Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

I’m chilling in Alta right now, and like the past couple entries I won’t be able to post this until Friday when I go back to Tromsø, but I thought it now none-the-less because I’m having fun in Alta. That’s right Alta. I thought I couldn’t go further north from Tromsø, but I can…and did. We had a couple of classes rescheduled from Monday and Tuesday so all of a sudden we had 5 days free. I was frantically trying to find somewhere to go, when Rachel, another master’s student from the US and Luther, suggested we go to Alta, which is where she was an exchange student 6 years ago. It was easy to get to and fairly cheap, so we did it! We took a 6 hour bus ride here on Sunday that took us widing around the mountains and on two boat trips through the fjords. We arrived late Sunday at Rachel’s host families’ house. It has been great! A beautiful city and very laid back so I’ve been able to do some reading for class and been able to sleep in and get off of Tromsø island for a bit.

We have had a lot of highlights from the trip and one is our trip to Kautokeino, a Sami town on the tundra of inner, northern Norway. It was a beautiful two hour drive that I got to do! Our host family lent us their car, a fun, zippy, red Toyota Crisas?We started on the road to Kautokeino and when we began it looked like a mini Black Hills. Lots of birch and evergreen covering small mountains with the Alta river following us the whole way. It is quite funny though because the trees this far north don’t very tall, maybe 15-20 feet at most, so when I say mini Black Hills, I mean it literally. As we continued inland, the evergreens gave way to birches as far as the eye could see…it was beautiful. The birches were turning colors so we had a fall drive on a beautifully sunny day. The yellow leaves lead us as the wind got colder and colder. Even though it’s tundra, or vidda as they call it in Norwegian and probably Sami too, there was actually a lot of life. I can’t imagine it in the winter though…just empty, white and dead looking I would guess. After two hours of driving, during which I was never quite sure of the speed limit, we reached Kautokeino, a small, quaint town with typical Norwegian houses clustered together in the midst of the birches. We stopped at Juhl’s Silver Gallery which is a stunning gallery literally in the middle of nowhere. The Juhls began it before there was even a road through the tundra, but now it is a tourist attraction of its own. The Sami, the indigienous people of Norway, have a long tradition of wearing extravegeant silver jewelry in weddings and traditional celebrations, so this gallery builds on that tradition. We spent the rest of the early afternoon poking around the city, and finally headed back after exhausting basically everything Kautokeino had to offer.

I also had a great time visiting some of Rachel’s host family’s relatives where I learned the true way to eat Norwegian waffles. Basically, you make a heap of heart shaped, thin, waffles, serve them cold with strong coffee and a whip cream type concaction called trollkrem (Troll Cream) made out of berries picked from the forests outside of the town. Then, you eat and eat and eat because they go down so easily you never feel full. Besides the grea food, they also had two kids that were in fourth and first grade and we played hard core chess. I learned the Norwegian words for all the chess pieces and also learned that the best way to beat a fourth grader is to lure them with the queen and then put them in check mate. Fun stuff.

Today was also a highlight. We went to the local school and taught the 4th grade English class. Quite exciting! We sang “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and we helped them to learn their body parents in English. I felt like I was back in Tanzania teaching! After teaching we headed to the Alta museum which is home to 6,000 year old rock carvings from my ancestors I guess. It was interesting and gave a good depiction of Norway through the ages. Now I feel like we’ve done all Alta has to offer too, but instead of taking the bus back this time, we’re flying back. 30 minutes versus 6 hours and only 588 kroner, so not a bad deal at all.