As Grand As It Gets
I suppose there are downsides to being a world-famous rock star-- bad road food, tiffs with band mates, inept sound guys, etc. But one definite upside is that after the show you get to come home to a hotel like the First Hotel Grims Grenka in Oslo (one such famous band was staying there while I was in town). In a city dominated by a royal palace and flush with 19th-century coffee houses, Grims Grenka stands out, offering its jet-set clientele sensual, plus-sized suites that are perfect for the pre-party, the after-party or a simple, low-key night of living luxuriously.
Oslo’s only Design Hotel, the Grims Grenka's interiors can only be described as hypermodern, featuring floor-lit catwalks, beds by Jensen and a mood-based lighting system (There's no "on" or "off" here. You set your lighting switchpad to "work," "play" or "sleep").
If you venture to the roof of Grims Grenka, you’ll find Q Lounge, a casual cocktail bar with views of Oslo city center to one side and Oslo Fjord to the other. Downstairs is Madu, a high-end joint that marries the cuisines of Asia with fresh Norwegian ingredients harvested from the farmlands and fjords.
After hitting up those spots, you can return to your room and enjoy a glass of sparking Norwegian water in the your giant tub, which in my case was located on a stage in the middle of the room. Guests optional, of course.
http://www.travelagentcentral.com/norway/opulence-fjord-first-hotel-grims-grenka
Showing posts with label norway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label norway. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Let's Just Ban All Gasoline Cars
Well, the far right should have a field day with this one.
Norway's Socialist Left Party is proposing to ban the sale of cars that run (only) on gasoline by 2015. Its legislation wouldn't ban all cars that use gasoline, but it would require that all new cars run partly or fully on alternative fuels, including electricity, ethanol, bio-diesel, and hydrogen.
Any new hybrid would be permitted, including such well-known models as the 2010 Toyota Prius. Flex-fuel models, including some Volvo and Saab entries made solely for Scandinavian markets, would also be fine--as would all-electric vehicles. In North America, GM has promised that half its vehicles will be flex-fuel-capable by 2012; all of those would make the cut.
The proposal isn't new; it was first suggested in May 2007. But it got a flurry of attention on Saturday, when Norway's finance minister Kristin Halvorsen--a member of the Socialist Left Party--suggested that the plan was "much more realistic than people think" when they first hear about it.
"We are often a party that puts forward new proposals first," she told Reuters, in a story that spread quickly around the world. Halvorsen stressed her plan does not go after existing cars, applying only to new cars from 2015. (The Norwegian public may not have understood this; reaction was apparently loud and angry.)
Reality check: The proposal isn't likely to go far. A three-way coalition holds power in Norway, and various cabinet members are opposed--although green advocacy organizations favor it.
To the best of our knowledge, no nation on earth has legislated against a specific form of motive power for automobiles.
Reuters notes that Halvorsen spoke with journalists during a green car event at which she raced a Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car around a track against several other politicians. "She finished among the slower times," noted the news service.
For the record, Norway's socialist finance minister is no relation to our own Bengt Halvorson. Well ... they're probably related somehow, but way back. Way, way back. Long enough, anyway, for the spelling to be changed at Ellis Island or some other port of entry (cf. "Voelcker"). We just wanted to clear that up.
http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1020294_socialism-at-work-lets-just-ban-all-gasoline-cars
Norway's Socialist Left Party is proposing to ban the sale of cars that run (only) on gasoline by 2015. Its legislation wouldn't ban all cars that use gasoline, but it would require that all new cars run partly or fully on alternative fuels, including electricity, ethanol, bio-diesel, and hydrogen.
Any new hybrid would be permitted, including such well-known models as the 2010 Toyota Prius. Flex-fuel models, including some Volvo and Saab entries made solely for Scandinavian markets, would also be fine--as would all-electric vehicles. In North America, GM has promised that half its vehicles will be flex-fuel-capable by 2012; all of those would make the cut.
The proposal isn't new; it was first suggested in May 2007. But it got a flurry of attention on Saturday, when Norway's finance minister Kristin Halvorsen--a member of the Socialist Left Party--suggested that the plan was "much more realistic than people think" when they first hear about it.
"We are often a party that puts forward new proposals first," she told Reuters, in a story that spread quickly around the world. Halvorsen stressed her plan does not go after existing cars, applying only to new cars from 2015. (The Norwegian public may not have understood this; reaction was apparently loud and angry.)
Reality check: The proposal isn't likely to go far. A three-way coalition holds power in Norway, and various cabinet members are opposed--although green advocacy organizations favor it.
To the best of our knowledge, no nation on earth has legislated against a specific form of motive power for automobiles.
Reuters notes that Halvorsen spoke with journalists during a green car event at which she raced a Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car around a track against several other politicians. "She finished among the slower times," noted the news service.
For the record, Norway's socialist finance minister is no relation to our own Bengt Halvorson. Well ... they're probably related somehow, but way back. Way, way back. Long enough, anyway, for the spelling to be changed at Ellis Island or some other port of entry (cf. "Voelcker"). We just wanted to clear that up.
http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1020294_socialism-at-work-lets-just-ban-all-gasoline-cars
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Young People's Wellbeing
A table of young people's wellbeing in 29 European states - the EU plus Norway and Iceland - has ranked the UK 24th.
The Netherlands was top while only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta came lower than the UK.
The table, about youngsters aged up to 19, was compiled by York University researchers for the Child Poverty Action Group using mostly 2006 data.
The government commented that its policies were lifting more than a million children out of poverty.
The researchers assessed the countries on 43 separate measures, ranging from infant mortality and obesity to material resources - like poverty and housing.
Table: Youth wellbeing rankings
Also included were how children felt about their lives, schools and relationships.
CATEGORIES
health
subjective wellbeing
relationships
material resources
behaviour and risk
education
housing and environment
Feeling pressured by schoolwork, for example, fed into the measurement of "subjective wellbeing".
The study suggests little improvement since a similar report by Unicef two years ago, BBC correspondent James Westhead said.
The Netherlands led overall and was also in the upper third of the table in each area. Scandinavian countries dominated.
The UK's rank of 24th was well below the position which might be expected given its affluence, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report said.
Workless
Britain's best score, 15th, was in children's relationships - including how easy they say they find it to talk to their parents and get on with their classmates.
On material resources, the UK was 24th out of the 26 countries for which data was available.
"The UK position is particularly influenced by the high number of children living in families where no parent works. Only Lithuania and Poland do worse," said the report.
CPAG is not arguing against government policy focusing on income growth for the poorest families and the impact of public services.
But it says the current recession means many families are threatened with rapid income falls.
"There is nothing inevitable about the UK doing badly on child wellbeing," it says.
"The challenge should be to reverse this situation and put children front and centre of policy making."
Looking beyond 2010, the charity has a series of recommendations:
* Protect jobs, remove barriers to work such as unsuitable and expensive childcare.
* Mend the "safety net" which it says leaves many families struggling well below the official poverty line.
* Drop means tests in favour of universal benefits such as child benefit.
* Stop in-work poverty from low wages.
* End the "classroom divide" in which children growing up in poverty have lower attainment.
* Provide fair public services for those who need them most.
* End "poverty premiums" which mean poor families pay more for basic goods, utilities and services and more of their income in taxes.
* Ensure a decent home for every family.
CPAG says that as most of the data in the report is from three years ago - which is not unusual in international comparisons - many recent government policy initiatives are not fully reflected.
"The figures should therefore be read as a criticism of UK society, but not necessarily of recent social policy," it stresses.
England's children's minister, Beverley Hughes, added that the fact that a government department had been created to focus on children, schools and families showed the increased importance being given to children.
"Our Children's Plan is our long term vision and it puts children and families at the centre of everything government does," she said.
"Our policies have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty and halved absolute poverty. Policies announced in the last two years will lift around a further 500,000 children out of poverty.
"We are very proud that the majority of our children are happy and do well but in those cases where children and their families face problems, we will continue to invest in high quality services which provide the vital help and support that they need."
The CPAG report follows a BBC Newsround survey of 1,000 children around the UK.
Many were worried about money, bullying and knife crime - but most nevertheless said they were happy.
Overall ranking
1 Netherlands
2 Sweden
3 Norway
4 Iceland
5 Finland
6 Denmark
7 Slovenia
8 Germany
9 Ireland
10 Luxembourg
11 Austria
12 Cyprus
13 Spain
14 Belgium
15 France
16 Czech Republic
17 Slovakia
18 Estonia
19 Italy
20 Poland
21 Portugal
22 Hungary
23 Greece
24 United Kingdom
25 Romania
26 Bulgaria
27 Latvia
28 Lithuania
29 Malta
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8008926.stm
The Netherlands was top while only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta came lower than the UK.
The table, about youngsters aged up to 19, was compiled by York University researchers for the Child Poverty Action Group using mostly 2006 data.
The government commented that its policies were lifting more than a million children out of poverty.
The researchers assessed the countries on 43 separate measures, ranging from infant mortality and obesity to material resources - like poverty and housing.
Table: Youth wellbeing rankings
Also included were how children felt about their lives, schools and relationships.
CATEGORIES
health
subjective wellbeing
relationships
material resources
behaviour and risk
education
housing and environment
Feeling pressured by schoolwork, for example, fed into the measurement of "subjective wellbeing".
The study suggests little improvement since a similar report by Unicef two years ago, BBC correspondent James Westhead said.
The Netherlands led overall and was also in the upper third of the table in each area. Scandinavian countries dominated.
The UK's rank of 24th was well below the position which might be expected given its affluence, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report said.
Workless
Britain's best score, 15th, was in children's relationships - including how easy they say they find it to talk to their parents and get on with their classmates.
On material resources, the UK was 24th out of the 26 countries for which data was available.
"The UK position is particularly influenced by the high number of children living in families where no parent works. Only Lithuania and Poland do worse," said the report.
CPAG is not arguing against government policy focusing on income growth for the poorest families and the impact of public services.
But it says the current recession means many families are threatened with rapid income falls.
"There is nothing inevitable about the UK doing badly on child wellbeing," it says.
"The challenge should be to reverse this situation and put children front and centre of policy making."
Looking beyond 2010, the charity has a series of recommendations:
* Protect jobs, remove barriers to work such as unsuitable and expensive childcare.
* Mend the "safety net" which it says leaves many families struggling well below the official poverty line.
* Drop means tests in favour of universal benefits such as child benefit.
* Stop in-work poverty from low wages.
* End the "classroom divide" in which children growing up in poverty have lower attainment.
* Provide fair public services for those who need them most.
* End "poverty premiums" which mean poor families pay more for basic goods, utilities and services and more of their income in taxes.
* Ensure a decent home for every family.
CPAG says that as most of the data in the report is from three years ago - which is not unusual in international comparisons - many recent government policy initiatives are not fully reflected.
"The figures should therefore be read as a criticism of UK society, but not necessarily of recent social policy," it stresses.
England's children's minister, Beverley Hughes, added that the fact that a government department had been created to focus on children, schools and families showed the increased importance being given to children.
"Our Children's Plan is our long term vision and it puts children and families at the centre of everything government does," she said.
"Our policies have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty and halved absolute poverty. Policies announced in the last two years will lift around a further 500,000 children out of poverty.
"We are very proud that the majority of our children are happy and do well but in those cases where children and their families face problems, we will continue to invest in high quality services which provide the vital help and support that they need."
The CPAG report follows a BBC Newsround survey of 1,000 children around the UK.
Many were worried about money, bullying and knife crime - but most nevertheless said they were happy.
Overall ranking
1 Netherlands
2 Sweden
3 Norway
4 Iceland
5 Finland
6 Denmark
7 Slovenia
8 Germany
9 Ireland
10 Luxembourg
11 Austria
12 Cyprus
13 Spain
14 Belgium
15 France
16 Czech Republic
17 Slovakia
18 Estonia
19 Italy
20 Poland
21 Portugal
22 Hungary
23 Greece
24 United Kingdom
25 Romania
26 Bulgaria
27 Latvia
28 Lithuania
29 Malta
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8008926.stm
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Norwegian Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo
NORWAY has never failed to attract tourists with its spectacular and charming landscape of forests, fjords, mountains and coastline. And for World Expo 2010, Norwegians promise visitors to its national pavilion a full experience of all these.
The pavilion of the Scandinavian country will be constructed around 15 model trees made of wood and bamboo. The trees will be arranged in such a way as to present a clear interpretation of Norway’s varied landscapes.
All the model trees will be covered by a semi-transparent roof and when the sun shines through the roof, it will create the effect of shade or blue skies.
The roof will also be able to collect solar energy to make the entire pavilion self-sufficient.
It will house the Fjord Restaurant which will serves Norwegian food and a business center for conferences and forums, creating special experiences of eating near a fjord or having a meeting in a forest.
Visitors will enjoy a “powerful sensory experience,” said Arild Blixrud, Norway’s acting commissioner general for the Expo.
Designers got the idea for the pavilion when walking through a forest in Norway, said Siv Helen Stangeland, one of the chief designers.
“Through this innovative design, Norway wanted to present its concepts in resource and energy conservation with the theme ‘Norway Powered by Nature’,” said Oyvind Slaake, Norway’s vice minister of trade and industry.
Most Norwegian cities are close to the sea, forests or mountains, and Norway will show the world “how we invite nature into the city and use nature to improve the quality of life,” said Philip Lote, communications director of Norway’s Expo delegation.
The country signed its participation contract with the Expo organizers on October 16. So far, 225 countries and international organizations have confirmed their participation in the Expo, with 108 have signed participation contracts.
The US$22.8 million Norway Pavilion will not be constructed from scratch, but assembled using prefabricated laminated wood building kits and bamboo which will be shipped from Norway.
But the stability of the pavilion will not be a concern as Blixrud says it will be able to withstand even the most powerful typhoon.
Wood is widely used as a construction material in Norway while bamboo is the traditional construction material in China. The pavilion will also aim to present a combination of Norwegian and Chinese cultures, said the commissioner general.
Another highlight will be the Norwegian government’s post-Expo plan for the “trees pavilion.”
“The government hopes to leave the 15 trees in China after Expo as a symbol of friendly relations between the two countries,” Blixrud said.
They could be split into single trees and moved to different areas of China and used as restaurants or conference halls or located in local parks for people to enjoy.
http://shownbylocals.com/shanghai/expo-2010-presented-by-shownbylocalscom/norwegian-pavilion-at-the-shanghai-2010-world-expo.html
The pavilion of the Scandinavian country will be constructed around 15 model trees made of wood and bamboo. The trees will be arranged in such a way as to present a clear interpretation of Norway’s varied landscapes.
All the model trees will be covered by a semi-transparent roof and when the sun shines through the roof, it will create the effect of shade or blue skies.
The roof will also be able to collect solar energy to make the entire pavilion self-sufficient.
It will house the Fjord Restaurant which will serves Norwegian food and a business center for conferences and forums, creating special experiences of eating near a fjord or having a meeting in a forest.
Visitors will enjoy a “powerful sensory experience,” said Arild Blixrud, Norway’s acting commissioner general for the Expo.
Designers got the idea for the pavilion when walking through a forest in Norway, said Siv Helen Stangeland, one of the chief designers.
“Through this innovative design, Norway wanted to present its concepts in resource and energy conservation with the theme ‘Norway Powered by Nature’,” said Oyvind Slaake, Norway’s vice minister of trade and industry.
Most Norwegian cities are close to the sea, forests or mountains, and Norway will show the world “how we invite nature into the city and use nature to improve the quality of life,” said Philip Lote, communications director of Norway’s Expo delegation.
The country signed its participation contract with the Expo organizers on October 16. So far, 225 countries and international organizations have confirmed their participation in the Expo, with 108 have signed participation contracts.
The US$22.8 million Norway Pavilion will not be constructed from scratch, but assembled using prefabricated laminated wood building kits and bamboo which will be shipped from Norway.
But the stability of the pavilion will not be a concern as Blixrud says it will be able to withstand even the most powerful typhoon.
Wood is widely used as a construction material in Norway while bamboo is the traditional construction material in China. The pavilion will also aim to present a combination of Norwegian and Chinese cultures, said the commissioner general.
Another highlight will be the Norwegian government’s post-Expo plan for the “trees pavilion.”
“The government hopes to leave the 15 trees in China after Expo as a symbol of friendly relations between the two countries,” Blixrud said.
They could be split into single trees and moved to different areas of China and used as restaurants or conference halls or located in local parks for people to enjoy.
http://shownbylocals.com/shanghai/expo-2010-presented-by-shownbylocalscom/norwegian-pavilion-at-the-shanghai-2010-world-expo.html
Friday, March 20, 2009
Norway in the forefront of rainforest conservation: Full text of the interview with Hans Brattskar
mongabay: What led Norway to identify forests as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Brattskar: The main reason for why the government of Norway initiated our work with REDD is of course that emissions from deforestation and forest degradation measure up to almost one-fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions. The Norwegian government realized REDD was a field which needed leadership in order to kick start the process, and where Norway, by making significant initial contributions, could be catalytic in the sense that we could start building the international framework needed to make it easier for other countries to follow.
Norway is a forest-nation and several Norwegian NGOs are involved in work with tropical forest countries, therefore it was natural that this became a focused topic in the country. Our main goals are to include emissions from deforestation and degradation in a new climate regime and to reduce emissions from forests—but we also recognize that this may have added value in terms of protecting biodiversity, strengthening indigenous people's interests and improving local livelihoods.
mongabay: What are Norway's principle concerns with REDD in terms of the challenges that need be overcome to make it a reality?
Brattskar: There are of course several challenges. The drivers behind deforestation are strong and to find ways within each country to reduce the deforestation is probably the main challenge. Another challenge is to establish funding mechanisms for REDD to that generate sufficient funds to make REDD possible at a scale that really matters to combat climate change and to provide the developing countries with long-term, predictable compensation for their REDD-achievements. REDD is recognized as a cost effective and relatively fast way to reduce emissions, but as we like to say: that does not mean it is neither cheap nor easy. Our main goal and challenge is the inclusion of REDD in a future climate regime, in a form that ensures cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in developing forest countries.
REDD financing should in the future be based on results based compensation - that is, developed countries should provide compensation to tropical forest countries based on reduced or limited emissions. I believe key words here are coordination and verification. The REDD efforts need to be coordinated, and the results must be verifiable. One challenge is to build systems for measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) emission reductions. We are convinced that it is now technically possible to monitor deforestation and forest degradation with satisfying precision. But it will take a lot of investments and capacity building to establish national MRV-systems in many developing countries.
It is also important to ensure a coordination of REDD efforts. We believe the multilateral institutions, like the UN, the World Bank and the African Development Bank should play important roles in this coordination. The efforts must be anchored at a national level, based on inclusive, holistic, multi-stakeholder national strategy building and implementation processes - and the national governments must cooperate with an international organization such as the UN, the World Bank or the African Development Bank.
It is important that REDD efforts are not fragmented, and we feel that we are doing great progress in this field. The World Bank and the UN are for example working together in an extraordinarily well coordinated way on REDD.
Our main goal and challenge is of course to include REDD in a future climate regime – in order to ensure cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in tropical forest countries.
mongabay: Is Norway is finding support for REDD from other industrialized governments?
Brattskar: In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program which is run by the UN agencies of UNEP, FAO and UNDP. In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'. One main reason for establishing the multilateral UN REDD program is for other countries to be able to easily fund REDD. It is also important that REDD is included in the climate regime after 2012. We will not be able to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through fragmented approaches.
So far, Britain is funding the Congo Basin Forest Fund together with Norway, and Germany providing significant support inter alia to forest conservation through its international climate initiative. Other donor countries also show great interest in REDD.
We think it is important to underline that REDD is more than development aid, and more than combating climate change. It might seem ambitious but we strongly hope that the work with reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation can create deep, substantial, lasting partnerships between developed and developing countries to help put the latter on the path to genuine, sustainable, low-carbon development.
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0319-norway_forests.html
Brattskar: The main reason for why the government of Norway initiated our work with REDD is of course that emissions from deforestation and forest degradation measure up to almost one-fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions. The Norwegian government realized REDD was a field which needed leadership in order to kick start the process, and where Norway, by making significant initial contributions, could be catalytic in the sense that we could start building the international framework needed to make it easier for other countries to follow.
Norway is a forest-nation and several Norwegian NGOs are involved in work with tropical forest countries, therefore it was natural that this became a focused topic in the country. Our main goals are to include emissions from deforestation and degradation in a new climate regime and to reduce emissions from forests—but we also recognize that this may have added value in terms of protecting biodiversity, strengthening indigenous people's interests and improving local livelihoods.
mongabay: What are Norway's principle concerns with REDD in terms of the challenges that need be overcome to make it a reality?
Brattskar: There are of course several challenges. The drivers behind deforestation are strong and to find ways within each country to reduce the deforestation is probably the main challenge. Another challenge is to establish funding mechanisms for REDD to that generate sufficient funds to make REDD possible at a scale that really matters to combat climate change and to provide the developing countries with long-term, predictable compensation for their REDD-achievements. REDD is recognized as a cost effective and relatively fast way to reduce emissions, but as we like to say: that does not mean it is neither cheap nor easy. Our main goal and challenge is the inclusion of REDD in a future climate regime, in a form that ensures cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in developing forest countries.
REDD financing should in the future be based on results based compensation - that is, developed countries should provide compensation to tropical forest countries based on reduced or limited emissions. I believe key words here are coordination and verification. The REDD efforts need to be coordinated, and the results must be verifiable. One challenge is to build systems for measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) emission reductions. We are convinced that it is now technically possible to monitor deforestation and forest degradation with satisfying precision. But it will take a lot of investments and capacity building to establish national MRV-systems in many developing countries.
It is also important to ensure a coordination of REDD efforts. We believe the multilateral institutions, like the UN, the World Bank and the African Development Bank should play important roles in this coordination. The efforts must be anchored at a national level, based on inclusive, holistic, multi-stakeholder national strategy building and implementation processes - and the national governments must cooperate with an international organization such as the UN, the World Bank or the African Development Bank.
It is important that REDD efforts are not fragmented, and we feel that we are doing great progress in this field. The World Bank and the UN are for example working together in an extraordinarily well coordinated way on REDD.
Our main goal and challenge is of course to include REDD in a future climate regime – in order to ensure cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in tropical forest countries.
mongabay: Is Norway is finding support for REDD from other industrialized governments?
Brattskar: In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program which is run by the UN agencies of UNEP, FAO and UNDP. In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'. One main reason for establishing the multilateral UN REDD program is for other countries to be able to easily fund REDD. It is also important that REDD is included in the climate regime after 2012. We will not be able to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through fragmented approaches.
So far, Britain is funding the Congo Basin Forest Fund together with Norway, and Germany providing significant support inter alia to forest conservation through its international climate initiative. Other donor countries also show great interest in REDD.
We think it is important to underline that REDD is more than development aid, and more than combating climate change. It might seem ambitious but we strongly hope that the work with reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation can create deep, substantial, lasting partnerships between developed and developing countries to help put the latter on the path to genuine, sustainable, low-carbon development.
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0319-norway_forests.html
Amazon Rainforest: Norway emerges as champion of rainforest conservation
Scandinavian country with population 1.5 percent that of the United States is the biggest international funder of rainforest conservation.
While citizens in western countries have long paid lip service to saving rainforests, Norway has quietly emerged as the largest and most important international force in tropical forest conservation. The small Scandinavian country has committed 3 billion krone ($440 million) a year to the effort, a figure vastly greater than the $100M pledged — but never fully contributed — by the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA). Norway now hopes it can help push to include forest conservation in the successor to the Kyoto Protocol by providing funding and fostering cooperation among international actors like the UN and World Bank, as well as developing countries, to fund the creation of an international architecture which makes it possible to incorporate deforestation and degradation into a post-2012 climate regime.
Norway's leadership on forest conservation arose from its concern over the impacts of climate change and what it sees as an attractive source for cuts in carbon dioxide emissions: reducing deforestation and forest degradation, which together account for roughly 20 percent of emissions caused by human activity or more than all the world's trucks, cars, ships and airplanes combined. The country, which is the world's third-largest gas exporter, the fourth-biggest oil exporter, and has some of the highest emissions per capita in Europe, aims to be carbon neutral — in terms of compensating for all remaining domestic emissions through emission reductions in other countries — by 2030. Although Norway was among the first countries in the world to adopt a carbon tax (in 1991) and hydropower is the source of nearly 99 percent of its electricity, it needs to aggressively reduce n emissions to meet its targets.
Norway's intention to support forest conservation as a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was announced by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the 2007 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, Indonesia. At the time, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), was still a somewhat esoteric idea for curtailing emissions; one championed by a handful of major conservation groups, a coalition of tropical nations led by Papua New Guinea, and the World Bank. Today the landscape has changed. REDD — in various forms — is backed by a broad range of interests, from politicians to business leaders to environmental groups. Still, few have ventured forth with the funds needed to jumpstart REDD projects. The United States for example has not directly committed money to the initiative. Norway hopes its commitment will prod other countries to follow its example.
"The Norwegian government realized REDD was a field which needed leadership in order to kick start the process," Hans Brattskar, ambassador and director of the Norwegian government's International Climate and Forest Initiative, told mongabay.com. "Norway, by making significant initial contributions, could be catalytic in the sense that we could start building the international framework needed to make it easier for other countries to follow."
"Our main goals are to include emissions from deforestation and degradation in a new climate regime and to reduce emissions from forests—but we also recognize that this may have added value in terms of protecting biodiversity, strengthening indigenous people's interests and improving local livelihoods," he continued.
The Norwegian government cites these multiple benefits — a "triple dividend" — as the critical reason for supporting REDD. It also sees REDD as an opportunity to engage developing countries in climate negotiations set to resume in Copenhagen this December.
"We think it is important to underline that REDD is more than development aid, and more than combating climate change," Brattskar said. "It might seem ambitious but we strongly hope that the work with reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation can create deep, substantial, lasting partnerships between developed and developing countries to help put the latter on the path to genuine, sustainable, low-carbon development."
Oil palm plantation border rainforest. Oil palm has arisen as an important driver of deforestation in Southeast Asia
Norway is optimistic about the potential of REDD to simultaneously reduce the risk of dangerous climate change, alleviate rural poverty, and protect ecosystem services and biodiversity. But it notes that daunting challenges need to be overcome, including building capacity for developing nations to reduce deforestation, thus ensuring equitable distribution of benefits to stakeholders including forest people, verifying reductions in emissions, and providing the long-term funding needed to compete economically with the primary drivers of deforestation, among them agriculture and logging.
"REDD is recognized as a cost-effective and relatively fast way to reduce emissions," Brattskar said, but added that it will be neither cheap nor easy. "Our main goal and challenge is the inclusion of REDD in a future climate regime, in a form that ensures cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in developing forest countries."
Norway has demonstrated its willingness to commit substantial sums for forest conservation — provided recipient countries honor their commitments to reduce deforestation. Last year Norway pledged up to a billion dollars to Brazil's Amazon Fund, an initiative that seeks to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 70 percent relative to a 1996-2005 baseline. It also announced NOK 500 million ($73 million) towards the development and implementation of a national REDD strategy in Tanzania over the next five years, millions of dollars for the South American country of Guyana, and more than $100 million to Congo Basin countries. It continues to seek new partnerships and opportunities in countries committed to developing national strategy plans for REDD. Most of the support is channeled through multilateral organizations such as the African development bank (which administers the Congo Basin Forest Fund), the World Bank (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) and the UN (UN Redd Programme) that support countries in drafting national strategies for REDD.
Norway is counting on other industrialized nations to eventually join the effort initiative by supporting multilateral processes for REDD. Brattskar said Britain is already providing financial backing for the Congo Basin Forest Fund while Germany is supporting forest conservation through its international climate initiative. He said other donor countries are showing "great interest".
"In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program," which is run by three UN agencies, UNEP, FAO and UNDP. "In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'."
"We are certainly not alone in this field. At the same time, we would strongly appreciate more countries' getting involved and providing support to REDD efforts."
Norway has demonstrated its willingness to commit substantial sums for forest conservation — provided recipient countries honor their commitments to reduce deforestation. Last year Norway pledged up to a billion dollars to Brazil's Amazon Fund, an initiative that seeks to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 70 percent relative to a 1996-2005 baseline. It also announced NOK 500 million ($73 million) towards the development and implementation of a national REDD strategy in Tanzania over the next five years, millions of dollars for the South American country of Guyana, and more than $100 million to Congo Basin countries. It continues to seek new partnerships and opportunities in countries committed to developing national strategy plans for REDD. Most of the support is channeled through multilateral organizations such as the African development bank (which administers the Congo Basin Forest Fund), the World Bank (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) and the UN (UN Redd Programme) that support countries in drafting national strategies for REDD.
Norway is counting on other industrialized nations to eventually join the effort initiative by supporting multilateral processes for REDD. Brattskar said Britain is already providing financial backing for the Congo Basin Forest Fund while Germany is supporting forest conservation through its international climate initiative. He said other donor countries are showing "great interest".
"In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program," which is run by three UN agencies, UNEP, FAO and UNDP. "In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'."
"We are certainly not alone in this field. At the same time, we would strongly appreciate more countries' getting involved and providing support to REDD efforts."
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0319-norway_forests.html
While citizens in western countries have long paid lip service to saving rainforests, Norway has quietly emerged as the largest and most important international force in tropical forest conservation. The small Scandinavian country has committed 3 billion krone ($440 million) a year to the effort, a figure vastly greater than the $100M pledged — but never fully contributed — by the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA). Norway now hopes it can help push to include forest conservation in the successor to the Kyoto Protocol by providing funding and fostering cooperation among international actors like the UN and World Bank, as well as developing countries, to fund the creation of an international architecture which makes it possible to incorporate deforestation and degradation into a post-2012 climate regime.
Norway's leadership on forest conservation arose from its concern over the impacts of climate change and what it sees as an attractive source for cuts in carbon dioxide emissions: reducing deforestation and forest degradation, which together account for roughly 20 percent of emissions caused by human activity or more than all the world's trucks, cars, ships and airplanes combined. The country, which is the world's third-largest gas exporter, the fourth-biggest oil exporter, and has some of the highest emissions per capita in Europe, aims to be carbon neutral — in terms of compensating for all remaining domestic emissions through emission reductions in other countries — by 2030. Although Norway was among the first countries in the world to adopt a carbon tax (in 1991) and hydropower is the source of nearly 99 percent of its electricity, it needs to aggressively reduce n emissions to meet its targets.
Norway's intention to support forest conservation as a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was announced by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the 2007 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, Indonesia. At the time, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), was still a somewhat esoteric idea for curtailing emissions; one championed by a handful of major conservation groups, a coalition of tropical nations led by Papua New Guinea, and the World Bank. Today the landscape has changed. REDD — in various forms — is backed by a broad range of interests, from politicians to business leaders to environmental groups. Still, few have ventured forth with the funds needed to jumpstart REDD projects. The United States for example has not directly committed money to the initiative. Norway hopes its commitment will prod other countries to follow its example.
"The Norwegian government realized REDD was a field which needed leadership in order to kick start the process," Hans Brattskar, ambassador and director of the Norwegian government's International Climate and Forest Initiative, told mongabay.com. "Norway, by making significant initial contributions, could be catalytic in the sense that we could start building the international framework needed to make it easier for other countries to follow."
"Our main goals are to include emissions from deforestation and degradation in a new climate regime and to reduce emissions from forests—but we also recognize that this may have added value in terms of protecting biodiversity, strengthening indigenous people's interests and improving local livelihoods," he continued.
The Norwegian government cites these multiple benefits — a "triple dividend" — as the critical reason for supporting REDD. It also sees REDD as an opportunity to engage developing countries in climate negotiations set to resume in Copenhagen this December.
"We think it is important to underline that REDD is more than development aid, and more than combating climate change," Brattskar said. "It might seem ambitious but we strongly hope that the work with reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation can create deep, substantial, lasting partnerships between developed and developing countries to help put the latter on the path to genuine, sustainable, low-carbon development."
Oil palm plantation border rainforest. Oil palm has arisen as an important driver of deforestation in Southeast Asia
Norway is optimistic about the potential of REDD to simultaneously reduce the risk of dangerous climate change, alleviate rural poverty, and protect ecosystem services and biodiversity. But it notes that daunting challenges need to be overcome, including building capacity for developing nations to reduce deforestation, thus ensuring equitable distribution of benefits to stakeholders including forest people, verifying reductions in emissions, and providing the long-term funding needed to compete economically with the primary drivers of deforestation, among them agriculture and logging.
"REDD is recognized as a cost-effective and relatively fast way to reduce emissions," Brattskar said, but added that it will be neither cheap nor easy. "Our main goal and challenge is the inclusion of REDD in a future climate regime, in a form that ensures cooperation and predictable financing for REDD in developing forest countries."
Norway has demonstrated its willingness to commit substantial sums for forest conservation — provided recipient countries honor their commitments to reduce deforestation. Last year Norway pledged up to a billion dollars to Brazil's Amazon Fund, an initiative that seeks to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 70 percent relative to a 1996-2005 baseline. It also announced NOK 500 million ($73 million) towards the development and implementation of a national REDD strategy in Tanzania over the next five years, millions of dollars for the South American country of Guyana, and more than $100 million to Congo Basin countries. It continues to seek new partnerships and opportunities in countries committed to developing national strategy plans for REDD. Most of the support is channeled through multilateral organizations such as the African development bank (which administers the Congo Basin Forest Fund), the World Bank (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) and the UN (UN Redd Programme) that support countries in drafting national strategies for REDD.
Norway is counting on other industrialized nations to eventually join the effort initiative by supporting multilateral processes for REDD. Brattskar said Britain is already providing financial backing for the Congo Basin Forest Fund while Germany is supporting forest conservation through its international climate initiative. He said other donor countries are showing "great interest".
"In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program," which is run by three UN agencies, UNEP, FAO and UNDP. "In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'."
"We are certainly not alone in this field. At the same time, we would strongly appreciate more countries' getting involved and providing support to REDD efforts."
Norway has demonstrated its willingness to commit substantial sums for forest conservation — provided recipient countries honor their commitments to reduce deforestation. Last year Norway pledged up to a billion dollars to Brazil's Amazon Fund, an initiative that seeks to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 70 percent relative to a 1996-2005 baseline. It also announced NOK 500 million ($73 million) towards the development and implementation of a national REDD strategy in Tanzania over the next five years, millions of dollars for the South American country of Guyana, and more than $100 million to Congo Basin countries. It continues to seek new partnerships and opportunities in countries committed to developing national strategy plans for REDD. Most of the support is channeled through multilateral organizations such as the African development bank (which administers the Congo Basin Forest Fund), the World Bank (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) and the UN (UN Redd Programme) that support countries in drafting national strategies for REDD.
Norway is counting on other industrialized nations to eventually join the effort initiative by supporting multilateral processes for REDD. Brattskar said Britain is already providing financial backing for the Congo Basin Forest Fund while Germany is supporting forest conservation through its international climate initiative. He said other donor countries are showing "great interest".
"In addition to our contributions to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which is also supported by a number of other countries, Norway is financing the first phase of the United Nations' REDD program," which is run by three UN agencies, UNEP, FAO and UNDP. "In the long run, this needs to be supplemented by funding from other donors. We do not want this to be seen as a 'Norwegian project'."
"We are certainly not alone in this field. At the same time, we would strongly appreciate more countries' getting involved and providing support to REDD efforts."
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0319-norway_forests.html
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sverre Fehn (1924-2009)
Sverre Fehn, the celebrated Norwegian architect and 1997 Pritzker Prize winner, died in Oslo on 23 February at the age of 84
Born in Kongsberg, Norway, in 1924, Fehn graduated from Oslo School of Architecture in 1949. Over the next five years, he studied traditional architecture in Morocco and worked in Paris with Jean Prouvé, meeting Le Corbusier.
This period of his life had a profound influence on his outlook. Often classed as a modernist, Fehn acknowledged the work of Le Corbusier and other contemporaries including Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, but rejected the preceding generation’s urban perspective.
‘I have never thought of myself as modern, but I did absorb the anti-monumental and the pictorial world of Le Corbusier, as well as the functionalism of the small villages of North Africa. You might say I came of age in the shadow of modernism,’ he later said.
Fehn made his name internationally with his design for the Norwegian Pavilion at the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels. This was followed by the much-lauded Nordic Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale (pictured) and the Hedmark Museum in Hamar, Norway.
In his work, Fehn attached great significance to the qualities of materials, the interplay of light and his buildings’ relationship to the landscape. ‘We work with our alphabet materials such as wood, concrete, bricks,’ he said. ‘With them, we write a story which is inseparable from the structure.
‘When I build on a site in nature that is totally unspoiled, it is a fight, an attack by our culture on nature. In this confrontation, I strive to make a building that will make people more aware of the beauty of the setting, and when looking at the building… to see the beauty there as well.’
Fehn became a professor of architecture at Oslo School of Architecture in 1971, and taught there until 1993 while lecturing and holding exhibitions across Europe.
In recent years, a clutch of Norwegian museums won him further plaudits, including his striking Norwegian Glacier Museum at the mouth of the Fjærland Fjord, the Ivar Aasen Centre in Ørsta and the Norwegian Museum of Photography in Horten.
Fehn was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1997. A retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year.
http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/sverre-fehn-(1924-2009)/1994311.article
Born in Kongsberg, Norway, in 1924, Fehn graduated from Oslo School of Architecture in 1949. Over the next five years, he studied traditional architecture in Morocco and worked in Paris with Jean Prouvé, meeting Le Corbusier.
This period of his life had a profound influence on his outlook. Often classed as a modernist, Fehn acknowledged the work of Le Corbusier and other contemporaries including Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, but rejected the preceding generation’s urban perspective.
‘I have never thought of myself as modern, but I did absorb the anti-monumental and the pictorial world of Le Corbusier, as well as the functionalism of the small villages of North Africa. You might say I came of age in the shadow of modernism,’ he later said.
Fehn made his name internationally with his design for the Norwegian Pavilion at the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels. This was followed by the much-lauded Nordic Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale (pictured) and the Hedmark Museum in Hamar, Norway.
In his work, Fehn attached great significance to the qualities of materials, the interplay of light and his buildings’ relationship to the landscape. ‘We work with our alphabet materials such as wood, concrete, bricks,’ he said. ‘With them, we write a story which is inseparable from the structure.
‘When I build on a site in nature that is totally unspoiled, it is a fight, an attack by our culture on nature. In this confrontation, I strive to make a building that will make people more aware of the beauty of the setting, and when looking at the building… to see the beauty there as well.’
Fehn became a professor of architecture at Oslo School of Architecture in 1971, and taught there until 1993 while lecturing and holding exhibitions across Europe.
In recent years, a clutch of Norwegian museums won him further plaudits, including his striking Norwegian Glacier Museum at the mouth of the Fjærland Fjord, the Ivar Aasen Centre in Ørsta and the Norwegian Museum of Photography in Horten.
Fehn was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1997. A retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year.
http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/sverre-fehn-(1924-2009)/1994311.article
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Medicines From The Sea
For the first time, Norwegian scientists have managed to produce completely new antibiotics from bacteria found in the sea. The eleven species of bacteria that create substances that kill cancerous cells and three other bacteria that produce new antibiotics were discovered by scientists at NTNU and SINTEF.
In collaboration with research groups in Moscow and the University of Bergen, they have made breakthroughs in the field of biotechnology. Never before have Norwegian scientists carried out the entire process from gathering bacteria from the fjords to presenting completely new interesting substances in bottles.
Behind their success lies a long and painstaking process of screening, cultivation, isolation and testing. However, it will still take some time before they can be sure that the process will continue to the phases of commercialisation and medicine production.
A network is built up
The NTNU and SINTEF researchers have been bioprospecting for five or six years, searching for interesting substances that are produced by marine bacteria. The wide range of expertise of this research group makes it unique, as it brings together competence in physiology and genetics, and has access to modern screening and fermentation laboratories.
The pace of the process has risen during the past few months, since the recruitment of Professor Stein Ove Døskeland’s group at the University of Bergen. The scientists have also had bacterial fractions tested in Russia.
Ninety percent are of no interest
Many of the bacteria that have been brought up from the Trondheim Fjord have antibiotic functions, but most of these are already known, and are therefore of no interest. New compounds that can be patented are most interesting.
“Substances with a new chemical structure and, we hope, with a different mechanism of action than we already know of, could be extremely valuable, for example in fighting cancer. This is why we need more candidate structures. Not all of them can be developed into new medicines, but if we are successful with one or two of them, we will be quite happy,” says NTNU professor Sergey Zotchev.
Recent focus on a few selected bacteria has led to these exciting findings. In Bergen and Moscow, the 11 anti-cancer substances have been tested against leukemias and stomach, colon and prostate cancers.
“We have found that cancerous cells have been killed, while normal cells survive, and that individual extracts act on different types of cancer cells,” says senior scientist Håvard Sletta of SINTEF. “However, we still have not identified the active substances in the compounds produced by the bacteria”.
Much work still to be done
Meticulous laboratory experiments have enable the scientists to identify the chemical structure of one of the three substances that can be used as antibiotics, and which they now know act against multiresistant bacteria. Towards the end of January, this substance was due to be tested on animals in Moscow. If the results turn out to be positive, the way will be clear for a patent application.
“If it turns out that this substance does not work in animals, the worst that can happen is that there will be a pause in our efforts. However, in many cases, all that is needed to take us further is a chemical modification of the molecule, but that requires a lot of work, and we could be stopped for lack on funding,” says Sergey Zotchev.
“We need to remember that bacteria from the sea produce antibiotics in order to deal with their own natural competitors, rather than to act against infections in the human body”.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090225073211.htm
In collaboration with research groups in Moscow and the University of Bergen, they have made breakthroughs in the field of biotechnology. Never before have Norwegian scientists carried out the entire process from gathering bacteria from the fjords to presenting completely new interesting substances in bottles.
Behind their success lies a long and painstaking process of screening, cultivation, isolation and testing. However, it will still take some time before they can be sure that the process will continue to the phases of commercialisation and medicine production.
A network is built up
The NTNU and SINTEF researchers have been bioprospecting for five or six years, searching for interesting substances that are produced by marine bacteria. The wide range of expertise of this research group makes it unique, as it brings together competence in physiology and genetics, and has access to modern screening and fermentation laboratories.
The pace of the process has risen during the past few months, since the recruitment of Professor Stein Ove Døskeland’s group at the University of Bergen. The scientists have also had bacterial fractions tested in Russia.
Ninety percent are of no interest
Many of the bacteria that have been brought up from the Trondheim Fjord have antibiotic functions, but most of these are already known, and are therefore of no interest. New compounds that can be patented are most interesting.
“Substances with a new chemical structure and, we hope, with a different mechanism of action than we already know of, could be extremely valuable, for example in fighting cancer. This is why we need more candidate structures. Not all of them can be developed into new medicines, but if we are successful with one or two of them, we will be quite happy,” says NTNU professor Sergey Zotchev.
Recent focus on a few selected bacteria has led to these exciting findings. In Bergen and Moscow, the 11 anti-cancer substances have been tested against leukemias and stomach, colon and prostate cancers.
“We have found that cancerous cells have been killed, while normal cells survive, and that individual extracts act on different types of cancer cells,” says senior scientist Håvard Sletta of SINTEF. “However, we still have not identified the active substances in the compounds produced by the bacteria”.
Much work still to be done
Meticulous laboratory experiments have enable the scientists to identify the chemical structure of one of the three substances that can be used as antibiotics, and which they now know act against multiresistant bacteria. Towards the end of January, this substance was due to be tested on animals in Moscow. If the results turn out to be positive, the way will be clear for a patent application.
“If it turns out that this substance does not work in animals, the worst that can happen is that there will be a pause in our efforts. However, in many cases, all that is needed to take us further is a chemical modification of the molecule, but that requires a lot of work, and we could be stopped for lack on funding,” says Sergey Zotchev.
“We need to remember that bacteria from the sea produce antibiotics in order to deal with their own natural competitors, rather than to act against infections in the human body”.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090225073211.htm
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Cruising Norway’s Coast
My ship, the Vesteraalen, was bound up the North Atlantic coast of Norway, with 34 stops to the tiptop of Europe on the Arctic Sea — a voyage that promised snowy fjords, towering mountains, northern lights and tiny fishing villages. From the final village, I had heard, a person can even see Russia, but I didn’t feel like a vice president in the making; I felt like Zhivago embarking on one final glorious escape.
There’s more than one cheap way to go on a cruise, particularly in these darkening economic days. Some check in daily with travel agents, or bottom fish at CruiseCheap.com. But I, currently living in Florida and therefore in no need of sun, chose to sail north just as the days were growing noticeably short.
Every winter Hurtigruten, a Norwegian cruise fleet that is jammed to the gills with fjord frolickers in the summer, finds its ships undersubscribed. Since the line is under contract with the Norwegian government to deliver mail and cargo year round with its fleet — most of its ships follow the same route as the Vesteraalen — it cannot follow the other cruise lines to warmer waters and must cut its fares roughly by half. Periodically, it further offers a two-for-one ticket, promising room and board for two passengers for seven days (six nights) for about $1,500. And so it was that I found myself, with my sister, Bethany, in tow, stumbling through a snowstorm barely in time to make our 10:30 p.m. departure on the Vesteraalen.
We had skipped dinner aboard the ship to explore Bergen, a cheerful little city that wraps around both sides of a pair of fjords, in our last hours before sailing. We had feasted there at Beyer ’en, a warm and elegant restaurant that specializes in delicious local ingredients. It had given me inordinate pleasure to be able to look up from my menu and say to the waitress, “She’ll start with the lamb from Hardinglam, and I’ll have the lamb from Flaam." Bethany and I were still repeating this silly rhyme a couple of hours later as we stood out on the high aft deck of the Vesteraalen watching Bergen drop away, flakes swirling around us, and the twinkling lights of the city intermittently disappearing and reappearing behind gusts of snow. It was magical and epic to be sailing away in all that swirl. And really, really cold.
Back inside it was warm, but we soon discovered that the Vesteraalen was no floating pleasure palace. “What I would like to say very politely is that this is not a cruise ship,” Egbert Pijfers, the extremely tall officer in charge of keeping the passengers informed in Norwegian, English and German, told me. “We have no casino, and there is no shuffleboard. So very politely I’d like to say it is a sea voyage on a working vessel with cargo and local passengers.”
That’s just the way most of the people on the Vesteraalen seemed to like it. “We had been on a cruise with Hurtigruten once before,” explained a gentleman from Hamburg, who was one of several repeat passengers on the ship, “and we liked the no-nonsense atmosphere.” His wife nodded in affirmation.
As the only Americans aboard, my sister and I may have started out with a higher appetite for nonsense than any of the sturdy Northern Europeans who made up most of the passenger list. Very politely, I’d like to say that in our first prowl around the ship that would be our home for a week, the “no nonsense” seemed a dram overbearing.
We found a promising room called the Salong Vesteralstuen, with a miniature dance floor and ring of booths and bar tables, but it was dark and empty, and the curtains of the bar were tightly drawn. In the Salong Trollfjorden, or Troll Fjord Lounge, which was a sort of Naugahyde men’s clubroom with long-haired tapestries, several graying couples who had been speaking German to one another nodded at our hellos and then stared at us silently. In the glassed-in Panorama lounge, the observation salon at the top of the ship, there was another bar, but it was closed up tight.
The two-for-one sale obviously had failed to produce a windfall of takers. The Vesteraalen, 350 feet long and built to hold 540 people, with 147 cabins, was carrying fewer than 40 passengers staying in berths plus another few dozen locals who got on for a stop or two and mostly stayed put in the booths of the cafe, which was open all night.
This low occupancy was normal for the winter, Mr. Pijfers told us later, and is even more pronounced on Vesteraalen’s larger sister ships like the Midnatsol, which is built for 1,000 passengers. “Oh ja,” he said, towering over us from behind his desk. “Thirty or 40 people on a boat like Midnatsol is not so cozy. It is better to be on this boat in winter.”
Soon it occurred to us that an empty boat meant empty cabins that might be bigger than the one we’d paid for. Ours was perfectly clean and functional and the beds comfortable enough, and we would have thought nothing of it had the boat been full, or even if we had been with our respective partners rather than our disrespectful siblings. But neither pertained. “You could just ask,” Bethany said.
I screwed up my courage and headed out to the reception desk to talk to a fellow who looked in his uniform to be about 14 years old but could have been twice that age, and who cheerfully moved us into a triple. He wore his hair tight to his head except directly in front, where a patch of bangs stood straight up in the air like a snowdrift. Perhaps it was a mystical premonition of what we were to read later that evening, but as I thanked him, something made me think of an elf.
We celebrated by buying a nightcap in the cafeteria and repairing to our spacious new cabin where I read aloud “The Seeress’s Prophecy” from “The Poetic Edda,” a collection of Norse stories told in verse that was the only Norwegian literature besides Ibsen that was available in my home bookstore. It’s a hallucinatory tale of giants, elves, trolls and dwarves in a land deeply confused about its relationship to the sun. “Fili and Kili and Bivor and Bombur?” I mused, “Gee, I always thought Tolkien made up his own names for the dwarves in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ”
Overnight the snow broke up into squalls that came and went as the ship traveled through classic fjord land of otherworldly beauty. We’d seen pictures of the fjords as green canyons of summer, but with a winter fog hanging low and the water various shades of gray below, the views from the ship were surprisingly modernist. It was a world of clean horizontals — water meeting the land, vapors meeting the tops of the fjord walls — bisected occasionally by a plunging curve of cliff or the tumultuous vertical of a frozen waterfall. Add to this the snow that periodically blotted out the scene, and the total effect was mesmerizing. It was easy, we thought, to see where the Norwegian affinity for crisp and spare design found its inspiration.
Periodically we went out on deck, where the same view en plein (howling) air made it equally easy to see how locals of an earlier vintage might have found inspiration to say, “Hey, Harbard, what say we get your longboat and head south for a little, you know, heh, heh, heh, plunder?”
The vast and nearly empty Panorama lounge, with its long rows of comfortable booths along the windows on either side, was the perfect place to sit and revel in the passing scenery. The mountains plunging into the fjord waters were always changing enough to be interesting, but never so rapidly as to make you worry about missing something. The result was hypnotic in the same very good way that driving across the Painted Desert or the Dakotas can be. There was time to sit and watch and dream up all manner of stories about the people who might live in the improbable little dwellings that look weirdly like Midwest farmhouses, or the lives lived there in the distant past. There was time, too, for reading thick novels, for writing old-fashioned letters, or, in the case of some fellow passengers, knitting long scarves. There was time to let go of time.
Hurtigruten vessels don’t tarry; in most towns the ship docked for an hour or less, giving us just enough time to stroll up and down the main street. Every day, however, we docked in at least one town for a stretch of several hours.
On our first day we signed up for the architecture tour of Alesund, a major fishing town that burned to the ground in 1904 and was rebuilt almost entirely in the Art Nouveau style. The town’s sturdy stonework is gaily decorated, though in suitably restrained Norwegian fashion, but here and there it is a bit overwrought and fortresslike, and we decided that it might have been the work of Fili and Kili, the dwarves of the Edda.
By this line of reasoning, the next day’s town, Trondheim, had clearly been constructed by elves. There, beside the River Nid, ancient wooden houses of various hues huddled together in the intermittent snow. (A cargo of wood from Vinland, the Norse colony thought to have existed briefly on the shores of what is now eastern Canada, was sold here around A.D. 1000, according to the official Hurtigruten guidebook, and is said to have been the first American export to Europe.) Slim-hipped women wearing leggings and furry boots, tuniclike parkas and pointy Nordic caps walked on snowy streets in the company of handsome wiry men who were similarly attired. Even the cathedral fed our fantasy; from certain locations its magnificently simple cone of a spire, flanked on either side by smaller pointed towers, looked for all the world like a giant cap and ears peeking up over the rooftops. Imagining ourselves in a suburb of Santa’s Workshop, we stepped into the steamy Dromedar Kaffebar for a sweet and rich mocha.
We might have stayed in Trondheim happily for a day or forever, but the Vesteraalen was sailing. Not for the last time did we wish we had bought a ticket that allowed us to catch the next day’s boat, a service the line offers. We wished it again later that same night, in fact, when Mr. Pijfers announced that the ship would be delayed in the protected waters outside Trondheim because of the weather. There was a hurricane, he said, and swells in the seas that we needed to cross were predicted to be from 12 to 24 meters high.
“If you know that I am exactly two meters tall,” he said when we asked for details (that’s nearly 6-foot-8), “then you can imagine six of me.” That is a lot of wave, and he was being modest: the prediction put the seas as high as 12 Mr. Pijfers.
“A hurricane?” I asked, thinking like most North Americans of a late summer storm out of the Atlantic. “Did it come up the coast of America and across?”
“Oh no,” he said. “This is a hurricane from the North Pole.”
The storm caused us to skip the port where we could have gone ashore to a Viking re-enactment feast. We were not heartbroken; only six people had signed up, and as Mr. Pijfers said, “A Viking Feast with only so few is not very cozy.” We went instead in circles for 10 hours, surrounded on two sides by snowy mountains and on the third side, between us and the raging sea, by a band of low rocks. It was pitch black by 4 p.m., and we retreated to our cabin to sample the various aquavits we had bought in Trondheim.
The savvy Hurtigruten traveler always tipples before meals. There is plenty of food in the dining room, much of it of the smoked fish variety and all of it very good. (A week will raise your omega oils to a level that will get you through next summer and beyond.) But no one orders drinks, or even sodas, which are absurdly priced. Instead, everyone disappears a half-hour before dinner to have a glass of wine or whatever in their cabin. We didn’t figure this out until Trondheim, where in a spirit of cultural exchange we bought the aquavit. “We drink this one with fish,” said the helpful sales-elf as she handed us a bottle of clear liquid. “And we drink this one with meat,” she said pointing to a beautiful amber bottle. “And this one is for after dinner.” When we asked, on the strength of the food recommendations, if we should have it actually with our meal, she said, “Oh, no, drink it like schnapps, in a shot or three, and chase it with beer.”
The aquavit was light and delicious and got us happily through the rest of the trip, though the Edda poetry we read that pre-hurricane evening told a cautionary tale of a beautiful giantess who drank too much and regretted it.
The hurricane rocked and rolled our ship to the point where we had to get up in the middle of the night and batten down the half-read novels that were banging around the cabin. But it also blew away the squalls and blizzards, and we awoke to a clear cloudless dawn sometime after 10 a.m., when the sun finally hauled itself over the horizon. The snowy peaks we had seen in the far inland distance the day before now rose only one row behind the fjord walls, and in some cases directly out of the sea. The glorious and forbidding North was upon us.
Sometime during the next few days we passed an astounding mountain with a hole right through the middle of it. It seemed impossible that it might be a natural phenomenon, and Mr. Pijfers explained that it was said to have gotten that way when an amorous troll was chasing a beautiful giantess and an arrow was shot, a hat was thrown and there was some defensive business with a rolling pin, and then the sun came up and it all turned to stone. It made perfect sense when he said it. No longer merely breathtakingly beautiful, the winter landscape on either side of the ship was now lovely and mysterious in the dangerous way that makes you yearn to know it better but wonder if you’re really up for what it might demand in exchange. We were happy to be safely aboard.
Everyone came out on deck as we passed a magnificent snowy range named the Seven Sisters and saw the crests of their braids catching the rays of a sun that by that point didn’t bother to come above the horizon at all. When the sun does that kind of thing — when dawn lasts a couple of golden hours followed by dusk lasting a couple of reddish hours with nothing in between — it’s hard to keep track of time. Somewhere along the way we had crossed the Arctic Circle, and in the Salong Vesteralstuen, were presented with certificates and shots of aquavit. Somewhere else we huddled against the warmth of the smokestack up on the aft deck and looked at the northern lights half the night — a blush of green that came and went over the ghostly winter landscape like a false promise of spring. We visited a little town where old lady elves kick-pushed themselves along the streets on personal standup sleds.
Near Tromso, we went dog sledding in the dark, flying over fresh snow, up and down hills, looking at the lights of the town spread along the water in the distance and laughing all the way at the good fortune that brought us here to sit under a reindeer skin behind a dozen relentlessly cheerful pups. Three hundred dogs howling and barking and baying and otherwise begging in the moonlight to be included in the sledding adventure was memorable, but the sledding itself was worth the trip all the way from America.
Back on board, by the time we were approaching the northernmost point of Europe, the almost comically dramatic cliffs overlooking the Arctic Ocean known as the Nordkapp, or North Cape, we’d made friends with many of our fellow passengers, even the Germans from the Troll Lounge, who as soon as they discovered we spoke a bit of their language were revealed to be huge fans of America.
Then there was the couple we called “the mysterious newlyweds,” a pair of cooing lovers from somewhere that doesn’t speak Norwegian, English or German. By apparent virtue of their romantic status they were the only passengers assigned to a private table every evening at dinner.
“Yes, we are just married,” the groom said when I cornered them at last in the cafe and asked how they came to be spending their honeymoon on the Vesteraalen in winter. The bride smiled in an adorable way. “We are engineers from Madrid, and we wanted not just to go to the beach or something. But somewhere different.”
I refrained from asking if the prospect of 20-hour-long nights had fit into the honeymoon calculus, instead inquiring whether they had found what they came for.
“Yes it has been ... ,” the groom began, and then stumbled a bit with the English. The bride picked up where he left off, saying, “All of our dreams of this trip have turned out to be true.”
Thinking about it later, I realized I could almost have said the same thing myself. Almost, because secretly I really would have liked to have seen an iceberg. But that will have to wait for next winter, when I just may go to the South Pole.
NORSE LEGEND AND ARCTIC REFLECTION
THE CRUISE
As a part of its contract with the government to deliver mail and freight along Norway’s Atlantic coast, the Hurtigruten ship line, which is primarily a passenger line, aims to have one northbound and one southbound ship visit each of the 35 ports along its route every day of the year. Because the boats are nearly empty of passengers in winter, a traveler at this time of year can count on finding a voyage on a compatible schedule.
At the home port of Bergen, the southernmost port on the route, many passengers board one of the 11 Hurtigruten ships that make this run and disembark, as my sister and I did, six days later at Kirkenes, the last stop. From Kirkenes, flights are available back to the south. Those who book passage for the full 12-day round trip on Hurtigruten are rewarded by seeing the ports that were visited in the middle of the night on the northbound voyage during the day on the southbound trip.
The current base price per person for a double berth is $654 one way and $1,194 round trip, but special promotions, like the two-for-one winter deal, are common. For information, call (866) 552-0371 or visit www.hurtigruten.us. Prices for trips that allow you to stay in various towns for a day or two of sightseeing and cross-country skiing must be individually calculated. (There may also be a fuel surcharge.)
Excursions on land can be booked on board the ship. A dog-sledding trip at Tromso was 900 kroner a person (about $130 at 7 kroner to the dollar) in October, and a trip to the North Cape was 665 kroner.
Some of the additional cost of the 12-day round-trip may be recouped in cheaper airfare, since a round trip on the ship allows you to buy a round-trip airline ticket to Bergen.
GETTING THERE
United/SAS recently offered fares from Newark to the Bergen airport for $602, and Northwest had one for $676. (Lufthansa, KLM, Continental and British Airways fly to Bergen from Kennedy Airport.) A search for flights from New York to Bergen one way and then back to New York from Kirkenes and connecting cities found a ticket on United for $730, but all of the other options were over $900.
FOOD AND DRINK
At Beyer’en in Bergen (Rosenkrantzgaten 8; 47-53-05-15-00), the Flaam lamb entree is 285 kroner and the Hardinglam appetizer is 130 kroner. In Trondheim, at Dromedar Kaffebar (Nedre Bakklandet 3; 47-73-502-502), the mocha, called kaffechoc, costs 42 kroner.
READING
“The Poetic Edda,” the ancient book of Norse mythology, is available in several versions, including a translation by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford, 1999).
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/travel/15vesteraalen.html?pagewanted=all
There’s more than one cheap way to go on a cruise, particularly in these darkening economic days. Some check in daily with travel agents, or bottom fish at CruiseCheap.com. But I, currently living in Florida and therefore in no need of sun, chose to sail north just as the days were growing noticeably short.
Every winter Hurtigruten, a Norwegian cruise fleet that is jammed to the gills with fjord frolickers in the summer, finds its ships undersubscribed. Since the line is under contract with the Norwegian government to deliver mail and cargo year round with its fleet — most of its ships follow the same route as the Vesteraalen — it cannot follow the other cruise lines to warmer waters and must cut its fares roughly by half. Periodically, it further offers a two-for-one ticket, promising room and board for two passengers for seven days (six nights) for about $1,500. And so it was that I found myself, with my sister, Bethany, in tow, stumbling through a snowstorm barely in time to make our 10:30 p.m. departure on the Vesteraalen.
We had skipped dinner aboard the ship to explore Bergen, a cheerful little city that wraps around both sides of a pair of fjords, in our last hours before sailing. We had feasted there at Beyer ’en, a warm and elegant restaurant that specializes in delicious local ingredients. It had given me inordinate pleasure to be able to look up from my menu and say to the waitress, “She’ll start with the lamb from Hardinglam, and I’ll have the lamb from Flaam." Bethany and I were still repeating this silly rhyme a couple of hours later as we stood out on the high aft deck of the Vesteraalen watching Bergen drop away, flakes swirling around us, and the twinkling lights of the city intermittently disappearing and reappearing behind gusts of snow. It was magical and epic to be sailing away in all that swirl. And really, really cold.
Back inside it was warm, but we soon discovered that the Vesteraalen was no floating pleasure palace. “What I would like to say very politely is that this is not a cruise ship,” Egbert Pijfers, the extremely tall officer in charge of keeping the passengers informed in Norwegian, English and German, told me. “We have no casino, and there is no shuffleboard. So very politely I’d like to say it is a sea voyage on a working vessel with cargo and local passengers.”
That’s just the way most of the people on the Vesteraalen seemed to like it. “We had been on a cruise with Hurtigruten once before,” explained a gentleman from Hamburg, who was one of several repeat passengers on the ship, “and we liked the no-nonsense atmosphere.” His wife nodded in affirmation.
As the only Americans aboard, my sister and I may have started out with a higher appetite for nonsense than any of the sturdy Northern Europeans who made up most of the passenger list. Very politely, I’d like to say that in our first prowl around the ship that would be our home for a week, the “no nonsense” seemed a dram overbearing.
We found a promising room called the Salong Vesteralstuen, with a miniature dance floor and ring of booths and bar tables, but it was dark and empty, and the curtains of the bar were tightly drawn. In the Salong Trollfjorden, or Troll Fjord Lounge, which was a sort of Naugahyde men’s clubroom with long-haired tapestries, several graying couples who had been speaking German to one another nodded at our hellos and then stared at us silently. In the glassed-in Panorama lounge, the observation salon at the top of the ship, there was another bar, but it was closed up tight.
The two-for-one sale obviously had failed to produce a windfall of takers. The Vesteraalen, 350 feet long and built to hold 540 people, with 147 cabins, was carrying fewer than 40 passengers staying in berths plus another few dozen locals who got on for a stop or two and mostly stayed put in the booths of the cafe, which was open all night.
This low occupancy was normal for the winter, Mr. Pijfers told us later, and is even more pronounced on Vesteraalen’s larger sister ships like the Midnatsol, which is built for 1,000 passengers. “Oh ja,” he said, towering over us from behind his desk. “Thirty or 40 people on a boat like Midnatsol is not so cozy. It is better to be on this boat in winter.”
Soon it occurred to us that an empty boat meant empty cabins that might be bigger than the one we’d paid for. Ours was perfectly clean and functional and the beds comfortable enough, and we would have thought nothing of it had the boat been full, or even if we had been with our respective partners rather than our disrespectful siblings. But neither pertained. “You could just ask,” Bethany said.
I screwed up my courage and headed out to the reception desk to talk to a fellow who looked in his uniform to be about 14 years old but could have been twice that age, and who cheerfully moved us into a triple. He wore his hair tight to his head except directly in front, where a patch of bangs stood straight up in the air like a snowdrift. Perhaps it was a mystical premonition of what we were to read later that evening, but as I thanked him, something made me think of an elf.
We celebrated by buying a nightcap in the cafeteria and repairing to our spacious new cabin where I read aloud “The Seeress’s Prophecy” from “The Poetic Edda,” a collection of Norse stories told in verse that was the only Norwegian literature besides Ibsen that was available in my home bookstore. It’s a hallucinatory tale of giants, elves, trolls and dwarves in a land deeply confused about its relationship to the sun. “Fili and Kili and Bivor and Bombur?” I mused, “Gee, I always thought Tolkien made up his own names for the dwarves in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ”
Overnight the snow broke up into squalls that came and went as the ship traveled through classic fjord land of otherworldly beauty. We’d seen pictures of the fjords as green canyons of summer, but with a winter fog hanging low and the water various shades of gray below, the views from the ship were surprisingly modernist. It was a world of clean horizontals — water meeting the land, vapors meeting the tops of the fjord walls — bisected occasionally by a plunging curve of cliff or the tumultuous vertical of a frozen waterfall. Add to this the snow that periodically blotted out the scene, and the total effect was mesmerizing. It was easy, we thought, to see where the Norwegian affinity for crisp and spare design found its inspiration.
Periodically we went out on deck, where the same view en plein (howling) air made it equally easy to see how locals of an earlier vintage might have found inspiration to say, “Hey, Harbard, what say we get your longboat and head south for a little, you know, heh, heh, heh, plunder?”
The vast and nearly empty Panorama lounge, with its long rows of comfortable booths along the windows on either side, was the perfect place to sit and revel in the passing scenery. The mountains plunging into the fjord waters were always changing enough to be interesting, but never so rapidly as to make you worry about missing something. The result was hypnotic in the same very good way that driving across the Painted Desert or the Dakotas can be. There was time to sit and watch and dream up all manner of stories about the people who might live in the improbable little dwellings that look weirdly like Midwest farmhouses, or the lives lived there in the distant past. There was time, too, for reading thick novels, for writing old-fashioned letters, or, in the case of some fellow passengers, knitting long scarves. There was time to let go of time.
Hurtigruten vessels don’t tarry; in most towns the ship docked for an hour or less, giving us just enough time to stroll up and down the main street. Every day, however, we docked in at least one town for a stretch of several hours.
On our first day we signed up for the architecture tour of Alesund, a major fishing town that burned to the ground in 1904 and was rebuilt almost entirely in the Art Nouveau style. The town’s sturdy stonework is gaily decorated, though in suitably restrained Norwegian fashion, but here and there it is a bit overwrought and fortresslike, and we decided that it might have been the work of Fili and Kili, the dwarves of the Edda.
By this line of reasoning, the next day’s town, Trondheim, had clearly been constructed by elves. There, beside the River Nid, ancient wooden houses of various hues huddled together in the intermittent snow. (A cargo of wood from Vinland, the Norse colony thought to have existed briefly on the shores of what is now eastern Canada, was sold here around A.D. 1000, according to the official Hurtigruten guidebook, and is said to have been the first American export to Europe.) Slim-hipped women wearing leggings and furry boots, tuniclike parkas and pointy Nordic caps walked on snowy streets in the company of handsome wiry men who were similarly attired. Even the cathedral fed our fantasy; from certain locations its magnificently simple cone of a spire, flanked on either side by smaller pointed towers, looked for all the world like a giant cap and ears peeking up over the rooftops. Imagining ourselves in a suburb of Santa’s Workshop, we stepped into the steamy Dromedar Kaffebar for a sweet and rich mocha.
We might have stayed in Trondheim happily for a day or forever, but the Vesteraalen was sailing. Not for the last time did we wish we had bought a ticket that allowed us to catch the next day’s boat, a service the line offers. We wished it again later that same night, in fact, when Mr. Pijfers announced that the ship would be delayed in the protected waters outside Trondheim because of the weather. There was a hurricane, he said, and swells in the seas that we needed to cross were predicted to be from 12 to 24 meters high.
“If you know that I am exactly two meters tall,” he said when we asked for details (that’s nearly 6-foot-8), “then you can imagine six of me.” That is a lot of wave, and he was being modest: the prediction put the seas as high as 12 Mr. Pijfers.
“A hurricane?” I asked, thinking like most North Americans of a late summer storm out of the Atlantic. “Did it come up the coast of America and across?”
“Oh no,” he said. “This is a hurricane from the North Pole.”
The storm caused us to skip the port where we could have gone ashore to a Viking re-enactment feast. We were not heartbroken; only six people had signed up, and as Mr. Pijfers said, “A Viking Feast with only so few is not very cozy.” We went instead in circles for 10 hours, surrounded on two sides by snowy mountains and on the third side, between us and the raging sea, by a band of low rocks. It was pitch black by 4 p.m., and we retreated to our cabin to sample the various aquavits we had bought in Trondheim.
The savvy Hurtigruten traveler always tipples before meals. There is plenty of food in the dining room, much of it of the smoked fish variety and all of it very good. (A week will raise your omega oils to a level that will get you through next summer and beyond.) But no one orders drinks, or even sodas, which are absurdly priced. Instead, everyone disappears a half-hour before dinner to have a glass of wine or whatever in their cabin. We didn’t figure this out until Trondheim, where in a spirit of cultural exchange we bought the aquavit. “We drink this one with fish,” said the helpful sales-elf as she handed us a bottle of clear liquid. “And we drink this one with meat,” she said pointing to a beautiful amber bottle. “And this one is for after dinner.” When we asked, on the strength of the food recommendations, if we should have it actually with our meal, she said, “Oh, no, drink it like schnapps, in a shot or three, and chase it with beer.”
The aquavit was light and delicious and got us happily through the rest of the trip, though the Edda poetry we read that pre-hurricane evening told a cautionary tale of a beautiful giantess who drank too much and regretted it.
The hurricane rocked and rolled our ship to the point where we had to get up in the middle of the night and batten down the half-read novels that were banging around the cabin. But it also blew away the squalls and blizzards, and we awoke to a clear cloudless dawn sometime after 10 a.m., when the sun finally hauled itself over the horizon. The snowy peaks we had seen in the far inland distance the day before now rose only one row behind the fjord walls, and in some cases directly out of the sea. The glorious and forbidding North was upon us.
Sometime during the next few days we passed an astounding mountain with a hole right through the middle of it. It seemed impossible that it might be a natural phenomenon, and Mr. Pijfers explained that it was said to have gotten that way when an amorous troll was chasing a beautiful giantess and an arrow was shot, a hat was thrown and there was some defensive business with a rolling pin, and then the sun came up and it all turned to stone. It made perfect sense when he said it. No longer merely breathtakingly beautiful, the winter landscape on either side of the ship was now lovely and mysterious in the dangerous way that makes you yearn to know it better but wonder if you’re really up for what it might demand in exchange. We were happy to be safely aboard.
Everyone came out on deck as we passed a magnificent snowy range named the Seven Sisters and saw the crests of their braids catching the rays of a sun that by that point didn’t bother to come above the horizon at all. When the sun does that kind of thing — when dawn lasts a couple of golden hours followed by dusk lasting a couple of reddish hours with nothing in between — it’s hard to keep track of time. Somewhere along the way we had crossed the Arctic Circle, and in the Salong Vesteralstuen, were presented with certificates and shots of aquavit. Somewhere else we huddled against the warmth of the smokestack up on the aft deck and looked at the northern lights half the night — a blush of green that came and went over the ghostly winter landscape like a false promise of spring. We visited a little town where old lady elves kick-pushed themselves along the streets on personal standup sleds.
Near Tromso, we went dog sledding in the dark, flying over fresh snow, up and down hills, looking at the lights of the town spread along the water in the distance and laughing all the way at the good fortune that brought us here to sit under a reindeer skin behind a dozen relentlessly cheerful pups. Three hundred dogs howling and barking and baying and otherwise begging in the moonlight to be included in the sledding adventure was memorable, but the sledding itself was worth the trip all the way from America.
Back on board, by the time we were approaching the northernmost point of Europe, the almost comically dramatic cliffs overlooking the Arctic Ocean known as the Nordkapp, or North Cape, we’d made friends with many of our fellow passengers, even the Germans from the Troll Lounge, who as soon as they discovered we spoke a bit of their language were revealed to be huge fans of America.
Then there was the couple we called “the mysterious newlyweds,” a pair of cooing lovers from somewhere that doesn’t speak Norwegian, English or German. By apparent virtue of their romantic status they were the only passengers assigned to a private table every evening at dinner.
“Yes, we are just married,” the groom said when I cornered them at last in the cafe and asked how they came to be spending their honeymoon on the Vesteraalen in winter. The bride smiled in an adorable way. “We are engineers from Madrid, and we wanted not just to go to the beach or something. But somewhere different.”
I refrained from asking if the prospect of 20-hour-long nights had fit into the honeymoon calculus, instead inquiring whether they had found what they came for.
“Yes it has been ... ,” the groom began, and then stumbled a bit with the English. The bride picked up where he left off, saying, “All of our dreams of this trip have turned out to be true.”
Thinking about it later, I realized I could almost have said the same thing myself. Almost, because secretly I really would have liked to have seen an iceberg. But that will have to wait for next winter, when I just may go to the South Pole.
NORSE LEGEND AND ARCTIC REFLECTION
THE CRUISE
As a part of its contract with the government to deliver mail and freight along Norway’s Atlantic coast, the Hurtigruten ship line, which is primarily a passenger line, aims to have one northbound and one southbound ship visit each of the 35 ports along its route every day of the year. Because the boats are nearly empty of passengers in winter, a traveler at this time of year can count on finding a voyage on a compatible schedule.
At the home port of Bergen, the southernmost port on the route, many passengers board one of the 11 Hurtigruten ships that make this run and disembark, as my sister and I did, six days later at Kirkenes, the last stop. From Kirkenes, flights are available back to the south. Those who book passage for the full 12-day round trip on Hurtigruten are rewarded by seeing the ports that were visited in the middle of the night on the northbound voyage during the day on the southbound trip.
The current base price per person for a double berth is $654 one way and $1,194 round trip, but special promotions, like the two-for-one winter deal, are common. For information, call (866) 552-0371 or visit www.hurtigruten.us. Prices for trips that allow you to stay in various towns for a day or two of sightseeing and cross-country skiing must be individually calculated. (There may also be a fuel surcharge.)
Excursions on land can be booked on board the ship. A dog-sledding trip at Tromso was 900 kroner a person (about $130 at 7 kroner to the dollar) in October, and a trip to the North Cape was 665 kroner.
Some of the additional cost of the 12-day round-trip may be recouped in cheaper airfare, since a round trip on the ship allows you to buy a round-trip airline ticket to Bergen.
GETTING THERE
United/SAS recently offered fares from Newark to the Bergen airport for $602, and Northwest had one for $676. (Lufthansa, KLM, Continental and British Airways fly to Bergen from Kennedy Airport.) A search for flights from New York to Bergen one way and then back to New York from Kirkenes and connecting cities found a ticket on United for $730, but all of the other options were over $900.
FOOD AND DRINK
At Beyer’en in Bergen (Rosenkrantzgaten 8; 47-53-05-15-00), the Flaam lamb entree is 285 kroner and the Hardinglam appetizer is 130 kroner. In Trondheim, at Dromedar Kaffebar (Nedre Bakklandet 3; 47-73-502-502), the mocha, called kaffechoc, costs 42 kroner.
READING
“The Poetic Edda,” the ancient book of Norse mythology, is available in several versions, including a translation by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford, 1999).
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/travel/15vesteraalen.html?pagewanted=all
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