Grand opening of the Seed Vault

The Global Seed Vault finally opens today, and we aren´t invited. But yesterday we were, to the final rehearsal - together with a large part of the local population. The weather was really bad, and the drivers of the 5 large buses that took us up the winding, narrow road to the vault, through the blizzard in complete darkness, did an excellent job. The weather today is a lot better, but still windy.

Anyway - we weren´t allowed to take pictures during the ceremony, but here´s one of the host, Fredrik Skavlan.


Underneath is the scene where Mari Boine and Coco Mbassi performed, and where Nobelprice-winner Wangari Maathai spoke about deliveries of seeds. They´ll be doing the same things today, more about that here.


Afterwards, we took some snapshots of the beautiful ice-art in the halls.



And we did a little posing, Emma and I...


The art-piece that´s on the entrance of the vault looks really nice, but as the weather was so horrible last night, I couldn´t get a good shot of it, and I have nicked the one under from here. It´s made by the Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne.

The bear in front is made of ice, by the way...


The whole town has been flooded with camera-teams for several days - it´s quite entertaining to see reporters and camera teams snooping around the streets and shops, carrying heavy gear. Here and here are a couple of reports. There´ll probably be more before this day is over.

Update 8 o´clock: you´ll find the whole ceremony here.