Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Strolling the festival area

text and images britt-arnhild

Several days now I have been walking around the festival with my big Nikon D5100 (Laurie SF, that´s the camera I am using......by the way, I love your Golden Gate Bridge post!!!!!) The goal has been to take photos to share with you all.

Starting with an exhibition with photos from The Holy Land.

Then walking past The Pilgrim Center, up to the cathedral, and the Archbishop´s Palace.

The St.Olav Festival is a combination of a cultural and church  related program. Connected as it is to the death of St. Olav in 1030AC, and the cathedral built on St.Olav´s grave, it is also an important goal for pilgrims.

Take a look at what BBC World writes about the festival and its pilgrims.

 

Good photos from concerts and seminars are not easy to get, though if you come to the festival you can choose among dozens every day.

The medieval market and its booths, well, taht´s  something else.
Playing with Nikon becomes a lot of fun.

Colours, arts and crafts, temptations.....

....yes, I brought my purse as well as the camera.

A wide range of products,
not only from Norway.

Music in the air.

Though I have been declared The Queen of Jewelry, I passed by this booth.
I do have enough neclaces, at least for today......don´t I Lanny? 

My eyes fell on the glass angles
made by locals connected to Trondheim City Mission.

Aqua or blood red.
Guess which colour I bought? 

Still three days to go
of the festival.

And tomorrow the Trondheim food festival starts as well.

See you.

Here or there. 

To Paint a Heaven

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To live as a human, to live as a christian,
to paint the sky, the heaven,
which embraces your life

The himmel (we use the same word for sky and heaven in Norway, himmel) can be painted in many ways.

Yesterday bishop Tor and a group of young people ,worked with their colours in the cathedral.
Maria Amelie, a Russianborn writer and journalist who became known in Norway when she wrote the book "Illegal Norwegian", Petter Normann Dille, a gay teological student, Eldar Rønning, a world champion cross country skier and Renate Tårnes, one of the survivors from Utøya July 22nd 2011.

For 90 minutes they talked about values. 
Willpower
To choose. Ambivalence
To be different
Confidence.

 

They words were framed by Maria Solheim and her music. 

 

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A blessed hour in the cathedral. A meeting in trust and respect.

This is also a part of St.Olav Festival.

 

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Thanks for your comments yesterday.
I keep on photographing the festival for you.

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And I walk into this day with my painbox and my brushes.
To paint the himmel over my life.

To pain the himmel over our lives. 

 

St.Olav Festival........again!

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It is THAT time of the year again. The St. Olav Festival. And none of my blog readers are here to celebrate with me....... Where are you readers? What are you thinking about? The one and only place to be at this time of the year is of course Trondheim. And the festival. Next year I hope to see you here.

This year I have a few special images to show you, kind of behind the scenes photos from one of the booths at the medieval market.

On behalf of bishop Tor, I am leading the regional Norwegian Bible Society group, and we have a booth at the market to promote the Bible. I am in charge of this and has the pleasure to stand there part of the time. It must be said though that it has been a pleasure to find volunteers for the booth.
We share the booth with beautyful Nina from Ren Fryd, who makes her own soap. A delightful share which fills the booth with a heavenly fragrance. Temptation in the air, I would say :-)

The festival continues for 8 days.
I haven´t had much time for photos yet, but plan to take my big Nikon with me tomorrow.

So readers, since you are not here,
what do you want me to photograph for you?

Walk along

text britt-arnhild
images terje 

Are you ready?

I am!
With my book, with a sheet with words and photos.
With my small group of pilgrims

First stop near the river.
Praying.

Walking down to the well.

"I am the living water"
Three times we drink.
In the name of The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit

 

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And now I am back home,
in The Blue Garden,
in the sun

 

with nothing on the agenda

nothing exept enjoying life

Planning a pilgrim walk

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The coming weekend we will gather people from the diocese to meetings at Nidaros Pilgrim Center. There we will inspire each other to focus more on Green Living.

Saturday morning I will be taking the group on a short pilgrim walk near the cathedral.

I did the walk by myself yesterday morning, as part of the planning.

Along the river.
Fresh water from St.Olav´s well
Prayers near the Pilgrim´s Cross
The cathedral. The Goal. Walking three times around it in silent prayers.

 

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Terje will walk along.
I have asked him to bring a camera.
Hopefully I can take you along as well.
Afterwards. 

 

Back to England

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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

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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

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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!!!