Edvard Grieg's House

A few Mondays ago, we were on a long minbus trip home from a very exciting trip to Florø.  On our 12 hour dive home we got to visit composer extraordinaire Mr Edvard Grieg's  summer house. I had heard about Edvard Grieg, I have listened to his music, but I am not an extreme fanatic. Until NOW! Edvard Grieg is fricken awesome!


He was 152 cm high, had a sweet moustache, spent his days composing music, hanging out with Tchaikovsky and eating oysters. He even had a special 4 tier oyster holder. This man was cool. In his younger days he was a ginger. He studied at many schools including Tanks, the same school as Ingvild! He married his cousin. Who was 2cm taller than he was. Spent his winters wearing bow ties in Italy, France, Germany and Spain. In the summer he composed music in a small wooden cabin over looking an amazing fjord just 50m from his summer residence. It was there he took inspiration from Norwegian folk music and wrote songs such as Peer Gynt.


Proud to be Norwegian, proud to be Edvard Grieg's nationality.

The back porch of Eddie's house, complete with the rose stain glass window.

Eddie's pimping dining table with the sterling silver confectionary holder he received for his 60th birthday.

Our class is convinced that our American classmate Johan is Edvard Grieg's reincarnation. Johan is also pretty cool.

My church fetish

I believe I have a borderline psychiatric problem when it comes to taking photos of the tops of churches. They are just so pretty.

Minibus to Fløro!

The last two weeks have been busy and full of excitement, hence not very much time for blogging. My class saw a semifinal of the Eurovision song contest, I turned 21 and we had a study trip to Gran Canaria.

The daughter of my teacher, Marika, competed in the semifinal of the Norwegian selection for the Eurovision song contest. It was held in a small town on the western coast of Norway named Florø, 10 hours drive from where we live and has a population of about 8500 people. What made this trip so special though was that Florø is the town I was born in! AND I hadn't been back to Florø since the beginning of my life. It was very strange that this trip happened unplanned! I got to visit the hospital I was born in, and see the ambulance boat which my Mum worked on. It was just by chance I was sitting in Marika's hotel and saw this boat out the window which I had repeatedly seen in family photo albums, it took a few seconds to sink in before I realised. Then I ran outside, around the wharf and onto the jetty where I talked to the young dudes now working on the boat. I told them that my mum worked on the same boat 20 years ago and they replied "cool", they couldn't quite understand why I was so excited. It was a very strange feeling to know that my parents and I had lived in that town.

Then there was Eurovision song contest. In Norway it's a big deal. In fact last Friday when Egypt had one of it's most historic days of all time, it was more important for the Norwegian newspapers to have a laughable singing contest on their front covers! Our class had fantastic seats, not to far back and right in front of the stage. Just as the show was about to begin, two of my classmates Antonia and Johan started a slow clap. After a few seconds the whole audience of 3000 people joined in, pretty awesome. The show was embarrassingly corny but entertaining. We watched the Norwegian version of Justin Beiber sing a song called "puppy love", followed by a 18 year old supermodel who pranced around with backstreet boy style backing dancers. When it was time for our teachers daughter Marika, we waved banners and clapped the whole way through. She is a fantastic performer! But probably the coolest part of the experience was to sit and observe all the camera men and technical staff do their jobs. Watching the show being filmed and broadcast live was very fascinating and I realised just how many elements go into making a show like that go smoothly. Here are some photos from our road trip.

The redningsselkapet which also frequents our family photo albums

Internasjonal hanging with the school minibus

The hospital

Getting ready for the Eurovision show. Whoppa!

Marika taking photos for the press after the show.

Sheep head party!

The friends I made last summer.

Last summer, my aunt, uncle and I went for a four day hike in the Norwegian mountains. We saw almost no people but we saw hundreds of sheep. They were so cute, and I sort of fell in love with them. Norwegian sheep are pretty lucky, they get to roam around the pretty mountains all summer before their shepard collects them up and....slaughters them. Anyway I didn't think I was going to be eating one of their adorable heads, but this weekend I did.

My aunt told me that I couldn't go a year in Norway and not attend a sheep head party. Despite my soft spot for those cute little sheepies, I agreed. So she rang around to all the butchers in her city. All of them had sold out. It wasn't that they didn't normally have them, which is what I would have assumed. It was that so many people were demanding sheep heads for dinner that all the butchers had sold out! Who said the vikings were dead! Finally she found a butcher who was able to send five sheep heads 300km in the mail. Seriously, she just causally went down to the post office and picked up her package of sheep heads. Totally normal.

This is how they are prepared:
The hair on the sheep heads is burnt off, then they are smoked, salted and hung up to dry. The day before the sheep heads party they need to soak in cold water to get rid of some of salt. Then they are boiled in a cauldron sized pot for two hours and served up with boiled potatoes and mashed swedes. Plenty of beer and a rocket fuel strength Norwegian spirit known as aquavit is essential. They help guests to loosen up and get over the fact that they are eating the head of a sweet little sheep.
This is how you eat a sheep head:
All the guests at the party were quite excited to dig in. First you rip off the jaw, then you remove the skin off the cheeks and make your way up to the eyeballs. Yes, you then eat the eyeball and the tongue. The meat was actually delicious, just psychologically scaring to look at. Thats were all the alcohol comes in handy.

I think this is a great tradition, a real celebration of food and where it comes from. Eating meat from animals you know have had a good life, and not letting them go to waste. Dare I say it, I would do it again. Tusen takk til Åse og Ketil for en kjempe awesome helg!

24 hour soak.

Viking cooks.

Yummy tongues.

Dinner is served!

Gran Canaria. Ole!

Resiprical disrespect on Gran Canaria

I have spent the last week on a Spanish island off the coast of Africa. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? It wasn't.  I know I sound like ungrateful bitch, but I spent the week wondering what I was doing there. 


The island of Gran Canaria has way too many tourists on it, mostly oiled up, shirt free Scandinavians. There are so many tourists that the locals have lost all respect for politeness or customer service. Their only interest is to take your money. The first thing the receptionist said to us when we walked in was "Hey lady, I want to go home", the second thing he said was "Lady, no loud music after 10". No matter how cheap your hotel is don't ever greet your guests with a selfish, unwelcoming, rude comment. At our three star hotel we had to pay 6 euros a day for internet. The TV had a slot machine for coins, and if you want a remote you have to pay for that too. For example if you want a cup of tea with your breakfast you have to HIRE a fricken kettle. Give me a break people! By the way, the hotel bar played loud, horrible music way past ten.


There is almost no chance to get a taste of the Spanish culture in the town we stayed in known as Puerto Rico. Many of the restaurants are Scandinavian or British owned, and nearly none of them sell Spanish food. We could buy the Norwegian newspaper at the hotel convenience store, and the British people who come to the island to work learn Swedish faster than they do Spanish. I think there is something wrong going on. Most of the tourists aren't interested in learning about the place they are visiting. So they create restaurants with familiar languages and flavours. Most of the inhabitants are sick of being invaded then ignored, so they don't show respect back. 


Lesson learnt: Be disrespectful and a chain of disrespectfulness has begun.


P.S I can't deny that I enjoyed seeing blue skies again. Especially when they include palm trees. And, I got to eat my favourite ketchup and mustard popcorn from the candy shop.

Sigrunn and Hannah almost kill themselves

Last week Sigrunn and I went for a walk. We ventured out into the nature which we see every morning when we wake up and look out our windows. We are so lucky, to live in Søgne! It was such a beautiful sunny day, especially since it was the middle of Jaurary, (what the hell it's supposed to be the middle of winter!). Trying to walk down the hill from the school to the lake we almost killed ourselves. I thought it was a good idea to slide down the hill on my bum, but I ended up going at 1000km a second and smashed into a tree. I still have a massive bruise. All was not lost however. We ended up finding a sweet dang summer hut, complete with swing, trampoline, see saw and a beautiful view almost all the way to Denmark. When the weather gets warmer we are planning to take our beers and a portable BBQ and dive off their wooden deck into the ocean.