Another month has
slipped by and as planned last month we spent it very quietly. The increasingly
dark days weren’t that conducive to much activity anyway. One highly
anticipated milestone was reaching December 21 as it’s the shortest day of the
year. We were very curious as to how much daylight we’d actually have on that
date. As you can see from the photo below, taken at noon on December 21, a very clear day, there is
a kind of a grey/blue twilight for about two hours a day, 10-12. Before 10 and
after 1 p.m. it’s pitch
dark. You know the sun is there somewhere below the horizon, but, you can’t see
it. It’s just enough daylight to mark the coming and going of each day.
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| December 21, noon |
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| December 21, sunset |
One negative to all
this ‘darktime’ is that it has been playing havoc with our sleep patterns. There’ve
been a few episodes of going to bed at 3
a.m. and not getting up until 10-11. We’re trying to maintain a
‘normal’ sleep pattern, but, it’s difficult. On the plus side, it’s been a
welcome break in our usual hectic lives and has allowed us to get back into
reading for recreation. Unfortunately, we have now gotten through every book we
had on board and all those we traded with the neighbouring boat. There are some
English language books on sale here, but, they’re expensive and not a great
selection. So, I have ordered myself a Kindle from Amazon (electronic e-reader)
and am eagerly awaiting its arrival in late January so I can download books
anywhere and everywhere. In the meantime, what a treat it’s been to finally
read a lot of books that have been on my list for years, like Mutiny on the
Bounty (a really good yarn). In addition to quite a few sailing books, I
have also ploughed through the Stieg Larsen ‘dragon tattoo’ trilogy, Rohinton
Mistry’s A Fine Balance (very good), Jonathan Frantzen’s The
Corrections (well-written, but didn’t like the characters or story much)
and about a dozen other varied titles.
Three books that
really resonated were all by the same author, David Howarth. I mentioned in an
earlier blog that we met the author’s son-in-law on a neighbouring boat in
Stornoway which is how the author first came to our attention. Usually, I have
absolutely no interest whatsoever in war history, but, these three are just
good all-round adventure stories as well as historical books. I think they’re
still in print and if you’re interested in a good story, these are all a very
fast, enjoyable read. For us, having visited the sites in both Scotland and Norway and right
across the North Sea where the action took
place made it all the more real and gripping. In the spring, we’re planning to
visit the Toftfjord and the Lyngen Alps mentioned in the books. Would recommend
reading The Shetland Bus first, followed by We Die Alone. The
Sledge Patrol can be read independently and is set in Greenland .
If you like these books, you may also like The Last Gentleman Adventurer:
Coming of Age in the Arctic, by Edward Maurice which I found fascinating
for its insights into the Hudson Bay Company and Canadian Inuit culture just
prior to ‘modernization’.
December, of course,
also brings the Christmas and New Year’s period. We were interested to see how
Norwegians celebrate. This was also our first Christmas spent living aboard and
we wanted to celebrate old traditions while perhaps also making some new ones.
For us, Christmas
dinner is always turkey. For Norwegians, it’s usually lamb or something else,
so, first we wondered whether we’d even be able to get a turkey (‘kalkun’).
There were a few, in boxes, in the grocery store, so, we nabbed one when we
first saw them. The next question was whether it would fit into our propane
oven. With some rearrangement of the interior we were just able to fit it in.
The next worry was would it cook properly as the oven heat is somewhat
irregular and localized and we could run out of propane. We were having guests
(Mark and his daughter Marissa from the boat Tevakenui and Celia, my new friend
from New Zealand who has been here six years teaching English), so, were
worried that not only might we ruin our own Christmas dinner but others’ as
well. As it was, by rotating the turkey every hour, it was done to perfection
and the dinner was a great success. We made an effort to have all the trimmings
as well. We didn’t make stuffing, but, the requisite Brussels sprouts and other
vegetables were easy to find. Not so easy was mincemeat. We searched every
single grocery store in town and found a single, dusty jar of imported
Robertson’s mincemeat which was only one month past its sell-by date. We
grabbed it! Our guests brought homemade Christmas cake and shortbread which
rounded out the traditional meal.
New Year’s Eve was
highly anticipated. We knew there would be a fireworks display from the top of
the chairlift that goes up the mountain adjacent to our marina. We anxiously
watched the weather throughout the day as we first had some fog, then heavy
snow, which obscured the mountain top. We thought the celebration might be
cancelled. In the evening, the skies lifted and it looked like a go. Around 11 p.m. we made our way to the town
square to find that there were only a very few drunken foreigners milling
about, no Norwegians, no music and no scheduled events. Disappointed, at 11:45 we decided to make our way
back to the marina to watch the fireworks from there. Halfway back, the
mountaintop around the detonation site was first surrounded by red flares and
then a ring of bright white, flaming, torches. Then, the fireworks started and
we soon realized why no Norwegians were downtown. They were all at home setting
off their own elaborate firework displays. The private displays were almost as
good as the official display. We’ve seen better quality fireworks, but, the
sheer volume of the displays, which must have numbered in the hundreds was
truly amazing and went on for almost an hour. Both sides of the channel which
separate the island
of Tromsø
I wish I had a tripod
so I could have taken better pictures, but, here a few which really don’t do
the scene any justice at all….
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