The Big Arrival

... aand here we are. Bit of an anticlimax really. Having been on the road and looking forward to something for so long was kind of intoxicating. But, here we are, this is it, ordinary life can resume. Yuhu.

The car arrived late on the 13th, but it isn´t released until real soon now, so we´ve lived the camping-life for another night. Only difference is we don´t have any cooking gear and hardly any cutlery, and of course no bed linen, and almost no clean clothes. The washing machine is running full steam.

But Svalbard is as I remembered (only less white), that is, wonderful. And the house has a good size and a nice feel to it. We´re situated near the fjord, close to UNIS, and can see as far as the airport. And of course we can see mountains and a glacier and wide open blue sky.

We´ve encountered the first practical problems that will need solutions fairly quick. No post box. Bad internet-connection (this is the neighbour´s - the only open line, but weak). Broken lamps (there are four cheap, ugly-bugly ones, two that work only partly, and two that doesn´t work at all) - but the lamp problem can wait a little, I suppose. There are several that work too.

Otherwise the house is quite comfortable, but empty (lots of space to fill up).

But, I promised you photos from Engeløya. Here comes.


First evening was warm and quiet and lovely, and we were euphoric when we went to bed. This is what we woke up to, though:
Storm and rain and the bleak realization that Thomas had no waterproof foot wear.

Luckily the weather improved a lot, but didn´t get as good as on the first night. But we did spend some quality time at a nearby beach, Bøsanden.

William looking for exciting marine life.

Peter building castle.
Isn´t this a wonderful beach? Almost deserted too. Note the Lofoten mountains in the background.

Crab fishing from the terrace outside the rorbu where we stayed.

We hiked to the top of mount Prestkona, 646 m altitude. Highest peak on Engeløya.
Thomas was the only one of the kids who could be bothered to conquer the last 200 meters.

And this is the view.
And more fishing. This time we actually caught something (3 cods, 1 mackerel and 1 coalfish), enough for dinner and a little extra.


We found a little island (Sandøya)to picnic on. Here´s the view from there:


And finally, here´s two for the road -
Rear end of Lindströms Tivoli, travelling the E6 to Bodø...


... and early monday morning at Bodø Lufthavn.

Last night in Bodø

Hello again! During the last 5 days we´ve made our way north to Bodø and a bit beyond, and back again, to Bodø. No internet anywhere, and I haven´t missed it at all. But as the hotel here in Bodø offers internet, I couldn´t resist connecting with the Really Big World again, to tell everyone how extremely beautiful this area is. I thought Sogn&Fjordane was the most amazing county in Norway, but now I know that Nordland is a good no. 2 (or perhaps actually no. 1). Everywhere we look there are beautiful islands and mountain peaks, and long white beaches. We will return.

I haven´t loaded all photos from the last week off my camera, so here are only some photos from the first part of the trip after Ørnes. So photos from Engeløya later.

Now, Saltstraumen, just south of Bodø: Thomas was greatly looking forward to seeing this phenomena, and was only partly disappointed. The stream under the bridge was extremely strong - as advertised, but the fishing was not even close to what we´d anticipated. We didn´t catch a single one. Still, here are some pictures:


In Bodø we left the car on the quay, to be driven onto the cargo ship later. Dirty car... ....and ship, ready for the Barents-sea.


Having got rid of the big red car, we hired a tiny blue one and set off for Steigen. The weather was amazing, so we had to stop on the way and dip ourselves in Kobbvannet...
We ended up in Steigen, which is on the Engeløya. We stayed at Røssøy, where it looks like this (no kidding!):
But more later. Tomorrow at 8:30 our plane takes off. Good bye main land!

Ørnes

Found connection again! This time by the courtesy of my friend Mette, who is letting us stay in her house in Ørnes, just south of Bodø.

To continue on the place we left off: point E wasn´t really Torghatten, as we drove further on and spent the night at Tjøtta, were we stayed in a beautiful place next to the sea and did some crab-fishing:



This is the one Thomas caught, all on his own.

But we did stop at Torghatten, and hiked hrough the hole:



Easy walk and spectacular sights, it´s like a cathedral in there!

We didn´t see the mountain at a distance at the right angle for the hole, so here´s a photo I grabbed from the net:


This is Petter Dass-land, so we had to stop by Alstahaug, where he was a clergyman for some years, and where they have a Petter Dass-museum. Snøhætta is building a new museum there, and it´s an interesting building.
And here is the old building, where Petter Dass lived.

Helgelandskysten is quite amazingly beautiful, here are some photos:


Emma doing a mermaid - and underneath, Thomas basically running around, after hours in the car.


I guess Ørnes is point F, so therefore Bodø, where we´re going today, will be point G (but I´ll drop the alphabet-thingy now, it´s getting rather silly...).

We´ll be leaving the car on the cargo-ship today, and move on in a rented car from now on. The weather is glorious, and we hope it stays that way!

Connection!

Whoa! I didn´t expect to find internet-connection here in the outskirts of absolutely nowhere (forgive me, people of Bogen, Nord-Trøndelag (inhabitants 10 or 12, maybe)). It turns out that some company is running wireless broad band tests in this particular area, free of charge. Lucky me. And unlucky William, who has an ancient portable PC, and for some reason can´t pick up the vibes. My computer is a Mac Book Pro. Need I say more?

I must add here that we are carrying 3 lap tops on this trip. Mac for me, ancient PC for William and even older PC for the kids. We feel like The Modern Family. Or maybe not. Perhaps the true modern family of 5 would have 6.

Bogen is quite nice, actually, this is the view from the house where we’re staying. Nice.
The trip so far has mostly been about getting from point A to point B and C and so forth. So far, we’ve traveled more than one thousand km, and we haven’t reached the geographical ”middle” of Norway yet! Apparently, it’s just north of here, just south of Brønnøysund.

Well, point A was Bergen, point B was Olden, where we stayed one night, at the Helland-Hansen-family’s cabin(s) . We were tempted to stay another night, as the company was so agreeable, but decided to stick to the plan and left early for Trondheim (point C). That was a pretty long drive, but we stopped at Lom, where Emma and Thomas did some climbing on an artificial rock.

We stayed one night in Trondheim, at William’s cousin’s place. He and his family were away, still let us stay at their house. The kids loved their house and their garden, full of flowers and berries.

We spent a few hours in the centre of Trondheim, which is a pleasant city. I haven’t been there before, except for a very short visit when I was 14. But my parents met while they were students at NTH, the university in Trondheim, and I have heard lots about how marvelous Trondheim is.

My friend Frøydis Lindén has been partaking in an art exhibition in Trondheim this summer, together with many other artists. Her project was to invite people in Trondheim to make little objects in clay, inspired by the question, ”where are you from?” The objects were then casted in porcelain and placed out at different points in the city, 22 in all. I had only time to search for three, and found only two. More information about the project here.

And pictures here:
And here we are at point D, Bogen, Nord-Trøndelag (almost Nordland), heading on for point E, which probably will be Torghatten, where we will be doing a bit of hiking, I hope.
More later, don’t know when.

PS. Have I mentioned how much we’ve crammed into the car? THIS much:

Peter posing on the left. Grinning because he didn’t do the packing.

The Big Move 2

Firstly, I have made a decision. I have been in doubt whether to write in Norwegian or English in this blog. And I´ve decided to use English, because I personally think it´s annoying when I´m prevented from understanding other people´s blogs because they´re in Russian or Chinese. Very few people (comparably) understand Norwegian, while English is slightly more international. And anyway, I enjoy writing English - I read it a lot, but seldom write it. There´ll probably be misspellings and such, but never mind that. (When I´m fed up I might write in Norwegian, though)

Anyway, as this month of July has been pretty cold weather-wise, I certainly feel that we´re getting acclimatized to the temperatures in Longyearbyen. But I nourish a small hope of proper summer-temperatures in August, before we start the final journey northwards. Pretty soon we´ll cram ourselves into the car filled with luggage for a year - and head for Nordfjord, then to Trondheim and Bodø. In Bodø the car will be sent onwards on a cargo ship. We can´t go with it – we´ll have to go by plane. On August the 13th we´ll land in Svalbard, and hopefully some peace and order will enter our lives. Most of these two last months have been filled with packing and planning for Svalbard, and even if there is a strange kind of satisfaction in emptying the house, it is also BORING.

These days my Bachelor-project from the Bergen Art School is shown at Galleri Format in the centre of Bergen, photos and information can be seen here and here. Last chance to see – it´ll be removed soon!

I am looking forward to the journey along the coast northwards, but grey skies and rain will be a disappointment. But whatever the weather I´ll try to take photos to show you all. If I figure out how to publish them here. And I will.

The Big Move 1

Dette er første forsøk på å publisere blogginnlegg, så bær over med meg. Jeg har ennå ikke helt bestemt meg om hvordan dette skal gjøres, så ting kan endre seg underveis.

Vi har altså ikke reist enda, men nedtellingen er i gang. Vi reiser om (omtrent) nøyaktig 13 dager og 10 timer. Eller noe sånt. Og da skal vi bruke 11 dager på turen! Men mer om den senere.

Uventede problemstillinger har dukket opp underveis - som at nettsiden til folkeregisteret ikke godkjenner gateadressen vi har fått i Longyearbyen (vei 238 - hva kan være enklere?) Og hva gjør vi med hensyn til valget? Kommunevalg i Longyearbyen? Eller i Bergen? Som vi må melde flytting fra?

Dette finner vi ut av!