Christmas and New Year in Tromsø and Trondheim

I don't intend to take prolonged breaks from posting here. My aim is to update this blog approximately once a week, because otherwise experiences stack up and it becomes impossible to know what to write about. This is exactly what has happened now.

Before and over Christmas I was probably as busy as I've ever been. But also, one of the reasons I didn't write here was that I had promised to say something about Tromsø, but I had no idea know what to say.

Marthe in Tromsø

My impression of Tromsø as a town is very positive. Small as it may be, it's the largest town in this bit of the world. It has a fantastic library and it's a place I could imagine moving to in the future. The problem is that when we visited in December we spent the whole day trying to do all our Christmas shopping in one go.

My energy for consumption wanes after something like an hour and a half, regardless of where I am or how much shopping might yet be to come. As a result, my main impression of that trip was a revelation which came to me in a shoe shop in a shopping centre. The PA was playing Last Christmas by Wham. I was sitting down for a minute, far too hot in my coat and woolen hat, and I was listening to the part where this incredibly bad lead keyboard line enters the song. I was listening to the bells jingling in the background, and focusing for the first time on the truly idiotic lyrics. I was wondering what on earth they thought they were doing when they made it. Then I realised: it was always intended to be a bad song.

This probably seems obvious to other people, but somehow I had always thought that musicians, singers and producers who made bad records did it by accident. Late last year in a shoe shop in Tromsø, it finally hit me that people make records like that because they hold their audience in contempt. Listen to that song and you can't help but imagine them in the studio, bent over laughing at how shit that synth sounds, cracking up at how nonsensically inane those words are. And you can't help but shiver to hear George Michael's cynical laughter echoing down the years.

But there were beautiful moments none the less. There were street decorations. There was a little contemplation room outside the church, and a snowlady with large breasts and her very own snowcat. One of the best things was the way, for a couple of hours, the sun still lit the skyline from behind with wonderful colours. Where we live it was constantly dark at that point.

Contemplation Room

Snowlady and her Snowcat

Light!

For Christmas I went back to England for a brief but pleasant family visit. It somehow felt colder there than I expected. For New Year I flew to meet Marthe in Trondheim. It seems that for Norwegian New Year almost every individual buys an amount of fireworks which would be considered appropriate for a good sized official display in England. We stood on a bridge and watched the sky above the town fill with coloured sparks and streaks in every direction. Then the air around us grew thick with smoke. I caught some falling ash in my eye, but there was no lasting damage.

Flying back to Nordreisa in a storm was somewhat terrifying. Below is an aerial picture of the village where we live, taken on that journey. If you look at the water, normally quite still in all weather, you can start to get an idea of what the wind was like.

Storvik from above.

We landed unharmed, but the wind speed was such that the plane could not approach the building and it was too dangerous to walk. We were shuttled in groups of four to the terminal. On our journey home I opened the passenger door and the wind blew it out of my hands and back off its hinges. I jumped out to close it again and I could hardly stand up in the storm. The door was mashed and the wing was bent. Weather like that demands a certain level of respect.

Back in Storvik, each day grows slightly less dark. I think it's less than a month now until there will be a minute or two of direct sunlight. The snow is falling and I'm beginning to think about what I will write this year and how the landscape might affect it. I wish anyone reading this a happy 2012.



PS. I made a list of the books I read in 2011. You can find it here. I would love to exchange views and impressions with anyone who has read any of them too.