A month of Firsts

January, the first month of a new year was also a month of firsts for us.

First time to see the Northern lights in Tromsø. Although they are visible a lot here, they can happen anytime during the dark hours and they don’t often last long. You have to be in the right place at the right time. As we aren’t out much at night, we were beginning to despair of ever glimpsing them. We set up a watch system with Tevakenui and Mark gave us a knock on the hull late one night and there they were! A long curtain of shimmering pale green that arced right over us, wonderful!

First time to see the returning sun. January 21 was the day the sun came back over the mountains in Tromsø. Although it was a cloudy, snowy day and we couldn’t actually see the sun, it was a town celebration anyway. It is a tradition to celebrate by drinking hot chocolate and a solbolle (‘sun bun’) which is a kind of donut (more like a hot cross bun) filled with custard. We enjoyed ours but will have to wait to actually see the sun. The days are noticeably lighter now and it can only get better from here.

My favourite Tromsø building - photo museum Perspektivet

First time to eat reindeer. Celia, our new friend, invited us to dinner at her student residence and we enjoyed a lovely meal of reindeer. It was very tasty. She had threatened to serve us mølje as it is the season for it. This is some kind of mixture of cod livers and cod roe. We politely declined. She also threatened to serve us rakfisk (rotten fish), which sounds just as good. I don’t have all the details, but, they actually bury fish underground for a while, then, dig it up and eat it. The uric acid involved in the decaying process serves to tenderize the fish. Writing this, I’m sure you think I’m pulling your leg, but, it’s really true. Rakfisk is different from lutefisk which is cod marinated in lye which sounds equally appetising!

At the reindeer dinner party at Celia’s, we met Karsten and Helge, from Germany. Karsten is an executive chef on the Hurtigruten (coastal steamer) and it was fascinating to learn behind the scenes stories of a cruise. Helge is a geophysicist/glaciologist doing research at the Polar Institute. I have never met so many PhD’s/scientists in one place as there are here in Tromsø. It’s an amazing place with the University, teaching hospital and Polar Institute drawing brilliant people from all over the world. This week there is a large contingent in town for a major Polar conference. Norway, of course, is a polar nation and Svalbard, with its true Arctic environment, is researched extensively. Norway also has a large research station on Antarctica. Many of the scientists from here relocate to the research station to do research during the Antarctic summer season (i.e. now).

First time skiing in Norway. Celia was able to borrow a car and A went off for a day’s downhill skiing to Målselv Fjellandsby (Snowman resort). This was about a two hour drive southeast of Tromsø. What a treat to get out in a car, the surrounding area has absolutely spectacular scenery with mountains all round. The pastel colours of the sunrise on the mountains and unfrozen fjords were superb. The skiing was excellent, a small, uncrowded resort with great snow. I had no trouble getting down the hills, although they were challenging. My problem occurred in getting back up them! As a spoiled North American used to chair lifts and gondolas, the basic bobble and t-bar lifts provided proved to be a big challenge. I felt like a beginner again as I either fell flat on my face trying to attach myself to the lift at the beginning, lost balance and fell over half-way up, or, in one memorable case, got dragged up the side of a hill hanging on for dear life. It was all very entertaining for Celia to watch. I, however, had to swallow my pride and nurse my aching shoulders and triceps for days afterwards. Some of the lifts were very long and unlike a chair lift where you get a nice respite between runs, the manual lifts required effort to hang on and it felt like you were skiing uphill as well as downhill. It proved to be quite tiring. We are hoping to get in some cross-country skiing as well, possibly even a hut-to-hut overnight trip. However, when we went to buy some used skis last week, there wasn’t anything left, so this will depend on ski availability.

First time at an international film festival. When we first heard that there was an international film festival here in January, we wondered why you’d ever pick dark, cold, January to hold it. On further reflection though, it became obvious. It’s a great diversion for the dark time. We had heard that many volunteers were needed and with visions of spending a few days working inside nice, warm, dry, comfortable theatres, maybe ticket-taking, along with a few free movies as well we decided to become volunteers. English-only didn’t seem to be a drawback, so, we submitted our applications and were accepted. To our horror, when we got our assignments, it was to work outside at the children’s Snow Screen venue! First of all, it was outside, second, it involved working two split shifts daily for three consecutive days and it involved hordes of five year olds, just our cup of tea. It seemed like a match made in hell.

 

Historic movie theatre - Verdensteatret

The reality was quite different and although cold, we thoroughly enjoyed our volunteering. Only the morning shift involved children and I must admit it was a bit daunting the first morning. We arrived on-time, only to find that most of the children were already there. If you can imagine around three hundred five-year olds milling around in thick snowsuits all wearing reflective yellow vests, flopping around on the bean-bag seating, running up and sliding down the two snow slides

A on the snow slide

G on the snow slide

over and over again, well, you can image the scene, utter pandemonium. Combine this with us two newbie volunteers and it gets even better. Our job was to set up the venue and distribute hot lemonade, cut up and distribute apple sections and festival souvenir bracelets to the kiddies. On the third day, the audience was a little older, maybe around 9-10 years old and therefore more demanding. We had fiskeburgers (fishburgers) to hand out as well as the apples for them and there were a lot more questions in Norwegian that we couldn’t answer. Anyway, we got through it, the weather cooperated and we got our free film reward.

As volunteers, we were able to view, for free, up to six films every day, what a great deal. We managed to get in around sixteen films in seven days, so, got our money’s worth. All the venues were packed and most films were sold out. We missed a couple due to the sell-outs and also a few were on so late at night we gave them a miss. For some of the films, the makers were present and gave an introduction prior to the film. This really added to the experience. There were four or five venues around town, all within walking distance and it was great to see all the crowds and feel the energy on the streets moving from place-to-place between films. The Snow Screen venue, which we worked, is actually a screen made from snow. They hand-carve and smooth it out of a large pile of snow and it works remarkably well.

The Snow Screen outdoor theatre.

Snow sculpture

We had always wanted to visit the Toronto film festival, but, never had the time. In Tromsø, we made up for it. We also loved the Northern slant as many of the films were from Scandinavia, Russia and other polar countries. Did you know that Murmansk also has a film festival. We saw films from Greenland (their first ever feature film and it was good), Russia, Thailand, U.S., Norway, Argentina, Romania and the U.K. Some of the highlights were:

Incendies (Canada) – a Canadian film which has now been nominated in Hollywood for best foreign language film. It was amazing: well-made, good acting and a brutal, but, gripping story. See it if you get a chance.

How I Ended this Summer (Russia) – two men, a remote Arctic weather station, a radio, majestic scenery and not much else. You wouldn’t think you could make an interesting two hour movie from that, but, this one really worked for us and held our attention throughout.

Exit through the Gift Shop (UK/USA) – you’ve probably heard of this documentary. It’s about ‘tagging’ (street art), something I didn’t think I’d be interested in as I absolutely hate graffiti, but, the film is good fun as it’s actually more about the people involved than their ‘art’.

Roald Amundsen 1925 (Norway) – this was a silent film, made in 1925, with Norwegian subtitles, of Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the North Pole in 1925 via what looked like two flying boats. The film has been digitially remastered and the quality was excellent. The Norwegian government has declared 2011 the ‘Year of Nansen and Amundsen’ to celebrate two major anniversaries. This year is 150 years since polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen was born and 100 years since polar hero Roald Amundsen and his four men were the first people in history to reach the South Pole. On the last Sunday of the film festival, there was an additional celebration at Polaria to kick this anniversary year off. They had free Amundsen/Nansen films, dog sled rides,

Dog sled rides at Polaria.

speeches, lots of free cake, solbolles, cookies and hot chocolate to celebrate. G picked up what he thought were some chocolate disks which turned out to be something ‘fishy’, we don’t know what!

POSTSCRIPT – I am actually posting this entry in Canada, where we arrived late last night. It is an unplanned three week trip to visit A’s mother who is gravely ill in hospital. So, we may be seeing some of you face-to-face over the next few weeks. The boat is safe under the watchful eye of Tevakenui and we plan to return to Norway on February 23^rd.

Black Sheep II awaiting our return.