Open doors and open minds . . .

I am in Oslo now. Just spent a quick day in Trondheim, and now about to head down to Malmö and catch my flight back to Iceland Wednesday. I’ll spend another week or so in Iceland before I fly back to Canada on the 5th of October. I’m looking forward to visiting some relatives there again, and also spending some time at the Arni Magnusson Institute, reading some neat books and talking with the people studying there.

More about Oslo and Trondheim another time. For now it is important I say something about Servas. I hope my hosts do not mind me mentioning them here, but I’ve had such a wonderful time with them and it has been such an important part of my trip that I cannot simply leave it out!

Servas is an international peace program and an open-doors program. A person can get interviewed and accepted in his/her home country (I got in while I was in Iceland, which was a bit of an exception), and then you can ask for contact information for “hosts” in various countries around the world. This is not an on-demand type of opportunity. It is a privilege and an opportunity to meet people and spend quality time getting to know them. Getting a place to sleep for a couple nights at a time and a meal or two are secondary (but VERY nice) features.

So. I tried Servas for the first time in Copenhagen. I stayed with Bjorn and his family there, and got to enjoy a wonderful dancing performance by his two kids, Kalle and Sigga. Bjorn was VERY kind and generous and we had a very nice time talking about anything from his work with employment challenges in Denmark, to how he made himself a REAL shirt of chain-mail (weighs more than all my luggage...! and if you know me then you’ll know that I’ve got a lot of luggage!), or how he and his family might move to Canada for a year or so! I think near Vancouver would be an excellent place... but maybe I am biased!

In Odense I stayed with Birthe and Johannes. They are retired. Birthe used to do nursing, and even did trips to the Mediterranean with some groups of patients; Johannes used to work in a small publishing/printing company, and now he is collecting stamps and telling fantastic stories with them, particularly about natives in North America. I got to have dinner with them and their son, Bo, and his wife and two kids. It was really special and a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about Denmark and life there. And the food was oh so good!

In Stockholm I stayed with a family living outside the central city, at the end of one of the subway lines. Ulla and Ulf welcomed me generously into their home, as did their three daughters. It was really neat to talk with them about things in Sweden and Canada and the world, and life in general and specific. I felt very comfortable there, and they even put me in touch with a friend of theirs in Gotland who works as a blacksmith! I’m hoping I’ll be able to correspond with him a bit, or maybe even visit his workshop one day!

In Uppsala I stayed with Eva and Harley. They were amazing! They drove me around over the weekend and we all had a great time visiting runestones, old stone carvings from 2500 years ago, old remains of houses from the Viking-Age and Migration Period, and also Gamla Uppsala and the famous grave mounds there and at Valsgarde. Harley is putting together his new and improved PC, and I wish him lots of luck with it! Eva makes the most amazing tuna casserole thing... and I’d really like the recipe!

I made some snap decisions last week that landed me in Oslo sooner than I had planned (which is a good thing, as it turns out, since I wouldn’t have had much time there otherwise) Anyways. I got a bit stuck cause accomodation can be VERY tough to find in the big cities, even in late September. So I couldn’t find anything, but Liv and Michael rescued me and let me stay with them for two nights in Gjøvik. Gjøvik is a small town, with more grave mounds (actually woke up and looked out the window to see some at the farm just across the road!) and it is a lovely two-hour train-ride north of Oslo. Their family is very musical. Maia Beth, their daughter, has a lovely voice, and played the piano beautifully the first evening I was there. Their son David plays the cello with an orchestra and is also studying to finish his Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering. Liv teaches music, and Michael admits modestly that he is very good at playing the stereo... I had a lot of fun talking with them and learning about how they have moved back and forth from the USA (Michael told me he is originally from a small town called “New York”) and Norway (Liv grew up in Bergen), and how the graduation year in high schools here has a phenomenon known as the “Russ” . . . Sounds like fun, although perhaps not so helpful for exam preparation!

So that’s my experience (in short) with Servas so far. It has been truly wonderful and made my trip much more meaningful and engaging. I plan to become a host myself, although I doubt London Ontario is the most exciting of places to visit when compared with Stockholm, Uppsala, Copenhagen, Odense, or Oslo/Gjøvik.

Many many thanks to all my hosts!

Oslo

Hi - really time for me to fall asleep now, but just wanted to post quickly. I am in Oslo. I took a boat from Stockholm to Helsinki for a few days, visited with my great and wonderful fun friend Rogier there. Then took a train to Turku, a boat from Turku to Stockholm and a train from Stockholm to Oslo. I am tired, but Norway is by far the most beautiful landscape I've seen in Scandinavia so far! Lots of gorgeous trees and big hills and lakes and fjords. Helsinki definitely wins for most amazing architecture. Stockholm has the most beautiful architecture I've seen in these parts.

Going to see some more viking ships tomorrow! :-)

Time for sleep!

Stockholm and Uppsala

I entered Sweden through Goteborg, and visited a small museum there, as well as the Museum of Natural History, which boasts the only stuffed blue whale in the world. This guy is a baby boy, measuring some 16 metres (an adult could be over 36!). I think the vast majority of my time in Stockholm was absorbed in the historical museum, and particularly in their Viking exhibit. It is a huge and very impressively put together show. They have some swords, and the one in the middle here is clearly pattern-welded. You can see the visual effect on the blade. They also have a famous and unique iron staff from a woman's grave. This staff was perhaps part of the tool-kit for a sorceress of sorts. You can see the unique house-model on the top, and the basket design in the middle of the shaft.

Stockholm is of course also the site where the Nobel Prize is awarded. The gala and dance happen at the "City Hall", which is a fairly new building (built in the early 20th century) but VERY spectacular. The dance happens in a hall that is entirely coated in gold. It may seem impossible, but the whole hall used only some 14kg of gold.

I am in Uppsala now, and heading back to Stockholm tomorrow, and then to Helsinki tomorrow evening. One of my friends from the summer course in Icelandic is teaching Dutch in Helsinki, and he invited me to visit, and the ferry is fairly cheap (cheaper than a passenger ticket to Victoria from Vancouver I think! But this is a 17 hour trip!), and I'll never be closer than here, so I'm going! I think I may take the train north through Finland and then south through Norway. My trainpass lets me do that, so why not?!

In Uppsala today I saw the famous grave mounds at Gamla Uppsala - these are from around 600AD, the time of Beowulf. I also got to see the much more prolific (in terms of rich goods and treasures) mounds at Valsgard, also from about the same period. There are runestones EVERYWHERE around Uppsala, from about 1000AD. They usually mark the death of someone, and detail the names of the wife, brothers, sons, or other relations, as well as who paid for the stone to be raised, and who actually carved the runes. It is very easy to see them anywhere really, and it gives a neat impression that these stones (and perhaps less lasting runes in wooden monuments and such) may have been the equivalent of modern-day advertisements and such, marking popular river-crossings and high-traffic areas with the idenities of major families and poliitcal powers.

Visiting Icelandic relatives in Denmark

Some of my Icelandic relatives moved to southern Denmark, to a town called Svenstrup. I got to visit them briefly for a couple days and it was really really fun and special to see them again (it's been three years since I last saw them). Svenstrup and environs are kind of surprising I think. At first glance it seems like a beautiful and quiet farming area with not much in the way of industrial or commercial development. But then there is Danfoss. Danfoss is a HUGE company with connections all over the world, and they have the Danfoss Universe nearby Svenstrup. This is a sort of technological scientific park and museum where you can play with all sorts of very neat things and learn about how things work by making them work. Very fun. I don't have much time right now, but the photos show the blue cube, with a glacier exhibit inside (with real ice glaciers and a lightning machine and a lava room) and me on a swing machine that moves as you apply force, and then the newest building, Cumulus, named and shaped after the cloud-type, in which you can learn about how the digital world works.

Time for bed now. I'm in Stockholm now. Spent a day in Goteborg yesterday, and will spend another day or so in Stockholm, then go to Uppsala, and then maybe to Finland! Sadly the Viking-Age village and archaeological site named Birka is closed now for the 'winter' season (which is unfair cause it's still sunny and warm and rather summer-like, and I really want to see it, so it should still be open I think!) But I got to see an AMAZING exhibit on medieval archaeological finds today. There was a pattern-welded sword from the Viking Age, which made me very excited. Also LOTS of other iron objects and finds, including the most impressive find of smithing tools from the Viking Age EVER! Very very very exciting place for me, and I spent three hours ONLY in the Viking Exhibit, and only got about half way through it. It is a big place. That's just the one exhibit too. There are many other exhibits in the same museum. I'm going back there tomorrow!

busted stuff . . .

here are a couple photos from the Bymuseet (city museum) in Odense. A sword-blade dating from about 900AD that has been bent before it was tossed into a bog. Not exactly sure why people did this. Maybe it was a way of disposing of enemy weapons after a battle so that they couldn't be used again, or so that their 'power' was removed?

The other is a brooch, from 900AD also I think. You can see the two animal figures (lost heads over 1000yrs!) looking at one another. Where they thought to be communicating with one another? What? Why? Why the arrangment with the other 'nodes'? What did it mean to wear something like this?

Odense and Als

I'm in Als now, in a small community called Svenstrup, visiting some Icelandic relatives. I don't have much time to post now. I spent two days in Odense and saw some neat museums there, one with spear-heads from the stone-age and swords from the Viking-Age! Also saw the HC Andersen museum (Odense is his hometown) and a fantastic train museum. Also got to see the remains of St. Knut at the big church in Odense!

That's all for now. I'm going north tomorrow, to Fredrickshavn, and then taking the ferry to Gotheborg where I will hopefully get to see more viking ships and such before heading to Stockholm and Uppsala!

Copenhagen

I flew to Copenhagen on Monday and I've been having a great but exhausting time exploring everything I can while I'm here. Time for some sleep now, so this'll be brief. Attached photos show Christiansborg, the royal palace (Denmark has the oldest monarchy in the world, or something like that? Definitely the oldest flag - made/found in the 12th century). This palace was built in the 19th century, but two previous versions were constructed in the 18th and 17th centuries. Both burned to the ground cause of fires in stove pipes. Before that, a fortress was errected here in the 12th century, and there is an archaeological exhibit under the current castle that shows the layers of buildings over 900 years. Very neat.

Canals are all over the place in Copenhagen. Here are some flatwater kayakers! Also some swords at the National Museum here. Sadly the pre-historic section is closed for rennovations, so these are mostly from the 12th century, which is a bit late to appeal to my PhD-tastes, but I still think I can see that the central blade is pattern-welded, which is kind of exciting (for me anyways . . .)

That's it for now. Time for sleep! I'm off to Odense tomorrow. Also visited the Viking Ships Museum in Roskilde yesterday!

Vik

Ok . . . so at the end of my camping trip I spent three nights in Vík on the southern coast of Iceland. Vík is a small town of about 300-500 people depending on where you draw the boundaries. It is a really nice place, and I camped right on the beach almost, listened to the waves all night, and ate my breakfast and dinner watching the beach and all the sea-birds. It was the perfect way to end the trip, and I'd been looking forward to returning to the beach there every since I first saw it in early July.

There is a glacier nearby, called Myrdalsjökull, and several headlands with big cliffs where various gulls and puffins nest. The grasslands nearby are home to one of the largest breeding colonies of Kría or arctic tern, and also the largest colony of mice in Iceland, not to mention also having some snails apparently. I heard the mice running around in the darkness, but couldn't see any. Never found any snails. Saw LOTS of kría, though! They are beautiful birds. I love how fleet of wing they are, and how protective of their territory. Basically wherever they are (regardless of whether it's a nesting ground or just their hang-out for the next 30 minutes) they attack you quite intently if you get too close. They are the farthest-travelled bird in the world I think - all the way from the south pole to Iceland, the UK, and etc... each year!

You can see the neat rock formations off the coast here. Supposedly two trolls came along and tried to either make off with a three-masted ship, or to take the entire island of Iceland away with them. The sun came up and turned them to stone. You can also see my tent in the arial shot of the beach - that subtle little speck of orange?

I spent another night at Skógafoss before returning to Reykjavík. I saw some neat old farm storage houses built into rock-faces, and when I walked all the way to the shore of the ocean I saw a whale skeleton. Skógafoss is where they filmed part of Beowulf and Grendel I think - the scenes where those dirty pagans were being converted in the icy cold river? I´m not sure, but I think that's the same place. But photos from Skógafoss will have to wait for a while . . . I'm going to Denmark on Monday and will be going about the mainland to see some museums that I hope will have inspiring and informational stuff in them for my PhD project! So . . . I should be able to post again over the next weeks while I'm there. I fly home to Canada on October 5-6, so hopefully see you in a month if you're in the London (Ontario) area!