I’m reading a very long book right now, and so it’ll be a while yet before I have a review ready. Instead I share the picture above.
This photo was taken way back in the last century, in June of 1994. That young, thin, dark-bearded figure on the ship’s bridge is your obedient servant. The ship is the Fram, the arctic exploration vessel designed for Fridtjof Nansen and later used by Roald Amundsen as well. It’s in a museum all its own in Oslo, not far from the Viking Ship Museum. When I reviewed Nansen’s book Farthest North in January, almost a year ago, I vaguely remembered having this picture, and looked around for it. Couldn’t find it. Today I happened to open a photo album in the basement, and there it was. So I share it with you now, to your wonder and amazement, I have no doubt.
“Fram” means “forward.” It’s Norway’s traditional motto, based on the reported war cry of St. Olaf’s men at the battle of Stiklestad: “Forward, forward, Christ-men, cross-men, king’s men!”
This was my first trip to Norway, and I took it with my dad. My mother had died recently, and Dad proposed that we go together. “I’ll pay for the travel; you cover the rest of your own costs,” he said. Couldn’t say no to that. That was when I first met my relatives over there. It was the first of five delightful journeys.
I’m still not making much progress on the book I’m reading, so I have another non-review post tonight.
The video above is just a brief introduction to my favorite Norwegian artist, Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914). Among his famous accomplishments was illustrating Asbjørnsen & Moe’s collection of Norwegian fairy tales, along with Erik Werenskiold. Werenskiold did some excellent work, but I always felt Kittelsen possessed that little extra spark of creative genius. In some ways he was ahead of his time, graphically.
He is generally considered the man who crystalized the Norwegian conception of the troll. As you’ll see in the video.
I have yet another opportunity to recommend to you (assuming you have a Netflix subscription) a Norwegian miniseries on which I did translation work. In actual fact, not much of my own work made it into The Lørenskog Disappearance in its final form – our team worked mainly on treatments and scene outlines (as far as I remember), and a lot of our stuff seems to have gotten cut. But I still think it’s an intriguing series, and I recommend it.
Tom Hagen (his having the same name as Robert Duval’s character in “The Godfather” is purely coincidental) was and is one of the richest men in Norway, an energy tycoon. He and his wife Anne-Elisabeth lived in a modest home in a community east of Oslo. Their security was minimal. On October 31, 2018, he came home from work early, having been unable to reach Anne-Elisabeth by phone. He found her missing, but there was a note on a chair, demanding a ransom through an obscure form of cryptocurrency and warning him not to contact the police.
He did contact the police though, and what followed has often been second-guessed. Worried that the kidnappers were watching the house, they did not send in a forensic team immediately, leaving time for evidence to disappear or be removed. They made a mistake in their text communications with the ransomers. Tom paid the ransom, in spite of the fact that he’d gotten no proof of life from the kidnappers.
Anne-Elisabeth was never seen again.
After time passed with no further breakthroughs, suspicion began to turn toward Tom. It was learned that the marriage had been strained. Anne-Elisabeth had contacted a divorce lawyer, who thought the couple’s prenuptial agreement, heavily weighted toward Tom’s interests, could easily be broken. Tom was arrested, but the case against him was weak. Eleven days later the court ordered his release, and the investigation has stalled ever since.
The Lørenskog Disappearance is a docudrama. Many of the characters are fictionalized. We view the story through the viewpoints of four different groups: The police, the reporters (two episodes), the lawyers, and the informers. This produces a Rashomon kind of story, in which the same people and events are viewed from different perspectives. Particularly interesting are two reporters – a man who may be biased against Tom by his experience as the child of an abusive father, and a woman who may be biased toward him by her experience as the child of a Soviet political prisoner.
I don’t think it’s a secret that The Lørenskog Disappearance does not offer any final solutions. What it does offer is a fascinating examination of how we view the stories we see on the news.
Though the trailer above is dubbed, the version I watched on Netflix was subtitled.
The Hafrsfjord Jubilee in Stavanger. These are some of the many people I did not talk to in Norway.
No book review tonight. I’ve had a sudden onset of translation work, which is a development approved at the highest levels. It had been a while. But it slows down my reading.
So let’s pick up on a subject I left hanging. I wrote a lot here, before I left, about my self-education program to improve my conversational Norwegian. I downloaded an app to listen to Norwegian radio, and watched some Norwegian TV too. How did that go, you ask?
Not very well, to be honest.
During the course of my preparations, I thought I was comprehending the language a little better. That didn’t “translate” (pun unintended) into any actual benefit, in practice. When I faced real human beings in Norway, I found I still couldn’t understand them without several repetitions. And I hate inconveniencing people. Especially when they generally speak English already, and the whole thing could be done more efficiently that way.
Discursive interjection: What is it with language study books and the conversations they give you to memorize? I didn’t resort to any of those during this process, but I often thought back to my time as a student.
A model conversation for the student to memorize goes like this:
Student: “Kan du si meg veien til stasjonen?” [Could you tell me how to get to the station?}
Policeman: “Ja, rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.” [Yes, straight ahead to the corner, then turn left.]
Now we all know what happens in real life:
Student: “Kan du si meg veien til stasjonen?”
Policeman. “Ja, rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.”
Student: “Unnskyld? Vil du si det igjen?” [Excuse me? Could you say that again?]
Policeman: “Rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.”
Student: “Si det igjen, takk?” [Say that again, please?]
Policeman: “You are an American, right?”
Student: “Yeah…”
Policeman: “Just go straight ahead to the corner, take a left and you’re there.”
Student. “Oh. Okay. Uh… takk.”
That’s how it actually works. And that’s how it generally happens in my experience. Carrying out a full conversation, when the other person is an English speaker, is just asking them to spend time being my teacher for free. And I can’t ask that.
Cant. Ask. That. It’s not in me.
However, on a few occasions, I did encounter people whose English was worse than my Norwegian. Then I was able to communicate, with some effort.
And that’s the return I got for my effort. I guess it’s something.
There was a joke I used to make, when I was young and studying Norwegian. I said, “I want to be able to not talk to people in a second language.”
Turns out I spoke prophetically.
I’m pretty sure a normal person would be conversational at this point. I think my real problem is psychological – I’m blocked by my social discomfort.
Still and all, my print-only language skills allow me to make some money in hard times. That’s nothing to nyse [sneeze] at.
June 24: Reporting from Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, where I am spending more of my life than I ever wished. It’s been a long day, and I’m only about half-way through.
I got up, not too early, and Trygve asked me if I wanted to see some more sights before I left. Why not? He took me to various places. We saw the Utne Hotel in Utne (which has no connection to his family, though he is related to the people who built the Ullensvang Hotel).
He took me to a fascinating place I’d never heard of (that I remembered). It’s Agatunet, the only partially preserved medieval klyngtun in Norway (if I remember correctly). A klyngtun was what I described the other day, where all the neighbors on various parcels on a farm lived clustered together in something like a village. One part of the tun’s main building, the Lagmandshus, was bujlt in 1221 according to dendrochronology. It was the home of Sven Bjorgulfsson Aga, a lawspeaker who was mysteriously murdered a little later and found beheaded across the fjord. Never solved. Otherwise, Agatun is a rare surviving klyngtun even without the medieval building.
The dark-colored end of this building is the surviving part of the 13th Century Lawman’s house in Agatunet.Genuine 13th Century wooden wall.Original carvings in the wood.Inside the courtroom.The other side of the building. Less interesting, but the light was better on this side.
We drove up to Voss, stopping for a few more photo opportunities…
Voss, I think.
…and had lunch in Voss. Biffsnirper, an unusual Norwegian dish consisting of shredded tags of beef which you dip in a sauce. Served with French fries and a salad. I quite liked it. Not sure what the sauce was.
Biffsnirper.
Finally we went to the bus station and figured out what I was supposed to do with my suitcase (keep it with me) and where to get on the train. Trygve and I said goodbye. He really delivered a tremendous visit, especially considering how I jerked him around about the dates. It seemed to mean a lot to him that, after 16 years, he’d been able to keep his promise to take me to Svelland farm. It meant a lot to me, too.
The Bergensbanen is considered one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. It takes something over seven hours, and crosses the Hardangervidda plateau and stops at various localities headed for Oslo. I arrived some time after 10:00 p.m.
I’d been told that there were buses to the airport right there, and that I could just ask someone where to find them. In fact, I spent about an hour and a half wandering through the railway station, across the footbridge to the bus station, and back. Almost nobody was working at that hour. I saw no security officers. The people I worked up my nerve to ask knew nothing.
Finally I decided to just take the airport train, which was clearly signed and for which buying a ticket was easy. The track was easy to find too. So that’s how I got to the airport, a little after midnight.
Since then I’ve been vegetating here at the airport. If I had any class I’d have gotten a room at a motel and slept decently, but I nodded in a chair, reading when I couldn’t sleep (which was most of the time). I was waiting for instructions to appear on the big board to tell me where to check in. Finally I stopped checking (didn’t want to lose my seat) and arbitrarily chose 9:00 a.m. as the time I’d check again. The desk number was up by then. I proceeded down to desk 2, where there was a very, very long line doing that switchback, stay-between-the-ropes Disney thing. I assume they were understaffed due to the strike. I got my boarding pass at last, went through security, and got over to the gate side, where I now sit recharging my cell phone and waiting for the time to come to go to the gate. Many challenges lie ahead.
Final note: Challenges indeed. The flight to Reykjavik was packed and uncomfortable. I asked about Lost & Found at the airport, to see if I could get back the Amazon Fire I lost. They told me it had to be done online. The check-in line was long again, but the flight to New York was only about half full, and thus comfortable. At JFK customs took forever, and then security took forever and ever, amen. I ended up missing my connection, spent a night in a cheap hotel in Jamaica, NY, got onto a (delayed) flight to Minneapolis on standby, and finally arrived after 10:00 p.m.
I refuse to think about all that. My trip to Norway was, considered in itself, a wonderful experience and could hardly have gone better. Many thanks to all the friends and family who went to such trouble to make it such a good time for me.
June 22: A day of disaster that ended better than I feared. “The thing that I have greatly feared has come upon me,” as it says in Job. I’d worried that this trip was going too well, and today I discovered a serious problem – all of my own making.
Yesterday I told Trygve that I needed to take time to fill out some US Customs re-entry forms (turned out they didn’t apply to me after all) and book my tickets for my bus trip to Oslo Friday. I chose a bus to ride, started the checkout, and came up against a problem I’ve encountered before and should have remembered. I can’t buy anything online with a credit card in this country. They want to text me a security number, but the cell phone tied to the card is my American one, which doesn’t work in Europe.
Then I realized that I’d made the same calendar mistake I made before with Trygve. First I told him I was coming Tuesday, and then (for some unknown reason) I bought a ticket for Monday. Now, I realized (to my horror) that my plane leaves Friday, not Saturday. So Thursday needs to be my travel day. That’s tomorrow.
I apologized profusely to Trygve, who seemed fairly sanguine, however. After trying a couple things, including a call to my credit card company, he said the best thing was to drive to Voss and buy a train ticket to Oslo there. This is the Bergensbanen, a famous rail line I’ve ridden before. We weren’t sure my card would work there either, but what choice did we have?
Statue of Knut Rockne in Voss. You can tell from the look on his face he thinks I’m a moron.
We drove to Voss (famous as the birthplace of Knut Rockne, and a beautiful place in its own right), and found a ticket machine in the entry hall – out of order. You can’t buy a ticket from an agent anymore. It’s all automated. Trygve led me up to the platform, and we found a machine there that did sell me a ticket. And my card worked.
Sigh.
Relieved, we did some driving around, doing some of the sightseeing Trygve had been planning but now will be prevented from doing. Three waterfalls, plus the Norwegian Nature Center in Eidfjord.
I forget what these falls are called. Voringfoss, maybe.This one is called the Skjervsfossen. I could have gotten a better picture if I’d stepped closer to the edge of the observation platform, but I didn’t want to show off.
Up to the Hardangervidda plateau itself (at least the edge of it), where we looked at Sysenvatn, an artificial lake built for hydroelectricity and some other sights on the plateau.
Just a random, picturesque spot.
Then we drove back (it took a while). I was feeling better by now, though I still feel dumb. I think I ought to have my mental acuity checked by a doctor when I get home.
We went out again about an hour later to pick Trygve’s son Kjell up from dayschool. We then went to a few picturesque spots above the town to take pictures. It really is quite dramatic. I think I’m going into Sublimity Shock. I need the Midwest to get my blood sugar level back down.
Tomorrow we may do some more sightseeing before my train leaves, but we need to give ourselves time to get to the station, because those narrow mountain roads are prone to long traffic delays.
June 21: Up bright and early for the big day of this leg of the visit. Trygve drove us to Odda, which he told me is where the series Ragnarok was filmed (Odda was a good place for that project, as it combines stunning natural beauty with some genuine industrial blight. I helped translate Ragnarok, but had missed that fact), and we met his uncle Knut there. Knut joined us for the trip.
First he drove us to Rosendal Baroniet, the only barony in Norway, and long the place to which many of our ancestors paid rent . I embarrassed myself a little by asking (when the guide asked) for a Norwegian translation of his talk. I then rescinded that, because I realized it would prolong the tour, and I really needed to use a bathroom. I finally asked him to direct me to one, which he did (a staff toilet), so I missed a portion of the tour. Generally I could understand what he was talking about, though I missed a lot of the details. Most of the details?
Rosendal Barony, main residence.
Then we drove on, around the Åkrafjord, to Åkra itself, where we met a local fellow named Lars Erik, who was delighted to tell us all about the place. He showed us a place on Vika farm, across the road, where a fire devastated the tun (cluster of buildings where various families on the farm lived together) when it burned spectacularly in 1790 (?). Lars Swelland’s father, if I recall rightly, was born on Vika farm.
The old tun site at Vika.
Then to the old church. The present building began construction in the 1790s. This was after the people started refusing to enter the old stave church, which was swaying in high winds so that the bell rang by itself. It was later remodeled a couple times.
Aakra Church.
Sadly, the remodels removed a number of wall paintings in a naïve style, of which only a few traces remain.
A trace of the old church wall paintings, preserved under a door frame. It’s thought to be Samson and the lion.
The church possesses a 12th century brass and lapis lazuli crucifix, its oldest possession
There is also the old baptismal font…
… the original baptismal basin (not in the old font now)…
…and the pulpit.
The original wood joinery is visible in many places, including very handsome “ships’ knees” pillars along the walls.
Outside there’s a long stone on which they used to set coffins before funerals…
and several soapstone crosses, a couple in a Celtic cross pattern, which seem to have been “erased” and re-inscribed many times, so there’s no way of saying how old they are. These crosses are chained to the wall to prevent theft.
The harbor at Aakra, from the churchyard.
We paused for a pancake and jam snack at a nearby café (next to the general store), and then we started climbing the mountain. I’m probably exaggerating when I say the drive took about an hour, but that’s how it felt – switching back and forth along narrow paths and finally gravel roads. We were very high up. Trygve kept apologizing for the bad weather, but I found it grimly beautiful, suitable for a Romantic painting.
When we finally reached Indre Svelland, Trygve found the neighboring farmer, Knut, who’d said he’d be happy to show us the old farmyard. It turned out to be just across a couple fences – the old house is long gone. Just a rocky place on the hillside.
Old site of Indre Svelland farm.
Knut ‘s old photo of what the place used to look like. I can’t recognize anything from the picture above.
But he was delighted to tell us all about “America Lars,” as my great-grandfather was known to the neighbors, because he came back twice (before his final, permanent return to Norway) to visit.
I’ve written of his story here before. Briefly, though he was quite successful as a farmer in Minnesota, Lars Swelland got overwhelmed after the death of his wife. When his son, who was renting his farm, missed a payment during the Depression, and he received one (1) dunning letter from the mortgage company, Lars packed up, got on a train for New York, and then boarded a ship back to Norway. Telegrams sent to intercept him either missed him or were ignored. The farm was lost to the family, and he spent the rest of his life in penury — somewhere else than Indre Svelland. He died during the Occupation.
Knut and his wife invited us in for coffee (I drank some, because it was the only low-sugar beverage on offer). We discovered that we’re third cousins. so we constituted a happy family gathering. They were very interested in the family in America, and we had a long chat. They showed me a door in their house that was salvaged from Lars’ old home. Nicely made – I seem to recall that Lars’ father, who made it, was a skilled handyman.
Knut and his wife with my great-great-grandfather’s door.The view from Svelland farm.
We’d been out several hours now, but we stopped on the way back in the town of Rosendal for some supper. It turned out to be hard to get supper in Rosendal. Everything was shut down. At last we found what seemed to be a sort of nightclub, where they served us hamburgers (Knut had a chicken salad). Not bad either. I picked up the check.
Rosendal.
Finally we headed back to Odda, dropped Uncle Knut off, and then headed home. It felt like a long drive (we were gone almost exactly twelve hours).
Lots of beauty, lots of new experiences and people met, and a bucket list experience. It was a big day. I’m ready for bed now.
June 20: Up, fed, and generally on time for my trip to Ullandsvang via Hardanger. Caught the Kystbussen (Coastal Bus) at 7:45 or so, and it took me by way of several tunnels and a ferry ride. Tore was waiting for me at Haugesund, and we set out north in his car.
Change in plan, not for today, but for my ride home. Tore said the strike was spreading at the Oslo airport, and he believed the best thing for me to do, to avoid missing my plane, was to take the Haukeli Express bus on Friday. Easy to get a bus from the bus station to the airport, he says. I’ll go with his advice. I rely on the kindness of new acquaintances. Also, I’ve ridden the Haukeli Express before, and liked it very much.
We were met at the town of Etne by Trygve’s uncle, Knut. Knut knows a lot about local history, and filled the time before Trygve got off work by showing me several local sites.
One was Stødle Church, on the site of the farm of Erling Skakke.
I’ve written about Erling Skakke (1115-1179) before in this journal. This was not my Erling (Skjalgsson), but another nobleman, even more powerful in his prime. He participated in a Crusade along with Ragnvald Kali Kolsson, Earl of Orkney (whose poems I reviewed on this blog once upon a time). During a sea battle in the Mediterranean, he took a wound in the neck. It healed up, but the muscles tightened on that side, so that he always held his head crooked thereafter (“skakke” means tilted). He married Kristin Sigurdsdatter, daughter of King Sigurd the Crusader.
When there was a temporary dearth of viable candidates to inherit the throne of Norway, Erling worked a deal with the church to get his son Magnus crowned, on the strength of his being a king’s grandson. This violated the law, which said that inheritance went through the male line. So there was resistance to the innovation, and new claimants appeared, and this launched Norway’s Age of Civil War, a long and bloody time. Erling was regent during Magnus’ minority, and remained powerful up until the time when both of them died in battle against the Birkebeiners (Birchlegs).
Erling Skakke’s view, from Stodle farm.
Uncle Knut obtained a key at the hotel to get inside the church. The interior is what I believe to be simple Romanesque, with a small chancel, and a tiny chapel at the very end. This small chapel, I am told, was probably built by Erling himself in the 12th Century.
Interior of Stodle Church. Note the naive paintings on the left-hand wall, the chancel, and the small inner chancel at the end.Chancel.Erling Skakke’s inner chancel.
The portions built later are decorated with naïve images of the gospel writers (as I recall), and also of the five foolish virgins. These paintings were apparently uncovered during the last restoration of the church. There is also a hogback gravestone outside the church wall, which reminded me of English ones. A Viking Age style.
Hogback gravestone.
There was also Grindheim church, which features a genuine rune stone set up against one wall (its inscription pretty much unreadable today, alas), and a fascinating stone cross. This one has had its capital knocked off, but has a notable feature – there’s a hole through the junction of the arms. This is reminiscent of Irish crosses, and suggests an Irish influence
Irish-influenced stone cross at Grindheim Church.
He took me to his home, where his wife Valborg made a delicious lunch. Then they both took me out to a nearby nature area for a walk through the woods. As we were about to leave we met a couple they knew coming in. They told us someone else from America had recently been through, asking about Vika farm (one of my ancestral places).
Then back to the house for dessert. By now we were all great friends. Trygve showed up, had some dessert himself, and then we took pictures all around and headed further into the Etne region, and on to Hardanger.
I’m already forgetting all the places we saw. As I mentioned before, Etne is a remarkably beautiful place, and Hardanger is the same but more dramatic. Trygve showed me the places where his family had lived in the past. He showed me the farm where my brother’s wife’s family came from.
Across the water, Frette farm, where my sister-in-law’s family came from.
He showed me a place to get a better picture of the Langfoss waterfall, which is indeed quite long.
Langfossen.
Also the Låtefossen, a magnificent double falls.
Laatefossen.
Kyrping, a picturesque cove at the edge of the Åkrafjord, home of Kyrping-Orm, father of Erling Skakke.
Kyrping.
Nearby was the bronze plate in the mountainside dedicated to honor the journalist Eric Severeid, whose family came from Severeid farm. We stopped for ice cream at a place where Trygve likes to shop. We drove over to Hardanger (avoiding a tunnel at one point for a more dramatic ride), which I still consider insanely beautiful.
Just a random picture taken while waiting for the light to change on a one-lane, mountainside road.
Kind of like a real-world rollercoaster, where falling off the world is a serious possibility. I was amazed at farms and homes where the driveways run upward at more than a 45⁰ angle. And in the end we drove up a similar driveway ourselves, to reach Trygve’s home.
June 19: Today was not as exertive as the day before, but quite satisfactory. I slept the sleep of the just, and woke feeling OK except for the congestion I’ve been having. I doubt this is Covid, as there’s no headache and no particular sore throat, not to mention no change in my sense of taste.
My hosts were kind enough to wash my dirty clothes, and to hang them to dry.
Then we headed for the Stavanger Archaeological Museum, where they’re having a special Viking exhibition for the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. I’ve been to the museum before, and like it very much. The exhibition turned out to be free, because of the festival.
We saw a fascinating collection of Viking artefacts, many of them from the Stavanger area, though a number of them were carted off to Bergen, where they remain, in the old days before there was a museum here. We saw three fine Viking swords…
…and some of the gullgubber, mysterious images on gold foil, thought to be votive offerings to the old gods…
I’d never guessed they were as tiny as they are.
Also gold arm and neck rings, and various pieces of silver treasure.
And a piece of a ship’s dragon head, recovered from a bog, something I never knew existed. And displays of various kinds.
A piece of a dragon head.
Other rooms showed area history from other ages, back to the stone age. Of particular interest was a loop of projected video of a young blonde woman doing a sort of haka dance, wearing the famous bronze age string skirt, often depicted in history books. She was very lovely and quite topless, and I liked her right off.
The gift shop had many tempting items, but I restricted myself to a blue glass ring.
The afternoon was quiet, and we said goodbye to the nephew at last, as he was picked up for his flight back home to England.
Tomorrow I must get up early to catch my bus for the first leg of my trip to Hardanger.
View of Hafrsfjord from Yterroy. You’ve read about the Hafrsfjord in my Erling books.
June 18: A big day for me. I got up in good time to get going to put my Viking togs on and get some breakfast before we headed out for a fjord cruise. It was raining as predicted, but clear skies were obviously coming on. We caught a big motorized catamaran doing a circular course through the Hafrsfjord. Our first stop was Ytterøy, an ancient peninsula where there’s a “bygdeborg” (a hill fort for local defense). We debarked and took a walking tour that involved a lot of climbing to the top of the hill, where there was a performance of Haraldskvadet (the skaldic poem about the Battle of Hafrsfjord) by a singing group (quite nice). Further on, a group with lurs (long, wooden traditional Norwegian horns) did an instrumental/performance piece that meant nothing at all to me. Perhaps it’s the sort of thing the Vikings really listened to, but to me it seemed postmodern and atonal. Our trip back down the hill was rather rugged, and involved some very steep descents. Some of the people around me were watching to make sure the old man in Viking clothes didn’t fall, which I have to admit was reasonable. The final descent had no handrails at all and seemed to me genuinely too dangerous for public use.
Another one of those plexiglass installations to spark the imagination.
Then there was a long walk along the shoreline (sometimes on top of half-submerged rocks). Happily, I came through neither broken on the rocks nor soaked. Finally we made it back to the quay, and caught another catamaran to Møllebukta, where the Viking market was being held. We walked around, and then my hosts left me by myself. I assumed they would take the further legs of the boat tour, but I guess they actually spent their time at the market. Their nephew the Viking enthusiast was with them, so it may have been to please him as much as me.
One of the Viking ships on the Hafrsfjord.
It was quite a deal. I’m told it’s far from the largest Viking market in Norway, but it was the biggest this American had ever seen. Hundreds of reenactors with their tents and sales stands ranged along several paths through an area around a brook. All kinds of goods for sale, artisans demonstrating their skills, the odd fight show or Viking game. We had a brief spot of rain, but the day had cleared up essentially. Beautiful weather, crumb-hungry seagulls swooping around, and in the distance the unforgettable Sverd I Fjell monument.
Viking battle.
I found my friends from Vikingklubben Karmøy, and they generously offered me a stool, where I took my seat. Except for a walk around to see what there was to see at one point, I stayed there, happy to be playing Viking in Erling Skjalgsson’s personal domain. The Karmøy people were good to talk to, and I was quietly and serenely happy. I’d been waiting for this day since I was 12 years old.
Me with the leader of Vikingklubben Karmoy.
At 4:30 my hosts began to leave, and so we went to Sola for pizza (I like to think of it as feasting at Sola), and then home to wind down.
A great day in my life. I will not demean it with a joke. I feel very happy.
