Fjord Frenzy: Finding My Way in Norway
I spent a lot of time at the dentist's office as a child. With a long line of dentists in the family - from my grandfather, to my great-uncle, to several of my dad's first cousins - you might think I would be blessed with good teeth. But I single-handedly managed to keep our dentist (“Cousin Ted”) in business with my mouth stuffed full of cavities. The one good thing to come out of these flawed dental genes was the amount of reading I did in the waiting room. I loved those Highlight magazines he had strewn around, and I think that’s where I first heard the beautiful-sounding foreign words fjord and Aurora Borealis (and if not, this post gave me another chance to complain about my faulty teeth). I imagined the Aurora Borealis as rainbow-colored lights, and pictured myself in a boat, winding my way through the fjords to see them. Was the fjord the water running through the mountains, or the mountains themselves? Who knew? All I knew is I wanted to go.
For those of you who want to catch up on your your fjord facts, you can watch this video. I learned the word comes from a Norse word meaning, "where one fares through".
So "fare through" we did, albeit decades and decades after I first got the idea. The seed was planted because of a children's magazine article? That seems like a flimsy way to decide where to go in this world. But most of our decisions about where to visit seem based on these feather-light ideas that for some reason stay with us over the years. We all seem to be searching for that perfect world. It's some imagined idea in our talking heads:
"Well, I know what it is, but I don't know where it is.
Where it is. Well, I know where it is
But I don't know what it looks like
What it looks like."
In a nutshell, Norway is gorgeous, full of fit Norsemen and women, and very expensive. I could end this post here, since that tells you most of what you need to know. But instead, I'll take you on a journey through those fjords. Just to be clear, you cannot see the Aurora Borealis (or Northern Lights) in the summer. For that treat, we will have to return in the winter. Even then, you aren't guaranteed to see them if it's cloudy, or if they are just too shy that night to come out. But in the summer, you are guaranteed to see the mountains, so there is no chance of disappointment if that is your goal.
Peter also had a hankering for Norway. It's really a photographer's dream, what with the mountains and the waterfalls, and the clouds thrown in for atmosphere.
Let's talk about mountains. We now live in a country that is not just flat, but below sea level. This means I can usually ride my bike without any problem. It also means there are no mountains to gaze up at it. When I think about the effect of living in a place without mountains, I think about my college friend Pam who grew up in Santa Fe, among mountains. She would always return to Boston after a summer in Santa Fe talking about how much she missed her New Mexico mountains. When you are in the mountains, she said, you think about how small you are in comparison. It really puts things (your problems, your power) in perspective. That might help explain why the Dutch have such a can-do, ain't-no-mountain-high-enough attitude towards life's difficulties. Just do it, they say. With no mountains to remind them how tiny and insignificant they really are in the grand scheme of things, they feel important and in charge. There's something to be said for that confidence, as fictitious as it really is. In Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, you can easily spot the folks heading to Norway. They are the ones wearing hiking books and carrying backpacks. Off in search of mountains.
Our Norway trip actually didn't start with mountains, but with water. Oslo, the capital, has a newly renovated waterfront, with over 5 miles of paths along the water. On the way to a food hall, you can take in the boats on the water and the street art on the shipping containers along the shore.
Oslo is overflowing with new construction, a sign of their booming economy. No wonder they don't want to take Trump up on his offer to come to the U.S. Norwegians just aren't moving to the U.S. these days. Why would they? Life is good at home. Who would choose to deal with our nonsense? In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Norwegians eager to start a new life emigrated to the U.S. According to this article, those early settlers were among the poorest immigrants in the U.S. Once they left Norway, the folks left behind had less competition for jobs, so Norwegians got wealthier. I wonder if Norwegian spouses had misgivings about their move to the U.S. "She gon' make you move to Miami", like in the song, below? Most Norwegians went to Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota, but I couldn't find a song about leaving for those places.
In addition to lots of street art, new construction, and boats, Oslo also has tons of statues. In fact, there were statues all over Norway. Who are all these people, I found myself thinking. Some were regular folk, like the cyclist, but some were clearly movers and shakers in Norwegian history. This is not a country whose history is on the tip of my tongue.
Trolls also aren't statues per se, or at all, but no blog post about Norway can possibly leave them out. We saw them everywhere, especially at the souvenir shops. I couldn't help but remember the Troll dolls we collected during the late 60's and early 70's. They were invented by a Danish man, so I guess trolls are a big part of Danish folklore, too. Who on earth could ever have predicted that children in the U.S. would find these strange characters so appealing and trolls would become one of the most beloved fads? They ranked right up there with wax lips in my book. Just another sign of how strange we children were in the 60's and 70's.
Back to Norway we go. What a gorgeous country. Even the language itself looks pretty, with all the ø's and å's sprinkled into the words. Everyone, it seemed to us, speaks English. In a country with only five million residents who speak a language no one else speaks, this seems eminently sensible. Good lord, by comparison, the Netherlands, at 17 million, seems huge. A lovely, friendly barista at a place in Oslo where we stopped for coffee - and boy does Oslo have a lot of good coffee; also eminently sensible in a country shrouded in darkness for so much of the year - told us she honed her English skills watching American TV as a kid and imitating the accents she heard. With so much of the world forced to speak English these days - O.K. in part because it makes good business sense, but also because Americans refuse to learn second or third languages - we hear a lot of variation in accents.
We chatted with the local second-language expert in Oslo (the same barista) about what causes one person to speak English like a local and leads another to speak with a thick accent from their first language. Poor Henry Kissinger is often discussed when the subject comes up of accents that cling on for dear life. How could such an educated man, surrounded by English speakers, retain such a "heavy" German accent? Was he just not trying hard enough? Many people think - we certainly did - that if you learn your second language early enough in life, you can speak it more authentically, unaccented by your native language. Turns out age is only one factor. Kissinger moved to the U.S. at age 15 to escape the Nazis, but his German accent followed him here. Apparently, his brother, only a year younger, learned to speak English without an accent.
Henry Kissinger was the second most famous graduate of George Washington High School, in NYC, after that beauty on the right: my mom. I sure didn't look like that in high school. That's my grandmother on the left, looking proud. My mom would be the first to tell you George Washington wasn't exactly the crème de la crème of NYC high schools, but in those days it was fine. I wonder if Henry (or another alum, Harry Belafonte) would agree.
More street art in Oslo. And also how I feel when I try to sound Dutch whilst speaking Dutch.
Why the difference? One theory is poor Henry was shy as a teen, and reluctant to speak, so he didn't practice enough at a time when his brain and mouth were flexible enough to form the new words without an accent. I can relate, Henry. I can relate. The top gun on research into retaining accents says the most important factor in speaking sans accent is hanging out with locals, listening, and then imitating them. "You are what you eat .... phonetically", he concludes. Food for thought for me, when it comes to speaking Dutch.
When you travel (or live abroad) you do a lot of looking around at people because you can't always (or often) understand what they are saying. I do this especially when we are having breakfast. It's the grown-up version of staring at the cereal box. At one hotel on this Norway trip, I saw a young woman who was deaf having breakfast with her hearing family. She lives life every day like a visitor in a foreign county, unless she is with someone who can sign. Imagine what that must be like? Have you noticed how firmly in the "etc" territory of this blog we are here?
But I promised you mountains, so let's go, shall we? From Oslo, we headed out on a train ride known for being one of the most scenic in the world: the Flåm Railway. Just to show I'm not just a word person, but a numbers gal, too - Ben! - here are some railroad numbers: 80% of the trip takes you up and up on a 5.5% gradient through 20 tunnels. At some point, they let you off to take some photos of a waterfall. There, it was every man (and woman) for himself among the crowds of mostly Chinese tourists who were determined to get the perfect selfie. Peter and I talked about how travel has changed so much recently, and certainly in our lifetimes. For one, "in the olden days" most people didn't have enough money to venture very far. With budget airlines and AirBnb's galore (among other factors) travel isn't just for the very wealthy. And governments like China and Russia who formerly kept their citizens from getting out and about are now opening up their gates for people to explore the rest of the world. That's a good thing, of course, even if it does make for some fierce tourist-crowding. In addition to the different people traveling, there is also, of course, the phone that has changed the way we experience our travels. Suddenly, all of us are Ansel Adams. I'm as guilty as the next person. I see people taking photos and I feel the pressure to perform, too. If I don't have an iPhoto of my experiences, will they really count? And how will I share them with you? It's all very perplexing in these days of constant-documentation and sharing of our lives.
Luckily, we spent a few days in heaven after that long train ride. At a lodge called 2/92 Aurland - the former family farm of a builder named Bjørn who specializes in mountain cottages - we were far away from the madding crowd. We hiked during the day, and spent evenings at a communal table, along with a family celebrating the dad's 50th birthday, two honeymooners, and a professor from Canada and his Irish wife. That communal table was spread both nights with delicious food cooked by a young Swedish chef covered in tattoos and full of ideas for updating traditional Norwegian food. The young man who greeted us at the door and toted our bags up to our room was from Nepal. The lodge owner/builder has spent a lot of time trekking in Nepal. Turns out Norwegians - who grow up hiking the way the Dutch grow up cycling - need a place to hike when it gets too dark and cold in Norway. When it came time to lug construction equipment up into the mountains of Norway, he knew the sherpas he had met in Nepal were perfect for the job.
With all of that eating, hiking was essential. We passed only two other hikers on the first day's hike, and assumed this was because we were in a quiet part of the country. It turns out even in more travelled areas of Norway, you can find solitude within fifteen minutes. Our hiking guide, an employee of the lodge, explained the rules of Norwegian hiking etiquette to us this way: if you encounter someone in your own neighborhood at home, it's perfectly acceptable to cast your eyes down and avoid eye contact. If you see anyone on the trail, you make eye contact and say a hearty hello. There are also hiking rules printed inside the wrapper of the iconic Norwegian hiker's chocolate bar, Kvikk Lunsj (Quick Lunch). This Norwegian staple is similar to the American Kit-Kat bar. Our hiking companion told us after World War II, Norway began to encourage hiking, but there were a slew of hiking deaths in the late 60's. The hiking safety rules were part of a campaign to increase safety on the mountain trails. I can tell you that in addition to being informationally superior to the Kit-Kat, it is also far superior in the taste department.
We had the whole mountain top to ourselves for a picnic lunch. Those sheepskin (or reindeer?) rugs are everywhere in Norway. It makes for a comfy seat after a long hike. The only problem is getting up afterwards to take the long hike back home.
What I love about hiking, other than the views you can see, the peace and quiet, and the feeling you have when you are finished, is the time you have to think. Something about the scenery and the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other rhythm helps me come up with some of my best ideas. It's only when the hike is over that I realize my ideas maybe weren't actually so earth-shatteringly wise. Our guide Britt-Marie works summers at the lodge and is a high school teacher during the rest of the year. On the hike down, we solved the world's education problems. We really did. This kind of deep thinking and wisdom only comes to me if the hike isn't too scary. If the path is steep, every bit of my wisdom and energy goes into surviving the danger. We didn't go on any of those kind of hikes in Norway, thankfully.
We set off on our own for our next hike. Britt-Marie suggested we take two of their bikes and ride "until it gets too steep and just leave the bikes on the trail." She smiled while I questioned and re-questioned her about whether the bikes might get stolen. We do live in Amsterdam, I explained, where bike theft is the norm. We left those Norwegian bikes on the side of the trail just like she said. They were right there, of course, when we returned.
It was so kind of the clouds to pose for a photo while we were riding home.
You can channel your inner Sal when you are in Norway. There were blueberries and raspberries on the hiking trails. What could be better?
From the ferry to our next stop, Bergen, we had a different view of the fjords. I loved the cloud-shadows on the mountains. You get a different perspective when you are down below looking up, instead of hiking up and looking down. The two perspectives are equally stunning, although on the ferry, there was none of the peace and quiet we found on the hikes.
Our ferry docked in Bergen, a lovely city overrun with others who had also just gotten their sea legs back. However, just like on our hikes, once we got a bit off the beaten path, we were treated to quiet again. I think I've mentioned a few times my theory (probably arrived at on a hike) about colorful buildings and grey climates. I've noticed a correlation. When you know you will be staring at grey skies a good part of the year, you paint your houses fanciful colors to cheer you up. This theory falls apart when it comes to the Netherlands, where I don't see many brightly colored houses and I do see a lot of grey skies. There are exceptions to every rule, my friends. In any event, Bergen had a lot of brightly colored houses and other colorful things to cheer up the eyes.
And maybe the gloomy weather is also just the right climate for street art. Poor Dora the Explorer looks a bit sea-sick.
In addition to bright colors, good food is a comfort during long grey days. It should be a requirement to have delicious food in places with deliriously bad weather. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the way the world shakes out. Why should Italy and Spain and southern France get to have such good weather, and such good food, too? That seems like an abundance of riches. Of course I understand the effect of sunlight on fruits and vegetables, but I'm just talking about basic fairness. So in a country like Norway, why should they have to subsist on lots of pickled and cured things? Shouldn't they get a little slice of heaven now and again? We noticed a lot of the food we ate was salty. Very salty. We wondered if years of eating salted, cured foods had rendered modern Norwegians so tolerant to salt they have to dump it into dishes rather than sprinkle it. Just a thought.
Actually, we ate quite a lot of delicious food, thanks to some young chefs reinventing and updating traditional Norwegian dishes. They even invented a name for their new cuisine: Neo-Fjordic. We met one such chef in Bergen at the much-beloved-by-the New-York-Times Lysverket. It's not every day you get to chat it up with a much-tattooed-chef, nor is it every day your chef smiles widely, revealing a gold tooth. He was taking the day off from the kitchen, and traveling incognito as a server. But since I do my research - when you grow up with a mom who reads the New York Times like some read the Bible, you either follow her down that religious path or you risk excommunication - I knew all about him. He gossiped about some celebrity chefs and confessed his frustrations with the business of keeping a restaurant afloat. Let's just say it seems chefs are more fearful of being upstaged by other chefs than actors are of their rivals. And let's also say how thrilling this was for Peter to get to talk food with this chef. The food at the restaurant was sensational. And, p.s., also a little salty.
Now let's get back to the issue of tourism after our break for food. It does seem that Norway has a more resigned attitude than Amsterdam towards the waves of tourists who descend. In Bergen, we took a funicular tram up to Mount Fløyen, along with a smorgasbord of tourists from Italy, Spain, China, Russian, and the U.S., among other foreign lands. I asked our hiking guide, Gerda, if the locals resent all of the tourists who crowd Bergen in the summer. She told us the mountain was like the Central Park of Bergen and locals find their spots where they can avoid the crowds. Indeed, once we left the Visitor Center area, we saw very few people, but quite a few goats. We learned that in September, before winter sets in, farmers in Norway have to find their goats who may have wandered off. Gerda told us some farmers have put chips in a few goats so they can now use GPS to find them. The teens tend to wander off and others meet their makers (lynx) out in the fields. Gerda attends a goat collection party that a farmer friend has back in the town - Voss - where she lives. Sometimes the differences between countries and customs are blurred and sometimes they are very clear. In this case, while listening to her tales of goat collection parties, I realized I was definitely not in Amsterdam, or N.J., anymore.
I was also glad to know the Norwegians have fond memories of Obama. I think for a Norwegian to name a goat after you is very high praise indeed.
Everywhere we hiked in Norway, we found wooden benches along the way where you could rest your bones and take in a lovely view. On Mount Fløyen, the benches are maintained by a group of retirees who meet up to socialize and work on the upkeep of the many benches. This partnership helps the retirees keep a sense of purpose in their lives, and also helps the hikers. The men do not take the tram up to the top of the mountain. They each arrive on their own two retired feet. In addition to a love of salty food, this ability to hike like a mountain goat is in their blood.
We saw lots and lots of trees, and now I understand where the Beatles got the idea for the title of this song.
Despite the unprecedented heat in Norway this summer, cold weather is on the horizon. You can't forget that when you see the thick sweaters for sale everywhere. Even the trees were wearing sweaters.
To reach our last stop in Norway, the lovely little town of Ålesund - with that fanciful circle over the letter A - we jumped aboard our first overnight ship. OK. It was a cruise ship. With all due respect to our family and friends who love cruises, this made me feel like I had crossed a line into a much older, more sedentary stage of life. Surprisingly, there were many families and young couples on board, so I didn't feel too creaky. Still, I worried I was now a member of a club I wasn't sure I wanted to join: people-who-have-cruised. I had heard all about the over-sized eating that goes on when you are afloat. Let's just say the the pile-your-plates-high breakfast buffet that greeted us in the morning was not for the faint of heart. There is something about a cruise that brings out the beast in all of us.
Here she is. Believe it or not, our ship was like a tiny Dutch cup of coffee compared to some of the jumbo-sized ships we saw on our travels.
Even in a small town liked Ålesund, the locals seem to cheerfully accept the total disruption to their lives when one of those mammoth ships pulls into town, disgorging thousands of visitors. I guess this mega-tourism has kept Norway afloat for so long they've become used to it.
Ålesund seems wisely to have taken on a brand, The Art Nouveau Town, to give tourists something to do when they jump ship. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Ålesund was rebuilt in Art Nouveau style after a fire in 1904 destroyed most of the city. Everywhere you turn you see lovely details on the buildings. We appreciated having something to do - look around at the architecture - while a steady rain kept us from hiking.
Whenever I said the name Ålesund, I heard this song in my head:
It turns out there really is a song titled Alesund. It doesn't get inside your head the way Elvis Costello's Alison does, but here it is:
While I love to plan ahead for our trips, I also like to be surprised. I had no idea Norway has a cinnamon roll, called a Skillingsboller, served wherever I turned. It's not as sickly- sweet as a cinnamon bun from the U.S. Chase all comparisons to a Cinnabon out of your American heads. The dough that is the true genius behind the skillingsboller has more heft to it than a danish pastry. Who wants to open a skillingsboller shop here in Amsterdam? I'll be your best friend.
Oh, Skillingsboller, where have you been all my life?
And now for two final Norwegian sculptures. The first, in Alesund, is titled Søster og Bror (Sister and Brother). That's not a subject I'm accustomed to seeing in a sculpture. The subject of the second sculpture, which we saw in Bergen, is definitely a first for me when it comes to sculptures, though not sadly not when it comes to humans.
All in all, Norway more than lived up to my expectations. I met my first fjords, got my mountain fix, saw a few waterfalls and a rainbow, and enjoyed the cool weather after the unprecedented heat in Amsterdam this summer. It's always an interesting change in perspective, to go from expat to tourist. There is a clear pecking order in every country and when we venture outside Amsterdam, we're changing our position in that pecking order. At the top of the heap is The Local, especially the resident who has been around for generations. I've noticed there's a resurgence in wearing traditional garb in Europe. I think it has to do with some desire to return to the "golden age" when the country was authentic (i.e. without "others"). After the locals on the ladder come people who live and work in a country, but who are originally from elsewhere. That includes us Expats. Then comes the Tourists. Recently in Amsterdam, there has been a lot of talk about how to rein in tourism. It's ruining authentic Amsterdam, the locals say. While I'm the first to criticize the tourists in Amsterdam, who can't ride bikes properly, smoke everything in sight, and roll their suitcases everywhere, I'm also a tourist whenever I venture beyond Amsterdam. And to a long-time Amsterdammer, I'm really no different. Just a tourist who has overstayed her welcome.
That leaves Immigrants to take their place at the bottom of the list. We seem to turn into cutthroat middle-schoolers when it comes to how we treat anyone who is new or different, securing our position by shunning those we perceive as being below us. I'll try to remind myself not to revert to this cruel middle-school attitude the next time a tourist blocks the bike lane to snap a selfie.
It's hard to choose the time over the past year or so I felt most embarrassed to be an American . In recent days, Betsy DeVos is trying desperately to bully her way into first place on the list. But surely the decision to separate immigrant children from their families at the border ranked right up there. The borders may be opened wider for tourists these days, but they sure aren't if you're an immigrant.
If I walked down the streets of Bergen dressed in one of these, would it help me fit in?
When I was writing and thinking about the precarious position of immigrants these days, I remembered an interview I read with the author Mohsin Hamid. He wrote the novel Exit West, which is at the top of my Must Read list. He said, "We are all migrants, all of us. We move through space and time. So I have experienced a situation not completely unlike Nadia and Saeed’s [the main characters in the book], more than once, several times. Not the desperation and the danger that they experience. But the apprehension of leaving a place I have called home. There is something violent in moving far away, just as being born is violent. You leave something behind, and the you that has moved is not the same you as before. Certainly you will be seen differently in the place you are going to." There may be little in common between the experience of an expat who moves voluntarily, and a Syrian refugee. But if we could learn to see what our experiences have in common - namely, that sense of apprehension, of being seen differently, of being a different "you" once you are away - then that's at least a start. As the statue of the homeless man reminds us: "Nobody is only what you see."
I love this mix produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the genius behind Hamilton. It was inspired by the Hamilton song Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) and the lyric, "Immigrants: we get the job done."
Where there is a rainbow, there is always hope. Photo credit for this beauty to Peter. And thank you to the town of Ålesund for providing the scenery.
Speaking of getting the job done, in case you didn't notice, I changed the title of the blog ever so slightly. The "etc" takes into account my travels outside of Amsterdam's borders, and my frequent detours to discuss everything from family to food to politics to books. Thanks, as always, for reading.
In a country with so much bounty (mountains, fjords, cinnamon rolls), who knew there was also the perfect job just waiting there for me? I do realize I'll have to do something about my pants before my first day on the job.
We will miss you, Aretha. This song is the best of the best. The song that can lift my spirits no matter what.