Ice on the Run

I was at the school today when, just after 1PM, they came to tell the kids to put on their boots. The river was getting so high with snow and ice, we might have to evacuate.

An hour later the principal came and said they were closing the school early. Some kids were supposed to stay till 4.30, but two hours before that everyone was out.

The seven year olds said they were "all tingly" and had "butterflies in my tummy" - quite understandably. But then the teachers started getting worried, bringing their coats, fetching their car keys - just in case. Maybe not too strange, considering what the river looked like at the moment.

It might be wrong to say so, but I find the whole situation rather... entertaining. As long as no one gets hurt and nothing gets damaged there's absolutely nothing wrong with a little action. Finally something's happening!

And I definitely think it's better for the kids to think of this as "exciting", rather than "scary" - nothing good is going to come of that. As the seven year olds and I agreed - nothing truly bad really happens in Norway; no floods, no hurricanes, no earthquakes.

And nothing at all ever happens here!

(...as if just to prove that last point; as soon as I'd written it the danger was announced to be over, and it's business as usual tomorrow)

Ice

Imagine a super slippery ice rink. Then imagine two inches of water covering the ice. Then dump a crapload of slush on top of that. What do you get? Our roads.

Well, the walkways and sidewalks. Where people walk. Not the main roads. Wouldn't want the cars to get wet.


I'm not sure if I miss the cold or the snow the most...

The sun is back!

It disappears for four months each winter and now it's finally back.

Just to dispel a myth, and answer the inevitable question - no, this does not mean it's dark four months a year in Norway. It simply means where I'm from, we don't get direct sunlight between mid October and February 24th.

The reason for this is Norway's mountains. When the sun is at it's lowest point in the sky (winter solstice - December 21st for the northern hemisphere), due to the tilt of the earth's axis the rays have no chance of making it over the mountains and down into the valley between them.

It looks something like this (no laughing please, I only have a tiny eee and a sucky touchpad with malfunctioning buttons);


This is more or less what the valley looks like, lake in the bottom, our house the red one on the left. The yellow sun is the "summer sun" - it's high in the sky (the northern part of the earth is tilting towards it), the orange "winter sun" is lower in the sky.

Clearly, no direct sunlight does not mean it's pitch black outside, which a lot of people seem to think - although when the sun is at its lowest point we only have light for around five-six hours a day. Basically, we're in the shade for one third of the year - it's dark and it's cold.


Which hopefully explains (in the simplest way possible) why I'm so the glad the sun "is back" - it means a little warmth, a little light, and only a little more time until spring comes!

Equinox

Today, September 22nd, the day and the night are just as long all over the globe. From tomorrow on, it'll get darker in the north and lighter in the south. In the north of Europe, Canada and areas along those latitudes, it will get dark half an hour earlier in the evening in just two weeks. And it will stay dark for half an hour longer every morning.

Us Norwegians have a long, dark winter ahead of us. Where I live, in this area of our little town, the sun disappears completely for almost four months. We'll see it on the mountaintops but it won't reach us between November and February. It'll be cold and dark.. very dark.


But... on the bright side (and I could sure use a bright side now), we'll have snow making our world soft and white. We'll see the millions of stars again, and hopefully the aurora borealis; the northern lights, making the sky seem alive. We'll have scarves and mittens, and soon it will be Christmas. We'll have candles again.

Winter can be beautiful.. it just lasts way too long.

Gone skiing

We went skiing yesterday, it was even sunny for a bit before the clouds came.

It's a nice place, we go around a few seters where a lot of people have cabins. When the snow is gone we go hiking there instead.

A few years ago I put some more photos on here and I seem to have written that I hated skiing. Which I kind of did.

It's not too bad really, it's fun when your skis are good (which mine were for the first time ever) and the weather is nice.

I guess I really am Norwegian after all...

Home for Easter

I came home to my little town for Easter this weekend, and I've spent the last few days with my family, being lazy and not doing much.

We're going skiing in a couple days and my brother should be here that evening, he doesn't like skiing (in fact, I don't think he likes moving at all..).

We've been in the woods and chopped some wood, the kitten missed me and the lil pig bit me.

Hopefully my sis and I will be able to trick the family into playing some board games - Christmas and Easter they can't refuse, and we never give up until we've won at Pictionary!
(I know I know, I'm such a dork...)

View from a bridge

We were out skiing, which for me only happens once a year, when we came across this. The picture is taken same place as these three years ago. We always go there during Easter, but I've never noticed this before.

Giant Snowman

Hornindal is in the news for the second time in two days.
Today, this guy is the reason




It's five meters tall and was made by Ingeborg (6), Silje (4) and their father Olav Helge Svår. He says they made the balls first, then hoisted them up on top of each other with a tractor.

The eyes are two logs of wood, the mouth a part of an old warning triangle, and the nose is, naturally, a carrot - put in place by the father who was lifted up by his wife and the tractor.


We can see it from our living room window and it does seem to have shrunk a bit the last days - even though we did have -13 degrees Celsius last night.

It has to be said this one is quite a contrast from the little snowmen in Bergen last year.

Winter came to Bergen

It only lasted 12 hours - it snowed all day and rained all night - but it was gorgeous. I can't believe only a few years ago every day used to be like this.

Snowdrops

I knew it!

The past years I've kept thinking "they're so early this year, it must be earlier than last year". But, as it turns out, they've come around the same time, mid-february, since the first time I saw them in 2005.

As it turns out, they do come earlier than before - three weeks in three years.

This is mostly because we no longer have snow. There's no snow in Bergen during winter.

Norway, of all places, has lost its snow!

It's madness I tell you! Madness!

Times of year

A guy I used to know showed me this picture and told me how he loved it - and how he looked forward to going to Trondheim, where the picture was taken.

A year later I found myself back in town and I wondered what it would look like during summer. Not quite so magical, but I guess magic is something which exist in our hearts and is hard to recreate with a camera.

"Solidarity with the snowmen!"

"We're becoming extinct!
Please help us!"




"Global warming is distroying us!
Give us a future!"

Night's here when the snow comes

It's white out. It's almost still in the air, falling down between the street lights. So soft you almost can't see it, so soft you almost can't feel it. It's careful snow, it's got all the time in the world. Tiny, fluffy snowflakes, once caught they will melt before they are seen. The world will be clean tomorrow, for a few hours while the people are sleeping and the cars are quiet. This is peaceful snow. Peaceful snow in a troubled world. Tomorrow they will fight again.

Let's have some snow!

Is this Winter?

It's snowing. Snowflakes touching my window. Landing gently on the ground. The city lighting up the night and snow filled clouds, coming in waves. Resting gently on the leaves still left on the trees. You never want it to stop. Snowflakes land where the wind blows them, and they stay until a rain drop comes. Landing in a snowflake's embrace, joined together for a second. The rain drop remains but the snowflake is lost for ever.


I love snow. I just don't like it when the rain comes and the world is covered with five inches of slush. I could never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined it would snow today. Yesterday there was a storm again, it was kinda bad, no wonder when they name after a nasty god. There was one like it two months ago which left two women dead after a mud slide destroyed several houses. This time one man was killed by another one. Bergen seems a dangerous place this time of year.

When I got out yesterday morning the street was a river and the cars were boats. I had a lecture and when I got back after a 15 minute walk, all my clothes were wet. Down my (waterproof) boots, my pants were so heavy when I got them off I don't understand how I could have walked with them on, even my underwear was soaked. I got out of it all and crawled into bed, reading anthropology for my exam next Monday.

The wind was incredible too. Strange to just stand and watch something like that, even if it's just a little wind. I saw it come towards me from the north, crashing into the wall and trees 20 meters in front of me, then changing directions to the west where I was standing watching it. I just stopped on top of some stairs and saw it come. It was strong enough to twist all the metal in my umbrella, not just turn it inside out but really bend it so hard I can't get it straight no matter what I do. It nearly swept me off my feet, much like I would have been if I had had to cross the street outside my building - the current in the road would have been strong enough to wash me away.

Mother nature sure is having a ball this year, the whole world over. She just gotta stop killing people. We seem to do that just fine on our own.

Now it has come.

It is mainly about the light.
It comes late,
but now it has come.


- The Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson
talking about depression and alcoholism in winter

Ice outside

I wanted to play basketball today. But there's so much ice on the ground in the driveway, I decided to go out and see what I could do to get it off. No one seemed to like my idea of putting hot water on there; the temperature drops well below the freezing point in the evening and therefore it wouldn't have been a good idea. I rounded up my siblings and we went into the garage to find whatever would get ice off stone.

The ice was really thick some places and thin others; we got some off but when the sun went down it didn't seem like it had worked at all. Not like we thought we'd get it all off in just an hour or so, I just get these ideas sometimes... My sister and I used brooms to get the snow and ice away so we could see how much was left. We found a footprint, a weird one, my sister went into the hallway and threw shoes outside, I checked to see if they were the ones that had made the weird print. We felt like archeologists for a few minutes - archeologists trying to hit each other with shoes. We never did find the right ones though...

Just three more days till spring is supposed to be here - can you believe it? It's March! The winter is almost over. Spring... flowers, leaves, grass! I can't wait!

It's amazing how tired just being here makes me - I didn't get up until lunch time today, although I spent quite a while in bed between waking up and getting up, just dreaming... It's not even midnight now and I'm exhausted! Maybe it's because I can't sit still when I'm here.

I should be reading, two months till exams, but I just can't concentrate - for some reason my mind is anywhere but here. If you want to be with someone but the distance between you makes it impossible, it's always good to have dreams.

Snowdrops

I saw snowdrops today. Lots of them in a garden. It's been a perfect winter day; clear blue sky, sunshine, cold. It's the middle of February - spring is coming in a month or two. Sometimes it's just good to be alive.

More brrr!

It's getting warmer...

Before it was -16.2 degrees (2.8 F)
now it's -14.2 degrees (5.2 F)

The sun is shining high on the mountains but we won't have it down here for another two months. The sky is a light blue and the air as clear and cold as it's ever been. It's not usually this cold until January - February but when the sky is clear the cold comes. It's beautiful :)

Brrrr!

It's -13.5 degrees (7.7 degrees F) outside! My nose is freezing cold even though I was only outside for three minutes and that was half an hour ago. I'm not complaining though; I'm loving it! As long as I don't have to go out there...