Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

A Secret Garden

@brittarnhild

For more than 35 years I've spent part of every summer at Moi, a little village south west in Norway. Every summer I have passed the old, white painted house, knowing that behind the walls five sisters were living. All five are dead now, the house is sold and for the first time I was able to see behind the scenes. Both the house and the garden are under renovation, the house and its four floors a treasure. But the most charming gem is the garden behind the house, a garden which you cannot see from the street.

An old green house. A dam with a single yellow waterlily, huge yellow alchemillas.

A real secret garden, for sure!

 

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In my blog world today:

Britt Arnhilds dagboksblader, my online journal

A new episode in my vlog:

 

 

Terjes first day at school

@brittarnhild

We have been south in Norway for a few days, to Moi, the village where Terje was born. The village where we used to spend every summer for almost 40 years. Now, with both my parents in law death, we seldom go back, but this weekend a birthday celebration in the area gave us the excuse we needed.

Terje´s brother and his wife still live at Moi. We stayed with them, and the first morning, when we were enjoying the fresh morning out on the terrace, Terje pointed down to the school. "Look at that old  building" he said, "it was built in 1963, the year I started school. I still remember my first day here. We were all treated with saft (homemade fruit juice) and skoleboller ( a traditional Norwegian pastry with icing sugar, coconut and egg cream, skoleboller means school buns :-))

It took us about 90 minutes to drive back to Moi from the party we were at. In the middle of the Nordic night which never gets dark. The perfect time to talk about childhood memories.

 

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Today in my blog world:

Britt Arnhilds dagboksblader, my online journal

Britt Arnhilds naturdagbok, my nature notes

 

 

A weekend filled with memories

@brittarnhild

We have been back to Moi, the small village south west in Norway, where Terje was born, for the weekend. A sister in law´s 60th birthday gave us the perfect reason to fly down for a few days.

Father in law´s house, the place where Terje was born and lived till he moved to Trondheim, the place we have spent our summers for almost 40 years, is sold now. We passed it, we took photos for our kids to see. But we never wanted to go inside to see what the new owners are doing with it.

Some doors are meant to be closed. Some frames are meant to be empty........we have our own paintings which we will bring with us. Good memories, shaping our lives.

A visit to the churchyard.......

.......and outside the vicarage I found a perfect spot for some knitting photos :-)

 

To say goodbye

@brittarnhild

We are back at Moi, my husband´s birthplace, to say goodbye to his childhood home for a last time. My mother in law died 10 years ago. My father in law continued to live in the house he had built with his own hands about 60 years ago until last summer. Then he moved into a care home, and we started the task of emptying the house. In December my father in law died, 91 years old (he would have been 92 in two days today), and our laborious work continued.

The work is finished now, and this weekend Terje and I are down here with a huge, rented car, to bring home all the stuff we want to keep in the family.

I have been walking around with my camera, saying good bye to the house, to my parents in law, to almost 40 years of my life, my own way.

Behind this wall my father in law had his carpentry workshop. So many millions of hours of labour of love have been spent there.

Handwritten notes still hanging in the porch wall. My father in law´s handwriting. Notes ready to be glued on the door when he went out in the garden or down in his basement workshop to work. "In the garden" "I am in the basement"

 

The vegetable garden. Last summer father in law grew pumkins here and made dozens of kilos of pumpkin marmelade and pickled pumpkins.

The old apple tree.
One year, when our boys were about 10, they flew down to their grandparents alone and spent a week with them. I let them bring my camera, looking forward to see what photos they would take, and laughed after the film was developed. The boys played hide and seek in the garden, took photos of each other when they hid and wanted me to seek for then in the photos :-) Many of the photos showed this tree, sometimes I saw one of the boys in there, some times not.

Oh, such wonderful memories.

The top window is the window to the bedroom which has been mine ever since I came here at Easter 1979, deeply in love with the oldest son of the house.

The love is just as deep, even deeper today. And my heart is filled with memories.

 

Soon history

@brittarnhild

For our family the view on the picture is soon history. The photo was taken this summer from my father in laws terrace. Some weeks ago grandpa Sverre moved into a care home and the house which he built in 1955 is now empty. Well, empty for people living there. The house is still filled with stuff and memories gathered though almost 60 years, and these days we are gathered to go through it all. Throw away, give away to a charity shop, take care of.

Days filled with hard work. Bittersweet days. But also days filled with a lot of laughter and memories.

 

Terje has one brother. He lives here at Moi with his wife and their dog Winnie. Their three children, a son in law and a granddaughter live a couple of hours away and will come tonight. Our four kids are all living in Trondheim, and only Øystein is able to come down for the weekend. The rest are together with us in their thoughts.

Four days to sort through 60 years of life is not an easy task. I don´t like changes. I want everything to be like it has always been. I was 21 the first time I came to Moi. Next summer the house, this view will not be ours any more.

 

On the hottest day

@brittarnhild

It was one of the hottest days this summer. On our list of plans we had written "hike to the Gursli mines", so we filled a backpack with water bottles and went along. 

I have heard about these old mines for years, but never been there. Now I could read the signs about the active mining period a hundred years ago. when at the most, 120 men worked here. The molybdenum was important for steel, and used during WWI especially. 

The mines was our goal for the day, and to come there we had to walk through the heaths. The nature here in this part of Norway, heia as we say in Norway, the heaths in English, is among the most beautiful nature I know. And at its very best now with the heather in full bloom.

When we hiked the Pulpit Rock the other day we were walking almost in a queue. Up to the mines we were alone. For the hours we were hiking we saw no other people.

 There were hundreds thousands of butterflies though. I wanted to take photos of them, but they were too fast for me, always busy living their lives as they are meant to life, to sparkle the nature with beauty.

Yes, we reached the mines in the end, we sat down and had our lunch, bread, eggs and water, and when we arrived home on this hottest day of summer, father in law had pork rib ready for dinner. Oh my, heavy Christmas dinner in July! We managed to postpone dinner for a few hours, and when we finally sat down the sun had set (behind the hills) and actually the meal tasted great.

 

 

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By the way, if you want a postc ard I need your address. Please email me at brittarnhild att gmail dot com

 

Ready for new adventures

@brittarnhild

The young ones have left now. Marta and Martin flew back to Trondheim, Ingrid went to Stavanger to visit a friend. Five days all of us together (well, Torgeir is in Dublin, Øystein in Las Vegas and Marius in Trondheim, working), five days passing like a blink of an eye. Nothing stops 91 years old grandpa to go with us, wherever we go, his special vehicle can climb mountains.....almost. Of course he could not go with us to Pulpit Rock, but when we take our afternoon coffee with us steep up to the hills behind the house, he "walks" along.

 

Ingrid, Marta and Martin have gone, and a lot of laughter, fun and noise went along with them.

Our summer vacation of 2014 is still a toddler though and last night we sat out on the veranda making plans for days to come.

 

How do you spend your summer?
Do you write any postcards?
Do you want a postcard from Norway?

New Shoes

text and images britt-arnhild

Norway is an expensive country. Prizes are high and wages are high, and because of the high wages more and more of our traditional industry has moved out of the country.

When farfar was a young man he worked as a carpenter. There were many small furniture factories at Moi, and for years they all flourished.

Now they are all gone. What is left is NorDan, a factory making windows.

 

There is one exception though, 
Eik Treskofabrikk, a small privat owned factory where they make clogs.

 

Farfar buys materials from Eik Treskofabrikk for his carpentry, and one day we drove up to Eik to buy Finish birch for a table farfar is going to make for Ingrid and Marius (90 years of age and a recent stay in hospital never stop my father in law.......)

Terje and I drove hime there.
I fell for the place, the owner understood my fascination and showed me around, allowing me to use my camera......

.....and some time later I left, as the proud owner of new clogs with real cow skin! 

Curiosity got them.......

text and images britt-arnhild

The big party is over, Easter break is here and the days are streched out like a white canvas ready to be painted. Walking and hiking is on top of my list this Easter (so is letters written by hand, listening to farfar´s tales, teaching Ingrid to knit with many colours........and a few other things)

I had a couple of letters ready to be mailed yeasterday afternoon, one to India, another to Alaska, and as I was not sure that I had the correct stamps, I decided to walk up to the post office. A 20 minute´s walk, and when I walked back home I took a detour down to where the river runs out into the lake.

To look for the swans which we had seen through the binoculars through farfar´s window earlier in the day.

I saw the swans, but they were a bit too far away for the small pocket camera I had brought. The ducks were there though, coming towards me, hoping I had bread crumbs for them. Which I had not. Unfortunately.

Without bread they turned their backs.......

....but curiosity, it did kill the cat, but it also got the ducks back to the silver haired lady with the camera.

 

This duck dancing was last night. Now a new morning has risen, the sun rose from behind the mountains and hit the livingroom windiw at 7.19am, a blackbird sits on the veranda fence, looking in to me, singing.

Have a lovely day.

 

The old white wooden church

text and images britt-arnhild

Like everywhere else in Norway, the tiny little village of Moi, south west in Norway, has its own church. A typical whitepainted, wooden church, built on the edge of the lake. The church is surrounded by the graveyard park where we regularly visit the graves of Terje´s little brother who died when still a toddler, and mother in law who died some years ago.

People in Norway love their churches.
Untill a year ago The Church of Norway was a state church. This is changing, in a slow, important process. Still a great majority of the Norwegians are members, though fewer and fewer are to be seen in church during Sunday mass.

The church is a place for joy and for sorrow.
A place for art in words, music and colours.
A place for worship and prayers.

But most of all the church is
The House of God.