glacier. Norway's fjords are arguably the world's finest - indeed, the Norwegians gave us the word. Here in the western edge of continental Scandinavia, the rock strata are folded and creased and convoluted, and these deep wrinkles were then ground away by the glaciers of the ice ages and flooded by the North Sea and the North Atlantic. These are cold, grey, uninviting seas; one suspects that the only people who would wish to swim in it are the sort who actively enjoy leaping naked out of saunas, rolling in the snow, plunging into icy water and scouring one another with birch twigs. And rinse and repeat. I blame Lutherism, myself. Some of the locals naturally vigorously deny this and point accusingly at the Finns, who everybody thinks are weird.

I must confess at this point that I have once gone swimming in a fjord. It was July, high summer - I am not completely daft - and far in the south of Norway, near Stathelle in Telemark. And it was glorious. While the water was disturbingly brown, like the runoff from a Yorkshire moor - and if you've never drunk the fresh icy water from a moorland stream, you've missed one of Britain's great treats. But it was warm, almost bathlike - quite unexpected, especially given how cold it feels when dashed in your face by the swift passage of a small motorboat taking you to one of it's owner's favourite islands.

( Read more... )

Day 2: departure

Cabin 370, M/S Polarlys, 11:48pm, 1 Oct 04.


Bergen is a beautiful city, but then, beautiful cities are ten a penny in Norway. English cities slump flatly, as two-dimensional as a stranded jellyfish, dying and drying on the beach. Norway doesn't have enough flat land to waste on this – if it's level enough so that you won't fall off it if you stop paying attention, you farm it or put an airport on it. Thus many of its towns sit at the conjunctions of mountain valleys – the locals wouldn't call them mountains, but they're spoiled – spreading tentacles of development along the valley bottoms. The centres may be small and condensed, but the outlying residential areas branch out and away, winding for kilometres along the lower land, divided up by towering spines of tree-covered rock. It's pleasing by day and nighttime both: in the light, rather than a sprawling conurbation, there's a lace doily of development, dissected by tree-covered peaks. In the night – and bear in mind, nights and days here can last for months – you can see how far up the slopes people live.

With its plenitude of watersheds, if Norway were the gargoyle of north-western Europe, it would have hydroelectric power coming out of its ears, nose and mouth. Result: electricity so cheap that by British standards it's free. You fit a lightbulb and then turn it on just once; turning them on and off shortens their lifespan. When I first visited a Norwegian household, a plague of blown bulbs (lyspære in Norwegian: "light-pears") followed me like some tungsten Typhoid Mary. Heating and hot water run straight off the mains – domestic gas and oil, central heating systems and timeclocks are unknowns. People heat their bathroom floors, because it's unpleasant to stand on cold tiles. (Mats, schmats. Why clean them?) People heat the driveways of their houses – it's easier than shovelling snow or spreading salt. Think about that. Power is so cheap, people heat their gardens. It's another world.

So at night, it's lit up like a fairground. In Britain, you can only see the extent of a town from the air or a high tower. In Norway, just look up: the land rears up into the sky on all sides. In the dark, you can trace streets and neighbourhoods on the hillsides, like a map in reverse. The horizon is above you – to the sides lies landscape.

In recent, richer years, they're also got really good at digging tunnels. They need to be. A few strategic bores can save hours of driving. Dozing in the back seat of a car for any distance in some parts is a punctuated arrhythmic series of starts and stares: darkness falls many times an hour but the nights are just two minutes long.
( Read more... )