Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Fishing in the ocean

@brittarnhild

We were invited by Ingrids father in law to go fishing in the ocean outside Lofoten. We love fishing, we love the ocean, we love to be outdoors, so we YES, was out immediate answer.

It was a sunny day, as all our days have been so far this vacation. Quite calm near Stamsund where we left the shore, but windy enough out on open sea. 

The Lofoten Island is traditionally where you get the most and the biggest cod, and lucky for us, it still is today.

It did not take us long to fill our buckets. Big cods for us, smaller fishes for the eagles.

The captain of the boat took us out to an island where he knew there are eagles, and true enough, soon we found two, and I could start photographing.

For a long time they sat watching us, but when we threw out a fish one of the eagles took of to catch it. 

I was lucky enough to catch both the eagle and the fish :-)

Great catch :-)

What is it with those glass artists?

@brittarnhild

One day in Lofoten we drove out to the Glass Hut at Vikten.
Glass everywhere, and artists who mastered their art to perfection.

I was busy looking at the boxes with different glass colours, thinking of Mauro and his work bench, when the glass blower, Alexander, started to make preparations.

I had no time to open my Nikon, but with my cell phone at hand I was perfectly helped.

 

Starting with a small piece of glass.....

blowing......

forming.......

adding colours......

heathing......

The piece of glass is starting to find its form.

 

Still I had no idea.

then........
.....a plate!

But before I managed to get a photo, the plate disappeared into the oven.

 

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Mauro, before we left the glass hut we spoke with one of the owners, Anders Tangrand, telling him about the marvellous glass artist we know in Venice. He told us that he had been in Venice and on Murano last year, and that he was very interested in getting contacts there.

"This Mauro Vianello, may be he can come up to our Glass Hut and demonstrate his art?"

  

I promised to send him your address, your wenbage and your youtube videos, and so I will :-)

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Glasshytta Vikten on facebook

Mauro´s webpage Glasshandmade

Mauro on YouTube

 

 

 

 

Hiking to a dead end

@brittarnhild

Our last day on the beautiful islands of Lofoten has come, and we decided to spend it hiking. The nature here is wild and fantastic, the hiking options a million. After a little talking back and forth we ended up with the several hundred year´s old Fisherman´s Path from Nesland to Nusfjord. "It is not too dramatic" we had heard, "you should make it in a couple of hours.....and then the same way back again"

Terje with a backpack containing water, coffee, bread, eggs asnd raincoats, I with my camera. We were ready for the day and the beauty.

 With the ocean to the right and steep mountains to the left, we were just in between, walking, climbing, stopping for photos, breathing beauty all around.

 

It was steeper and more wild than I had expected, but I´ve done some climbing earlier this summer, and felt fit for fight.

"Are we having a stop again?" I could hear from Terje´s voice that he would have prefered a much faster walk. I am not going to tell him my secret - I stop for photos every time I need to get my breath back......

And believe me, I could breath in my own pace, there was always some beauty to shoot.

To follow the path we had to look for the red Ts, but after a while the hike became more and more difficult.

Still beauty everywhere, but where could I put my feet?

Then, suddenly we came to a dead end. Or more correct, I came to a dead end. Terje could have climbed the boulders, but me knees cried NO loud enough for both me and Terje to hear it. Our goal, Nusfjord, was not for us to reach, we had to turn and hike the same route back again.

 Which felt quite okay actually. The beauty was just as beautiful seen from the other side :-)

We had met only a handful of people during our hours out in the wilderness. Among them were three young French people, two boys and a girl. Coming back to our car they were there, and could tell that they had hiked from Nusfjord. Now it was too far to hike back, they wanted to walk up to the road trying to fidn a car which could drive them back.

We knew that "walking up to the road" would take them hours, so we offered to drive them to Nusfjord.

So in the end we ended up in Nusfjord anyway.....

.....we were invited into the fisherman´s cabin they rent, and we became friends :-)

Nice to meet you Thomas, Bruno and Audrey. Safe travels back to France and welcome back to Norway again.

 

And when you follow your dream it comes true

@britarnhild

I have been up to "my" little red house again today. More photos, a peek in through the only window without shutters, more photos....a lot more photos. The house is not for sale, but my dream is for free and will stay with me.

28 years ago Johhny came to Lofoten from Sweden. Just like me he fell in love with the place, and a year later he had bought his dream. Today, many years later, Johhny is married to my best friend´s brother, we are facebook friends and instagram followers, and through internet I feel I take part in a tiny little bit of Johnny´s dream.

 Johnny and Trygve live in Southern Sweden, but spend every summer in Lofoten. When Terje and I came here last summer it was still early summer and Johnny and Trygve had not arrived. We climbed the gate to their home and felt like intruders to the amazing perennial garden, took a million photos and later I sent an email asking if I could use some of the photos in a blog post. Johnny said yes then, and yes again today when we came to visit. This time by an invitation, knowing that both men would be there to greet us.

 

This year Johnny and Trygve arrived from Sweden early in the summer, and have since then been digging, weeding, planting and cultivating their garden.

We were taken on a garden tour, among the 300+ different perennials.
To manage a garden like this, north of the arctic circle, staying here only during the short summer.....I can´t imagine how they do it.

After a long walk Trygve said: "I hope you are hungry. We have coffee, pancakes and cloudberries waiting for all of us inside"

Hot pancakes, Swedish coffee and cloudberry jam! Of course we were hungry. Trygve and Johnny had made a huge pile of pancakes, but between the four of us we managed to eat them all :-)

On Sunday Johnny and Trygve will have an "Open Garden" with people coming from far and close to enjoy their parennials. We have traveled south by then, but were lucky enough to have our very special garden walk alone with these two creative, charming guys!

 

You can follow Johnny and Trygve on their instagram blog @hageflekkinord

 

To fall in love with a house…..or a way to live life

@brittarnhild

This week we stay in a little cabin near Reine in Lofoten, the most beautiful area you can imagine. The place belongs to my brother´s parents in law. Just behind where we stay is a tiny little red house, and I have fallen in love!

 

A tiny red house, closed. 
A tiny red house, patiently waiting for someone to come and open the shutters, let in life, love, laughter

 

 

Can you imagine living there for months during the summer :-)
Lace curtains and pelargoniums in the windows. Beds made for a guest or two, a kitchen where the fragrance of freshly baked pastries sits in the wall, books, paintings, collections of small stones and shells, a loom with a weaving in progress, music......

The house is not for sale, but in my dream it belongs to me.

Will you come for a visit?

 

Gardening on the edge.

@brittarnhild

Cultivating a garden far up north, far out in the North Atlantic is a challenge. Terje and I went out for a morning walk, and I decided to look for gardens. Most houses had lawns, some of them quite huge. Most houses had trees and/or shrubs. But very few had a perennial garden.

A couple of weeks ago I got the summer magazine from the national Norwegian garden company, Hageselskapet, in the mail. There I read a very interesting article about gardening at Røst, about its challenges and about how daylight 24/7 during summer compensates for the short season.

We had beautiful weather during our two day´s stay. Gardening looked like an easy job. But I know there must be chains of days here with mist, cold, howling wind. Days when you have to hold on to every post and stone you find to walk a few steps, days when the icy cold wind fills every fibre of your body, making you believe a world without wind doesn´t excist.

As we walked along I started to dream about finding an abandon house, move in for a summer, and start a garden.

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Come back in a few days and may be I have a post about a couple who did just that!

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  Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods has been on the internet since 2005. The blog is my virual diary and a tribute to life and life´s Creator. I love to hear from my readers, in comments and in emails, and from time to time I am lucky to meet some of you, here, there everywhere.
I also have a few other blogs, you find them in the right hand bar. Welcome over, and welcome back here.

Pietro Querini, an opera about stockfish

@brittarnhild

Many hundred years ago, in 1430, the seafarer Pietro Querini and his crew sailed from Venice, a ship filled with goods, men filled with dreams of wealth and fame.

A few months later the ship was wrecked and most of the crew had died. Only a few remaining ones, among them the captain Pietro Querini, stranded on a small island in a cold, dark place, their only opting struggling for life a few days more, and then die.

 

Hell had never felt so close, but Pietro never lost hope and prayed to God for salvation.

For days and weeks which felt like months, like years, the men struggled. Some lost the fight, but one day salvation came. Not far from the little island where they had stranded, there was a community of fishermen, their wives and children, on the islands of Røst, and a dream of a little boy sent a group of men over the the shipwrech island to look for two lost calves. They did not find any calves and could not believe what they found instead.

 

The men were saved and spent a hundred days on Røst before returing to Venice. And with them on the return were sacks and sacks of "gold" from the North, sacks of tørrfisk, or stockfish.

The story about Querini and his men has been told in different ways over the years. Two years ago it was made into an opera and performed at Røst, with my brother Torodd as the conductor. We spent our summer in California that year so it was not an option for us to travel to Røst, but when I heard that the opera would be set up again this summer, we set our plans right there and then. We were to go to Røst!

 

If you do a google search you will realise how far out in the North Atlantic Røst is situated. It is hard to believe that people have lived here for hundreds of years. The livelihood is fishing, the ocean has always been filled with cod. To preserve the fish they dry it. You can read more about it here.

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We reached Røst yesterday, and today was the day for the Querini Opera.

We were among the first ones to arrive, the last ones to leave :-)

We were not allowed to photograph during the performance, but afterwards my camera was busy. Torodd, my brother, the conductor, the man with the broadest smile.

A few professionals, a lot of locals,
together it made for a most wonderful opera!

Now The Querini Opera has been performed at Røst twice.
What about next time in Venice?

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It is not the season to hang the fish now, so alle the wooden racks are empty. They do make for perfect photos though.

Here is a link to the Querini Opera´s website.

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  Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods has been on the internet since 2005. The blog is my virual diary and a tribute to life and life´s Creator. I love to hear from my readers, in comments and in emails, and from time to time I am lucky to meet some of you, here, there everywhere.
I also have a few other blogs, you find them in the right hand bar. Welcome over, and welcome back here. 

What the kittiwake says

@brittarnhild

She left Trondheim as a young bride more than 50 years ago. Her new home was a fisherman´s farm on the tiniest of islands far out in the North Atlantic. Here she was to spend a lifetime, giving the farm and the sea all her labor, all her love.

Today the place is abandoned through the long, dark arctic winter. The woman and her husband live somewhere else on the tiny island. In early spring life is back though. Couple after couple of kittiwakes starts to prepare a new season, repairing their old nests, laying eggs, hatching, feeding the baby birds.

The kittiwakes are an endangered bird species and the old woman does her best to help them survive. Every spring she is back in her old house, counting the number of birds roosting, the number of eggs, the number of new birds.

When we met her, she talked passionately about her dear birds. About her life on the island.

"Do you know what the kittiwake says after shitting on you?" she said with laughter in her voice. "vakk´e mæ, vakk´e mæ, vakk´e mæ" (wasn´t me, wasn´t me, wasn´t me.......)

We listened to the birds, and all of a sudden all of us could understand kittiwake language :-)

 

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 Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods has been on internet since 2005. The blog is my virual diary and a tribute to life and life´s Creator. I love to hear from my readers, in comments and in emails, and from time to time I am lucky to meet some of you, here, there everywhere.
I also have a few other blogs, you find them in the right hand bar. Welcome over, and welcome back here.

To live with the mist

 

@brittarnhild

For a long period I´ve had a layer of mist hanging over my head. I have struggled to blow it away, to clear the sight.

All I could focus on was what was hidden for me.........

.....until all of a sudden, one day......

......I focused somewhere else, realizing that beauty was there, right in front of my eyes.

While focusing on the mist, the dandelion became invisible.
But as soon as the yellow flowers managed to catch my attention,
the hidden mountain became part of the beauty.

Now I am not dreading the mist, I am curious to learn what lies behind. 

 

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I took these photos in Lofoten on Sunday, on our way from the church to the place where we had dinner. Now we are back in Trondheim and I am back working after my sick leave.

I am walking the path made ready for me, excited to learn more about what I´ll find inside the mist.

A Secret House in a Secret Garden

 

@brittarnhild

Somewhere along a backroad in Lofoten a tiny little house caught our attention. The first time we passed it almost by chance, and I said to Terje "You know, my best friend´s brother and his husband have a house in Lofoten, which is closed all winter. They will be back in a couple of weeks. I wonder if this house is theirs"

A couple of days later we were back. I had email my friend´s brother, and now I knew that we had found the correct place. 

The garden gate was closed, and a sign told us clearly not to trespass.
I climbed over, knowing deep in my heart that the secret house (and its owners) wished me welcome.

If you can say Love At First Sight between a secret house and a silver hair lady........This Was It!

While I walked around, we chatted, the house and I.
Mostly secrets, but I was told to tell the owners that the house is waiting for them to arrive. And instead of being impatient, it uses all its energy on showing more and more beauty.

I can´t quite see how it possibly can be any more beautiful.
But it will.

The house told me so itself, and I believe it!

So Trygve and Johnny, you really have something to look forward to.
Fjellkvein is waiting for the two of you.

While the rest of the garden is folding out its beauty, almost too impatient, the Aleksandre Rose has promised to wait till you are there :-)

And I will be back to see the new roof........ some time :-)