Some More Norwegian Oddisms

The longer I live here, the more things I notice that are very different, and sometimes somewhat baffling to me.

1. Double beds with 2 single duvets. Since I've started looking at places to live (and therefore intruding in people's homes), and also having visited some Norwegian households, I've noticed that despite having double beds in their main bedrooms, Norwegians only seem to use single-bed duvets, so that two (usually matching) single duvets lie side by side on the double bed. To make the bed, they seem to roll them up, so they look like two sleeping bags lying on the bed side by side, which just makes me feel like the bed is unmade... and surely this can't do anything for romance? I've been told, that as a result of this behaviour, choice of double duvets in shops is really slim. Perhaps I should've packed my queen size duvet from home. 

2. Shopping is done in tiny increments. Gone are the days of going to the shop once a week/once every two weeks, loading up a whole trolley, heaping mountains of shopping bags into the boot of my car, and strategizing on how best to get said shopping bags up to my third floor apartment in the least amount of trips possible (which usually involved several mad dashes between car and lift). Granted, I could probably get a car here, and then continue with this practice (without the lift), but there really isn't much point because public transport is good, and significantly cheaper than paying for petrol (it's double the price here compared to South Africa). For now I can only buy what I can carry home (which makes me really think twice about buying that dense cheese), or carry on the bus with me, which means shopping trips have become much smaller, and more frequent. And my shopping lists have become much better planned, because I can't just hop in my car to go get that milk I forgot, no, now I have to walk, and there's a very steep road between where I currently live, and the grocery store. I probably didn't need that milk anyway. 

3. The pizzas. They're huge (a medium here is a South African large, and a large is 40cm!), thick-crusted (several cm's at least), laden with more toppings than a cupcake decorated by a five year old (and they put peanuts on pizza!), and covered in a cheese that isn't mozzarella. They also cost more than anyone in their right mind should ever pay for a pizza. R300 for an average medium, R400 for an average large. I think I'll be making my own, thin crusted, simple, mozarella-laden pizzas from now on.

4. Things I think of as dessert are eaten as meals. Rice pudding is considered a lunch dish... not just a dessert. Also, waffles are snacks, or breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, whenever you want them, really. And you can put cheese on them. 

5. Norwegian sandwiches. Norwegians don't seem to like to use two slices of bread for a sandwich. They use one slice of bread with a topping on it (often tube cheese, or tube caviar, or some kind of lunch meat). Apparently this allows for maximisation of toppings. This actually makes complete sense to me, and I think I shall adopt it. 

6. Norwegian culture (at least in the north) makes them appear rude sometimes. This is definitely a cultural thing, and probably has a lot to do with differing definitions of what being polite means to me versus what it means to the average Norwegian. I've grown up in a society, that I guess, is mostly close to British, with probably some aspects of Afrikaans culture thrown in, where we're taught to say "please", "thank you", and "excuse me" to everyone. In Afrikaans culture it's still very common that men open doors for women and stand back to allow them through first, pull chairs out for them, and stand up to greet them. And although I've grown up in sort of a modern hybrid culture, where I don't absolutely expect these things to happen (I do expect "please", "thank you", and "excuse me"), when they do happen, it's nice. Although, some feminists would probably disagree with me.

I have noticed that dealing with Norwegians in everyday life, such as on the bus, or in a shop, or in a bar, is a somewhat different experience for me. Hearing "takk (thank you)" is quite rare, and I've not yet heard anyone say "vær så snill (please)" or "unnskyld meg (excuse me)". People rarely hold doors open for others, and boarding a bus is sometimes akin to experiences of junior school trips when it was a race to get on the bus first to secure the good seats. You'd definitely never have someone stand back to allow you on first! I've even been stepped on and bumped into without so much as a sorry or even an acknowledgement that it happened. I recently caught a bus that was almost completely full, and ended up having to stand, not because there wasn't an empty seat, but because some guy had decided that his giant bag needed to take up two seats on the bus, and it never appeared to cross his mind to move his great big bag off the seat so that two standing passengers could sit down. I'm hoping, that in this case, he was just a bad apple, and I'll give Norwegians the benefit of the doubt that they're not all like that.

Norwegians are actually really friendly, and polite (albeit sometimes a bit more restrained than I'm used to) when you engage them in conversation, so they just don't seem to observe the niceties with strangers. But as a foreigner, living among the people here, it can sometimes feel a little isolating and cold when no one smiles at you when walking along the street, or behaves like you're invisible when getting on a bus. I have been told that from a Norwegian point of view, all the "pleases" and "thank you's" used, for example, by the Brits, can come across as insincere. And because they're used so much, have less meaning. Therefore Norwegians use "thank you", mostly with family and friends, when they're truly thankful for something. This does make sense to me, and I guess it's just a difference in culture, but it's definitely taking some getting used to! I say thank you a lot, probably more than the average South African even. Maybe I should rethink this? 

7. The light. I know I'm repeating myself and that I talked about this in a previous blog post, but it is taking a lot of getting used to, and it seems like the longer I'm here, the more the 24 hour light is affecting me. While initially I didn't seem to have a problem with it (which probably had to do with recovering from travelling etc.), with the increasing amount of sunlight, so my inability to sleep seems to grow exponentially. I have never been one to suffer from insomnia, and I've never slept this lightly. In fact, historically, I've struggled to stay up past 12pm, and I have been such a heavy sleeper that I've been oblivious to house alarms, cats sleeping on my head, and the revving of Harley Davidsons in my lounge at 7 am! 

However, both my sleeping mask, and my cover-my-head-with-a-mountain-of-pillows tactic, have stopped being effective, which I think means the sunlight is starting to affect me psychologically (bring on the padded cells). I have stopped feeling tired almost completely, and the majority of this blog post was, in fact, written at 4 am, when I'd reached a desperate enough point that my options became: 1) get up and go for a run to beat my body into a state of tiredness, 2) tape every item of black clothing I own to the windows in my room (or tape them to my face... I prefer the windows though), 3) eat everything in my fridge, or 4) give up on sleeping altogether and write a blog post. As you can see, I chose "write a blog post". 
  

Heatwave in the Arctic

I just thought I'd quickly share a photograph I took today. The temperature got to 18˚C, which here, despite the snow still on the mountains, is considered to be a hot summer's day. The summer dresses and shorts and t-shirts came out, and it seems like the entire city spent the day outside appreciating the warmth. I am certainly regretting leaving all my summer clothes at home!

Fieldtrips in the Arctic

Of the time I have spent working as a PhD student so far (2 weeks), at least half of that time has been spent on field trips, and I have, in fact, only spent 1 day so far in my office. This feels somewhat like I've been thrown in the deep end, but it has been nice to spend time outside, getting used to glacial topography, and enjoying what I have been told is really nice weather for this part of the world (mostly like a nice sunny, but chilly winter's day in Cape Town). I've even seen people tanning. I think for me to consider 18˚C to be tanning weather I'm going to have to experience an arctic winter first. Anyway, the fieldtrips have also given me the opportunity to have some typical Norwegian experiences such as eating a waffle and brunost on a ferry (because apparently one cannot ride a ferry without having a waffle), and seeing reindeer.

My first field experience was for the masters tectonic course last week, looking at brittle and ductile deformation in archean TTG's and supracrustal metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks at Torsnes. I saw some awesome folds, and amazing euhedral garnets the size of golf balls (unfortunately my camera died, so I don't have any photos of the outcrop, but I managed to hack a sample out of the rock, so a picture of a slightly-less-than-golf-ball size garnet is below.) Overall this was a nice geo-tourism trip for me and it got me used to walking on extremely slippery rocks.

Top left: Migmatitic deformed gneisses intruded by a planar felsic dyke which has subsequently been deformed by small shears. Top right: Ptygmatic folded felsic dyke. Bottom left: Buckle-folded pegmatite dyke. Bottom right: My desk-crop containing a massive euhedral garnet.

Perhaps a more challenging task was assisting with the 3-day first year structural geology field trip to Vannøya. Vannøya is an island northeast of Tromsø that requires the usage of several roads, a bridge, an undersea tunnel, and a ferry to get to (a +/- 4 hr round trip, which we did everyday). The trip was challenging not because the rocks are complex, or the content is difficult, or because it's a 60-student class, but because the undergraduates are taught entirely in Norwegian. Since I've been here only two weeks, my Norwegian skills are non-existent, and so I felt largely like a fish trying to climb a tree. Helpless and useless!

My first task was to translate the field guide, which is only in Norwegian. Google translate gave some amusing translations (sprø forkastinger (brittle faults) translates directly to "crazy faults"). It did, at least, give me some understanding of basic geological terminology in Norwegian, which I found came in handy when attempting to explain things to students. So my Norglish sounded something like this "Look at this kløv, see how it intersects the lagdeling so that it gives you a skjæringslinja. Have you measured the strøk og fall of anything yet?"

My second challenge has been actually understanding what is going on on the field trip. Since the Professor speaks Norwegian the entire time, it means I can't even understand the instructions the students are given, so I had to ask the students what they were supposed to be doing a lot of the time (and as those of you who do any teaching know very well, students usually don't know what they're supposed to be doing). Also, although all the students can speak english (and do so surprisingly well) they speak Norwegian amongst themselves, so I was almost always completely clueless as to what they were working on, or whether they actually needed help!

In terms of the geology, I found the whole exercise really became a test of my own observational ability, because I couldn't rely on a professor's explanations... which in the end was probably good for me. And I learned mostly that a confused-looking Norwegian student looks the same as a confused-looking South African student. Fantastic! Now I just need to learn to speak Norwegian. Hmmm.

First years on rocks

So now a little about the rocks at Vannøya; these rocks are the most pristine 2.4-2.2 billion year old rocks I've ever seen. They are low metamorphic grade (greenschist facies), folded and faulted, metasedimentary rocks (also intruded by some diorite), and the ripples and cross bedding are so well preserved that they could be in rocks only a couple of million years old. Perfect 2.4 billion year old ripples. Now that's rare! This is perhaps the one and only time I have, and will, get excited about sedimentary structures. The deformation in the rocks manifests as a series of several 100-metre scale folds with some smaller parasitic folds on their limbs, and a number of (mostly) strike slip faults. It's a pretty fantastic area for teaching because the students get the opportunity to see an unconformity, intrusive contacts, folded contacts, sedimentary structures, folds, faults, and perfect examples of bedding-cleavage relationships. Now let's hope that they actually saw all those things!

Top left: Intrusive diorite-sandstone contact defined by a layer of breccia. Top right: Slightly deformed pebble bed along the unconformity between the supracrustal rocks and older TTG's. Bottom left: Fold hinge! Bottom right: More folds.

Really old ripples (left) and cross bedding (right). 

And just because I cannot bring myself to end a post with sedimentary structures, here's a fault:

Thrust fault with mudstone footwall and sandstone hangingwall. Note the smaller faults in the hangingwall sandstone. 

On a side note: I caved and bought a tube of cheese today... it's pepperoni flavoured... the jury's still out on that one.

The Differences: It's the Little Things

Obviously moving from a a third world (albeit Cape Town really isn't that third world) country such as South Africa, to one of the most first world places on earth, was going to be a huge change for me. The major differences are initially very obvious; the safety and lack of crime is extremely evident, and it's awesome to be able to wander around the forests, and walk home alone in the middle of the night here without worrying. It's nice not to see barbed wire and electric fencing all over the place, and in the almost 2 weeks I've been here, I've seen three policemen, and that's because they were in a parade!

People leave their bags and jackets unattended in bars, walk around on the street listening to iPods and playing on cell phones, and I've been told that it can occasionally be seen in winter that people will leave their cars running in the parking lot of the grocery store, keys still in the ignition, because they don't want their car to get cold. What!? Any of these things done in South Africa would just be asking for it, and it's going to take me some time to get used to not having to watch my handbag constantly.

So obviously the big changes are very BIG; I haven't seen a homeless person in the two weeks I've been here, no one's begged me for money, the public transport system is fantastic and (mostly) easy to use. Although, I have had instances of getting on the wrong bus and ending up in the opposite side of the island to what I intended. But that's mostly a language problem. I'm sure it'll happen a fair bit for a while.

Some of the small changes, however, have been more unexpected, or expected, but have made a bigger difference than I thought they would. So here they are:

1. Crossing the road. Cars stop for you to cross the road if it looks like there's even a possibility you might want to get to the other side. I've had cars stop for me to cross the road when I was just standing on the road trying to figure out how lost I was! And there have been countless times where I've waited for cars to stop before crossing the road, and I get looks from drivers like I'm slightly silly, saying; "Why are you waiting? Of course we're stopping for you." I think most Norwegians wouldn't last very long trying to cross Cape Town roads. It's probably got to do with how low the speed limits here are. 80kph on highways and 30kph in the suburbs! The cyclists and roller skiiers go faster than the cars! Oh yes, and there are roller skiers everywhere at this time of year. I'm not even going to try and describe what this activity entails, so here's a picture.

Roller Skiing

2. The cheese. Norwegians don't know what cheddar cheese is! They have Jarlsberg, and I've seen some Gouda, and even some blue cheese, but cheddar cheese does not exist here. Typical norwegian cheese is either a rather bland white cheese, or varieties of brunost (extra creamy, extremely rich caramelised cheese Norwegians like to eat on waffles), or flavoured cheese in a tube. I've gotten used to the brunost, and have grown to rather like it. It is extremely rich, and it feels somewhat like you're eating chocolate, not cheese, so I tend to eat it on dry knekkebrød (rye cracker bread). I've heard that its fat content is so high that a couple of years ago, when a truck carrying brunost caught fire, it took several days to put the fire out! Hmmm. The cheese in a tube, on the other hand, still freaks me out. And Norwegians LOVE it! There are a ton of different flavours including bacon, jalapeno and even shrimp (shrimp cheese. really?), and I'm sure I will eventually bring myself to try them, but right now, cheese in a tube just feels like it would be too close to melrose cheese. Also, they eat caviar out of a tube... it seems to be a popular spread here. That'll also take me a while!

Left: Brunost. Right: Varieties of tube cheese.

3. The coat/shoe room. Most houses and even apartments I've been in here have an entrance area, sometimes a room separated from the rest of the house by a door, where one leaves their coats and shoes and then walks around in their socks. Norwegians never wear their outside shoes inside. In some cases one can bring a pair of "inside shoes" which are never worn outside, and therefore not dirty. Growing up, I remember my mom making me take off dirty shoes before going into the house after playing outside, but this is a whole different level of the concept. It definitely makes sense, because it means that one doesn't have to clean the floor that often, but it still feels weird visiting people I barely know in my socks. 

4. The hours. Norwegians work really short hours. The average Norwegian works from 9am until 3 or 4pm. They are, in fact, known for being the Europeans that have the most free time. I think this has to do with all the outdoor sports they seem to do. An odd thing, though, is that the supermarkets stay open until 10/11pm on weekday evenings and late on Saturdays, but then NOTHING is open on a Sunday, and when I say nothing I mean there are about three 7/11 type shops open in the whole city on a Sunday! Also, the convention for time here is weird. Norwegians don't use AM and PM, so they'll say I'll meet you at sixteen hundred (4pm), and they write it 1600 (always without the colon). Needless to say, the bus schedule confused me at first!

5. Alcohol. It's expensive and regulated by the government. Anything over 4.75% alcohol can only be bought at government-run alcohol stores called "Vinmonopolet", of which there are only three in Tromsø, and they are super expensive. A cheap bottle of red wine is NOK100 - 120 (R160 - 190) Cheap beer at the supermarket at 4.5% alcohol costs NOK25 - 30 (R40 - 50) a beer. The same "cheap" beer at a bar costs NOK75-90 (R120 - R150). For one beer!! I know that Norwegian salaries are huge, but those prices are rather ridiculous. Also, the hours one can buy alcohol here are short. The Vinmonopolet stores are only open until 6pm on weekdays, 3pm on Saturdays, and stay closed on Sundays. Now, I'm somewhat used to this kind of system because of the strict opening times, and no alcohol sales on Sunday laws in Cape Town, but a lot of the other international students seem to really struggle with it. 

6. Credit cards. People use cards for EVERYTHING here. From buying a NOK10 coffee, to buying a packet of crisps on a flight, to all their grocery shopping. I've seen people who only carry their bus card and their credit card and don't bother with cash or a wallet, and I've had shop tellers act surprised when I hand them cash! Also, the change in coins comes out of an automatic machine attached to the counter. The first time this happened the teller had to show me how to retrieve my change. Haha.

7. It's light all the time (at least for now). The midnight sun in Tromsø starts tomorrow! However, when I got here 2 weeks ago it was already not getting completely dark. The being light at night thing is rather a double edged sword, because it means that one can keep doing stuff for 24 hours. I've seen people running at 11pm, and it really doesn't feel like you're partying until 3am if it's still light outside. One really loses track of time very easily. I haven't had nearly as much of a problem sleeping at night as I've heard others have, although my average sleeping hours have gone from 8 hours a night to about 6 hours a night. 

And the final difference: no one knows what ROBOTS are... they're called traffic lights here. WTF?

Syttende Mai (17th May) - Norwegian Constitution Day

Yesterday was the 17th of May, usually an average day for me. In Norway, it is the biggest day of the year because it is the day that Norwegians celebrate being Norwegian. And they do it properly!  Now, I've always thought of myself as a somewhat patriotic person. I am proud to be a South African, I support our sports teams when given the chance, and I follow politics and care deeply for the future of the country, however Norwegians take national pride to a level I've never seen before. People prepare for weeks for the 17th May, there are people out tidying the streets and houses during the week before, and every city in Norway has its own celebration. In Oslo, the parades snake their way past the royal palace where the king and royal family spend the day waving to the participants. Here in Tromsø, the suburbs outside the city centre are almost as empty as the main road in an amish town on a Sunday morning. Almost the entire population turns out in the city centre to watch or participate in the three parades and various other activities that take place throughout the day. Most of these activities include consumption of food... including sweets, candy floss, ice cream and hot dogs.

Luckily, I was forewarned to get myself a flag and to make sure that if I was going into the city centre, to dress nicely. I woke up yesterday morning and it was as if someone had dropped a red, white, and blue colour bomb on the city. Flags decorate everything; houses, cars, people, buses, even some trees, and red, white, and blue flowers magically appeared overnight at the bus stop near my house.

Flags on cars

Red, white and blue flowers at the bus stop

People dress smartly (mostly in red, white, or blue, or some combination thereof), or in national dress (called Bunad), and walk around saying "Hurra" and "Gratuler med dagen". The first time I saw someone in national dress,  I thought I'd been transported back in time several hundred years. It's a strange sight to see people dressed as if they are living in the 18th or 19th centuries on a bus, or driving cars, or wearing ray-bans.  The national dress seems an important part of the day, and most women, and some men choose to wear it. 

The women's dress consists of detailed white shirts worn under heavy wool dresses in different colours and/or patterns (depending on the region they're from), many with embroidered detailing, and accented with some of the most intricate and beautiful silverware (sølje) I've ever seen. I also saw some outfits including aprons and shawls. I noticed some men's dress consists of a white shirt, detailed waist coat and jacket, knee length pants, and knee high woolen socks with tassels on them.  Many men also just wear suits with red, white, or blue ties. I am told that people also sometimes wear the national dress to occasions such as weddings and graduations. I also saw Sami (a group of people who speak a different language and come from the northern-most part of Norway) costume, which is really really brightly coloured and includes significantly more shiny stuff. 

Examples of the national dress

The three parades throughout the day seem to be the main events, with a children's parade in the morning (most traditional), a parade of the russ (final year school students, who have been partying, drinking, and generally causing trouble in the city since 1 May!) in the middle of the day, and then a parade of all clubs/sports/groups in Tromsø in the afternoon. I managed to make it into the city to watch the childrens' and the afternoon parades. Both were equally amazing. The children's parade includes all school children, many wearing national dress, and each school marching in its own group, some groups singing, some waving flags, some chanting (in Norwegian, so I don't know what they were chanting). Brass bands and groups of drum majorettes march interspersed among the groups of school children. It's all very noisy, and slightly chaotic.

The afternoon parade seems to consist of any club/sport/group that resides in Tromsø, from the swing dancing society, to the small dog society, to the red cross, and every sport under the sun. Which means some pretty amazing and hilarious sights walk by. There are also even more brass bands and majorettes.  

Photographs of the groups in the afternoon parade

Overall the day was a fascinating experience of Norwegian culture, and an amazing demonstration of community. I'll leave you with my favourite sight, which was this:

A large dog pulling a carriage containing a small dog

Arriving in Tromsø

So, after living in warm, sunny, mountain and beach-endowed Cape Town my whole life, I bought a one-way ticket, got on a plane, flew 11500 kilometres, and moved to one of the world's most northern cities for 4 years. Good idea? I don't know yet. Am I mad? Probably.

Tromsø is a 70 000-strong city (town by most standards) within the arctic circle of Norway. It's situated at 69˚ N, and is a magical place where the sun shines constantly for 2 months in summer, and never rises for 2 months in winter. It snows for 9 months of the year, is known as one of the best places to view the spectacular northern lights, and is hailed as the gateway to the arctic circle. The city centre and majority of the suburbs are on an island (Tromsøya) in the fjords, so that whichever way you look there is a spectacular view of sea and snow-capped mountains. Here's the view from the front of my flat building.

I moved here to do a PhD in geology at the Universitetet i Tromsø, and this blog is about my life here in Tromsø, so pretty much anything I feel like putting out there... photographs, thoughts about Norway/Norwegians, thoughts about South Africans, thoughts about being a Norwegian South African, probably a fair amount about rocks, and maybe even a recipe or two. So far my experience of Tromsø has been much like a kid seeing a jungle gym for the first time. Some of it looks daunting, I'll get a few bumps and bruises figuring out how it works, but I really want to enjoy experiencing it. And I think that's possible.

There is so much new for me; snow EVERYWHERE, a public transport system that is efficient and works, and I feel safe walking around the street any time of day or night for the first time in my life. At the same time, I miss the cheeriness and friendliness (most Norwegians make even Cape Townians seem friendly!) of most South Africans. And I am having serious biltong withdrawal issues.

One of the strangest things I've had to contend with so far is the lack of darkness. The picture below was taken at 12:07am in the city centre a few days ago, and that is as dark as it gets right now. 

This particular occasion I caught a bus home from a pub (where I paid literally 10 times what I would pay for a beer in Cape Town!) in the city centre at 12:14am and watched the sky go orange as the sun prepared to rise in the north (yes, the NORTH!). In another week or so the sun will stop setting altogether. I've found that it completely messes with one's sleep patterns, and nighttime simply feels like eternal afternoon. It also means that telling the time of day by how light it is, is completely impossible!

Interestingly, the cold hasn't been a problem at all. On my first day in Tromsø I decided to do a bit of exploring to find an open shop (I managed to arrive on a public holiday... which Norwegians take very seriously). The temperature was predicted to be around 5˚C, and being mostly ignorant to what such a temperature might feel like, I heaped on the layers, finished with my big winter coat (never used in Cape Town). After 5 minutes or so the scarf came off, then the coat, and then I began regretting the 2 layers of socks! After all, it is "summer" in Tromsø, and I have discovered that 5˚C is not nearly as bad as it sounds. It's supposed to get to 17˚C on Friday and people are talking summer clothes and beach trips. Haha! For me, if there's snow, it's still winter, but I think I should probably change that attitude, because 9 months of winter sounds excessive. Here's to hoping that the trees start to grow some leaves, and the grass gets less brown. Oh, and here's some more snow.

And a rock thrown in for good measure... because there should always be a rock.