Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Fields of daffodils

@brittarnhild

Last summer we visited the small island Gossen/Aukra, four hours by car and ferry south west of Trondheim. It was then I heard about the fields of daffodils for the first time. "You should come back in spring" my friend told me when we drove past the church, "then these fields are painted yellow with thousands and thousands of daffodils. There and then I promised myself that I would go back in spring.

But when is spring in Norway, when exactly will the daffodils be in bloom?
The past weeks I have sent quite a few messages to my friend on the island, "how are the daffodils doing? do you still have snow? when will they bloom this year? And a couple of weeks ago I wrote again "we will be at our cabin fort the Easter holidays (our cabin is halfway between our home and the island) do you think the daffodils will be blooming then? 
My friend was sceptical, probably Easter time would be too early, and I told myself to wait for better luck next year. Our opportunity to see the flowers this year had to be Easter.

Then, some time last week, my friend wrote again, the snow has melted and with the warm, sunny weather we have now the daffodils will probably be in bloom next week.

All I had to do then was to convince Terje that six hours of driving home from the cabin was about the same as two hours driving, since we then got to see the daffodil fields, and also had an invitation from our friends to come and eat lunch with them. Terje is rarely hard to convince and yesterday we found ourselves on the island.

The story says that the very first daffodil bulbs were taken home from The Holy Island around 1720 by Alexander Borck who was a priest on the island then. Back home he planted the bulbs but was for a long time haunted by guilt. He had not been given the bulbs but had taken them, from Calvary, and now he doubted that God could forgive him. He struggled with his guilt for a long time until he finally prayed for forgiveness through one whole night. Finally dawn came, he looked out his studio window and was greeted by a field of yellow flowers.

He was forgiven, and for 300 years now people have been blessed by the yellow daffodil fields in spring.

 

Autumn break in the mountains

@brittarnhild

It is an old tradition with a week off from schools around the first or second week of October. It used to be called "potetferie" potato break, and my mother remembers when she was a girl she and her classmates were sent out to farms nearby the city, staying there for a week, helping with the potato harvest. 

We harvested our potato land a couple of weeks ago, so no need for that this week. Instead we took Leander with us and drove up in the mountains for a few days. Leander is in first grade now, so this is his very first potetferie, or autumn break as we call it nowadays.

We are staying at the cabin of Terje´s brother and his wife, a couple of hours south of Trondheim, close to the old mining city Røros.

Last night we went out with our headlights, which can be quite scary when you are five, soon to be six, and a little afraid of the dark. It turned out to be a very exciting experience though, and we all agree that this is something we will do again tonight. And of course repeating the coming back inside treat with hot chocolate and mashmallows.

Today it is snowing, the first snow of the year, and blowing hard. Not at all the hiking weather we had planned. But we have been out feeding the birds, exploring the area, and now we are waiting for the sun to come back, may be we can have a hike then :-)

The first two photos were taken this morning, when I was out to greet the day.
Two photos were taken last night, and the one of Terje with the birdhouse in daylight just before it started to snow.

 

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I am making sure to record filming for you to show in an upcoming episode in Britt Arnhild´s World.
Make sure you see this one, from our stay at the Obrestad Lighthouse.

 

 

To the Lighthouse

@brittarnhild

I am so happy to tell you that I have found a rhythm on my videos on YouTube which works very well for me, and hopefully for you as well. As you know I started my YouTube channel in English, then after some time, several years ago, turned the video updates into Norwegian. Then, a couple of years ago, I startet to do them both in Norwegian and in English. It worked for some time, but in the end I had to realise it was too much work for me.

The last few months have been kind of back and forth, partly because of travelling, partly because of a long sleep my computer had, partly because life has been too busy.

But now, finally, it seems like I have found the working way, the path less traveled so to say.
One week I will do a Norwegian episode, the next week one in English, then back to a Norwegian one, and so on. I have tried this for a few weeks now, and really like the way it turns out.

This week is the English week, and today I have posted a video I have been waiting to do for several weeks now, with footage from a trip Terje and I had down south to the village where he was born, combining it with an overnight stay in a lighthouse. I dod quite a lot of filming from the lighthouse and the amazing beaches nearby, and this is what I let you enjoy with me in the episode.

There is more in the episode as well, of course, as usual. I talk about several different knitting project and I read from one of Virginia Wollf´s books, not To the Lighthouse, but The Waves.

Enjoy:

 

 

A new life to my Mac Book Pro

@brittarnhild

My dear Mac died a few weeks back. I had to take it downtown to the Apple Store, and finally got it back yesterday.

 

The first thing I did this morning was to make a new (English) episode for YouTube, with all the amazing footage I had from our trip from our cabin, along the Atlantic Ocean Road down to the city of Molde.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

Welcome to the City of Roses

@brittarnhild

Molde, a small city in the northwestern coast of Norway. Molde, the City of Roses, a name it got more than a hundred years ago.
Even though we are north in Europe, the climate here, close to the Atlantic Ocean, is good for roses and also garden flowers in general.

History tells that every cruice ship which enters the city is given a bouquet of roses from the hotel directors. This continues even today.

You find flowers everywhere in the city, even up on the roof of the municipality hall. I took some footage from there, which I will add in an upcoming video.

From our cabin we take a ferry and then drive for 2-3 hours, over The Atlantic Ocean Road, as I showed you yesterday, and not long afterwards we are in The City of Roses. We went there two days ago and stayed overnight at Hotel Scandic Seilet (The Sail). Our room was up on the 7th floor. I love heights, the view was amazing.

We had a lovely walk Sunday afternoon, another one on Monday morning,

and before heading back for our cabin, we drove up in the hills to see the city from above. Wherever you are in Molde you can see the mountain skyline across the fjord. I am sure Molde is the city in the world with the most beautiful, scenic view.

 

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In my next English YouTube video I will take you along The Atlantic Ocean Road and also to Molde.
Meanwhile, why not watch an old episode, from October last year:

 

 

 

If I had a flower shop

@brittarnhild

If I had a flower shop I would cover the pavement outside my shop with rose petals.

Red, yellow, white, purple. Like smiles to greet the passerby.

If I had a flower shop.......

 

.............

I don't have a flower shop and I guess you don't have one either.
But we can always cover our paths with rose petalsRed, yellow, white, purple.
Like smiles to greet the passerby.......

 

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I took these images in Molde today. Molde is Norway´s  City of Roses
And quite a lot of other flowers.

 

Married to a road engineer

@brittarnhild

When you are out driving with a road engineer, you never know what is behind the next corner. We are at our cabin now, after spending some days driving up from the southern tip of Norway. It is possible to do the distance in one (long) day, with a few ferries along the road, but why do it in a hurry when you can do it at snails pace?

Well, part of, or rather most of, the driving was done along main roads, but as soon as we had the possibility to drive along one of the old historical roads.......well, we did!

Taking pictures from the car when we are driving is not easy, and of course we could not stop every fifth minute. But Terje is a good guy, when I say stop, he stops (sometimes.......) and when I say jump, he jumps (sometimes.......)

Of course it took so much longer to drive these historical roads, but it gave us some fantastic moments.
Can you imagine being a road engineer a hundred years ago. Not to say a simple road worker.

Imagine meeting a car here, as we did many times :-)
Well, one of the cars had to back and luckily, drivers in Norway, on these narrow roads, are all very polite. Often both we and the other car backed. 

 

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Thank you for visiting my YouTube-channel 
And if you have not done so yet, well, it is never too late :-)

 

 

 

Florø, as far west as you get.......almost

@brittarnhild

After a wonderful week in the south of Norway, with our youngest son and his family, we are heading north again, up along the western part of Norway. This afternoon, just as the sun left us and the sky turned grey, we arrived in Florø, the westernmost town in Norway. We have travelled quite a lot up and down Western Norway, but we can't quite agree if we have been here before. If we have, it was back in 1983, when our oldest son Torgeir was a baby. We do agree that we were in the neighbourhood then :-)

We did a downtown walk before dinner, enjoying some of the many sculptures around. Like this grandma. 
You see two grandmas , you say? 
Well, you are right. I have titled the picture "when grandmas meet" :-)

Florø was built on the rich herring fishing. Our hotel is situated right on the harbour, with busy traffic, but I am not sure how many fishing boats there are nowadays.

Of course I had herring for dinner.
And shrimps.

This cute bicycle, covered in colourful crochet, was situated outside the tourist information.

The yellow building is our hotel.

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Have you not seen my most recent video yet?
Here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

Serendipity took us to The Old Rectory Garden

@brittarnhild

We are in Lillehammer now, after leaving our home in Trondheim this morning. Lillehammer holds some very good memories for us, our second son, Øystein was born here in 1984. 10 years later we came here to watch the winter Olympics.

It is less then 6 hours to drive here from Trondheim, so we had made plans for a couple of very nice stops along the road. We made the stops and had just about an hour left to our hotel when I got a message on my phone from my best friend. "We are in Ringebu now, visiting the most adorable rectory garden you can imagine. I wish you were here."
I hardly finished reading the message before I cried out to Terje. "Terje, stop the car, we passed Ringebu three minutes ago, now you need to turn the car and drive back, we are going to visit a garden!"

Lucky me, I have a husband who jumps when I say jump, so a few minutes later we found ourselves in the rectory garden, where our friends greeted us :-)

Pure serendipity.
No more.
No less.

The garden.
More than 150 different historical roses.
Perennials.
Herbs.
Fruit trees.
View.
Sun.
Bees.

And in the rectory, and also inside all the other different houses on the old farm, were exhibitions with art by a wide range of Norwegian artists.

We have had a very warm summer so far here in Norway, and most of then roses were already gone.
I still enjoyed it all, and when we left Terje said, "You know Britt Arnhild, we can always come back here another year, when all the roses are in full bloom.

 

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 :-)