I did a touristy thing for the last couple of days

Johanna, Stoffe, Lars and I went out on a slow boat to Sandham in the Stockholm Archipelago, then came half way back and camped on Grinda, where we shelled and ate shrimp, and swam. Totally stunning, from the ostentatious summer houses and launches to the amazing lime green Baltic seaweed to the sheer number of islands (30,000, even when you discount rocks of less than 50 metres diameter)

Scandinavian Skullduggery

Well, not quite. Maybe my ad lib title reflects my memories of visiting the Historik Museet today, looking at old viking swords and the loot won with them.
I´m in a quiet Stockholm suburb called Älta.

I love searching for the Swedish letters on the keyboard `ö´ , ´ä´, and my favourite ´å´ (pronounced ´awe´) Once again the immortal verdict of Vincent Vega comes to mind. They got the same shit over there they got here, but there it´s a little different. Just three extra letters. My old friend Johanna maintains one good reason for not taking her husbands name (Stål) is that it has a Swedish letter in it. ´Causes so much hassle when you are travelling´.

I have been learning a very specialised set of Swedish vocabulary The words I´ve learned, Johanna reminds me, aren´t very sophisticated or even useful. I can say ´hut´, ´doggy´, ´blanky´and not a lot else. You might have guessed - I have been spending quite a bit of time with her one year old.

I thought Norway would make me a bit homesick. It actually made me feel comfortable, it was so like New Zealand. Well, New Zealand at sixty degrees latitude with a very cute lilting language. Sweden seems more, well, developed. Stockholm (pictured below) is a real city, the kind that roars a bit; the mountains are all up north; and people are nationalistic without a sense of irony. (There are 30 or so specified days a year when traditionally you raise the Swedish flag on the, ahem, flagpole in your garden)

Image: Windowlicker (CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike Licence)

Nature is still incredibly close to hand. Just like Oslo, the forest starts before the city ends. Beautiful mixed forest of birch, pine and fir, smelling amazing, with a carpet of wild blueberries. Sprinkle liberally with small lakes and you have yourself a nice wee hinterland. I´m having a good time.

(Image: public domain)

Hiking in Norway.

I get out of the car at Dyranut, and step onto the Hardangervidda Plateau for the first time.

(photo: threedotscreative commons attributionsharealike licence)

It is a vast treeless landscape, a lumpy plain a kilometre above the sea, coloured in ochres and browns ringed by dark blunt peaks and to the north, the imposing, disc-shaped glacier, Hardangerjokulen. Winter has left her footprints here, great patches of snow lie, seemingly at random over the land. But her mementos are fading fast: sometimes I stop to watch a bank of snow drip itself away. Meltwater is the dominant feature: bogs and marshes are everywhere, and gushing streams emanate from the most tiny catchment.

I am on what we would call a tramp, but to Norwegians, it is a Tur. They are mad for their `turs´, excursions which could be cross country skiing on lighted paths in the Oslomarka, or a jaunt up the local mountain… the possibilities are endless.

One possibility is to take your brass quintent through the mountains, playing for your room and board to appreciative turists. This is the option that Fannraken take, and on my second night I hear them at the grand hall of Sandhaug. their music sounding precious and fragile in this windswept wilderness.

The third day the landscape starts to change: I get closer an imposing looking monolith and the peaks start to rise around me. I consider taking a detour to pass between two of the more impressive, but the the chill in the air and Thor throwing his hammer about discourages me.

I have just decided to pitch camp when the rain hits – massive drops that saturate. The wind is not too pussy either. Somewhat frightened by the ferocity of the storm and my inexperience with my new tent lead me to the ´unmanned hut´ in the valley below.

(photo: leo avalon: creativecommons non-commercial no derivative works attribution licence)

At 60 degrees latitude in July, it never got darker than this

Even an unmanned hut is still far from basic. Sheets, stashes of food available on an honesty system and cutlery. A lot of cutlery. Six cheese slicers. Cheese slicers are very important. The hut, like those in New Zealand, is full of German tourists. And a nice ranger who comes every year for the first week of the summer season. I ask her about my personal hero, ecosopher Arne Naess. ´oh yes, he loves it around here, he has an old cabin up by the glacier.
´He´s still alive?´
´yes I think so, maybe he´s almost a hundred. You might see him if you go up to Finse´

The next day dawns cold overcast but there´s no rain, and I start the long trek down the valley to Eidfjord. Again water is everwhere. Here, where the land is steeper, it rushes in great torrents over the granite bedrock. Like tears over the land´s cheeks.

There is movement going up the sides of the valleys too, in the shape of a female moose that I surprise. I watch it kinda wobble along, majestic-like until it leaves my sight over the ridge. I continue, exhilarated.