Come visit me says Graeme, it’s only three flights and a ferry. Sure says I, I’ll come in March after you’ve been there a bit, it’ll be starting to warm up and the days are getting longer but I might still get the Northern lights.
So I jetted off from Aberdeen on St Paddy’s day to visit Graeme in the sunshine… yeah right, nothing is ever that simple! After finishing my week at work on 16th March, I pottered up to Aberdeen airport to stay in a nice hotel ready for my early flight to Bergen, Norway, then on to Trondheim and Sandnessjøen arriving around 4pm. Just as I’m away to switch off the light, a text comes through from the airline ‘your flight tomorrow has been cancelled due to a lack of crew. We will rebook you and let you know’.
Cue panic? Not much I could do about it so I waited patiently and took another sip of my gin. Another text comes through – ‘we’ve booked you on a 9am flight to Amsterdam, where you will connect to Trondheim and then onto Sandnessjøen getting you in at 10.45pm. Not the most direct route I hear you cry – not at all! After a 2000km diversion, I finally end up in Trondheim where I have a 5 hour layover and it becomes apparent that I’m definitely not getting to Sandnessjøen before the last ferry to Dønna leaves. Graeme suggests I book in to the lovely Syv Søstre hotel and he’ll come and get me in the morning – oh and they do a great breakfast (he neglected to mention there was caviar at breakfast!)
So plans made, I try to amuse myself in Trondheim for 5 hours (quite hard to do) and get on a tiny plane to head north, eventually arriving at 11.33pm, a couple of hours later than anticipated. Unnervingly, on the tiny plane, the cabin crew lady, once she’d established that I wasn’t Norwegian, advised me to keep my belt fastened as it can ‘get a little bumpy’. That it did as we came into land in a winter wonderland! Never had I seen quite so much snow! Graeme had assured me that there was a bus from the airport (turns out it only comes when a flight is due so it didn’t matter we were an hour late!) and the nice man will take me to the door of the hotel. This he did, at a pretty fast pace considering the blizzard and the fact the road was white! However, I finally got to the 7 sisters hotel and settled down for the night!
Graeme, considerate bloke he is, met me the following morning after a leisurely breakfast and a bit of a lie in on my part. I’m not sure he’d factored in, when coming to get me on foot from the ferry, that I’d have such a large and hefty bag and how hard that may be to pull in the snow. However, he duly pulled it up the high street to a lovely café for a nice coffee and some cake – a beautiful Norwegian delicacy that I fell in love with – Kanelboller – kind of a cinnamon roll crossed with a donut (consequently very sad they’d run out yesterday when we went in for a last one). We then headed off to the ferry for my first, of many, trip across the water to Dønna and up the hill (Graeme still lugging my case) to GraemeHus.
On the Islands, everything is shut on a Sunday and I had chosen a weekend to arrive when Graeme wasn’t working on the Sunday. After a quiet start to the day, Graeme took me on a wee walking tour of Bjorn and we found a pile of snow that was nearly as tall as me! It was a bracing walk, with Graeme showing me the school where he goes for his Norwegian lessons and the harbour wall, looking over to the 7 sisters mountains and Sandnessjøen. One thing that has struck me about Norway was how peaceful and quiet it was – you can hear the birds, the lap of the water on the wall and the howling wind!
Monday was a school day for Graeme, so he toddled off to school around 8am whilst I stayed in the warm! When he came back we headed for the ferry and into Sandnessjøen. Before heading for the obligatory kaffe and kake, we earned our treat with a nice gentle walk through the town and towards the school, stopping on route to admire Sandnessjøen church and the views on the way back. Everywhere you turn, you get an amazing view – whether it be the fjords or the mountains. Also, everywhere you turn you see people getting on with the snow – most memorably a lovely lady on a sleigh obviously off to the shops and a ginger cat that followed us down the road, so striking against the white of the snow.
Graeme had asked if Laila and Trine would like to stop by for some coffee on Tuesday afternoon and I felt that if we were indeed going to entertain, we’d need some kake. So we popped into the supermarket on the way back to the ferry to get some dinner supplies and also a box cake mix and ready-made icing. Those of you who know me well will know this goes against my grain but Graeme isn’t really a baker so at least I kinda homemade it!
So on Tuesday morning, Graeme popped off to the office for a staff meeting and I started using google translate to figure out what I needed to make up the cake mix. It was at this point that I realised that we seemed to have bought a tub of readymade buttercream and a packet mix for a chocolate glaze, not chocolate cake – so we had two lots of icing and no cake! So off we went to the local shop to see if we could rectify the issue and thankfully we could (therefore I now have a packet of chocolate glaze mix – coming soon to a cake near you). The house full of the smells of home baking (sort of anyway), we welcomed first Trine and then Laila to GraemeHus.
It was a pleasure to meet both of these ladies and talk with them – they were both warm and friendly towards me, andmade an effort to ensure I understood what was going on, as they tried to help Graeme with his Norwegian. Graeme has spoken so much about these two ladies that I am glad that I have been able to meet them and put faces to the names. Trine couldn’t stay long as she was off to help run a local Scout group and Laila needed to visit a friend, but it was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. It was also pleasing to see how far Graeme’s Norwegian had come – from nothing last year, to whole stories now, and I know these lovely ladies have been so helpful in this progress.
Wednesday was the start of my tour of the churches which Graeme plays for. On the island of Dønna there are 3 churches, Dønnes in the north, Nordvik in the middleish and Hæstad just down the road from Graeme’s house. It was the latter we visited first for a funeral service, for which Graeme was playing. The service was lovely – I understood very little bar the words for ‘father’ ‘grandfather’ and great grandfather’ (thanks Laila) and I figured out where the Lord’s prayer was and attempted to sing ‘Abide with me’ in Norwegian (not as easy as you might think).
After this, Graeme and I shot off to the ferry once again to head for a swim in the town swimming pool. Due to the ferry times, we were there well before the pool actually opened so we were forced to head for a kaffee and kake whilst we waited! Graeme then went shopping, as his socks had been wet following one of our walks and he’d noted a hole in his shirt. He (and I also) was very proud at utilising his Norwegian to complete this shopping trip alone, including having to ask for another size. Having heard him recount the story several times over the last few days, as he has been practicing the past tense, I can sense his feeling of achievement and even I know some of the verbs now! I shall let him fill you in on the story, that even has a punchline now!
We headed to the lovely 25m swimming pool, with the obligatory jacuzzi and sauna, with a breath-taking view of the 7 sisters as you swam/baked – possibly one off the most scenic pools I’ve ever swum in! We’ll not, however, mention the changing rooms….! After this, we headed for an early tea at a local grill as Graeme needed to return to the island for an evening rehearsal. There was a moment whilst we sat on the ferry, with another ferry adjacent, that we thought we may end up on the wrong island, but thankfully we were on the right one!
Thursday continued my tour of Dønna and it’s churches, with first a quick stop to Heidi’s Sjokoladedrøm. Heidi’s sits on the banks of the fjords and has another breath taking view – this one including Dønnamann. Dønnamann is in fact a mountain that looks like a man, lying down with his face to the sky – even more obviously when snow covered. I assumed ‘mann’ meant hill or mountain so when Graeme pointed it out to me, I didn’t see the man at first – until he mentioned the nose; and then you can’t unsee it!
One of the many things I have learnt in Norway this week is that in many places, you are expected to take your shoes off at the door. This made sense in the swimming pool changing rooms – but was a little bizarre at Heidi’s (I was wearing Christmas socks – had I known they would be on display, I may have chosen differently that morning!). Heidi came over and offered us a ‘traktorvaffel’ with our hot chocolate, explaining it was a Belgian waffle with ice cream and chocolate sauce etc. Lovely we thought – it duly arrived, with home made lemon curd, berries, ice cream and chocolate sauce and looked delicious but oddly shaped. It was in fact a tractor waffle. Turns out that the first tractors in Norway could be found on Dønna and hence the item on the menu. Whatever the story, it tasted delicious!
After this we pottered up to Laila’s family farmhouse. This was the house that Graeme had stayed in when he first arrived in Dønna and from what I could ascertain this was the family farmhouse that had gone through the generations. It was full of beautiful things, including lace that Leila had painstaking repaired over the years and some interesting objects like a milk separator. I am a fairly short person and even I found some of the ceilings quite low and the stairs to the upper floor very steep.
After this we pottered up to Dønnes Church in the north of Dønna. This church is the oldest on the islands, with parts dating back to the medieval times. It is stunning from the outside with its glass onion steeple and equally lovely inside. In the snow and bright sunshine, it looked like a picture postcard. After this we headed down to Nordvik church, nestled in the mountains in the middle of the island, with a beautiful view of a fjord. En route to this, we took a wee detour so I could see the infamous Dønna phallus. Standing at 89cm tall, the Dønna phallus is mocked by nearby areas asbeing a bit small and fat, but nevertheless is a symbol of its past. However, alas I couldn’t see it in all its glory as it has been boxed up for the winter to protect it against the cold snow….! Apparently in a few weeks there will be an unveiling, with music and dancing!
On Friday we headed down to the South of Dønna, seeing DønnaMann from a different angle and over the bridges into Herøy. We stopped by Graeme’s second office for a cuppa and chat with Trine and Bård and then set off on foot to walk, across another bridge, to Herøy Church – the last of the churches accessible without a ferry. Prior to setting off for the church, I nipped to the loo – no lock on this door, in a council building – just a wee sign to put across saying ‘engaged’. I’ve never been so speedy in a loo in my life! The views as we walked on this bright sunny (but pretty cold) day of the seven sisters and the beautiful clear waters of the fjords were stunning. Herøy church I think was my favourite inside – from the beautiful stained-glass windows to some of the paintings on the pulpit and font, the medieval nook at the East end and the colour changing lights behind the altar.
For our last full day, we headed out on the ferry again, passing through Sandnessjøen to the Petter Dass Museum. As Graeme stated in his blog, this was the first time he’d been to the museum, and it was interesting to read and learn about this man who descended from a Dundonian and influenced the teachings and music of the early Lutheran church in Norway. I would like to state that as we headed up to the memorial on the top of the hill next to the museum, Graeme shot off like a gazelle, following in the footsteps of the exceptionally tall gentleman before us, who had left deep footprints up the hill. I was doing fine until I couldn’t reach the next one, decided to make my own and ended up on my bottom.
Graeme eventually turned round and realised I was stuck, came down, handed me his new book (in Norwegian about 2nd world war weapons he’d bought in the gift shop), went back up, took some photos, returned to me, took his book and headed back to the path saying ‘shall we take a selfie’. All the while, leaving me in the snow (which was super deep) and when I tried to move, I slipped further down the hill, towards the rather flimsy fence. I suppose, at least he didn’t laugh……
After this we headed for an early dinner before Graeme’s rehearsal, further north. As payback for the snow falling incident, it was my pleasure to watch him squirm (and take video evidence) as he was made to join in with ‘we will rock you’! Again they made me take my shoes off (it was -5 and my feet were frozen) and I really would have worn better socks if I’d known! We headed back to the ferry with the Dønna contingent of the choir and Graeme regaled them with the shopping story once again! These ladies came from all over – Serbian, Belgian, Norwegian, someone Norsk but married to an Irishman. They were friendly and chatty and ensured they included me in the conversations.
The next day I’d fly home (and indeed I did, without so much of a delayed flight – though the new foot of snow we woke up to Sunday morning proved fun for getting to the airport) after a wonderful week in Norway. The trip was a chance to relax, to chill and take some time out. Graeme and I are very good at sitting down and reading our books and this was great. It was also wonderful to meet the many people and see the many places that I have read about over the last year in Graeme’s blogs or heard about from Graeme. I will be back, but maybe not in the snow!
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