My jog this morning

We are staying in a really beautiful spot, this is the view out front:

And this mountain you see in the background is behind the same apple tree. The house we stay in is hidden behind the camper.

And the mountain behind the house is what we see from the little kitchen window. We are in the basement, so is hard to get the perspective right, so that you understand that you are looking at a big mountain which is not far away, and not just a large stone close to your face!

And here is the route I ran in these beautiful surroundings this morning! The rain started after I'd been out 30 minutes, so I had my shower on the way home...

Birthday!

The birthday song is here.
The music for it is here. The vocalist here is singing different words, and he's not nearly as talented as our bunch. The tune may be unusual for you gentle readers.
My coworker had a birthday this week, we had a blast celebrating her!
(hint to see pictures: click on the pink, highlighted, and underlined word "blast" above)

forensic photography or roadkill...

I came across a few interesting mishaps while out jogging this morning. The road I was running on is two lanes, but there's not much of a shoulder for a jogger or a pedestrian; on the outside of the guard rail I came upon the site of a small tragedy...can anyone identify this species?
Also there was this, incidently right across the road from each other:
Well, with all you read in the papers now a days, a person wonders what REALLY happened...

Grandma should have had this:

I'm glad for Calvin in my life!

Family Ghost stories

In the distant past here in Norway the young girls would take the sheep and goats up to the mountains for the summer. There they would stay on the “sæter” all summer. A distant matriarch in our family, we think her name was Kanutta, she may have been my grandmother's great grandmother was out walking in the evening watching the cows, as hands were never to be idle, her hands were busy knitting as she walked. Under her arm she had a pail of sour cream. She met upon a beautiful lady dressed in blue who started to talk to her. As they were taking, our great grandmother offered her flatbread spread with sour cream. As she was preparing this she noticed that the blue lady had a bit of a tail sticking out below the hem of her dress. This was the mark of the Hulder. Our brave matriarch took her knitting needle and drew the mark of a cross in the sour cream on the flatbread she'd prepared for the stranger. But when the Hulder saw the cross, she vanished in the mist. Kanutta told this story and maintained it was true.
Onkel Amund Brænde, my grandmother's older brother was maybe no more than three years old when the family had bought a beautiful used sofa at an auction. Our great uncle came in from the living room to tell his mother, “lady hit me”, “lady hit me”. At this our venerable great-grandmother went into the living room to see what was going on. As he looked over at the couch, little great-uncle Amund said, “lady gone!”. The couch was instantly removed from the household!
Our great-grandmother, Ingeborg Brænde, nee Flote, didn't live to see her children grow up, she passed away of unknown causes in her late 40's. Our grandmother, Ingrid, who was 4 years old at the time of her mother's death, was raised by her sisters. She would tell stories later about them that had been unkind to her. One night when Ingrid was still very young she was in bed crying and afraid because of a storm outside. I remember her telling us that she “saw” her mother came to her and smiled at her. At this point Ingrid poked her sister, and said, “Svanhild, it's Mother!” When she looked back the apparition was gone. Even though none of her 6 siblings believed this story, Ingrid maintained it was true all her life.

Potato-Planting-Crew

Planting potatoes last spring was one of the first things I did after returning from Lebanon. It helped me feel like I'd really come "home".

Fishing with an otter

I withheld this picture until I made some investigations about our method of fishing, now I can explain it better. The caption on the picture says it all, but it may not get published...the little orange float has a heavy fishing line attached, and there are about 14 flies tied on to leads which are hanging off the heavier line. We had two of these "otters", one on each side of the boat. We were out again today and got 18 fish! They are kind of small, but the lake is so full of fish that they don't require a license, so we can keep all we catch. We fried them all and have enough left for one each for breakfast. click here

fishing!

My parents took IJ and me out fishing a few days ago! We had a great time. It's a glacial lake, so the water is so cold that the outboard motor couldn't keep warm enough to run, so dad rowed us around for hours while we pulled in the fish; we got 14 trout using a variety of flies; what an experience! My mother fried 'em up when we got home and we ate 'em ALL!
We're actually after bigger fishes, so we're tying special flies today and hope to haul 'em in this evening. We have an announcement in the paper, and my mom noticed that there is a performance at the prayer house at the very time we want to cast. If nobody comes we could go to theirs and I could accompany them on my harmonica.

The Avalanche

My dad was born in Stryn on September 12, 1936. The next day, September 13, 1936 a devastating avalanche wiped out 2 villages; 73 people lost their lives; whole families where wiped out. I know of one survivor, a baby crib was caught in a treetop and and in the cradle was a little baby boy. My brother went to school with this man's son perhaps 27 years ago. I've heard this story all my life, and yesterday we went out to the site of the disaster.

Bødalen og Nessdalen

I uploaded my picture to picasa, there should be a link here for you to see them if you want.

Eating out in Stryn

On the way home this evening we stopped for a late dinner at a very cool place. It's a 350 year old river wharf shed which has been converted into a seafood restaurant. Before World War II the building was owned by Sunde-Julius. The current owner is a retired architect. He came to our table to chat and showed us an old sign that they'd found up in the attic of the shed. It says: "registration point for Norwegians to volunteer for the German defense army" The sign was posted in the city for several days, but since there were no volunteers, Sunde-Julius, who had posted it, took it down and hid it his attic. There it lay until it was found by the new owner.
This is a black-and-white photo which has been colored. It was taken before WWI. Notice the ship's tall mast and rolled up sail, right near where we sat!
We sat near the river front where it was a bit chilly, so they provide blankets for guests to wrap up in. A very nice touch which I've never seen before!
This is what mor ordered, it's fish, Brieflabb, think “seabass”.
Far and I ordered this, Steinbit (Anarhichadidae). This is an interesting fish, we caught some once when we dragged in our fishing nets from the fjord. They have huge teeth. My dad put one of them near the seat of our rowboat and it sunk it's teeth into the wood and hung on all the way home! I've heard stories that during the war people made shoes out of the hide of this fish. In Norwegian the name means "stone biter". It lives on the bottom of the fjord and eats clams and stuff like that...barnacles?
Here's a picture I found on the web of two decapitated steinbit.
here's more pics

A Scandinavian Wedding

I feel lucky to have such good looking relatives, unfortunately I don't know them very well. I hope to do something about that in the next months :) Here we have the bride and the groom who is my cousin.

And this is another cousin, brother of the groom, he has two more brothers, and they are here...

What gives these pictures meaning to me is that I know a little bit about the person, but why blog it? Well it was a very special day where I got to be with people who I haven't seen in years, but we could pick up where we left off. And I met brand new people who I can look forward to picking up with again. Life is exciting when it's like that, old friends and family, and new friends and exciting possibilities.

I hope this little girl invites me to her wedding someday, I want to see what shoes she decides to wear!

And here are half the cakes, more than I could eat!!

We got diplomas for cleaning our plates last night! !t was really good though, even without the brains

Supper in Voss

This is smalahove. That is a smoked and boiled sheepshead. We have the profile here with a closeup of tongue, ear and eyeball. We ate most of it, was delicious, along with new potatoes and mashed rutabaga. The brain had been previously removed. Ya, but we didn't notice that til just now :/

Stavechurch and shrimp heads

The dragons on these old stave churches remind me of Chinatown. The construction of these churches is interesting, no nails were used, and the wood was specially treated so that they have stood for hundreds of years without decaying.
We hiked up here the other day from our friends' place near Bergen.

Windbreak

It's not always beautiful, warm and sunny here, this is some serious insulation.