Stockholm

Last weekend was our final big trip of our European sojourn: Stockholm, capital of Sverige. We flew in Thursday afternoon, having to transfer in Oslo due to the fact that Norwegian Airlines canceled their direct Bergen-Stockholm route after we had purchased out tickets. Nevertheless, it was a pretty easy trip, all the more so due to the “Arlanda Express” trains that go from the airport to Stockholm Central station in 20 minutes. The speed of the train is displayed on a screen above the door of each car; Henry was impressed that it gets up to over 200 km/hr. From there, it was a short walk to the Sheraton Hotel, where we had accepted an offer to upgrade to their “club level,” which was so totally worth it as you get access to a special lounge where the elite “club” guests (that was us!) get their own breakfast buffet, far from the madding crowd (see earlier posts for references to the horrors of the ordinary Scandinavian buffet). This lounge also had a happy hour every day at 5:30 when they would bring out complimentary Swedish meatballs and drinks. When you are dragging around two young children, you really want food and liquor to be close enough that you can access them without having to put on shoes.

So this awesome hotel filled with free beer and Swedish meatballs was fortuitously located in the heart of an awesome city. Stockholm is truly beautiful, block after block of stately old buildings surrounding vibrant public spaces. The city’s charms seemed to lend themselves especially to the Christmas season. It snowed pretty heavily the first morning we were there, and the city looked like some kind of Scandinavian Norman Rockwell picture with all the holiday lights and decorations set off by fresh white snow.

The first day (snow day) we managed to figure out how to catch a light rail train to one of the Stockholm’s many islands, “Djurgårdsbron” (no, that’s not how you pronounce it), where there are a large number of parks and museums. We visited the Vasa Museum, where the old warship Vasa is displayed. This hulk was rescued from the harbor where it had lain since 1628, when it sank on its maiden voyage due to being top heavy and too narrow. It’s absolutely huge and fascinating to see. It was supposed to have been the flagship of the Swedish Navy during the period of the 30 Years War, and it’s covered with elaborate carvings in wood and metal. The way the museum is set up, you can go to different levels where you can see different parts of the ship from different angles. It is truly immense. Unfortunately, they keep it pretty dark in there for preservation purposes, and it really does look like a creepy ghost pirate ship, so Henry was scared and wanted to stay in the gift shop most of the time. Eventually he got a little more comfortable and agreed to look around a bit. We didn’t take him to the area where they have displayed some of the skeletons of the crew that they recovered from the wreck.

The next day we went ice skating at an outdoor rink right in the middle of the Center, which was really fun, although this time it was Dexter who caused problems as he shrieked and cried the whole time, to the effect that he had wanted to stay at the hotel. This reminded me of the “Incident of the Boat Ride” at Tivoli way back in August. Susan and Henry went for a boat ride while I tried to hold Dexter by the side of the pond and encourage him to wave to them. But Dexter spent the entire (seemingly very long) time screaming “I want mommy!” at the top of his little lungs. So now this scene was repeated at the end of our trip, Dexter once again shrieking and wailing through a lovely public space where everyone else was having a delightful time, snot and tears running down his face. We had come full circle, a pleasing narrative symmetry achieved in the complementary hues of summer and winter. A nice Swedish lady tried to offer Dexter some chocolate, just as in Tivoli some nice Danish people had offered me scowls, shaking heads and dirty looks as his shrieks echoed across the picturesque amusement park.

Fortunately the next day Dexsee was in a better mood and we were able to walk through Gamla Stan, the charming old city, and then take a boat ride back to Djurgårdsbron (you pronounced it wrong again), where we visited the outdoor “museum” of Skansen, a weird, eclectic place that combines a zoo with reconstructed historical scenes and a giant escalator (it’s hard to explain). At the outdoor Christmas market there, Susan and I tried Glögg, or Swedish mulled wine, which was good; you drink it with gingerbread, which is called “pepper cake” in Scandinavia. It was fun to see the elk and slide down steep snow covered paths with our stroller.

Now back in Bergen we feel sad to be leaving soon. It’s getting quite dark here. It’s beautiful in the morning when I walk Henry to school. At 8:30 it’s still dark and the lights of the houses and the Fløybannen funicular railway twinkle up the sides of the hills around town, but the sun is just starting to put colors in the sky behind the mountains to the east. A huge star that must be Venus is always hanging low in the southeast. There’s snow all around now, and the Pepperkakebyen (world’s largest gingerbread city) is drawing crowds in the main square:

Everyone brings their own contributions to the Pepperkakebyen; ours has a little maple leaf flag in front.

They take Christmas very seriously in Scandinavia; there is "jul" everything, from beer to yogurt. Bergen's Christmas tree:

In Praise of Øl

It's been a while since I wrote anything. Have I been kidnapped by a Viking metal band? Well, since Henry woke me up early this morning (he has a stomach ache, but has now gone back to sleep), I will take a moment to comment on an unappreciated aspect of Norwegian culture, which is the microbrew phenomenon. The variety and quality of microbrewed beer (øl) you can get here is truly remarkable. Unlike the North American microbreweries, which typically focus on a few styles, the microbreweries here continuously put out small batches of all sorts of different beers, so every time you go to the Vinmonopolet (the Norwegian version of the LCBO) you find a dozen or so new beers on the shelf that all look really good. They come in 500 ml bottles, which you pour into glasses and share. This kind of microbrew beer really is the fine wine of Norway, as the labels typically include pairing suggestions and the proper serving temperature. In fact we always drink ours in wine glasses since they're the only glasses the right size that were supplied with this apartment. Here are some we have tried, with excerpts from the label notes (we started saving the bottles at some point, college dorm room style), which are sometimes given in charming English as well as Norsk, otherwise provided by google translate (thank God for google translate!). Our favourite brewery is the "HaandBryggeriet," which just means "hand brewed."

HaandBryggeriet, Hesjeøl (Norwegian harvest ale): "Brewing was very much a part of farm life in old Norway. Indeed farmers were required by law to make beer and could lose their lands if this duty was neglected. Custom called for a special hearty but thirst quenching ale at harvest time. This hesjeøl or harvest ale is a recreation of this beer style."

HaandBryggeriet, Menno & Jens: "This brew is a collaboration wit two dearing [sic] brewers, here we have gone all the way and made a true (gruit) herb ale, there is no hops in this ale, only herbs. A beer based totaly on historic brewing traditions incl the Haandbryggeri wild yeast."

HaandBryggeriet, Farewell Ale: "In Norway beer was a very important part of life, and beer was a part of all the important occations. When somebody passed away it was customary to toast them off to a good journey to the after life. HaandBryggeriet have recreated this old style funeral ale."

HaandBryggeriet, Dark Force, Double Extreme Imperial Wheat Stout (9% alc!): "This imperial really strikes back. From a strange country far far away comes the only imperial wheat stout, made by four guys brewing in their spare time and boldly goes where no brewery has gone before."

HaandBryggeriet, India Pale Ale: "This special beer features a variety of wild hop that grow on the banks of a stream near the brewery."

HaandBryggeriet, Nissefar: "HaandBryggeriet makes xmas beer with the good old traditional flavours from the days when the old farm breweries made dark, hearty, earthy beers with lots of xmasy flavours."

HaandBryggeriet, Bestefar: "Bestefar is the Norwegian word for grandfather. In this case, it refers to the father of father Christmas, or Nissefar as he is known in Norway. Bestefar is the perfect companion for a cold winter night spent contemplatively in front of the fire."

Some other breweries we've tried:

Ægir Bryggeri, Rallar Amber Ale (The Rallarvegen or railway road is the old work road, now a popular mountain biking road that goes from Finse down to Flåm on the Sognefjord).

Ægir Bryggeri, India Pale Ale: "Dettte er ein karakteristisk IPA frå den amerikanske vestkyststilen." This was the first one we tried, when we were mountain biking in Finse. Really excellent.

Troll Bryggeriet, Slogen Lys Ale: "Eit smakseventyr" (a taste adventure)

And another favourite:

Nøgne Ø, Saison: "crisp and refreshing and pairs very well with seafood and white meat"

Nøgne Ø, Two Captains, double IPA

Nøgne Ø, Imperial Stout: "en tett og helt svart ale med stor fyldighet." Tasting note: this one tasted like what Guinness would taste like if it were much, much better.

Nøgne Ø, #100: "#100 ble skapt som en ukommersiell ale; en feiring av vårt 100. brygg. Dette til tross ble den raskt en bestselger. Denne alen domineres av humle, med høy bitterhet, men har likevel en fyldig malt-kropp." (#100 was created as a noncommercial ale, a celebration of our 100th brew. This notwithstanding, it was quickly a top seller. This ale is dominated by hops, with high bitterness, but has a rich malt body.)

Nøgne Ø. Imperial India Pale Ale, #500: "This is our celebration of 500th batch of beer. As a base for this beer, we have elected to play with numbers: 5 hops, 100 IBUs, 5 malts, 10% alcohol."

Nøgne Ø, Bitter: "harmonisk og lettdrikkelig øl med god aroma av klassisk engelsk East Kent Golding humle." ("humle" are hops)

Nøgne Ø, Pale Ale: "en unpasteurisert og unfiltrert ale."

Nøgne Ø, God Jul: "God Jul er fyldig og smaksrikt øl." (Merry Christmas is rich and tasty beer)

I love that the word for flavour or taste in Norwegian is "smak"-- so "god smak" means "good flavour." Patriotic pride aside (happy American Thanksgiving everyone!--we celebrated by not even eating dinner last night, for various reasons), Norwegian microbrewed beer is really the best beer I've ever had. God smak! Literary connection: Nøgne Ø means "the naked island" and comes from a poem by Ibsen called "Terje Vigen." (It's a patriotic long poem which maybe I'll get around to reading some time. I’m not much on patriotic long poems, however, I must admit. I still have never made it very far in Joel Barlow’s The Columbiad, and that should probably come first.)

Usually a 500 ml bottle of one of these will cost the equivalent of about $10. So you really have to think of them as like bottles of wine, to be savoured and appreciated, Fortunately they merit that; they are really complex, interesting beers. (By the way, there is to be no counting the above labels and multiplying by ten. We don't want to think about that.)

Classes are over here, final exams in progress. We're going to Stockholm in early December, then we return to Ottawa December 15.

Geirangerfjord

Transatlantic Cable:

Snow on the ground here in Bergen this morning. So much for the statistics about how Bergen is warmer than Ottawa.

Update: As of late morning, it's now snowing quite heavily here. Wow! I guess winter in Norway has started....

So last week we went to Geirangerfjord. This might be the most beautiful place we've ever seen. We've found that the smaller fjords, of which Geiranger is one, are actually the most stunning, as the canyons are so narrow and deep. First, the drive up (we rented a car) was amazing, as the highway skirts the edges of several fjords, crosses the huge Sognefjord by ferry, and bounces up and down over mountaintops. So one minute you are in what feels like a high mountain environment (even though it's only a few hundred meters really, it feels much higher because this far north you get above the tree line quickly), and then the next minute you plunge down some hairpin turns and you're in a picturesque little waterside village whose orchards and pastures scale the side of a steep fjord. As Susan said, it was kind of like the Rockies, the BC interior, and the Pacific coast all rolled into one drive. The other thing about this road is that in many stretches its only about one and a half lanes wide, in both directions. And trucks use it. So parts of the drive were a bit terrifying... squeezing past a truck on one side with a cliff on the other.... As we were driving along we caught various glimpses of the Jostedalsbreen Glacier looming over the mountain tops; the whole drive was about 6 hours, and for hours we would see this massive thing from different angles, including one stunning view where we came around a turn high up on a mountain and were looking across a deep valley to some peaks on the other side draped in glacial ice with clouds swirling around them. You could see why the Norse made up stories about Thor throwing thunderbolts with his war hammer and that sort of thing. Anyway, Geiranger itself is a little tourist town at the very end of the fjord; we stayed at a resort hotel, which was pretty much the only thing open in town at this time of year. In the summer cruise ships go there, which is amazing because the fjord isn't that wide but we read that it's 300-400 meters deep. But in October it's very quiet and you have to eat all your meals at the hotel because everything else is shut down. This seems to be a good business for the hotel as they charged us 1600 kroner for a quite mediocre buffet meal the first night.

We had a nice hike through vertical sheep pastures ascending the side of the canyon, and it snowed in the mountains as we were hiking so we could see the clouds swirling around the high ridges and the rock gradually turning white with snow. The hotel had an outdoor "therapy pool" with some kind of warm mineral water in it, and bubbles like a hot tub, so we spent a lot of time sitting in there and enjoying the view of the snow-capped mountains. On the way out we took a different road and half way up the side of the fjord we came to a viewing spot, from where you could see a long way down and watch all the waterfalls cascading down the side. It's hard to capture in words—and I don’t think even a photo could do it justice--it might be unrepresentable--but like I said Susan and I both thought it was perhaps the most beautiful place we've ever seen.

On the way back we spent one night in Ålesund, a coastal town that suffered a disastrous fire in 1904 but fortuitously was rebuilt almost entirely in an Art Nouveau style. It's quite lovely and different from other places in Norway, as the buildings have all kinds of decorations on them. We got our kids pizza in a "kebab-hamburger-pizza" joint, of which there are approximately five billion in Norway. The guy working there was eager to engage us in conversation; he was from Palestine, but had previously lived in the US, and was happy to notice that we were North American as he said that Norwegians don’t talk too much. He seemed keen for some conversation.

Regarding food, one thing we could do without is ever eating at a Scandinavian buffet again. It can become quite a melee, and if you have kids you spend the whole meal getting up to get them things. All the meals at the Geiranger hotel were served buffet style. The first night our bill for dinner came to 1,600 kroner. We just have to laugh about the prices at this point. You'd think you would at least get table service for that!

Back in Bergen, we 're in the last five weeks of the semester. I have to say that the amount of work Norwegian students are required to do is ridiculously little. There is a national law that says that professors aren't allowed to require university students to attend class. So you really can't ask them to do anything; if they haven't done the reading, then, oh well, they're not even required to show up so what can you say? I mean, most of them have a good attitude and the majority actually do read the books, but the whole system seems a bit absurd to me. In addition, they don't write any graded papers (in a few classes they do one or two "practice" essays), they just take a 6 hour exam at the end of the term. If they pass the exam, they pass the class. That's the entire evaluation.

Despite their lackadaisical education system and crushing weight of taxation, Norway is also absurdly prosperous. On the drive up to Geiranger we were struck by the complete absence of any visible sign of poverty in any town or village we passed through. Everyone here seems to be what would be described as "upper middle class" in North America. No one appears extremely wealthy, but everyone is well off. The only people who are obviously poor are the junkies, who are allowed to shoot up in designated spots without persecution. In Bergen, there is a park where they all hang out. It's not dangerous; the police monitor it and parents push their strollers through without apparent concern. For those of you who've seen The Wire, it is just like "Hamsterdam." Anyway, besides the drug addicts we've not seen any poverty the whole time we've been here. There's a kind of strange unreality to it.

Bergen is such a nice place. The center of the city is all winding narrow streets with beautiful old buildings, filled with cafes and shops.

To be superficial for a moment, the stuff you can buy here (if you have the money) is amazing. The clothing (brands you never see in North America) is totally cool and really well made. It's funny that Scandinavia is on the one hand so socialistic but also on the other hand a consumer paradise (again, if you have the money). I'm afraid I'm starting to feel like North America is really dumpy and needs to catch up to Europe in a lot of ways. It will be strange going back there after this trip.

Adventures in Eastern Europe

We went to Lithuania over the weekend for a conference. It was interesting visiting EasternEurope and the former Soviet Union, both firsts for us. Confusingly, this was for the American Studies Association of Norway conference.

Digression in manuscript: Why was the American Studies Association of Norway (ASANOR) in Lithuania? One of my colleagues here in Bergen was organizing it, and she told me that they decided to hold it in Lithuania in order to do a favour for the host university there. Since Lithuania joined the EU, their universities are now required to have a certain number of international conferences in order to meet EU criteria for internationalism. The conference was thus held in a city called Kaunas, at Vytautas Magnus University (surely you are all familiar with Vytautas the Great...joking, but, actually, I just realized that some of you probably are familiar with Baltic history, seeing as how you're all such keen scholars and everything), which is about an hour-plus drive from the capital of Vilnius. This was not very convenient, but in a way it was good as we got to see the country outside of the capital.

Facts About Lithuania:

1) It is flat, except for a few mildly slopey parts.

2) Hardly anyone there speaks a word of English.

3) Lithuanian is even harder to understand than Norwegian (it is not related to any other modern languages; it is close to Sanskrit).

4) Stuff is really cheap in Lithuania.

5) There are many cows in Lithuania, perhaps even more than in Wisconsin.

6) Lithuania borders Russia (Kaliningrad), Latvia, Poland, and Belarus. According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, under no circumstances should you even think about trying to cross the border into Belarus, aka "Lukashenko Land". Lithuania is a surprisingly stable and pleasant country given that it is surrounded by a KGB style police state, a failed empire ruled by criminal oligarchs, and a country whose national religion was openly mocked throughout an entire episode of Seinfeld. Not to mention its own distressing past. During the tour we had on the last day, the guide expostulated at length about the wonderfulness of Lithuania, but also regularly dropped in comments like, “And here is the forest where thousands of people were murdered during the war!” And then switch back to discussing the wonders of contemporary Lithuania. And indeed, today, Lithuania seems to be an island of relative happiness and prosperity in its neighbourhood.

Vilnius itself is beautiful, at least in the central parts, with lots of 19th century buildings. (You might not know that Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, but that's okay because no one in Lithuania knows that Ottawa is the capital of Canada.) There is clearly a lot of new money there, too, as the main commercial area has the same kind of stores one would find in the Rideau Centre (that pinnacle of capitalistic excess). They even had a decent coffee joint with a cabal of laptop surfing hipsters hanging out. However, once outside of Vilnius it is quite different. Kaunas has a rough edge to it, and there seems to be a fair amount of resentment about being one of the poorer countries in the EU. There are old dilapidated apartment blocks from the days of the Evil Empire, and beefy guys in leather jackets hanging around who look like extras from some episode of the Sopranos where Tony makes a deal with the Russian mob. On the other hand, it was refreshing being in a country where it doesn't cost $10 for a banana. We went out to eat the first night there at a traditional Lithuanian restaurant, where all of the staff wear hilarious "rustic" costumes, and we had huge, heaping plates of food, like potato salad and sausages, plus tankards of beer, which was all really good, and for all four of us the bill came to about $20. Really. The beer there is quite good, from a brewery called Svyturys, and super cheap. After the conference on Saturday, we rented a car and drove to the coast. There is a place there called the Curonian Spit, which sticks out into the Baltic; you have to take a ferry to get there from Lithuania, since the part that attaches to the mainland is in the Kaliningrad exclave of Russia. The ferry ride is only a few minutes; there were some Russian people on the boat with us. On the Spit itself, you walk through the forest for a few minutes and come to the Baltic Sea.

The beach is stunning (even as a native of California I must say that I was impressed), and we happened to go there on a beautiful warm blue sky day. We drank our Svyturys (beer drinking in public places seems to be unrestricted or perhaps even encouraged in Lithuania) while the kids played in the sand, and stayed until the sun was setting, watching freighters crossing the Baltic.

It felt like one of the more exotic places I've been, especially with the occasional Russians about. Farther down than we had time to go is a town called "Nida" which used to be known as "Nidden" when this was a German area; a lot of writers hung out there, including Thomas Mann who had a house there before the war (you know, “the war,” which people here seem to mention frequently). Kaliningrad used to be called Koenigsberg, a name that will be familiar to students of Kant and fans of the Prussian Empire. Following our afternoon at the beach, we took the ferry back to the mainland and got lost driving around Klaipeda, a rough port city filled with the most astounding phalanx we had yet encountered of old Soviet apartment blocks, so decrepit that we couldn't even tell if they were still inhabited or not (one really hopes not). After driving past some strip clubs that seemed inappropriate for family dining but are no doubt popular with freighter crews, we randomly happened to notice in the "old town" section a restaurant that was listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook, which was supposedly a pizzeria famous throughout Lithuania for its dozens of kinds of pizza. A bit desperate at this point, we decided to try it and it wasn't half bad; I'm fully prepared to believe that it was in fact the best pizza in Lithuania, and the waitress even spoke English (perhaps because Klaipeda being a coastal town is more on the tourist route than other parts of the country). The next morning for the end of the conference we got a bus tour of Vilnius and we were able to spend most of Sunday wandering around the capital as our flight on "Air Baltic" didn't leave until evening.

I must mention one other thing about the conference, which is that it was also scheduled as the annual meeting of the Nordic Association for Canadian Studies. I was told by my colleague the organizer that the Canadianists complained that their conference was overshadowed by the American Studies Conference, and no one came to their panels. For some reason this made me laugh (I'm a bad person). I myself did my duty by attending the Canadian keynote address on "Public Administration and the Challenge of Diversity." A professor from Memorial talked for a solid hour about how the Canadian bureaucracy is organized and the various diversity criteria that go into staffing decisions. I feel strongly that I should get some kind of award as an exemplary immigrant to Canada for sitting through this (along with about 10 other people) on a lovely sunny afternoon, but my virtue is canceled out anyway by my earlier noted amusement about the American/Canadian conference dynamics.

Back in Norway, we also did a "Fjord cruise" of the "Sognefjord," that was lovely as well. In a couple of weeks is a fall break where all universities, schools, and daycares are closed, so we're heading up north to a place called Geirangerfjord to stay at a hotel in a small town and have outdoor recreation amidst scenic splendor. Someone Norwegian tried to help me pronounce "Geirangerfjord" but it's hopeless. We are also going to stop at a town called ålesund, which if you think is pronounced "all-e-sund" you would be extremely wrong. It's more like "oil-son". But if you try to say it like that they still will look at you like you're an idiot.

We're half way through the trip now. The days are getting shorter fast. When I wake Henry up to get ready for school it's still dark, and we walk there in dusk with the street lights on. According to the internets, on October 30 (last day before daylight savings time ends here) Sunrise will be at 8:57 AM (vs. 7:39 in Ottawa, for comparison). On December 14th, our last full day here before we come back to Canada, sunrise will be at 9:38 and sunset at 3:28. At that point I'm sure we'll be glad to get back to the cold and sunshine of good old Ottawa.

And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys used to always say.

Black Metal Update

Susan met Gaahl!

Susan decided it would be interesting to write an article about Svartediket (world's first black metal musical), so she emailed the theatre and asked if there was anyone she could interview. Then on Thursday she learned to her surprise that she had an appointment to interview Gaahl (and the playwright, but whatever) at 5:30 that afternoon!

Although I was frightened to wonder if I would ever see Susan again, or would have to raise our children myself, when she came back Susan said that Gaahl is quite shy and self-effacing in person. Not only was he very nice, he also gave Susan his email and phone number! That's right, we have Gaahl's phone number, so our weekends here should be pretty cool from now on.

In other news, I forgot to mention earlier that Finse, where we went biking last weekend, was the filming location for the "Ice Planet Hoth" scenes in the beginning of "The Empire Strikes Back." We were wondering why there were so many ton-ton's around, until we saw the display about this at the hotel.... the imperial walkers were a bit of a drag, but we found that they are surprisingly easy to trip, a design flaw that seems to have escaped the usually astute Darth Vader.

Finse

Last weekend we went biking in a remote outpost called Finse, the highest point on the Bergen-Oslo rail line. It is only accessible by train; no roads go into the "town," which consists of a hotel, a hostel, and about 20 other buildings altogether. The main road through town actually consists of the (very large) railway platform, which people drive down (not sure how they got the cars there!) and two stretches of dirt/gravel track stretching off to east and west. This gravel road is called the Rallarvegen, the old road that was used during railway construction, and is now a popular mountain biking route. The hotel is called "Finse 1222" in honour of the number of meters above sea level; this is not very high by North American standards, but at 60 degrees north latitude (same as the southern boundary of Yukon and NWT in Canada), it is above the treeline. There is a huge ridge to the south of town, visible across a lake, from which several fingers of the Hardangerjøkulen glacier are visible. The whole glacier is on a gigantic plateau above the ridge; we saw some people hiking up onto it, which would have been really cool to do, but with the kids this would have been too difficult for us to get to. So we contented ourselves with renting mountain bikes and cycling up and down the Rallarvegen. The weather was beautiful all weekend, sunny most of the time and even hot enough on Sunday that we wished we had brought shorts. The valley below the ridge was once occupied by the glacier, and is now filled with tons of huge boulders dropped by the glacier as it retreated ("erratic boulders"--see chapter four of my book for a discussion of their ideological importance to 19th century Americans!) Henry rode on the back of a double bike and Dexter had a trailer. Pulling the trailer up and down the rocky hills was challenging but went surprisingly well, and we saw several other people pulling them as well. Norwegians seem to have very large families, perhaps due to the generous government benefits for parents. Henry loved riding the double bike and just wanted to go as fast as possible and through every puddle and rock pile. We made it 10 km in the west direction, which brought us to the reward of a rustic restaurant serving waffles (very Scandinavian).

The hotel was rustic but nice--no tv's in the rooms, but they had some excellent beer on tap called Aegir India Pale Ale (from Aegir brewery in Flåm); it was 85 kroner a pint, but worth it after a day of mountain biking. 85 kroner = about $15. We've been told not to think about how much things cost here in dollars, and we're kind of getting into the swing of that. Dinner was actually really good, to our surprise--the first night, wild Atlantic salmon, which is hard to get in North America and is delicious.

In other news, I might finally be forced to learn some Norwegian as one of the only people I've met who doesn't speak any English is the woman who works at the coffee shop in the library, where you can get decent coffee for only 10 kroner (less than $2, which is a total bargain here).

Regarding language, I was at the fish market in the centre of town buying some fish when the guy working there asked me where I was from, and I said "Canada," and he went into French and told me he was from Belgium. So we said a few things in French and then he asked me if I was really Canadian, and I said no I was American but I lived in Canada, and he said "Oh, because you have this beautiful American accent!" and went on a little discourse about how nice an American accent sounds in French. So that was pretty awesome, just thought I'd share. Hi Robert!

A few Finse pictures below....

Svartediket

Last night we were fortunate enough to be able to attend a performance of Svartediket, the world's first black metal musical. The performance was held at a lovely theatre in central Bergen. First we treated ourselves to a typical Norwegian dinner of fish soup and reindeer stew at the Café Opera, across the street. The food was excellent and chased down by a bottle of Portuguese wine. Thus fortified, we made our way to the theatre, where a crowd of young "black metal" enthusiasts circulated outside, speaking in excited tones in Norwegian.

According to the program, which fortunately was in both Norsk and English, "black metal" is a worldwide movement of which Bergen is the capital. Originally inspired by the British band Venom, black metal rejects the commercialism and pop appeal of "death metal" in favour of a more pure musical aesthetic, involving much shrieking and screaming. However, whereas the UK version of "black metal" promoted Satan worship, in Norway Satan has been displaced by Odin; thus earning Norwegian black metal the name "Viking metal." Viking metal supporters feel that Christianity was imposed on Norway by foreign invaders, and they favour a return to the traditional Norse gods.

The theatre was packed with young people, along with ourselves and one other group of middle-aged tourists who happened to be sitting right behind us (thus constituting the senior citizens section). The plot of the drama revolved around an incident of the nineteenth century in which babies were murdered and the bodies thrown into the black waters of lake Svartediket. The work also took up the theme of colonialism, as one of the main characters was a menacing priest and another a German merchant, alluding to the way that Germans dominated the local economy from the time that Bergen was a Hanseatic League city. There was a "ghost girl" and a devil/demon guy with long black hair, and a guy in a long white robe who looked like Saruman from the Lord of the Ring movies.

We understood no more than these most vague outlines of the plot. However, liberated from the tyranny of narrative, we were able to immerse ourselves in the pure joy of the theatrical performance, the terror and awe of "black metal" as projected on stage. All of the performers were strong singers (some of them seemed to be local black metal musicians and others professional actors), and the presentation on stage of a dark woods with the forbidding lake Svartediket in the midst provided the perfect complement to the pounding drums and thrashing guitars of the musical numbers. One singer in particular stood out, the guy who looked like Saruman, who was none other than Gaahl of the band Gorgoroth. The man has some pipes, though, according to Wikipedia, his political views are repulsive. But as some sort of evil demonic figure (not sure what exactly, but definitely a bad guy), he was certainly well cast.

Throughout the performance, there was an air of great excitement, and we truly felt that we had witnessed an authentic Norwegian and Bergen cultural event. So much so that Susan bought a Svartediket T-shirt. And we learned how to pronounce "Svartediket."

P.S.: Turns out Gaahl’s character was not in fact a bad guy, but the Norse God Heimdall, who was supposed to be offering encouragement to the main character. As mentioned, our understanding of the plot may have been a bit shaky.