Six Scandinavian Satisfying Situations

Lofoten Islands - go there

I didn't quite round up our final days in Norway - shit happened dawgs, and it's a tad on the tricky side to punch a keyboard when your drive sharing your way around 300 bloody fjords.  Don't even talk to me about tunnels, they can get fucked too, as can ferries.  When it wasn't my turn behind the wheel I took up knitting.  As you can imagine my woollen green scarf is really coming in handy in Thailand at present (as if I've finished it though - old khaki green wouldn't even make it round a teddy bear's neck right now).

Home sweet Home

Final Norwegian highlights included;

1. Staying in a Fisherman's cottage in the Lofoten Islands.

They are all the go here.  You have to rent a Fisherman’s house - all the cool kids are doing it.  They have them sticking out over the water, and inside they’re all wooden and cosy.  Vali and Cordi really took a fisherman's life to heart, and became obsessed with fishing.  They basically spent every spare second out on the dock.  Things didn’t go well initially – there were snagged lines, broken rods, seaweed clumps and a starfish.  But at last a little fishy was caught.  And that's when reality crept in.  The poor little bastard bled and flapped, and my daughter screamed and cried.  When we finally got the hook out of it’s mouth and then tossed the poor little flapper back in, it had snuffed it.  It floated on top of the water while we stood in the pools of blood all over the dock.  We all hoped for a resurrection, but it wasn’t to be.   My daughter watched it float for a while and then decided that fishing was cruel and that she was now a vegetarian.  She didn’t last a meal. 

"Is it dead Mum?" "No, I think it's just relaxing"

Come to me, my one true love...

2. Eating my body weight in liquorice daily;

This was the main highlight of the trip hands down.  God damn it the Scandi's have a large array of liquorice, and I just worked my way through it all. Sweet; salty; long sticks filled with white, pink and orange sugar stuff; allsorts; chocolate - covered and stuffed; soft; hard; chewy toffee.....you name it. My favourite variety ended up being some mini liquorice balls dipped in milk chocolate and rolled in some liquorice powder.  This variety was from Iceland.  I am planning a trip purely to go buy a crate of them. Jesus I love lickie.
“Liquorice fucks your brain up”  my husband informed me on about day 10 of non stop feasting.  “What??” I replied with black juice spilling out my mouth.  It was true.  Apparently it really does bad things everyone. Brain swelling, general puffiness, all things bad.  I couldn’t believe it.  Not only does the world take away booze, drugs, ciggies and coffees but now LICKIE?????  I’m basically wounded.  Apparently any over 40's shouldn’t have more than 2 ounces of it a day (that’s only 56 grams - I'd been having about half a kilo a day).  That knowledge was a horrible reality so I basically pretended that I never heard the rumours and continued on with my feast.  Even though I’ve been looking a bit puffy around the eyes and my teeth remain tinged black, I'm sure it's only temporary....I’ll be fine.

It's worth it, it really is

Oh Ragner, I'm lost in those eyes

3. All Most Things Viking  

I'd had a Viking fascination since Miss Clements set the entire grade four class a special Viking project over a couple of weeks, which culminated in a feast day and some special outfits.  My Viking name was Ingrid, and I took it all pretty seriously. I never quite believed they were a bunch of pillaging rapists though (not my flesh and blood, my tribesmen), and low and behold this was the case.  They were farmers god damn it; farmers with a 300 year period of sea faring which basically set the tone for their entire history. Give a fuck about the specifics though - the show Vikings is awesome, and getting an Aussie ex St Kilda player and former underwear model (apparently he was the inspiration for Smith Jerry from SITC - go and immediately google "Travis Fimmel underwear model' - you will not be sorry) to play the main character makes it all the more pleasant.  All the same, across Norway when trying to lure tourists to come and pay 30 bucks to look at their dug up "Viking" hall they emphasise heavily on the 'Viking' part - well, it certainly packs a bit more punch than "Farmers" Hall.   The display I dragged the family to looked good, until you realised that all they found were a couple of beads, and a few rocks.  Yes, they were mounted in giant glass cases in an impressive room with seal skins on the wall and a special fictional movie about the inhabitants - but beads are beads dudes.

Val slaying a sea monster was more convincing than the Viking display

This was not a real throne,  I repeat NOT a real throne

I was so excited abut the giant hall - the last stage of the tour .... until I realised it had been reconstructed - don't you hate that?  It happens all the time - what is real anymore, what is REAL???? There were all these dudes doing special craft work wearing animal skin outfits inside.  I talked to one of them doing some weaving.  He was Scottish, and he didn’t have dreads or beads in his beard, and was far, far too clean.  I was like “Get into character dude, you’re meant to be a warrior, stop prancing around with your loom for fucks sake and axe something”.  He just kept on looming. The highlight of the day was a pig lying on the ground outside.

Yep, this was as good as it got 

4.  Bergen and Trondheim

See where I'm going with the toilet seat thing?

While  a small part of me is tempted to label Bergen a rainy hole, I cannot really be so cruel.  Yes, it rains here a lot, a LOT, and most of the locals I chatted with expressed a kind of despair at living all year round in the soaking wet - in particular 2 very drunk 50 year old women with a penchant for plastic surgery, whom we met at a late night burger place when we got lost and were trying to look for food.  But it is really beautiful - in particular, the old part of the city is quainter than a country grandmother's crocheted toilet seat cover.  What also made us love Bergen (at least at first) was that our Air BnB for the two nights we stayed there was a boat docked at the marina. That was a novelty.  The marina is definitely where I like my boats.  For example, just before we left Israel, I had the idea of celebrating a friends birthday on a sailing boat.  We'd only been battling the waves for about 15 mins when I lost my shit and begged to go back to the port - it's true the large joint we blew before we dropped anchor didn't help my insistence that we were about to sink.  But still, it was undoubtedly a 'roll around' situation and I just can't have it.  If the sea isn't flat, I'm not interested. Two stationary nights on the boat in Bergen was also enough for moi - it was fun and everything but boats just get grimy and grotty.  I think I like the idea of it more than the reality.

Doing it for the kids, yeah

Someone else is boat-suss

Taken with my own lily white hands

Trondheim was a really cool city.  Despite being the capital of Norway during the Viking Age over a thousand years ago, in comparison to Bergen, this city felt young and vibrant.  Although, to be fair on Bergen, it is a university town and we were there during Orientation Week.  Our first sight of Trondheim was basically a human sized chicken, 8 people chained together, drunk teenagers floating in rubber dinghies down the river, and a large group of people taking a swim in the nuddie.  My husband got lost on a jog one evening and ended up in the middle of a toga party.  He said out of a thousand people he was the only one not wearing a toga - to be expected really, he was out jogging.

'There's grown ups in the nuuuudddeeeee aaahhhhhh'

There's my husband in the top left corner

 5. Geiranger Fjord

As good as it looks

As far as fjords go, this is the cream of the fjord crop.  I'm not sure how I rate on fjord expertise to be honest, but I declare this reasonably pronounceable fjord the Shit Hottest Fjord Ever.  Take another fucken a delightful ferry ride with a giant bunch of tourists straight up the guts of 'er and prepare to be marvelled.  The only downer was lack of porpoises.  I'd heard porpoise rumours and I was all set to be porpoised.  There were no porpoises.  Even leading the kids in a chant of 'Porpoise Porpoise Porpoise" failed to materialise anything but death stares from those tourists in close proximity.  Maybe they were also spewing about the porpoise free experience. Once you start a chant though it's hard to quell the beast.  I had to send the girls inside along with promises that I would come running if porpoises were spotted.  Of course I wouldn't have - I would have been too busy looking at the porpoises and taking porpoise photos for Instagram.  Perhaps then it was karma for my pre-meditated porpoise selfishness.

Reality was way better

From above

6. Shopping in Stockholm

Oooooh yeah

I wanted a piece of that Scandinavian style, and by god I was going to get it.  Unfortunately it don't come cheap.  I deliberately blocked out the currency exchange rate when it came time to hand over the card, and it wasn't until the statement rolled in that I had a little dry retch.  I tried to shop in H&M thinking that the flagship store was going to be way better than the shit they try and peddle in H&M in Israel.  Seriously, I don't know what they're playing at there but they are only inches away of having all the stock in the Tel Aviv stores in a big pile in the middle of the floor and having the customers just wade in and hope for the best.  Sadly though the Stockholm flagship store didn't do it for me.  H&M really lost it's appeal after I saw that documentary The True Cost - that was one of the most depressing things I have ever seen.  I'm not going to go into too much detail but the worst bit was the camera cutting between scenes of human misery and despair in Bangladesh and Cambodia and switching to footage of fat American women fighting over bags and knitwear in the Black Friday sales.  H&M looked pretty guilty, but they weren't the only ones.  The solution =  buy nothing ever again, or check the labels and prepare to spend a bundle.  I was heading for  the flagship Acne Studios store.  And not just because Acne is fucking awesome but because the main store is inside an old bank building.  And it's not just any old bank building, it's the bank where the robbery took place that was responsible for the capture-bonding incident forever known as "The Stockholm Syndrome". This syndrome is a psychological disorder, where captives show positive feelings toward their captors. In this first instance, several bank employees were kept hostage in the bank vaults and became emotionally attached to their captors, not wanting to be rescued.  Anyway the bank vaults are still there in the store.....they are now the jeans rack.

Vaults

In conclusion......Scandinavia (especially Norway) was great.  It was really really great.   If I can cover the down points I would have to mention firstly the food.  Motherfuckers are obsessed with burgers and hot dogs.  Every single bloody place in the entire region - whether the fanciest restaurant in town or the shittiest ferry slops shop, all had either a burger or a hotdog up for eats, and most of the time they had both.  Also, enough with the meatballs for fucks sake - branch out a little.  The seafood is good, but to be honest I've had better.   My second criticism, which is also incidentally a tip - I would be saving hard if you intend to spend a chunk of time here.  She ain't cheap.  Apart from that - enjoy, because it's bloody awesome in this part of the world.  We'll be back for the Northern Lights this winter - and they better not pull a Geiranger Fjord porpoise on me.

Looking for a porpoise in life