Not long ago, archeologists in Bergen (Norway) discovered a mystery die from 1276.
It is a normal six-sided die, but the numbers are not the normal 1 to 6.
The Mystery Die
My Cabin Trip to The Planet Hoth
In 1997 I, my younger sister, my father and my mother all stayed at a cabin in Finse, a small mountain village in Hordaland county, Norway. Also known as Hoth.
Sunshine
Ortensia from Truly Madly Ordinary Stories From The Heart has made a new blogger-award for Scandinavian bloggers; named ‘Sunshine Nordic Little Thoughts’.
Like all “blogger awards”, it works like a chain letter.
Answer a question, then tag other people to answer the question aswell.
Name three things that pops into your mind when you are walking in the sun.
Easter Crime
In Norway, one of our main Easter traditions is reading and watching crime fiction, which we will often sit down to enjoy after a long nice walk in the snow.
My Year In The Norwegian Airforce
Between the summer of 2009 and 2010, I served my mandatory military service as a guard in The Royal Norwegian Air Force.
In Norway, when I was 19, all young citizens had to spend one year in the military.
There were easy ways to get out of it. From diseases, to ideologies, to responsibilities, to drug-use. So if you wanted to avoid service, you could.
As of March 2016, Norway currently employs a weaker form of mandatory military service for men and women, as now only those who are motivated are selected.
Probably a better systems, so they can avoid people who would rather not be there.
It started with a two-month boot camp in Stavanger. I was assigned to the airforce, but don’t get me wrong, I’m no top-gun. There are a lot of positions in the airforce that don’t require you to ever get in an airplane, and I served my time there as a guard.
Compared to the rest of the year, this period was more like a border-school/summer-camp than a true military experience. At the time I felt it was hard, but later I realised
this was a really soft entry
InterRail 2010 – Part 1: From Bergen to Berlin
I am continuing my project of curating my own Facebook photos, and this post is the first in a long series about an InterRail-trip I took during October in 2010.
I had just finished a year in the military, stationed quite a ways way outside of a city in the northern parts of Norway. It was cold, boring and mostly lonely.
Being stuck somewhere you don’t want to be, for the better parts of a year, really makes you want to spread your wings and experience the world.
Trading one location for many, if you like.
I started in my hometown of Bergen, Norway.
From there I travelled via Sweden and Denmark, down to Hamburg in Germany, where I stayed for the first night.
I only ever saw Hamburg in the dark, as I arrived quite late and left very early, but
the area around the train-station is one of the seedier places I have seen in my life
I Want More Movies Like ‘Black Panther’
I watched the new Marvel-movie, Black Panther, a few days ago, and I must say that I absolutely loved it. Not as much as I loved ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, but that film had space-travel and monsters, so it had quite the advantage on me!
It is the first superhero-movie, to my knowledge, that is set in Africa, and features mostly african characters.
The main location of the movie, the fictional country of Wakanda, is a technological utopia built on the customs of african tribes.
That got me thinking about what superheroes inspired by other indigenous peoples from around the world would be like.
My thoughts immediately went to the indigenous peoples of my own country, the Sami people.
They reside in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and a little into Russia. In a fictional setting, who knows what sort of hidden ice-kingdoms could be hidden up there.
One of the really cool parts of the movie was how traditional african clothes were used as a basis for the “afrofuturistic” designs of the costumes. I would really like to see how the same costume-designers would take on the traditional garb of The Sami.
I’m not sure what the name or powers of a Sami superhero should be, but including their thousand-year old practice of reindeer-herding in some way could lead to some cool stand-out superhero stuff.
I’ll stop now, and let this idea sit where it is.
Making a hero like this should be up to the individuals that are actually from the people in question.
What other cultures could make some new and interesting superheroes?
Oslo In The Snow
I and my girlfriend went to Oslo this last weekend. Going from the second biggest city in Norway to the biggest city may not seem like it would be that different, but in a country as sparsely populated as Norway, this was something of a big-city vacation for us.
We were mostly going to visit a friend of my girlfriend, who had moved to Oslo many years ago.
Her parents still living in Bergen, she had visited us a few times, and this would be the first time we reciprocated.
We met up in the city center, then proceeded to walk around to see the sights for much of the day, stopping in stores along the way.
While Oslo was not much colder than Bergen, it was much more covered in snow. In Bergen you usually get snow, then rain, then ice, then snow, and so on, so it is more slippery than wintry here at this time of year.
Much of the distance we covered was along this river. At the point pictured here, much of a waterfall had been frozen completely over, with the water making a new river in and under this new ice-“landscape”.
It was hard to capture just how cool this looked on camera, but if it does not come across, I am pretty sure that you could safely walk over that ridge. Not a risk I would be willing to take, but still.
At the end of the walk we stopped at a food hall, where I ate a delicious chicken-leg burger, before we later met up with our friend again, at her apartment, where she had cooked some wonderful summer rolls.
I really over-ate that day.
All in all it was a great little mini-vacation, and I really needed that after not traveling anywhere last year.
It made my participation in The Time Travel Blogathon slightly harder, since that took place at the same time, but it all worked out quite well.
Looking forward to our next trip already, wherever it may be!
In Norway we Trick-or-Treat on New Year’s Eve
If you are ever in Norway on Halloween, and you (or your kids) try going out to trick-or-treat, you may be sorely disappointed.
Rudolph the Red Roast Reindeer
Have you ever looked at Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and thought “Yummy!”?
No? Well maybe you should.
This months geeky recipe will show you how to make a tasty reindeer christmas-roast, with baked vegetables and a red wine sauce.
The Roast
1. First start by chopping up the vegetables, you can use whatever vegetables you prefer. I went with mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and baby potatoes. Place it all in a large roasting tray. Mix in a bit of oil, salt and pepper.
2. Tie the roast. Here’s how you do that. My roast was 1 kilogram, serves 4-5 people.
3. Put some spice on the roast. Salt, pepper, juniper berries, thyme and marjoram should do the trick!
4. Fry it in a pan, in oil and butter. You need to do this to keep the juices inside the meat while it cooks in the oven.
5. Place the tray with the vegetables and the roast (with an oven-safe thermometer in it) in the oven, at 125°c/257°f. When the internal temperature of the roast is at 60°C-65°C/140°F-150°F it is medium done, this will take about two hours.
If you want it medium well, the temperature needs to be 70°C/160°F.
6. After you take the roast of the oven, let the roast rest for 15 minutes before you slice it.
The Sauce
Kittelsen’s Christmas Creations
By “creations” I mean paintings. Sorry, I had a k/c-thing going..
Here are some wonderful winter works (again, sorry) by my favorite artist, Theodor Kittelsen.
Glacier Hike
I’m continuing with my project of curating my own facebook photos.
We are still in 2008, but this time the subject is a mountain hiking vacation I spent with my mother’s side of my family in the Norwegian mountain-range Jotunheimen.
My grandmother loves walking in the mountains, so it was there she wanted to celebrate her birthday in ’08.
We stayed at the hotel Leirvassbu. That location had been used to film the 2006 Norwegian horror movie Cold Prey just two years prior, and we watched that there one night.
One day I, my uncle, his dog and my cousin joined up with a group that were going on a hike far up in the mountains, to a glacier.
This was just prior to my year in the military, and I must have been at the most unhealthy spot I have ever been this far in my life. I weighed almost 100 kg.
But I felt I could not miss that experience, so I joined up.
The climb was steep, but I got some really cool pictures.
Just a little before we reached the top of the mountain we were hiking up, I just could not keep going any further.
I was too cold and tired to keep climbing, so I let the rest of the group continue while I rested there for 20 minutes.
I may not have reached the tippy-top of the mountain, but coming down I still felt great for having managed what I did.
And now, writing this, I feel even more great.
Because I know that if this were this year, I would absolutely get to the top!
Here’s the entire album 🙂
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