'Don't go fighting against the Spring'.

Something odd is happening.  Today Felix came back from the library grinning from ear to ear because he had brought me a present.  It turned out to be a copy of A Room with a View, because 'It is about a girl who goes to Italy and you are also a girl who wants to go to Italy'.  Next thing I know, Ruben is practically skipping up the drive with a little brown glass bottle in which he had planted a wild flower.  He was off to put it on his windowsill.

Such are the joys of a Nordic spring.  Not that my lovely boys are generally macho or anything, but this really was pushing it.  I was so pleased with them I made a microwave syrup sponge which we ate in front of Norwegian Idol.  Chaos on screen tonight as the local shops in Glausdal, just down the road, have started sending bus trips of locals to cheer on our two contestants- Sigmund and Marta Elise.  We're going to see if we can get on board next week. 

The strangeness continues:  on Saturday morning I walked into the kitchen and Anne-Helene says:

'So you've been making babies?'

'...?'

She was referring of course to the nest of baby bunnies (!) Ruben and I had just uncovered in the rabbit pen.  See photo- you can just make out a pair of teeny tiny ears!  The bunnies are both a blessing and a curse- super cute, but endlessly self-multiplying.  But, as Ruben says, we are in Norway and 'if it's cold, you can eat it'.  I'm usually a big fan of rabbit, but these are baby bunnies which are a different kettle of fish entirely. 

Elsewhere in We are now in the depths of 'Russ'.  Russ is the period from the 1st-17th of May when 18-year-olds are allowed to indulge in every kind of depravity to celebrate leaving college.  They are thwarted in their attempts to do anything seriously silly because a big part of being a Russ is wearing a boiler suite or dungarees in the national colours, with your name written on it in enormous
letters.  The outfit is just the start: 'Russ' blow vast amounts of cash on tour buses, festivals, booze, drivers and their own DJs to record their 'Russ song'.  The best title I've come across so far has to be 'Saxofuckingfon'. 

*Update*  Thea has just surfaced!  She has just arrived back from a Russ festival in Lillehammer. Three days and 8,000 teenagers spending vast amounts of money and partying in their tour buses.  Cascada played for goodness' sake.  Imagine Reading or Leeds festival but everyone is wearing matching outfits and has brought their own tour bus.

Last week Felix and I went on an adventure in a mountain!  The Hall of Mountain King, to be precise.  Well, practically.  (On a side note, Anne Helene told me a truly disturbing story of a friend of hers who plays Grieg's 'The Hall of the Mountain King' aka the Alton Tower's music when making love.  I have filed this under 'bedroom limits').  The Gjøvik Olympiske Fjellhall  was constructed in the 90s to house the Lillehammer Winter Olympic Ice Hockey.   Gjøvik didn't have space, so they CARVED IT INTO A MOUNTAIN.  Classic Norwegians.  When we arrived it was closed but the caretaker let us in- just us and the mountain staff (trolls?) in the 'World's Largest Cavern for Public Use'.  It's truly impressive.  It has a constant temperature of 7oC, even in the depths of a Norwegian winter.  It houses the ice rink, judo suites and swimming pool and is decked out in the very best of 90s leisure centre style.  It would make a wonderful setting for a horror film. 

Meanwhile, at Sygard Toft, I'm getting to do all kinds of really cool stuff.  Yesterday I learnt to use the saw mill and did some fencing.  Anne-Helene showed me around the farm museum which is a beautiful old store house decked out to look like a traditional Norwegian home.  It's littered with really cool stuff, including snow shoes for the military horses that used to be stationed here. 

I'm currently preparing for a spate of birthdays next week- Ruben on Monday and mine on Wednesday.  We're celebrating with shepherd's pie, a full English and afternoon tea spread over the three days in a sort of nationalistic birthday festival.  I can't wait to introduce the Norwegians to the delights of northern patisserie.

_____

For those of you who are curious, here are two photos of Mama G's infected udder which is slowly being removed by a leather knife.  There are no nerves left so she's not in pain.  Scroll down if you dare.

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Rosie's Adventures with Fibreglass

I would like to say that here follows an account of how I became a skilled builder or my startling success a recycling guru.  Nothing so simple, nor so innocent. 

For some time now I have been aware that Norwegian youth are big fans of 'snus'.  Snus is a 'moist powder tobacco product' which you put under your top lip so that it absorbs into your bloodstream much faster than with a cigarette.  When the nicotine hits you (well, me) it's with the force of twenty cigarettes and you nearly pass out (again, that's with me).  So, given the chance to try some in a handy little tea-bag, I duly did so.  What the bastards didn't tell me until the thing was actually wedged under my lip and causing a significant amount of pain was that the snus is actually cut with powdered fibreglass.  Well, foolish really, of course it's vital that the snus cuts your gum so that it can enter your bloodstream.  Friends, never again.

My whisky-and-snus fuelled Saturday night came as something of a surprise.  I was going to watch Maria, a delightful Spanish girl who used to au pair for Anne-Helene and now works in Gjøvik (where I'm going for a day out tomorrow- yay!), play French Horn with a local brass band.  But this was so much more than a concert.  The band pieces were interspersed with sketches, mostly involving a fictional group of singers called the Sølveguttene going on a drunken rampage in Ireland.  It says a lot for the quality of the visual gags that I was cracking up, despite being totally mystified by the local dialect.  Even better, because brass bands are brass bands the world over, as soon as we'd packed away the glockenspiel, it was time to get well and truly smashed. 

Over three hours I learnt the following:

1) Norwegians start with spirits

2) Every Norwegian social event will eventually serve wienerpølse (hot dogs)

3) Lars Magnus is an actual name that people have

Unsurprisingly I slept in my clothes and spent the next day being laughed at by my tee-total host.  It was all quite jocular and I found a mass of smoked salmon in the fridge so I was glad. 

When not on the lash with Vikings, our social life is exceedingly genteel and almost Austen-esque.  A standard evening might consist of cards, reading, playing piano duets, drinking tea and taking a turn about the room- soo refreshing!  Felix and I have just finished reading 'Fiesta: The Sun Also Rise' by Hemingway- I suppose we've established our very own book club.  Albeit one where our first discussion topic was male impotence and the definition of a pimp.  The best upshot of reading Fiesta has been that Felix has become convinced that 'swell' is an actual word that people say and I'm in no hurry to enlighten him. 

Work on the farm continues apace.  We've finished shaving around half of Puss's back and Queen G can now climb up onto my shoulder.  Today Stine and I made fifteen bottles of redcurrant cordial to sell in the farmshop (which opens this Friday!).  I cleaned out the turkey cage today and the inhabitants were super chuffed with their new straw.  I gave the geese some straw and one bit me.  This week we're also going to be making burgers from a pike.  One of those 'eat-it-before-it-eats-you' scenarios.

Sorry there aren't more photos!  I'm not a natural photographer, so I'm going to start carrying it about with me every day and try to document this wonderful place.  We had lots of very picturesque, fast melting snow today and a terrific sunset.  I've also made up my bed with yellow gingham and it looks gorgeous.  I feel like Mariette Larsen.  Or Mariette Larsen Magnus. 

Sup, my darlings! 

I'm writing this post during the news break in Norwegian Idol.  Not something I would usually be following, but two of the final ten contestants are from Glausdal, which is literally down the road, so we are honour bound to support them.  Norwegian Idol seems to be filmed in someone's garage and everyone sings English songs in super dodgy accents.  It's quite charming actually.  Update: the lyrics of the last song (sung by Sigmund) were 'I can't feel my face when I'm with you, but I love it'.  Presumably this describes the dangers of dating in the Norwegian winter. 

Can't believe I've only been here for eight days- I already feel part of a dysfunctional, multilingual family.  This probably largely due to the fact that together we have eaten four homemade cakes (chocolate, chocolate mousse, chocolate and raspberry and vanilla pavlova) and there always seem to be more arriving.  Konstanse is the eldest daughter and a keen baker.  Apparently she was a complete nutcase at school and her name still has some clout in the local schools (she's 22), but she has now found her zen in baking.  I've even started to bond with Gard (pronounced Gahrrrrrrd, or, more often, God) who is displaying lots of typical annoying little brother behaviour such as leaving the milk out and copying what I say in a really annoying (disturbingly accurate) English accent. 

Our visit to the Olympic Museum was a delight.  For an event aimed at grown ups, we were presented with a surprising array of free hot dogs, pin badges and posters.  They were showing a montage of opening ceremonies and I am unembarrassed to stay that, four years on, I still well up at Danny Boyle's Industrial Revolution.  It's just so damn good.  Afterwards we wandered around the open air museum, where someone has transplanted lots of gorgeous Norwegian buildings.  It actually looks and feels like Rohan. 

There's even a beautiful medieval church where you can get married, presumably to a member of the Rohirrm.  Oh, and left to right in the picture are Ruben, Felix, Anne-Helene and Tommy.

Work wise, no two days are the same.  The other day I followed Anne-Helene around with a notepad and wrote down 39 separate tasks.  My favourite was #17 Shave the cat.  Puss is the sweetest cat alive, but doesn't think it's worth her while to clean herself.  Thus, she is one matted kitty.  I spent two days this week digging a colossal flowerbed- I now have abs of steel and really sore hands.  They were so sore the other night I couldn't cut myself a slice of cake.  It was torture.

The weather simply cannot make up its mind.  We were sunbathing Monday, dining alfresco on Tuesday, watching the snow on Wednesday and we've been shrouded in fog since yesterday.  I now have  a fine collection of icicles on my beautiful Calamity Jane cabin.  As it warms up I'll be working hard getting the farm ready for National Day on the 17th May.  As far as I can tell National Day marks the end of a month of endless japes.  Facebook abounds with plans for practical jokes for school kids- such as waking up all of your teachers at 3am or choosing a random kid in the year below and marching into their classroom to steal their desk.  Or, for adults, the 7-day challenge (7 sexual partners in 7 days), where, for every successful conquest, you get to add another horn to your helmet (I really wish I were joking).  I've also been researching bunard, the national dress, which everyone roles out for National Day and at every other chance they get. They are honestly not embarrassed by any of this. 

The most exciting happenings of this week have occurred in the goat pen.  Mama G has an infection in her one remaining udder and has been put on antibiotics.  Sadly there is now no blood flow to the udder and it will eventually just fall off.  The baby goats, Queen J and Jerry are now on the bottle, any absolutely demolish their three feeds a day.  Jerry, previously the weaker of the two, is mad for the bottle and much of my time is taken up with restraining him and shouting 'Aw, fuck off man Jez' so Queen G can get some formula.  The geese are getting more hissy and vile by the day.  I simply do not see the point of geese as they are really bloody scary.  

It was my day off yesterday.  I was al psyched to cycle to Lillehammer and go exploring, but then I realised I was completely, impossibly zonked.  Physical exhaustion creeps up on you here and hits you with a sledgehammer.  Thus I spent the entire day reading a detective novel and drinking tea.  It was bliss.  The boys did the same on their day off today (very envious of Ruben who spotted TWO WHOLE MOOSE as he was walking by the river last night).  They are both excellent young men and I am a very, very lucky girl.

Missing you all xxx

What is a bjørnefitte?

So, the blog name!  Much as I loved all of the lovely puns on the words Norway and pølse, once bjørnefitte came into my life there was really no going back.  Bjørnefitte is not a real Norwegian word (yet) but it translates as 'bear fanny'.  There is no better phrase, surely.  This term was coined to describe the delightful trapper hat worn by one of my fellow Workawayers.  It does indeed look like a bear fanny.

It's my third day in Norway, and, boy, it's been an absolute treat so far.  I arrived on Thursday, about twelve hours door to door.  Strangely, the journey didn't seem arduous, only a taxi, followed by two trains, then a bus, then a plane, then a bus, then a train, then a car. I can only put this down to the fact that the past few months have been horrifically stressful, and anything else feels like a holiday!  That, or the fact that I've switched from six to one cup of coffee per day and am no longer in a constant state of caffeine induced hypertension. I am truly zenified.

The farm I'm staying on is called Sygard Troft (no idea what that means) and is owned by an eleventh generation farmer called Anne Helene.  She is an incredibly impressive individual, multi-skilled, hardy and very generous- she reminds me of Germaine Greer's drovers wife. I would never dare to cross her for she has many chainsaws.  It's the biggest farm in the town of Follebu in the county of Oppland.  There's a selection of beautiful barns and a farmhouse dating from the 17th Century.  I live in the most magical little fairytale cabin.  Today we used the tractor shovel to dig out the stone which I was using as my front strep- turns out it's an old boundary stone from 1776. I got a new stone from the creek, and I can usually find a delightful cat sitting there.  The cats are all magnificent- a dribbly black witch's cat, a slinky tabby and a black and white baby whose coat is so matted it's actually solidified. She's being shaved a little at a time and is currently sporting a naked cat bottom.

The work so far has been most unexpected: making a mat from silver birch twigs, collecting felled trees from the forest, changing winter tyres for summer tyres and caring for a crack-a-lacking bevvy of geese, ducks, chickens, bantams, goats, a pig, Shetland, a trotter, bunnies and guinea pigs.  Most of the animals are 'therapy pets', in place for the children and elderly people who visit the farm throughout the year.  Thus they are all very sweet natured.  Apart from the hissy geese.  But they're softies really.  They share a pen with a bunny who just loves geese. Loves 'em. 

Apart from Anne Helene, there is her boyfriend Tommy who visits at the weekend ( 'he's a bureaucrat, don't ask how anything works') and her five children.  So far I've met two: Thea, who is 19 in four days and a complete sweetheart- super enthusiastic, personable and desperate to get out and explore the world.  Like all Norwegian girls she is very blonde and beautiful- that's her playing the ice guitar on our walk up the local waterfall. Godt is in his late teens and keeps himself to himself- he's into computer games and basketball and clearly thinks girls are icky.

I've been so lucky with my fellow Workawayers who are two of the nicest young men you could imagine.  Ruben is 20 and pretends to be misanthropic. He's been here for three months and the family clearly adores him.  Felix (whose surname is Finger!!) is 23, hails from Hamburg and is incredibly funny.  That's him also playing the ice guitar.  We've just been playing Alias, the Norwegian version of Articulate, and I have spent 90 minutes crying with laughter.  The Norwegian version has an extra facet, and every so often you have to perform a round with a given 'emosjion'- hysterical, angry, scared, shy, drunk... We must play this version at Friendmas.

Right!  Off to bed because tomorrow we're going to the Lillehammer 1994 Olympics Museum!  I've also offered to make a roast with Yorkshire puddings in the evening.  I like these people and want to give them food.  Typical.