June 9, 2010
We survived our first night in the old fisherman’s cabin and joined our host for the day, Anders Paulsen, for a view into life in Lofoten. Although it is unseasonably cold, Lofoten is packed because this is the start of the busy summer season. The theme for today is fish, which is fitting since fishing is the main industry of the island from farming to packaging to tourism. Our first stop today is Nic. Haug AS, a storkfish factory. Here, storkfish are washed, dried, packaged and sorted. After the fish are dried, they are about 33 percent of what they weighed originally. The salted fish are exported to Italy, Portugal and Spain while the fresh fish are exported to Germany, England, Holland and France. Typically, the factory hangs the storkfish in February to dry and they remain on the drying racks through May. The quality of the fish is largely dependent on the weather conditions; need temperatures that are not too warm or freezing cold and a little wind. After the storkfish has been processed, a customer can buy it dried and soak it in water for four days to prepare it for consumption.
After a quick drive by past the local fish oil factory, our next stop in Lofoten was a visit to the Lofoten Maritime College/Vest Lofoten Upper Secondary School. Headmaster Søren Fredrik Voie introduced the college of 648 students and 160 employees. The school is located on the island of Vestvågøy, Lofoten, about 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Loften sees mild winters because of the Gulf Stream, allowing students training to be fishermen and seamen to take advantage of the ocean year round. One of the college’s greatest teaching tools is Poseidon, a computer-based simulator showcasing how to operate ships in different conditions. Poseidon, run under the direction of Captain Svein Arne, a mariner master with 366 months at sea under his belt, features 30 different ships in numerous ports across the world allowing students plan routes and then simulate the journey including rough weather conditions and docking.
After a delicious lunch, our next stop was to Aker Seafoods, a worldwide seafood distributor. At Aker, we were asked to dress in booties, a lab coat and hair net before entering the fishing plant. Over the course of the next 45 minutes, I learned more than I ever needed to know about the packaging of cod fish while stepping over fish guts and gagging from the stench of raw fish! It was interesting to see fish preparation from raw catch to final product on grocery store shelves. When a fishing shipment first arrives, the factory pulls out 10 percent of the total cargo to be measured for weight and length. The quality of the fish will determine the price to be paid to the fishermen. The fish is then cleaned and sent to the next machine via conveyer belt to be sliced as filets. The next step is the weighing where each worker is assigned to machine and required to weigh and cut the filets into 400 gram pieces. The workers’ pay correlates directly to the speed and accuracy of each cut, with starting pay at 140 NOK per hour to a max of 300 NOK per hour. If all the fresh fish is not needed, the rest is sent to be packaged as frozen food. Three pieces of the filet are packaged by hand into a plastic container and then placed in cardboard boxes. The boxes are sent into the freezer for about an hour to be frozen and then packaged into container freights. Aker Seafoods has about 90 total employees with 60 working on the floor. The workers generally start at 6:30 am and work until they have finished processing the fish or roughly 3:30 pm. The cleaning crew of five then come in and spends about seven hours wiping down and sanitizing all the equipment. After cleaning up, but still smelling like fish, we thanked our guides who sent us home with a package of frozen cod fish that Torgunn served for dinner later that evening.
Our last stop on the afternoon fish tour was a visit to LofiLabs, a fish farm. Our guide Espen showed us the process of harvesting fish which started with the parent fish that are kept in cages in the sea for most of the year. In February, the male and female fish are brought into a large tub where they spend two months mating while the fish farmers collect the eggs by spinning the water so all the eggs eventually land in the container. Those eggs are then taken into several individual tubs where fresh water is circulated throughout the day. Once a day, the y spin the water and the eggs that sink to the bottom are removed while the ones floating are still alive and continue to grow. There are nearly half a million eggs collected and transferred into the process. After three weeks, the eggs are now turning into larvae and the egg shells are collected while the fish are moved to the next step of large tubs. Here they are fed a specially cultivated microorganism until they are large enough to ingest dry feed. The larvae are monitored for another three weeks before they are big enough to take out to the sea. Here they are placed in large mesh bags to be hung underneath the jetty so as to allow the sea water to help them grow while they are fed dry feed. The fish are kept at this farm for about a year before they are sent to a sister company to be kept for another year until they are mature enough to be processed and sold. During the best year, 1.2 million fish were produced while the worst year produced only 200,000 fish. This year, Espen said the issue isn’t the quantity produced but the lack of buyers for the cod they do have.
After a fish filled afternoon, we arrived back to Kræmmervika Rorbuer for a quick dinner before getting dressed in our survival suits to head out on the boat to test our own fishing skills. Anders and Peter were doubling as our fishing instructors for the evening as we set sail around 8 pm. The speedboat took us into the middle of the water and surrounded by mountains and the midnight sun, the setting was absolutely picturesque. Our fishing adventure started early with Tim reeling in the first medium-sized cod fish and Peters bringing out his knife to release the fish and then slice the skin. For my first time on a fishing boat, I was horrified with the fish blood that splattered the boat and then watching the fish wiggling around as it bled out in the plastic container. Fishing was not for me, but I did capture the moment since this would probably be my only time aboard a fishing boat! Mason won the prize for the largest catch of the evening with a large cod fish. Other catches included haddak and sait (which was too small, so throw back into the water). The survival suit did a good job of keeping us warm but also retaining more of the fish smell. Never was I so excited to shower and so in need of laundry services!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Lofoten, here we come!
June 8, 2010
An early wake-up call at 5 am got our day started as we spent the day traveling to the Lofoten islands. The first leg of our journey was an hour car ride from Mo i Rana to Nesna to board a speed boat for Bodø. The speed boat is a three hour journey with several stops at islands along the way. Watching the sun reflect off the water as we pass mountain ranges and island homes is really an amazing sight and a great visual picture of Northern Norway! After a short lunch with our old friends in Bodø, we headed off to board the Hurtigruten. We’ve been hearing how amazing this trip is going to be and the weather seems to be cooperating with us today!
Hurtigruten or “Express Route” is a Norwegian passenger and freight line with daily sailings along Norway’s western and northern coast. The ship sails almost the entire length of the country, completing the roundtrip journey in 11 days, and is often referred to as the “World’s Most Beautiful Sea Voyage.” For our trip, we would board in Bodø and disembark at the next port of Stamsund on the Lofoten Islands. Hurtigruten is over 100 years old, created in 1893 to improve communications along the Norway coastline. The inside of the MS Nordkamp is similar to a low-end cruise ship with seven decks, lounges, a restaurant and cabins for those on a longer journey. Our view from the seventh floor faced the islands and about half way through our trip, we were able to see the Lofoten Islands in its entirety.
After spending the day traveling, we were happy to see our residence for the next two nights. We were going to be staying in the fisherman village of Ballstad. Located in the Vestvågøy municipality of Lofoten, the town has a population of 956. Our stay in Ballstad will be Kræmmervika Rorbuer, otherwise known as the old Fisherman’s cabins. It is a cluster of 34 historical buildings from the 1850s. Today, Kræmmervika Rorbuer features 250 beds and is owned by Torgunn Rist, the 34-year old daughter of the previous owner. Torgunn bought Kræmmervika Rorbuer from her father three years ago and together with her husband has been working to renovate the cabins and expand the marketing plan to draw in new tourists and highlight Lofoten fishing.
Kræmmervika Rorbuer has been a port for fishermen through the centuries. The islands of Lofoten were considered the access point to the “gold of the ocean,” so fishermen would come to this area to stay for long periods of time while they fished and earned their keep. In fact, Torgunn said her grandmother used to be a doctor on the island and was often called in to visit and take care of the sick fishermen. Since the fishermen were several to a cabin and had their personal and professional lives in the same room, diseases were often rampant. However, the fishermen had the highest regard for the doctors so they would often bathe the sick men before the doctor came in which would make it nearly impossible for the doctor to properly diagnose the sickness! Torgunn’s own history with the island goes back several generations. Her grandmother was a doctor on the island, tending to the sick fishermen, while her grandfather owned one of the local fisheries. Her father then bought Kræmmervika Rorbuer in the 1990s and now it is hers. The name, Kræmmervika Rorbuer, however, outdates the family and is in fact 500 years old!
An early wake-up call at 5 am got our day started as we spent the day traveling to the Lofoten islands. The first leg of our journey was an hour car ride from Mo i Rana to Nesna to board a speed boat for Bodø. The speed boat is a three hour journey with several stops at islands along the way. Watching the sun reflect off the water as we pass mountain ranges and island homes is really an amazing sight and a great visual picture of Northern Norway! After a short lunch with our old friends in Bodø, we headed off to board the Hurtigruten. We’ve been hearing how amazing this trip is going to be and the weather seems to be cooperating with us today!
Hurtigruten or “Express Route” is a Norwegian passenger and freight line with daily sailings along Norway’s western and northern coast. The ship sails almost the entire length of the country, completing the roundtrip journey in 11 days, and is often referred to as the “World’s Most Beautiful Sea Voyage.” For our trip, we would board in Bodø and disembark at the next port of Stamsund on the Lofoten Islands. Hurtigruten is over 100 years old, created in 1893 to improve communications along the Norway coastline. The inside of the MS Nordkamp is similar to a low-end cruise ship with seven decks, lounges, a restaurant and cabins for those on a longer journey. Our view from the seventh floor faced the islands and about half way through our trip, we were able to see the Lofoten Islands in its entirety.
After spending the day traveling, we were happy to see our residence for the next two nights. We were going to be staying in the fisherman village of Ballstad. Located in the Vestvågøy municipality of Lofoten, the town has a population of 956. Our stay in Ballstad will be Kræmmervika Rorbuer, otherwise known as the old Fisherman’s cabins. It is a cluster of 34 historical buildings from the 1850s. Today, Kræmmervika Rorbuer features 250 beds and is owned by Torgunn Rist, the 34-year old daughter of the previous owner. Torgunn bought Kræmmervika Rorbuer from her father three years ago and together with her husband has been working to renovate the cabins and expand the marketing plan to draw in new tourists and highlight Lofoten fishing.
Kræmmervika Rorbuer has been a port for fishermen through the centuries. The islands of Lofoten were considered the access point to the “gold of the ocean,” so fishermen would come to this area to stay for long periods of time while they fished and earned their keep. In fact, Torgunn said her grandmother used to be a doctor on the island and was often called in to visit and take care of the sick fishermen. Since the fishermen were several to a cabin and had their personal and professional lives in the same room, diseases were often rampant. However, the fishermen had the highest regard for the doctors so they would often bathe the sick men before the doctor came in which would make it nearly impossible for the doctor to properly diagnose the sickness! Torgunn’s own history with the island goes back several generations. Her grandmother was a doctor on the island, tending to the sick fishermen, while her grandfather owned one of the local fisheries. Her father then bought Kræmmervika Rorbuer in the 1990s and now it is hers. The name, Kræmmervika Rorbuer, however, outdates the family and is in fact 500 years old!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Havmannen Welcomes You
June 7, 2010
Monday was our formal introduction to Mo i Rana and included visits to the local newspaper, industrial park and National Library. Our guide for the day was Steiner Høgaas, a retired Parliamentarian , former Secretary of State, former head of the local business collective and currently a board member for several prominent organizations in Mo i Rana. To introduce our group to Mo i Rana, we started the morning at the local newspaper, Rana Blad. The Ansvarlig Redaktør (Editor in Chief and Managing Director), Kirsti Nielsen met with us at 9 am to give us a brief overview of the publication. With a six day a week circulation, the newspaper is picked up by 10,535 subscribers. This paper, like most in Norway, has chosen to skip printing on Sundays since it is too expensive with additional costs to have anybody work on a Sunday. Norwegians are second only to the Japanese for newspaper consumption and a typical Norwegian reads 1.6 newspapers. Rana Blad has a daily readership of 28,000 with 9,000 daily visits to the website. It also hosts a mobile edition and a social network. The 300+ newspapers in Norway are typically owned by one of the five big media companies. Rana Blad is owned by A-Pressen. There is a conglomerate rule in Norway, limiting any on company from owning more than 33 percent of all the media.
Rana Blad is a 30 page publication with 46 employees and 60 paperboys on staff. The company offices include three branches: Rana Blad for the reporting and writing; Mediebyraaet for advertising, public relations and design; and Helgeland for the distribution. The yearly income for the company is around 60-65 million kroners with 60 percent of the income coming in from advertising and 40 percent from subscriptions. A one year subscription to the newspaper would cost 2,000 NOK while a single newsstand issue sells for 20 NOK.
After walking through the newspaper offices, we headed around the corner to Mo Industripark AS. This industrial park has been the major employer in the city of Mo i Rana for years. In 1945, when the industrial park first opened, there were 8,400 residents in Mo i Rana and five years later, there were 25,000 residents. In square mileage, the industrial park is equal to the entire downtown town center area. The processing industry at Mo Industrial Park convert raw materials and local hyrdo-power into products that are in demand worldwide. The six processing enterprises in the park have an annual revenue of 3 billion NOK or the same revenue as the fish and aquaculture in the whole of Nordland County. The park is also home to Norway’s only steelworks and Scandinavia’s only rolling mill for the production of reinforcing steel. This movement to produce steel started in the 1970s, after the oil crisis, when Norway realized that they needed to start producing their own steel rather than being dependent on the fluctuating prices of imported steel to survive. This park started with ore, iron and steel and today the 2.7 sq. km. industrial park is home to the process industry, the business sector including the engineering industry, IT businesses and national IT-based service providers and two fish-farming facilities. There are currently 2,200 employees working at the park but there are plans to double the steel industry thanks to the large demand from India and China.
Perhaps the most interesting stop of the day was to the Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library). In the 1980s, there was a decline of industry in Mo i Rana. In 1989, the government passed the legal act to deposit archives which was the nation’s law to collect and archive every piece of distributed information (print, broadcast or online) to save for future generations. The archives found a home in Mo i Rana and several of the unemployed were trained in specialized skills to help maintain the archives. There are currently 210 employees in Mo i Rana and another 160 employees in Oslo. The goal of the archives is to make every document ever generated available. It is the individual or the company’s responsibility to drop off a copy of these documents to the National Library to be archived. Since the conception of the National Library, the government is seeking to make this the first entirely digitalized library. The original documents are archived in a vault in the mountain that is 42 km deep (length of a marathon). There is also a separate digital repository inside the mountain. Why inside the mountain? The first and most important reason is temperature control. The vault is a stable 8˚ Celsius, which is ideal for preservation. It is also protected from any outside climate changes, warfare or flooding. Finally, there is endless room and in fact, there is currently renovation for another expansion. Outside the mountain is a nitrate film vault; nitrate cannot be placed inside the vault since the chemicals can start a fire inside the mountain.
Following the rules for making a deposit into the national archives is a lengthy process. For example, seven copies of any book need to be delivered and according to the law, one copy would go into the mountain archives, one would go to Oslo, four copies would be sent to the four major universities and one copy would be placed in the national public library for requests. Newspapers must send two copies of each edition, one to be placed in the vault and one to be digitalized. The national archives has several separate sections including a cleaning area to process and restore old books, an audio/visual section to digitalize all broadcast and audio recordings including the daily NRK Nordland tapes and a film section to restore old films. The archives also hold any items that were sent out as bonuses when buying a document. For example, the library has a pair of pink Barbie flip flops, a bonus item when buying a magazine. The library cannot discriminate and keeps a record of anything printed whether it is news, comics, erotica or anything controversial. The goal is to preserve history today so others can learn from us in the future.
One of the most interesting aspects of the National Library is the cutting edge technology. We visited the daily use records, a section designed to fulfill requests for information. Here, nearly one million publications are randomly placed in bins and a computerized robot can retrieve any requested book. No humans are allowed into the stacks and would not even know how to find the requested material if they tried since it is not filed in any particular order. In another section of the library, two newly purchased digital scanners automatically flip pages and scan entire newspapers. Since Norway is a small country and has a limited number of literature through the years, the idea of digitalizing everything is not as daunting as some other countries. There are currently about one million pieces of literature in the archives.
Our day ended with a visit to Havmannen or “The Man from the Sea” statue. Situated in the water and facing outward to greet incoming ships, this granite stone statue was designed by famed English artist Anthony Gormley and is 11 meters (36 ft) tall and 60 tons in weight. The artist originally imagined the statue in steel, since steel was one of the pillars of the industrial Mo i Rana. It was placed in this city to symbolize the sharp contrast between nature and industry. Unfortunately, the steel industry was suffering at the time so this because Gormley’s first stone structure. The making of Havmannen became a controversial topic within Mo i Rana and was heavily discussed in Rana Blad, the local newspaper, for two reasons: whether it was appropriate use of public money and the lack of male genitalia. Nowadays, the town takes pride in the statue and even celebrates an annual festival, Havmanndagene, every May. Our host, Vigleik, explained that Havmannen faces outward, toward the sea, to welcome the ships coming into the harbor and help encourage prosperity and business in the community.
Monday was our formal introduction to Mo i Rana and included visits to the local newspaper, industrial park and National Library. Our guide for the day was Steiner Høgaas, a retired Parliamentarian , former Secretary of State, former head of the local business collective and currently a board member for several prominent organizations in Mo i Rana. To introduce our group to Mo i Rana, we started the morning at the local newspaper, Rana Blad. The Ansvarlig Redaktør (Editor in Chief and Managing Director), Kirsti Nielsen met with us at 9 am to give us a brief overview of the publication. With a six day a week circulation, the newspaper is picked up by 10,535 subscribers. This paper, like most in Norway, has chosen to skip printing on Sundays since it is too expensive with additional costs to have anybody work on a Sunday. Norwegians are second only to the Japanese for newspaper consumption and a typical Norwegian reads 1.6 newspapers. Rana Blad has a daily readership of 28,000 with 9,000 daily visits to the website. It also hosts a mobile edition and a social network. The 300+ newspapers in Norway are typically owned by one of the five big media companies. Rana Blad is owned by A-Pressen. There is a conglomerate rule in Norway, limiting any on company from owning more than 33 percent of all the media.
Rana Blad is a 30 page publication with 46 employees and 60 paperboys on staff. The company offices include three branches: Rana Blad for the reporting and writing; Mediebyraaet for advertising, public relations and design; and Helgeland for the distribution. The yearly income for the company is around 60-65 million kroners with 60 percent of the income coming in from advertising and 40 percent from subscriptions. A one year subscription to the newspaper would cost 2,000 NOK while a single newsstand issue sells for 20 NOK.
After walking through the newspaper offices, we headed around the corner to Mo Industripark AS. This industrial park has been the major employer in the city of Mo i Rana for years. In 1945, when the industrial park first opened, there were 8,400 residents in Mo i Rana and five years later, there were 25,000 residents. In square mileage, the industrial park is equal to the entire downtown town center area. The processing industry at Mo Industrial Park convert raw materials and local hyrdo-power into products that are in demand worldwide. The six processing enterprises in the park have an annual revenue of 3 billion NOK or the same revenue as the fish and aquaculture in the whole of Nordland County. The park is also home to Norway’s only steelworks and Scandinavia’s only rolling mill for the production of reinforcing steel. This movement to produce steel started in the 1970s, after the oil crisis, when Norway realized that they needed to start producing their own steel rather than being dependent on the fluctuating prices of imported steel to survive. This park started with ore, iron and steel and today the 2.7 sq. km. industrial park is home to the process industry, the business sector including the engineering industry, IT businesses and national IT-based service providers and two fish-farming facilities. There are currently 2,200 employees working at the park but there are plans to double the steel industry thanks to the large demand from India and China.
Perhaps the most interesting stop of the day was to the Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library). In the 1980s, there was a decline of industry in Mo i Rana. In 1989, the government passed the legal act to deposit archives which was the nation’s law to collect and archive every piece of distributed information (print, broadcast or online) to save for future generations. The archives found a home in Mo i Rana and several of the unemployed were trained in specialized skills to help maintain the archives. There are currently 210 employees in Mo i Rana and another 160 employees in Oslo. The goal of the archives is to make every document ever generated available. It is the individual or the company’s responsibility to drop off a copy of these documents to the National Library to be archived. Since the conception of the National Library, the government is seeking to make this the first entirely digitalized library. The original documents are archived in a vault in the mountain that is 42 km deep (length of a marathon). There is also a separate digital repository inside the mountain. Why inside the mountain? The first and most important reason is temperature control. The vault is a stable 8˚ Celsius, which is ideal for preservation. It is also protected from any outside climate changes, warfare or flooding. Finally, there is endless room and in fact, there is currently renovation for another expansion. Outside the mountain is a nitrate film vault; nitrate cannot be placed inside the vault since the chemicals can start a fire inside the mountain.
Following the rules for making a deposit into the national archives is a lengthy process. For example, seven copies of any book need to be delivered and according to the law, one copy would go into the mountain archives, one would go to Oslo, four copies would be sent to the four major universities and one copy would be placed in the national public library for requests. Newspapers must send two copies of each edition, one to be placed in the vault and one to be digitalized. The national archives has several separate sections including a cleaning area to process and restore old books, an audio/visual section to digitalize all broadcast and audio recordings including the daily NRK Nordland tapes and a film section to restore old films. The archives also hold any items that were sent out as bonuses when buying a document. For example, the library has a pair of pink Barbie flip flops, a bonus item when buying a magazine. The library cannot discriminate and keeps a record of anything printed whether it is news, comics, erotica or anything controversial. The goal is to preserve history today so others can learn from us in the future.
One of the most interesting aspects of the National Library is the cutting edge technology. We visited the daily use records, a section designed to fulfill requests for information. Here, nearly one million publications are randomly placed in bins and a computerized robot can retrieve any requested book. No humans are allowed into the stacks and would not even know how to find the requested material if they tried since it is not filed in any particular order. In another section of the library, two newly purchased digital scanners automatically flip pages and scan entire newspapers. Since Norway is a small country and has a limited number of literature through the years, the idea of digitalizing everything is not as daunting as some other countries. There are currently about one million pieces of literature in the archives.
Our day ended with a visit to Havmannen or “The Man from the Sea” statue. Situated in the water and facing outward to greet incoming ships, this granite stone statue was designed by famed English artist Anthony Gormley and is 11 meters (36 ft) tall and 60 tons in weight. The artist originally imagined the statue in steel, since steel was one of the pillars of the industrial Mo i Rana. It was placed in this city to symbolize the sharp contrast between nature and industry. Unfortunately, the steel industry was suffering at the time so this because Gormley’s first stone structure. The making of Havmannen became a controversial topic within Mo i Rana and was heavily discussed in Rana Blad, the local newspaper, for two reasons: whether it was appropriate use of public money and the lack of male genitalia. Nowadays, the town takes pride in the statue and even celebrates an annual festival, Havmanndagene, every May. Our host, Vigleik, explained that Havmannen faces outward, toward the sea, to welcome the ships coming into the harbor and help encourage prosperity and business in the community.
To Sweden and Back...
June 6, 2010
After a much needed late morning, Arna and Vigleik suggested a trip to Sweden for our Sunday afternoon. We packed up the car and started on the two hour journey from Mo i Rana to Hemavan Tärnaby. The border between Norway and Sweden is very laid back, there are no customs or policing and in fact, many Norwegians used to travel to Sweden frequently to pick up cheaper groceries, particularly tobacco and pork. Tärnaby is a ski resort and busy in the winter months where visitors can rent cabins and stay overnight. It is a really small town, home to only one restaurant, one grocery store, a tourist center and a Sami shop. Since we drove in on a Sunday, everything was closed and not a car was in sight. Vigleik and Arna, who hadn’t visited Tärnaby in a couple years, seemed surprised by the lack of activity. They said the last time they came there were more shops open and at least a few stores and restaurants were open on Sunday. The financial crisis seems to have hit Sweden as well. Instead of having lunch in town, we decided to visit the local grocery store to pick up some supplies for a trip up to the mountains to Arna and Vigleik’s cabin. On the drive back to Norway, we drove through several snow storms and to our delight, ran into some reindeer. We were surprised to see reindeer this time of year since typically the reindeer travel north into the mountains during the summer to find pockets of snow to get away from insects. The unseasonable cold this year has likely made the reindeer stay in the area, so for once, we were not complaining about the weather! Our introduction to reindeers included clarifying a well-known myth… Rudolph is actually a girl! Reindeer lose their antlers once a year; the male reindeers lose their reindeer in the winter and spring while the female reindeers lose their antlers in the summer and autumn. Therefore, Rudolph couldn’t have had antlers in December unless he was a young reindeer and had yet to grow his antlers and only had stubs. One of the most amazing sights was seeing a newborn reindeer. The female reindeers, after spending the winter pregnant after mating season in the autumn, give birth in May. We saw some newborns, perhaps only a couple weeks old, which looked like baby lamb with white skin and pink eyes. All the reindeer in the area does belong to somebody. There is a reindeer farm in the area that has marked the reindeer but lets them roam freely in the area, only feeding them if it the weather is too harsh for the reindeer to find their own food. When the reindeer are older, they are slaughtered for reindeer meat. Reindeer meat is a popular delicacy in the area, but it is rather expensive since there are limited number of reindeer killed each year. The Sami people have long eaten reindeer and are the herders in the area. It wasn’t until recently that they were able to organize themselves better and now have started offering more reindeer meat to the local stores. Vigleik explained that when referring to the Sami people who herd reindeer is okay to call them Laps. However, the politically correct term for the others is Sami people.
Another popular myth that Vigleik and Arna clarified was the history of the Viking helmets. No remains ever found in Norway indicate that the Vikings had horns on their helmet. That was an exaggeration by the history books!
About 25 kilometers from Mo i Rana, we arrived to Arna and Vigleik’s cabin at Rauvatnet. The name means “on/at the River Rauvatnet.” Arna and Vigleik bought this hytte (cabin) in January 1987 when their twin boys were only 11 years old. The cabin is a 15 minute uphill trek from the car and far enough into the mountain that you can’t see any other cabins. There is no electricity minus a couple small solar panels on the roof and there is no running water, although there is a creek that runs by the side of the house. There is an outhouse bathroom, which is essentially a toilet with a hole in the ground which is cleaned every couple years. The Hagas don’t use the cabin too often during the winter, but do celebrate every Easter up here. The cabin is tiny, you walk in and on the left is a living room with a small couch, chair, furnace, kitchen and bunk beds built into the wall. On the right is a small room with another set of bunk beds. The outhouse is attached to the side of the house but can only be accessed by leaving the main door. Vigleik and Arna said they prefer the primitive cabin and enjoy this place as their retreat from the busy everyday life at home. As soon as we entered the cabin, Arna started the furnace by throwing in a couple logs while Vigleik started boiling a pot of water for coffee and setting out some whiskey to warm us up. He then cooked up some sausages and soy sausages for us as we enjoyed a late afternoon lunch.
After spending several hours in the cabin, we made our way back to Mo i Rana. A quick stop at the grocery store turned out to be quiet an experience. Local law dictates that a full grocery store cannot be open on Sundays but a store that is less than 100 meters in size can stay open. Therefore, the ICA grocery we visited had a small section in the corner of the main floor that housed all the necessities including eggs, bread, milk and frozen pizza for the customers. This small store was packed the entire time we were there! Arna said that while it is perhaps not allowed, if you need something that is not available in the Sunday store, the cashier will run into the main store and pick it up for you when it gets slow in the store. Both Arna and Vigleik agree that the Sunday store rule is one of Norway’s silliest!
After a much needed late morning, Arna and Vigleik suggested a trip to Sweden for our Sunday afternoon. We packed up the car and started on the two hour journey from Mo i Rana to Hemavan Tärnaby. The border between Norway and Sweden is very laid back, there are no customs or policing and in fact, many Norwegians used to travel to Sweden frequently to pick up cheaper groceries, particularly tobacco and pork. Tärnaby is a ski resort and busy in the winter months where visitors can rent cabins and stay overnight. It is a really small town, home to only one restaurant, one grocery store, a tourist center and a Sami shop. Since we drove in on a Sunday, everything was closed and not a car was in sight. Vigleik and Arna, who hadn’t visited Tärnaby in a couple years, seemed surprised by the lack of activity. They said the last time they came there were more shops open and at least a few stores and restaurants were open on Sunday. The financial crisis seems to have hit Sweden as well. Instead of having lunch in town, we decided to visit the local grocery store to pick up some supplies for a trip up to the mountains to Arna and Vigleik’s cabin. On the drive back to Norway, we drove through several snow storms and to our delight, ran into some reindeer. We were surprised to see reindeer this time of year since typically the reindeer travel north into the mountains during the summer to find pockets of snow to get away from insects. The unseasonable cold this year has likely made the reindeer stay in the area, so for once, we were not complaining about the weather! Our introduction to reindeers included clarifying a well-known myth… Rudolph is actually a girl! Reindeer lose their antlers once a year; the male reindeers lose their reindeer in the winter and spring while the female reindeers lose their antlers in the summer and autumn. Therefore, Rudolph couldn’t have had antlers in December unless he was a young reindeer and had yet to grow his antlers and only had stubs. One of the most amazing sights was seeing a newborn reindeer. The female reindeers, after spending the winter pregnant after mating season in the autumn, give birth in May. We saw some newborns, perhaps only a couple weeks old, which looked like baby lamb with white skin and pink eyes. All the reindeer in the area does belong to somebody. There is a reindeer farm in the area that has marked the reindeer but lets them roam freely in the area, only feeding them if it the weather is too harsh for the reindeer to find their own food. When the reindeer are older, they are slaughtered for reindeer meat. Reindeer meat is a popular delicacy in the area, but it is rather expensive since there are limited number of reindeer killed each year. The Sami people have long eaten reindeer and are the herders in the area. It wasn’t until recently that they were able to organize themselves better and now have started offering more reindeer meat to the local stores. Vigleik explained that when referring to the Sami people who herd reindeer is okay to call them Laps. However, the politically correct term for the others is Sami people.
Another popular myth that Vigleik and Arna clarified was the history of the Viking helmets. No remains ever found in Norway indicate that the Vikings had horns on their helmet. That was an exaggeration by the history books!
About 25 kilometers from Mo i Rana, we arrived to Arna and Vigleik’s cabin at Rauvatnet. The name means “on/at the River Rauvatnet.” Arna and Vigleik bought this hytte (cabin) in January 1987 when their twin boys were only 11 years old. The cabin is a 15 minute uphill trek from the car and far enough into the mountain that you can’t see any other cabins. There is no electricity minus a couple small solar panels on the roof and there is no running water, although there is a creek that runs by the side of the house. There is an outhouse bathroom, which is essentially a toilet with a hole in the ground which is cleaned every couple years. The Hagas don’t use the cabin too often during the winter, but do celebrate every Easter up here. The cabin is tiny, you walk in and on the left is a living room with a small couch, chair, furnace, kitchen and bunk beds built into the wall. On the right is a small room with another set of bunk beds. The outhouse is attached to the side of the house but can only be accessed by leaving the main door. Vigleik and Arna said they prefer the primitive cabin and enjoy this place as their retreat from the busy everyday life at home. As soon as we entered the cabin, Arna started the furnace by throwing in a couple logs while Vigleik started boiling a pot of water for coffee and setting out some whiskey to warm us up. He then cooked up some sausages and soy sausages for us as we enjoyed a late afternoon lunch.
After spending several hours in the cabin, we made our way back to Mo i Rana. A quick stop at the grocery store turned out to be quiet an experience. Local law dictates that a full grocery store cannot be open on Sundays but a store that is less than 100 meters in size can stay open. Therefore, the ICA grocery we visited had a small section in the corner of the main floor that housed all the necessities including eggs, bread, milk and frozen pizza for the customers. This small store was packed the entire time we were there! Arna said that while it is perhaps not allowed, if you need something that is not available in the Sunday store, the cashier will run into the main store and pick it up for you when it gets slow in the store. Both Arna and Vigleik agree that the Sunday store rule is one of Norway’s silliest!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Life in Mo i Rana
June 5, 2010
The sun is shining in Mo i Rana today and the view out of Arna and Vigleik’s living room is spectacular. Their house is located about 6 km outside of the town center and faces a fjord and the surrounding snow-capped mountains. The summer months, which run from June 23 to mid-August, are relatively warm around 20˚ Celsius, although this year has been unseasonably cold to date. During our stay, it has been about 8˚ Celsius. In fact, it is so cold here that Ana escapes for six or twelve weeks to Majorca, Spain. Unfortunately, Vigleik still works full-time so he can only join her for a week each winter.
Today is our first of two “off” day which means we have no programs but are spending the weekend with our host family, doing what they would typically do. Since Vigleik is the town kultursjef, he actually has some work events to host and so we will be spending the day meeting the people of Mo i Rana. Our first stop is the unveiling of a bust. Per Magnus Karstensen is 95 years old and somewhat of a local hero. He was the municipalities’ first mayor when it joined into Mo i Rana and the head of the local school. He has done a lot of work for the township and was honored with the bust that will stand in the middle of the downtown square, outside the city council building. It is unusual, even for Norway, to honor somebody with a bust while they are still living. His family including his children and grandchildren all flew in from Oslo for the ceremony, which was held outdoors (in the cold!).
Our next stop on our working Saturday was to the bibliotek (library) to present Ellen Einan a literary award honoring her work as a poet. Every year, the municipality selects one Norwegian author to win and this year’s honoree is a long-time poet who was born and continues to live in Lofoten. Ellen was in the audience to receive the award but chose not to speak. We were told later that she is suffering from the first stages of dementia. As part of the celebration, a famed lyrical Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold was asked to recite several of Ellen’s poems.
Between this event and our next stop, we had a quick lunch at Babettes. Babettes is the town’s main restaurant, pub and nightlife venue and is a small eatery run by a Turkish family. It was an exciting lunch though since we were the guests of the town mayor, Geir Waage. Waage said he was very excited about having a busy Saturday because it means that the town is doing a lot of good and getting the people involved in projects and activities, which at the end of the day, is his goal.
Immediately after lunch, we were off to our last working visit of the day at the Rana Musuem. Here the Rana Culture School was presenting scholarships to eleven students. This scholarship started several years ago with a family living in Mo i Rana. The parents had one son, who loved music but decided to follow a career in law. He died from alcoholism at an early age. To honor their son and to right his memory, the parents decided to write a will donating all their money to create a music scholarship in their son’s name. Each year, the interest of the donation offers several scholarships of about 5,000 NOK to students in the area. Each student who performed for the mayor and the guests certainly earned the prestigious award!
Our last stop for the evening before heading home for dinner was a visit to the local church. The church was built in 1723 and the exterior was remodeled in 1830. All further renovations and upgrades have maintained the original structure, paint and architecture of the 1800s. The church continues to be the meeting place for most of the Mo i Rana residents and is the only church in the downtown area. The cemetery standing beside the church housed the remains of several Soviet Union members who were imprisoned by the Nazi Germans and sentenced to hard slave labor. The residents of Mo i Rana erected a memorial and placed all the remains in the cemetery. However, during this time, the Nazi Germans wanted to remove all the bones and pile them up to move in a large dumpsite grave on the island of tjøtta. The residents of Mo i Rana would not let this happen and anytime the troops came to town, they would circle the grave and defend the Soviets. Outside the memorial are eight headstones for the Norwegians who lost their life defending the graves on May 17,1940. Today’s program at the church featured a performance by a visiting children’s choir from Trondheim.
And this, Vagleik explained, is a typical Saturday for the city’s cultural chair.
The sun is shining in Mo i Rana today and the view out of Arna and Vigleik’s living room is spectacular. Their house is located about 6 km outside of the town center and faces a fjord and the surrounding snow-capped mountains. The summer months, which run from June 23 to mid-August, are relatively warm around 20˚ Celsius, although this year has been unseasonably cold to date. During our stay, it has been about 8˚ Celsius. In fact, it is so cold here that Ana escapes for six or twelve weeks to Majorca, Spain. Unfortunately, Vigleik still works full-time so he can only join her for a week each winter.
Today is our first of two “off” day which means we have no programs but are spending the weekend with our host family, doing what they would typically do. Since Vigleik is the town kultursjef, he actually has some work events to host and so we will be spending the day meeting the people of Mo i Rana. Our first stop is the unveiling of a bust. Per Magnus Karstensen is 95 years old and somewhat of a local hero. He was the municipalities’ first mayor when it joined into Mo i Rana and the head of the local school. He has done a lot of work for the township and was honored with the bust that will stand in the middle of the downtown square, outside the city council building. It is unusual, even for Norway, to honor somebody with a bust while they are still living. His family including his children and grandchildren all flew in from Oslo for the ceremony, which was held outdoors (in the cold!).
Our next stop on our working Saturday was to the bibliotek (library) to present Ellen Einan a literary award honoring her work as a poet. Every year, the municipality selects one Norwegian author to win and this year’s honoree is a long-time poet who was born and continues to live in Lofoten. Ellen was in the audience to receive the award but chose not to speak. We were told later that she is suffering from the first stages of dementia. As part of the celebration, a famed lyrical Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold was asked to recite several of Ellen’s poems.
Between this event and our next stop, we had a quick lunch at Babettes. Babettes is the town’s main restaurant, pub and nightlife venue and is a small eatery run by a Turkish family. It was an exciting lunch though since we were the guests of the town mayor, Geir Waage. Waage said he was very excited about having a busy Saturday because it means that the town is doing a lot of good and getting the people involved in projects and activities, which at the end of the day, is his goal.
Immediately after lunch, we were off to our last working visit of the day at the Rana Musuem. Here the Rana Culture School was presenting scholarships to eleven students. This scholarship started several years ago with a family living in Mo i Rana. The parents had one son, who loved music but decided to follow a career in law. He died from alcoholism at an early age. To honor their son and to right his memory, the parents decided to write a will donating all their money to create a music scholarship in their son’s name. Each year, the interest of the donation offers several scholarships of about 5,000 NOK to students in the area. Each student who performed for the mayor and the guests certainly earned the prestigious award!
Our last stop for the evening before heading home for dinner was a visit to the local church. The church was built in 1723 and the exterior was remodeled in 1830. All further renovations and upgrades have maintained the original structure, paint and architecture of the 1800s. The church continues to be the meeting place for most of the Mo i Rana residents and is the only church in the downtown area. The cemetery standing beside the church housed the remains of several Soviet Union members who were imprisoned by the Nazi Germans and sentenced to hard slave labor. The residents of Mo i Rana erected a memorial and placed all the remains in the cemetery. However, during this time, the Nazi Germans wanted to remove all the bones and pile them up to move in a large dumpsite grave on the island of tjøtta. The residents of Mo i Rana would not let this happen and anytime the troops came to town, they would circle the grave and defend the Soviets. Outside the memorial are eight headstones for the Norwegians who lost their life defending the graves on May 17,1940. Today’s program at the church featured a performance by a visiting children’s choir from Trondheim.
And this, Vagleik explained, is a typical Saturday for the city’s cultural chair.
Baptism at the Arctic Circle
June 4, 2010
We started off our last day in Fauske with a lavish breakfast set out by our host, Rolf. I wanted to write about breakfasts in Norway since they are so different than what we are used to at home. Every morning at both of my host families to date, we’ve had a breakfast tray set out on the table. This tray includes the staples of at least two varieties of fresh bread, wasa crackers, butter, homemade jam (this morning we had three varieties including cloudberry and mixed berries), brown butter, brown butter jelly, cheese, salami, shrimp salad, mayonnaise, caviar, salmon, liver pate, beet whipped spread, milk, homemade honey, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, instant coffee and sugar. Most of this stays on a tray that is just left in the fridge as is, to make it easy for the next breakfast meal. Most Norwegians do start their day with a hearty breakfast that starts with the bread on the bottom and then different toppings are added. Rolf said that if he has to take lunch with him on the go, he’d make a brown cheese and bread sandwich for later in the day. What is brown cheese? Well, brunost as it is called is a whey cheese native to Norway first made in the Gudbrandsdalsost Valley. Traditionally, the cheese is made from goat’s milk but has been known to be a combination of both goat and cow’s milk, depending on the brand. It is a strong, sweet yet sharp flavor somewhat like caramel and goat’s milk. Brunost is made by boiling a mixture of milk, cream and whey carefully for several hours so that the water evaporates. The heat turns the milk sugar into caramel which gives the cheese its characteristic taste. It is ready for consumption as soon as it is packed in suitable sized blocks.
After breakfast, we packed our bags and said goodbye to Fauske as we headed out into the mountains toward Rognan. Our first visit today was to a cable company called Nexans and our tour guide this morning was Ronny Pettersen. Nexans is a Paris-headquartered French company with over 120 plants and 125,000 employees worldwide. In Norway, there are five branches, with the Norwegian headquarters being in Oslo. In Rognan, which is the northern cable factory in the world, the company focuses on producing telecom cables. Established in 1952, the company has 175 employees and is the largest industrial company in the Saltdal community. Amazingly, the company boasts more than 80 percent of their employees as certified skilled workers and is home to 20 engineers. The three main production lines include telecommunication cables, special telecom (STC) cables mainly for submarines and remotely operated vehicles (ROV) cables. In 2008, Nexans Rognan had revenue of 750 million NOK and the goal is to increase that revenue to 1 billion NOK in the next five years. Today, all the production is custom ordered. During our tour of the facility, we saw clear fiber optic cables bought primarily from East Asia and then dyed or striped depending on the use and the recipient. The cables are then wrapped with rubber, steel and other materials to form cables via a series of heavy machinery and eventually, the end product is wrapped around wheels. Nexans Rognan has manufactured a pulley system to allow the sometimes 150 tonnes of cable to travel alongside the trackline for 500 meters to then wrap directly on the ship for transportation.
From Rognan, we continued driving south to the Nordland Nasjonalparksenter (National Park Centre) in Storjord in Saltdal. Saltdal is located in the heart of Nordland County along the E6, which is the highway that connects all of Norway. The Nasjonalparksenter features an exhibition introducing visitors to the wildlife and history of the surrounding park lands. Along our hour long trek, we took in waterfalls, the majestic mountains and the rich plantlife on this protected land. Interestingly, archeologists have found permanent settlements dating back from 3000 BC to 200 AD, or the Stone Ages. Some of the finds include charred remains, stone objects, animal traps from as early as 2400 BC and several examples of shelter from the 1800s. We saw two replications of houses of the Sami people over the years and the knowledge and forethought was so impressive. For example, in one of the huts, there was a fire pit in the middle of the hut with a raised roof in the center to allow the smoke to escape and a bar hanging across the hut to tie up the meat or anything else that needed to be slow cooked over the fire.
Next stop: Polarsirkelsenteret! The drive from Storjord to Saltfjellet was about 20 minutes but difference in scenery and landscape was night and day. We left behind the green forests and lush waterways behind in favor of barren trees, overcast weather, lingering snow piles and huge forbearing mountains. There was no greenery in sight and as we drove closer to the Arctic Circle Center, the weather dropped from 7˚Celsius (44.6˚ Fahrenheit) to 3˚ Celsius (37.4˚ Fahrenheit). The center is really one small building with a gift shop, but the Arctic Circle is said to run through the building. The center opened on July 13, 1990 and is approximately 680 meters above sea level. The Arctic Circle is the southernmost point where you can see the Midnight Sun and here, in Salfjellet, the Midnight Sun is visible for about a month while the sun is visible for at least six months a year. Although it is the wrong time of the year for us, it is also an amazing place to see the Northern Lights! The Arctic Circle is located at 66˚ 33˚ north. Outside of the center building, there are Russian and Yugoslavian war memorials from World War II. These were prisoners of the German Nazis that were held captive in the area and forced to hard labor and made to pave the way from the Ragnon to Saltjellet.
After playing tourist at the Arctic Circle, we said goodbye to our Fauske hosts and switched cars to head about 80 km south to Mo i Rana. The scenery once again became lush and full of green spruce trees as soon as we moved a little way outside of the Arctic Circle boundary line and after passing several mountains and fjords, we met our new hosts – Vigleik and Arna (pronounced Ana) Haga. Vigleik is the city’s kultursjef (civil culture officer) while Arna is a pensioner (retired teacher). Over a delicious homemade meal, Vigleik and Arna introduced us to their part of Norway. Arna is a Sami from an island in Finnmark while Vigleik came from a city in the south. They met in Oslo while Arna was studying at the University and Vigleik was working in the dorm cafeteria and now 40 years later, they are married with twin boys (one married with two children in Trondheim and one single in Oslo). Arna also has an older daughter, who is married and lives with her three children outside of Oslo. It was interesting talking to Vigleik and Arna about their differing views on the United States (Vigleik fears we are losing the freedom the Constitution was founded upon, while Arna fears the United States being a world power that doesn’t necessary think of other countries while making decisions) and their opinions about Norway today. One of the most interesting stories of the night was Arna sharing her own history as one of the Sami people living in Northern Norway before the Nazis entered the country.
Arna was a two year old living on the coast of a fjord in Finnmark when her family heard news of the German Nazis crossing through Russia and Finland to enter the northernmost region in Norway. At the time, she was the only child so her parents packed up their necessities and decided to leave their village and cross the fjord to wait out the German invasion. They assumed this would take at most three weeks. This was October 1944 and the beginning of the winter months. Three weeks came and went and there was no sight of the German invasion or of the horror stories they had heard of the Germans coming into town and burning down villages, livestock and people. A majority of the other families that had fleed the hometown with Ana’s family decided to go back to their houses, believing the stories were exaggerated or perhaps the Germans had decided to skip the island. Only three families including Arna’s decided to wait longer even though the hours of light were rapidly decreasing and the brutal winter winds were about to start blowing. In January 1945, the Germans did make their way to Arna’s town and her family, still across the fjord in safety, could see the entire village burning and the people being taken into captivity. Arna turned to her mother and said, “Mom, now we have no house.” They feared their own safety but more importantly how they could survive a winter without the proper necessities. As Arna says, it was likely the Sami blood and the Sami ways that kept them alive. It also helped that the winter was particularly kinder than many others of the past. Almost five months after they first left their house, the Norwegian troops found Arna and the three surviving families. The Norwegian army , during those five months, had been setting up a base in Verde, Finnmark and were engaging the Nazis to push them out of the area. While Arna had been evacuated by boat around the tip of Norway to Verde, the troops did see that nearly 500 other Sami people had been hiding in the caves and mountains of her home island and needed rescuing. However, taking those people by the small boat they had was not practical so the Norwegian troops created a convoy and within two hours of reaching the island, had managed to rescue and evacuate all 500 remaining people. A couple months later, Arna’s father had managed to find a boat in Verde which he used to sail back to their home island and with the aid of the government, the islands of Finnmark were repopulated and rejuvenated.
I asked Arna why there seems to be such a division between the Sami people and the Norwegians. Unlike the Native Americans in the United States, the Sami people and the Norwegians all came to the area around the same time and co-existed for many years. When the glaciers started moving, the Noregians followed the reindeer and the fish further south while the Sami people decided to stay up north. However, it wasn’t until the Europeans decided to draw boundary lines between Finland, Norway and Sweden that problems between the two groups started developing. The Norwegians wanted to create pride in Norway and wanted the Sami people of Norway to give up their language and allegiance to Sami culture and adopt Norwegian customs. The Sami people refused and in fact, the Sami people of Finnmark now speak a language that is closer to Finnish than Norwegian because of how close they are to the border. Both Arna and Vigleik remember growing up hearing negative things about their respective cultures but when they met each other and introduced each other to their families, there was no anxiety about their intercultural relationship.
We started off our last day in Fauske with a lavish breakfast set out by our host, Rolf. I wanted to write about breakfasts in Norway since they are so different than what we are used to at home. Every morning at both of my host families to date, we’ve had a breakfast tray set out on the table. This tray includes the staples of at least two varieties of fresh bread, wasa crackers, butter, homemade jam (this morning we had three varieties including cloudberry and mixed berries), brown butter, brown butter jelly, cheese, salami, shrimp salad, mayonnaise, caviar, salmon, liver pate, beet whipped spread, milk, homemade honey, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, instant coffee and sugar. Most of this stays on a tray that is just left in the fridge as is, to make it easy for the next breakfast meal. Most Norwegians do start their day with a hearty breakfast that starts with the bread on the bottom and then different toppings are added. Rolf said that if he has to take lunch with him on the go, he’d make a brown cheese and bread sandwich for later in the day. What is brown cheese? Well, brunost as it is called is a whey cheese native to Norway first made in the Gudbrandsdalsost Valley. Traditionally, the cheese is made from goat’s milk but has been known to be a combination of both goat and cow’s milk, depending on the brand. It is a strong, sweet yet sharp flavor somewhat like caramel and goat’s milk. Brunost is made by boiling a mixture of milk, cream and whey carefully for several hours so that the water evaporates. The heat turns the milk sugar into caramel which gives the cheese its characteristic taste. It is ready for consumption as soon as it is packed in suitable sized blocks.
After breakfast, we packed our bags and said goodbye to Fauske as we headed out into the mountains toward Rognan. Our first visit today was to a cable company called Nexans and our tour guide this morning was Ronny Pettersen. Nexans is a Paris-headquartered French company with over 120 plants and 125,000 employees worldwide. In Norway, there are five branches, with the Norwegian headquarters being in Oslo. In Rognan, which is the northern cable factory in the world, the company focuses on producing telecom cables. Established in 1952, the company has 175 employees and is the largest industrial company in the Saltdal community. Amazingly, the company boasts more than 80 percent of their employees as certified skilled workers and is home to 20 engineers. The three main production lines include telecommunication cables, special telecom (STC) cables mainly for submarines and remotely operated vehicles (ROV) cables. In 2008, Nexans Rognan had revenue of 750 million NOK and the goal is to increase that revenue to 1 billion NOK in the next five years. Today, all the production is custom ordered. During our tour of the facility, we saw clear fiber optic cables bought primarily from East Asia and then dyed or striped depending on the use and the recipient. The cables are then wrapped with rubber, steel and other materials to form cables via a series of heavy machinery and eventually, the end product is wrapped around wheels. Nexans Rognan has manufactured a pulley system to allow the sometimes 150 tonnes of cable to travel alongside the trackline for 500 meters to then wrap directly on the ship for transportation.
From Rognan, we continued driving south to the Nordland Nasjonalparksenter (National Park Centre) in Storjord in Saltdal. Saltdal is located in the heart of Nordland County along the E6, which is the highway that connects all of Norway. The Nasjonalparksenter features an exhibition introducing visitors to the wildlife and history of the surrounding park lands. Along our hour long trek, we took in waterfalls, the majestic mountains and the rich plantlife on this protected land. Interestingly, archeologists have found permanent settlements dating back from 3000 BC to 200 AD, or the Stone Ages. Some of the finds include charred remains, stone objects, animal traps from as early as 2400 BC and several examples of shelter from the 1800s. We saw two replications of houses of the Sami people over the years and the knowledge and forethought was so impressive. For example, in one of the huts, there was a fire pit in the middle of the hut with a raised roof in the center to allow the smoke to escape and a bar hanging across the hut to tie up the meat or anything else that needed to be slow cooked over the fire.
Next stop: Polarsirkelsenteret! The drive from Storjord to Saltfjellet was about 20 minutes but difference in scenery and landscape was night and day. We left behind the green forests and lush waterways behind in favor of barren trees, overcast weather, lingering snow piles and huge forbearing mountains. There was no greenery in sight and as we drove closer to the Arctic Circle Center, the weather dropped from 7˚Celsius (44.6˚ Fahrenheit) to 3˚ Celsius (37.4˚ Fahrenheit). The center is really one small building with a gift shop, but the Arctic Circle is said to run through the building. The center opened on July 13, 1990 and is approximately 680 meters above sea level. The Arctic Circle is the southernmost point where you can see the Midnight Sun and here, in Salfjellet, the Midnight Sun is visible for about a month while the sun is visible for at least six months a year. Although it is the wrong time of the year for us, it is also an amazing place to see the Northern Lights! The Arctic Circle is located at 66˚ 33˚ north. Outside of the center building, there are Russian and Yugoslavian war memorials from World War II. These were prisoners of the German Nazis that were held captive in the area and forced to hard labor and made to pave the way from the Ragnon to Saltjellet.
After playing tourist at the Arctic Circle, we said goodbye to our Fauske hosts and switched cars to head about 80 km south to Mo i Rana. The scenery once again became lush and full of green spruce trees as soon as we moved a little way outside of the Arctic Circle boundary line and after passing several mountains and fjords, we met our new hosts – Vigleik and Arna (pronounced Ana) Haga. Vigleik is the city’s kultursjef (civil culture officer) while Arna is a pensioner (retired teacher). Over a delicious homemade meal, Vigleik and Arna introduced us to their part of Norway. Arna is a Sami from an island in Finnmark while Vigleik came from a city in the south. They met in Oslo while Arna was studying at the University and Vigleik was working in the dorm cafeteria and now 40 years later, they are married with twin boys (one married with two children in Trondheim and one single in Oslo). Arna also has an older daughter, who is married and lives with her three children outside of Oslo. It was interesting talking to Vigleik and Arna about their differing views on the United States (Vigleik fears we are losing the freedom the Constitution was founded upon, while Arna fears the United States being a world power that doesn’t necessary think of other countries while making decisions) and their opinions about Norway today. One of the most interesting stories of the night was Arna sharing her own history as one of the Sami people living in Northern Norway before the Nazis entered the country.
Arna was a two year old living on the coast of a fjord in Finnmark when her family heard news of the German Nazis crossing through Russia and Finland to enter the northernmost region in Norway. At the time, she was the only child so her parents packed up their necessities and decided to leave their village and cross the fjord to wait out the German invasion. They assumed this would take at most three weeks. This was October 1944 and the beginning of the winter months. Three weeks came and went and there was no sight of the German invasion or of the horror stories they had heard of the Germans coming into town and burning down villages, livestock and people. A majority of the other families that had fleed the hometown with Ana’s family decided to go back to their houses, believing the stories were exaggerated or perhaps the Germans had decided to skip the island. Only three families including Arna’s decided to wait longer even though the hours of light were rapidly decreasing and the brutal winter winds were about to start blowing. In January 1945, the Germans did make their way to Arna’s town and her family, still across the fjord in safety, could see the entire village burning and the people being taken into captivity. Arna turned to her mother and said, “Mom, now we have no house.” They feared their own safety but more importantly how they could survive a winter without the proper necessities. As Arna says, it was likely the Sami blood and the Sami ways that kept them alive. It also helped that the winter was particularly kinder than many others of the past. Almost five months after they first left their house, the Norwegian troops found Arna and the three surviving families. The Norwegian army , during those five months, had been setting up a base in Verde, Finnmark and were engaging the Nazis to push them out of the area. While Arna had been evacuated by boat around the tip of Norway to Verde, the troops did see that nearly 500 other Sami people had been hiding in the caves and mountains of her home island and needed rescuing. However, taking those people by the small boat they had was not practical so the Norwegian troops created a convoy and within two hours of reaching the island, had managed to rescue and evacuate all 500 remaining people. A couple months later, Arna’s father had managed to find a boat in Verde which he used to sail back to their home island and with the aid of the government, the islands of Finnmark were repopulated and rejuvenated.
I asked Arna why there seems to be such a division between the Sami people and the Norwegians. Unlike the Native Americans in the United States, the Sami people and the Norwegians all came to the area around the same time and co-existed for many years. When the glaciers started moving, the Noregians followed the reindeer and the fish further south while the Sami people decided to stay up north. However, it wasn’t until the Europeans decided to draw boundary lines between Finland, Norway and Sweden that problems between the two groups started developing. The Norwegians wanted to create pride in Norway and wanted the Sami people of Norway to give up their language and allegiance to Sami culture and adopt Norwegian customs. The Sami people refused and in fact, the Sami people of Finnmark now speak a language that is closer to Finnish than Norwegian because of how close they are to the border. Both Arna and Vigleik remember growing up hearing negative things about their respective cultures but when they met each other and introduced each other to their families, there was no anxiety about their intercultural relationship.
Hydroelectric power is the future!
June 3, 2010
Good morning Fauske! Today was our first day in Fauske and this town is so beautiful. Situated in the mountains and beside a fjord, the view from our host, Rolf Ericksen’s, house is amazing. Rolf designed this house in 1977 and then, with the help of some carpenters, helped build the house and moved into it in 1978. The inside of the house is very homey with a country décor and the walls are covered with memorabilia from his childhood town of Værøy in Lofoten. Rolf has recently started renovating his childhood home that he now co-owns with his sister and in fact, just came home to Fauske with us after being away for a month in Lofoten. He just installed a sauna in the basement and started re-paneling the outside walls of his house. Rolf showed us some photos of his home in Lofoten, which is located right on the water and has a magnificent mountain as a backdrop. Rolf, an avid mountaineer, goes hiking and trekking through the mountains whenever he has a chance and showed Mason and I, his guests, photos of several mountain tops including an 11-hour trip hiking five mountains in Værøy. Next weekend Rolf is planning to hike seven mountains in Bodø! In addition to his passion for mountaineering, Rolf takes pride in staying active and in shape. Every year, for the past 40 years, he has participated in a training circuit to test strength, agility and speed through a series of exercises and activities. The goal is to complete the circuit and prove that you are still in good health. Around his house, Rolf has several statues of a man throwing a javelin, a symbol of his continued completion of the program through the years.
Our first trip for the day is to the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant buried deep into the mountain. One of our hosts, Sigmund Normann, used to work at the facility and was able to arrange for our visit. Our guide for the day was Rober Normann, unrelated to Sigmund, who explained that this facility has a production capacity of 300 million kilowatt hours and a maximum production capacity of 60-65,000 kilowatts. The maximum flow can be 60 m3/seconds and the inflow is 1 billion m3/year. The pressure is a net head of 120 m. A similar coal plant used about 150,000 tons of caol per year with 30,000 tons of CO2 emission. In the Sulitjelma Valley, there are four power plants with a total production capacity of 11 billion kilwatt hours (1.1TWh/median year). Interestingly, this whole facility is monitored from a remote location at the headquarters in Fauske and is only has twice a week visits by an employee to check for any leaks or damages. The power plant draws from two reservoirs to run four stations.
Natural resources in Norway are owned by the government. Norway believes that the natural resources belong to the people, not to the company and therefore the heavy taxes go toward the pension fund. For this particular plant, 33 percent of the production belongs to Bodø, 11 percent to Fauske and 20 percent to the Danish. The Danish are looking to sell their percentage to attempt to rely on wind power. In Norway, 98 percent of the energy comes from hydro electric plants and this particular plant produces 0.8 percent of Norway’s hydro power. The reason hydro electric plants are favored over wind in Norway is because the only location where windmills would be effective would be along the coastline. However, wind power cannot easily be harnessed and transferred to homes inland. Instead, hydro electric power works more effectively due to the large number of fjords in Norway and in fact, Norway sells its surplus power to Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Although the hydro electric plants are in their backyard, even the residents of Fauske and Bodø must pay a premium for their energy. The cost of the energy is determined by the outside purchasers from Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands. Norwegians pay the same rate.
How does a hydro electric plant work? There are two large reservoirs at the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant. One reservoir is 700 meters above sea level and drops 600 meters before it is converted into energy by the station. The larger the drop, the less electricity the plant needs to convert energy. As a side note, the power plant pays the government the same rate for energy consumption as the other consumers even though it is the place where this energy is created and harnessed. Norway does have the greatest consumption of energy per person at about 25,000 kw/per person. This is largely due to the miners and the smelters of aluminum and copper. The cost to run the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant is very minimal. The reservoir, dam and tunnels last forever and the generators and other heavy machinery have a lifetime of 25-30 years. Whenever an upgrade is made, the cost is generally made back within two years. There are currently 400-500 hydro electric power plants across Norway. The production cost of hydro electric energy is currently about 1.5 cents per kw/h, but the consumption cost is 10 cents per kw/h.
After a delicious lunch at the Sulitjelma Hotel, we headed over to the Salten Mining Museum, which opened in 1977 as a collection tools and equipment related to power plant and the mining caves. The most interesting display was a 3d replica of a mine from the outside and with a slice of the mountain to see the interior workings including the labyrinth of passageways and the locations of machinery throughout the tunnel and cave system.
Heading back to Fauske after the visit, the scenery was so majestic and impressive. The wind had died down so the fjords were still and reflecting the mountains surrounding the waterway. The roads were relatively new and free from potholes but extremely narrow and difficult to navigate when cars pass in both directions. One of the tunnels we passed through is famously known to be haunted by the ghost of a man who used to live in an isolated house in the mountains. Now he appears before cars periodically and often times drivers are worried they hit somebody before turning around and realizing that nobody was in the tunnel. Sadly, we did not see this ghost!
Good morning Fauske! Today was our first day in Fauske and this town is so beautiful. Situated in the mountains and beside a fjord, the view from our host, Rolf Ericksen’s, house is amazing. Rolf designed this house in 1977 and then, with the help of some carpenters, helped build the house and moved into it in 1978. The inside of the house is very homey with a country décor and the walls are covered with memorabilia from his childhood town of Værøy in Lofoten. Rolf has recently started renovating his childhood home that he now co-owns with his sister and in fact, just came home to Fauske with us after being away for a month in Lofoten. He just installed a sauna in the basement and started re-paneling the outside walls of his house. Rolf showed us some photos of his home in Lofoten, which is located right on the water and has a magnificent mountain as a backdrop. Rolf, an avid mountaineer, goes hiking and trekking through the mountains whenever he has a chance and showed Mason and I, his guests, photos of several mountain tops including an 11-hour trip hiking five mountains in Værøy. Next weekend Rolf is planning to hike seven mountains in Bodø! In addition to his passion for mountaineering, Rolf takes pride in staying active and in shape. Every year, for the past 40 years, he has participated in a training circuit to test strength, agility and speed through a series of exercises and activities. The goal is to complete the circuit and prove that you are still in good health. Around his house, Rolf has several statues of a man throwing a javelin, a symbol of his continued completion of the program through the years.
Our first trip for the day is to the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant buried deep into the mountain. One of our hosts, Sigmund Normann, used to work at the facility and was able to arrange for our visit. Our guide for the day was Rober Normann, unrelated to Sigmund, who explained that this facility has a production capacity of 300 million kilowatt hours and a maximum production capacity of 60-65,000 kilowatts. The maximum flow can be 60 m3/seconds and the inflow is 1 billion m3/year. The pressure is a net head of 120 m. A similar coal plant used about 150,000 tons of caol per year with 30,000 tons of CO2 emission. In the Sulitjelma Valley, there are four power plants with a total production capacity of 11 billion kilwatt hours (1.1TWh/median year). Interestingly, this whole facility is monitored from a remote location at the headquarters in Fauske and is only has twice a week visits by an employee to check for any leaks or damages. The power plant draws from two reservoirs to run four stations.
Natural resources in Norway are owned by the government. Norway believes that the natural resources belong to the people, not to the company and therefore the heavy taxes go toward the pension fund. For this particular plant, 33 percent of the production belongs to Bodø, 11 percent to Fauske and 20 percent to the Danish. The Danish are looking to sell their percentage to attempt to rely on wind power. In Norway, 98 percent of the energy comes from hydro electric plants and this particular plant produces 0.8 percent of Norway’s hydro power. The reason hydro electric plants are favored over wind in Norway is because the only location where windmills would be effective would be along the coastline. However, wind power cannot easily be harnessed and transferred to homes inland. Instead, hydro electric power works more effectively due to the large number of fjords in Norway and in fact, Norway sells its surplus power to Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Although the hydro electric plants are in their backyard, even the residents of Fauske and Bodø must pay a premium for their energy. The cost of the energy is determined by the outside purchasers from Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands. Norwegians pay the same rate.
How does a hydro electric plant work? There are two large reservoirs at the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant. One reservoir is 700 meters above sea level and drops 600 meters before it is converted into energy by the station. The larger the drop, the less electricity the plant needs to convert energy. As a side note, the power plant pays the government the same rate for energy consumption as the other consumers even though it is the place where this energy is created and harnessed. Norway does have the greatest consumption of energy per person at about 25,000 kw/per person. This is largely due to the miners and the smelters of aluminum and copper. The cost to run the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant is very minimal. The reservoir, dam and tunnels last forever and the generators and other heavy machinery have a lifetime of 25-30 years. Whenever an upgrade is made, the cost is generally made back within two years. There are currently 400-500 hydro electric power plants across Norway. The production cost of hydro electric energy is currently about 1.5 cents per kw/h, but the consumption cost is 10 cents per kw/h.
After a delicious lunch at the Sulitjelma Hotel, we headed over to the Salten Mining Museum, which opened in 1977 as a collection tools and equipment related to power plant and the mining caves. The most interesting display was a 3d replica of a mine from the outside and with a slice of the mountain to see the interior workings including the labyrinth of passageways and the locations of machinery throughout the tunnel and cave system.
Heading back to Fauske after the visit, the scenery was so majestic and impressive. The wind had died down so the fjords were still and reflecting the mountains surrounding the waterway. The roads were relatively new and free from potholes but extremely narrow and difficult to navigate when cars pass in both directions. One of the tunnels we passed through is famously known to be haunted by the ghost of a man who used to live in an isolated house in the mountains. Now he appears before cars periodically and often times drivers are worried they hit somebody before turning around and realizing that nobody was in the tunnel. Sadly, we did not see this ghost!
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