Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Back to England

text and images britt-arnhild

Look closely at this column.

I saw it outside St.Albans Cathedral. The guide, the wonderful, lively Gail Thomas, told us that she has once been to Trondheim and visited Nidaros cathedral. There she saw a quite similar column, and in Nidaros it is called The Lincoln Column.

We know that during the golden area of cathedral buildings, workers and artists travelled all over Europe, offering their skills (have you read Ken Follett´s Pillars of the Earth?). So probably a stone mason from Lincold has been both in Trondheim and in St.Albans.

I must read Pillars of the Earth again. It is a masterpiece of a book, thich as a brick stone, once you start it is hard to put down. Once I sat in Durham cathedral reading pages from it, and when I lifted my eyes I could see the workers and artists working their ways through the centuries.

I am on my way to England again. Lucky, lucky me :-)

In my purse I have a book from 1954, The East of England, An Artist´s Journey Through English Landscapes. by Sydney R. Jones.
Here is what I read about St.Albans:

Within the outer environs of London there is no more fascinating town than this one. It offers historic streets, inns, houses, the Clock Tower and Abbey gatehouse, the second longest cathedral nave in Europe capped with a Roman brick tower, walls of the first Roman city, Verulaminum, and the place of At.Albans martyrdom.

 

This time I am not going to St.Albans, nor to Bath,

but to.......

 

well, come back and you´ll find out ;-)

See you there.

Life close to the cathedral

text and images britt-arnhild

All my life I have lived close to a cathedral. I had my confirmation there, I was married there, I have a blog called Life close to the cathedral, I pass the cathedral several times a day.
It is part of my life.

My cathedral is Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim, Norway.

When you live your life close to a cathedral, it is always interesting to visit other ones.

Like St.Albans, just north of London, home to the shrine os Saint Alban, Britain´s first Christian martyr.

 Last night I went there for Evensong, and was showered in beautiful singing by the girl´s choir.
Today, actually in a few minutes, I will go there for a guided tour.

To learn more about this interesting place.
To be close to my Creator, my Saviour.
To pray.
To live. 

See you later....... 

 

visiting the magic

 

The children had been looking forward to the visit for days. The cathedral. The huge, magic stone building downtown. Older than any of them could imagine, "a thousand years, even older than my great grandpa........"

The rain only made the day more exciting. With water dripping from the raincoats they sat on the tram on their way from kindergarten, downtown to a day of tales and secrets.

Outside the cathedral they had to wait for the guide. Their teachers wanted the kids to look at the statues on the western wall, "can you see Jesus, and Mary, and the one over there is St. Olav, the one with a scallop is St. Jacob the Pilegrim......." One of the kids walked over to let her hand follow the old stone wall. She could feel the coldness of the stones, but also their life, their history.

 

Finally the wooden door opened and the guide came out.

"Welcome to the cathedra, welcome to the world of historyl", the guide was almost whispering. She bent towards the kids, had their full attention and in a voice, not much loader than a whisper, she started the magic: "Do you want to hear a story.........."

 

She had the kids, and the adults in her hands.

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I passed this group yesterday. I almost followed them into the land of tales, but had to continue to my office.........

 

The January Light

text and images britt-arnhild

The winter cold I have is bothering me. It steals sleep during the night, energy during the day. Apparently most of the people I talk to these days have or have had the cold, and everybody tells me it stays for a long, long time. Pleasant future prospects :-(

I stayed home from work two days last week. I should may be have stayed home longer. But when you are on the line between fit and ill, staying at home when "all the interesting stuff" happens at work, is boring. It is not for me! So I cough my way through the nights, drag myself trough the days. Hoping for better days. Always hoping for better days.

When I am feeling under the weather, my days too easily feel dark, heavy. Joy and laughter play hide and seek and I don´t have the energy to seek them out.

Then I start worrying about everything. My weight. The kids. The future. The Arabic Spring. The people of Syria. Young girls being raped in Nigeria. A humanitarian catastrophy building up in South Sudan. The Wall in The Middle East.

The more I knit up of these dark threads, the more knotty and black they get.

 

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I was low spirited when I started my sunday morning walk......actually it was more lunchtime than morning. Lucky for me it was more lunchtime than morning. I forced myself to lift my eyes from my black knotted knitting to the light of the day.

The January light. Which up here is like nothing else, at least like nothing else further south. As I walked, my feet started a silent conversation with God. And as I walked on, God spoke to me, still without words. As my eyes rised more and more, my heart opened. I still bore with me the suffering of the world, a big WHY, and huge WHAT CAN I DO? But in the middle of this, God showed me beauty, and after a while he broke the silence to tell me - I Am The Light.

After a while I found a cafe and sat down with a cup of hot chocolate, filled with a huge top of whipped cream. Still with the world, its people and its suffering on my mind. But now also with a deep thankfulness. "I am The Light"

After a while I walked on.  

God, show me the way and make me willing to walk it

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Afterword:

I am not sure what happened. I had planned a romantic, easy post about the beauty of winter light. The kind of post I know my readers love, the kind of post I know will give a lot of comments. I started with the title The January Light. Then quite other words came. More honest words? I don´t know. To tell about the beauty of January light is also honestly meant. From my heart. But those words did not come. 

I am not sure what happened?

Or may be I am?

The end of a festival

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
For a week now Trondheim has been turned upside down. The St.Olav Festival. The annual feast!

Two nights in a row we've been downtown. First to watch an outdoor show, TRANSITion with the German action theatre group Pan.Optikum. Then last night a cathedral filled to the brim, Verdi's Requiem.

 
Have you ever seen a firework with human bodies involved? A few weeks ago we were in the middle of an amazing firework in the Venetian Laguna. The other night was totally different, we were standing in the middle of it all.

You feel quite small as a human.

 
The festival has lasted for a week. Every day filled with program. The city of Trondheim filled with people.

 
One day the bishop and the two local county governors met to talk about values. Values on life and death.

 
Artists everywhere. Like this cathedral stone mason working on a copy of Archbishop Eystein.

 

Musicians, and my favorite conductor.

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The festival is over. The Archbishop's Palace is back to normal. New challenges are waiting.

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I am sorry I don't have much time for blogging these days. I will be back though!!!

High up......for God only to see

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 

The cathedral is being cleaned. A five floor scaffolding has been set up in the front of the church, the octogon. Stairs for workmen, and for ordinary people like you and me. In groups of up to 8 people we have climbed the stairs....high up, where the cathedral is richly decorated. Not for human eyes. For God only!

 
Luckily I am not afraid of heights and climed the stairs the other day, with 7 other people + a guide.

 
For centuries this part of the cathedral has been closed, only opened a few times, for cleaners and cathedral artists.

Walking on sacred stones. Close to God.

 
   
It was dark up there, but the guide's flashlight revealed treasures made for the eyes of The Creator.

 

 I had my confirmation in this cathedral, I was married here. I serve here as a deacon from time to time. I attend masses, like I did again yesterday.

Sometimes I dream about being a gargoyle, a saint or an angel, high up, for Gods eyes only, to be praised, cherished, loved.......for ME, the one I am, truly. Not how I am seen by humans. Seen how I am created by God.

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Another time. Another cathedral. Nature's own:

 

Can you see the happy, raised hands? They belong to Marta, cousin Tone and Terje. I could have been with them, but somebody needed to be behind the camera.

 

Yesterday we hiked up to Preikestolen, The Pulpit Rock,an amazing mountain a couple of hours from where my father in law lives.

 

Together with 1 million tourists (false), 2 million flies (true!) and 3 million steep steps (true!!), we made it up to the top, and down again. The downhill climbing was the hardest on my knees. But I feel so absolutely proud to make this blog post, showing the world that I made it :-)

 

Between the tips of our noses and the sea - 608 meters.

 

 

It was a steep walk, and difficult to walk on the stones. I had to concentrate, and alot of the time my eyes were fixed on the stones under my feet. At one point I lamost stepped on a small ant. It was so busy, waking with her goal ahead, not seeing any of the beauty around her. As my thoughts reached this point I rised my eyes and the Preikestolen plateau was right in front of me. The beauty was so intense it sent waves down my spine. The ant kept on and saw none of this.

How often is our life like this. We look right ahead, busy with our everyday life. never time to rise our eyes to see the beauty.

 

 

Sometimes I wonder why I keep on travelling the world with all this beauty of Norway around. Then I think twice, and I know :-)

 

A bird near the river

Text and image Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
I went downtown for my weekly photo walk, or photosafari as I like to call it. The day was wet and grey. Where could I find beauty to shot?

I started down at the harbour, the fjord was so grey there was nothing to see. Continued along the canal. I love that area, love the boats there. Got some great photos.....for another day......and then continued up to my favorite spot along the river Nidelven.

 
I saw a skarv (sorry I don't know the English name) there in January last year. Got a misty photo which I love so much. And to my pleasure the skarv was there again.

 
This bird is famous up on the Lofoten islands where my brother Frode lives. Years ago there used to be an old blacksmith, quite a character, who used to make the most elegant skarvs. WE have a small collection of three of them out at our cabin.

 
The skarv stands in a tiny little island out in the river. This island can't be seen when the tide is in, the tide from the Trondheim Fjord goes up the river a little, but yesterday, when I came to search for the skarv, the island was perfect for both of us.

Can you see the iron kind of a cross out on the island? If my information is correct, this iron cross was mentioned already in the old Norse litterature written by Snorre.

The skarv, the iron cross, the tiny island, the river, the Pilegrim Center and the cathedral.

I love this photo.

December 18th. The story behind the archangel

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

It didn't take very long yesterday till people started to email me about the story of the archangel on top of the northwestern tower of Nidaros Cathedral. First I got a message on facebook from Sjur, the churchwarden of the cathedral "This angel, with the face of Bob Dylan (Knocking on Heavens Door) was modelled by the artist as a tribute to Dylans participation against the war in Vietnam"

Then I got an email from Carol (her text is about the sculptures on the western wall of the cathedral, and then some interesting information about "my" archangel:

I couldn't resist doing a search for your angels name. I came up with a paragraph on a random blog with a link to wikipedia. The paragraph is below along with the link. Do you think it could be true?

 

Carol

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The two lower rows of sculpture, proposed by Professor Oluf Kolsrud in 1928, are based on the engraving by Jacob Maschius. Kolsrud was an historical adviser on the church's restoration, and prepared an iconography for the sculptures. His proposal to place statues on the "royal floor" – although without evidence of historical precedent – was approved in 1935. It was assumed that the medieval sculptures were based on living models, and to a large extent, this concept is applied to the new sculptures. Thus the sculpture of Bishop Sigurd borrowed features from the poet Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, and Kristofer Leirdal's statue of the Archangel Michael on the top of the northwest tower was based, according to the sculptor, on the face of Bob Dylan – inspired by Dylan's opposition to the Vietnam War.^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidaros_Cathedral_West_Front

Every Friday at 2pm we have a cup of coffee at work. Yesterday I told about my angel revelation while having coffee with my colleagues, and then most of them could tell me back that of course they knew this story, about Bob Dylan and the Vietnam War. And I was told more........Some years ago, when Dylan was in Trondheim for a concert, those responsible for the concert wanted to give Dylan a photo of the archangels face. A lot of effort was being made to make this and a beautiful, huge framed photo was handed Dylan when the concert was over.

You say you want to know what happened to the photo? Well, that's quite another story, and not mine to tell.......

December 17th. The angel on top of the cathedral tower

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
Can you see the angel on top of the cathedral tower? I pass this angel every day. I always look up to see that he is there. I think it is the archangel Michael. But I am not sure.

 
I am reading a huge, and I mean really huge, book about Nidaros Cathedral written by Gunnar Danbolt. I've tried to find information about the angel on top of the tower. There must be information about him somewhere, I evern know I have heard stories......a story about the likeness in the angels face.......but did I find anything? Do I remember?

It must be my age.......or.......

Anyway, I continue to search for stories. I continue to look up every day when I pass the tower. I continue to live in the great belief that there are angels in my life!

December 14th. Capture the Light

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

The days are short and I miss the sun. It snowed all week-end, on Sunday I wasn't even out of doors once.

Then during lunch break yesterday when I looked out of the windows, I saw that the low midday sun was playing hide and seek on the old medieval walls. I drank my coffee in a hasted and almost ran out to play along.

When you live close to the Arctic Circle, when your winter is dark and cold, you soon enough learn hom inportant daylight is. How essential the sun is.

And you learn, well I learn, to take care of the sunny moments.

To capture the light.