Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

The Iron Rose Memorial, and A Sea of Poppies

@brittarnhild

The main reason for travelling these days was to meet up with a small group of old colleagues from dioceses in Norway. Which I did today, in Oslo. We had all day together, ending with an early dinner, and after saying goodbye I had time for a walk in Oslo.

Outside the Oslo Cathedral I found the Iron Rose Memorial, with this text:

On 22 July 2011, an act of terrorism
ended the lives of 77 persons in
Norway. In a spontaneous act of 
solidarity, thousands of people laid
down roses in front of Oslo
Cathedral. Inspired by this sea of
roses, artists Tobbe Malm and Tone
Karlsrud initiated a project in which
smiths from all over the world,
survivors and others affected by the
attack were invited to forge roses
from iron 

 

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Back in September 2014 I visited the Sea of Poppies outside Tower of London.
Here is my post from then:

If you visit Tower of London this autumn you will find a sea of glass poppies flowing out from the tower, filling the lawn. Making it look like blood.

Blood from 888.246 men, many of them pure boys only, who died during WWI.

WWI started in November 1914, and the poppies are Tower of London´s way to remember.

Volunteers are putting up the glass poppies, the last one will be up on November 11th, 100 years after the bloody war started.

I had seen photos both on facebook and on instagram showing these poppies before coming to London. Still I was unprepared of my own reaction. Suddenly I found myself crying. Crying for all the lost lives. For all the bloody wars.

You can read more about Tower of London´s Poppie Project here.

 

 

 

 

Old and new in Lillestrøm

@brittarnhild

I am visiting my old friend Kari for a couple of days and today we did a walk in the town where she lives, Lillestrøm, just east of Oslo.

Unfortunately the day was wet and grey, still we had a great time together, stopping for coffee twice, for lunch once.

I have visited Kari many times over the years,

but never really visited the town before.

What fascinated me today was the mixture of old and now. 
Not elegant, not beautiful, but still.......well, charming.

 

The Hall of the Mountain King

@brittarnhild

I took the train from Trondheim and almost down to Oslo today. A 7 hours ride, passing over the Dovre Mountain. When Edvard Grieg wrote the music for Henrik Ibsen´s Peer Gynt, he found inspiration in the nature here in Norway. The Norwegian name of the composition  The Hall of the Mountain King is I Dovregubbens hall. Dovre is the name of the mountain, a gubbe is some kind of an old man, or as in Ibsens play, a n old troll. I love the Dovre mountain area. Usually when I go there it is by car, once, when I was young and fit, I bicycled over, but today I went by train.

I had been looking forward to enjoy the beautiful scenery today, but everything was gray with rain and very low clouds. I did not even remember to open my camera for a photo, not until I was far over on the other side, where the train had a short stop at Otta. Well, you can see the clouds here and even some fresh snow.

I am staying with a friend  from High School for a couple of days. We are having such a good time, talking so much, I have not even remembered to open my camera here either.......so far.

But who knows, may be there will be pictures and a new post tomorrow.

 

A Friday hike

@brittarnhild

I think I have mentioned it before, Terje and I are planning to do 100 different 5kms + hikes this year. We started on January 1st, and will continue till New Year's Eve. We have been in doubt this fall, will we really reach the goal, but we have never actually given up, and today, on our way to a weekend at the cabin, we stopped in a small town along the way to do hike no 84.

The town, Orkanger, is only about a 40 minutes drive from our home, and we often stop there for grocery shopping, for a cup of coffee or other errands, and back in early spring/late winter we did a hike along the river there. But we have never actually walked to where we did today, the old wooden house town.

The wooden house town has a long history, and along the way we passed several signposts telling the history. 
I love the colours of these old houses, and also the way they are restored to keep the old look.

This house is not among the old houses, more like a vintage one I would say :-)
The colour is very uncommon for a Norwegian wooden house, and I love it.

A cathedral made with waste plastic from the oceans

@brittarnhild

We are on our way back home from two fantastic weeks in Sweden and Denmark. We have spent the night in Helsingborg in Sweden and will be driving all day up to Trondheim. But somewhere along the way we need a proper lunch stop, and the very best place to do that is in Fredrikstad just over the Norwegian border. "Why Fredrikstad?" you wonder. You see, there they have built a cathedral, or more correct, they are building a cathedral, and the material they use is waste plastic from the oceans. A hope cathedral

I have heard about this project for many years, and today I finally got to see it with my own eyes.
To visit the site.
To go inside.
To pray.

         

Hope Cathedral.
An interfaith cooperation on
environment, creation and sustainability

You can read more about the project here

 

 

Opera Night

@brittarnhild

Friday Night was the night for our babysitting, Saturday night was our night off, and we had tickets for the opera. Not Swan Lake (which is a ballet by the way) as you might be led to believe from this picture, lol, but Georges Bizet Carmen. May be to most well known by all operas.

The National Opera and Ballet in Oslo is beautiful, situated down by the Oslo fjord. Terje and I have been to one opera performance here before, years ago, so coming here again was a very special treat for us.

We started with dinner in the opera restaurant, and then walking right into the concert hall and three hours with dramatic music, love and death.

With little Vida to the Royal Castle

@brittarnhild

Our little princess walking though the rainbow, into the Princess Ingrid Alexandra Sculpture Park.

It took us about 20 minutes to walk from our AirB&B down to the Royal Castle and its surrounding park. Oslo has had a problem with droughts this spring, with prohibitions concerning watering gardens and parks. But, lucky for us, and for everybody else I guess, rain came a few days ago. Still no water in the fountains around the city, but the parks are green and flowering.

Here is a huge rhododendron in front of a statue of Camilla Collett, an early female Norwegian author.

Look at the beauty of this rhododendron. I wish I had one in our garden, but as we live further up north I doubt it would give much flowers there.

The first image in this post was from Princess Ingrid Alexandra's Sculpture Garden. The rest from The Queens Garden, just behind the castle.

 

A few days in Oslo

@brittarnhild

We are in Oslo for a few days together with our son Øystein, his wife to be (in a month) Silje, and their little adorable Vida, our granddaughter. Øystein and Silje are going to a wedding tomorrow, so we are here mainly to babysit Vida, but also find time in between for long walks, coffee and exploring more of the city.

After we arrived today Terje and I had a long hike, or rather walk. I love hiking in nature, but I also love urban hikes walks where you can stop for lunch, for coffee, for selfies, or just to sit down and watch life.

We stay in a beautiful AirB&B flat, not far from Oslo's great food court. My daughter in law and I walked over there this afternoon to buy dinner for all of us, ending up with dishes from all over the world.

The weeding is tomorrow night, which means that Terje and I will be homebound with Vida. I think I will go back to the food court for cheese, salamis and ham, olives and a million other goodies, making us a tapas night.

 

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.