Djupvik

This week it has been light. No sun yet, but light still. And this has changed where we live.

On Wednesday I went and took a biology course in Norwegian at the adult education centre. I found out I knew woefully little about the workings of the human heart. Walking back into town, I saw an eagle circling up above the mountain and I stopped to watch it for a time. They can move such a distance in such a short time. I felt very earthbound for the rest of my walk. 

Living out here, you would think we would be surrounded by wildlife, and we probably are, but we've seen very little because of the time of year. Even the reindeer are elsewhere for the winter. I fully expect to meet more animals as the spring comes.

Today we drove to visit a woman I work with and her husband in a small village called Djupvik. When she was giving me directions to her house she said, "You just follow the road and keep going until you come to a sign which says Djupvik. It's the last house on the left." There is only really one road here. It's called the E6.

We stopped a couple of times on the way to take pictures around a place called Rotsund, which seems like a fishing village. I was using a broken camera and could barely get it to work. In the end it didn't matter so much that I hardly had the chance to take any pictures, because it's difficult to make an ugly photograph there.

Boats Outside Rotsund

Mountains Outside Djupvik

Then we drove a little further down the road and found the people we were heading to see. They live in a place where the tourists always stop to take pictures. They have a boat and they go out on the water, where whales swim over to inspect them until they switch off their engine. Moose live behind their house. (I am jealous of anyone who has seen moose in the wild, but everyone assures me I'll see one soon.)

They come from Alaska, but lived in Finland for many years. They welcomed us to their house and gave us coffee and soup. It was a good way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

Alone in Storvik

Marthe went to England a few days ago, to attend a conference on Arctic photography. It's the first time I've been alone here. Without her I'm reliant on the school bus to get to and from town. I'm usually the only adult on there, watching Daffy Duck and getting carsick with the kids. On Thursday I missed it and had to get a taxi home, which cost 500 kroner (50 pounds). Yesterday I skipped a meeting at work and sprinted to the bus stop as fast as I could. There is no bus at all at the weekend.

I went a little way up the mountain this morning. Not far, because nobody knew where I was. I found a place on top of a rock where I plan to have lunch tomorrow before dark. It's not such a bad thing having no sun when you have a few hours of cold blue light.

Tonight I went out for a walk again, down to the water, to look at the stars in the clear night sky. With the snow on the ground and the lights from the road above, it was bright enough that I could see quite well, but I decided to steer clear of the Ghost House by the shore anyway. I started to wonder why it is that we are automatically scared of old and empty houses, in the same way as we have an instinctual aversion to rats. And why, if ghosts don't exist, do people of all cultures have some concept of them? Basically, I started freaking myself out. I think this is because I'm aiming to write a ghost story soon. Anyway, I started heading up towards the road and just as I was nearing the fence I came across a sheep's skull, half buried in the snow.

The Ghost House in lighter times.

It feels really remote here now. It would take me a day to walk to the nearest shop. Since I have more than enough food, that's quite an enjoyable feeling.  I tend the fire, read, catch up on emails and letters and play the guitar. I've written a simple piece of music to try to evoke the place where we're living. You can listen to it below.

Storvik by Vince Stephen

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.