Packing Light - My Visit to Kristiansand

I have a habit, not necessarily bad, that my wife uses as verbal fodder among our more mature friends. It stems from childhood. Before every trip, my mother would ask my brother and I if we'd remembered to pack our swim trunks. My brother and I loved swimming and hotels in the United States often have pools. As a busy mother, she found dumping us in some water was the best way to get some reading done. Yet, now at age thirty-four, swim shorts don't quite have the value they did as a child. I still pack them.

They've seen little use, lately. Though I live teasingly close the coast of Norway and also not far from copious mountain lakes, Norway's waters are rarely inviting. Summer temperatures max out around 19C (about 65F), and it rains, a lot. But, we were going to Kristiansand on the southern tip of Norway. They get sun there and warmth too. They even have beaches in the South that people use!

We went to visit our friends Yeganah and Alija, who had just gotten married (we missed the wedding.) We'd not seen them since our own, four years earlier. Michelle was especially looking forward to this trip, having not gotten a vacation this year. So five days in the sun with good friends was just what she needed.

Translation: Warm Rock=Sun. Wet Rock=Rain. White Rock=Snow. No Rock=Fog

One thing we didn't pack were rain jackets. “It's Southern Norway,” Michelle said, “It never rains there.” She had lived there for two summers. I trusted her judgment, so I took the rain jacket out from beside my swim trunks and hung it in the closet.

We landed in a downpour, ran for Yeganah's car. The first thing I noticed in our 30 minute drive to their home in Søgne, was that even down here, well after the mountains have stopped, the landscape was still characteristically Norwegian, only lacking the drama. There were the usual forests, jutting rocks, small island dotting the inlets.

At their house on a hill, Alija pointed out his living room window, praising the lovely coastal views. I only saw clouds. I worried my swim trunks were remain folded in my suitcase.

Yeganah and Alija started listing their plans for the next few days: fishing, hiking, open-air museums, a trip to the southernmost point, a barbeque and a trip to the well-loved beach of Mandal. None of these things seemed likely or desirable that first day, so we headed to mall. Michelle didn't pack hiking shoes.

The mall was packed. Kristiansand is a summer town, a sun city. Folk flock to see Norway's largest zoo or the children's playlands of Kardamomme By or Kaptein Sabeltann. When the rain hits, the cinema and malls fill up. This combined with a rare and well-publicized murder there just a day before, made the whole country seek out the mall and it forced us to spend as little time as possible there. We had sushi instead. The weather cleared in the evening and we did get that great view from their living room in the end. We finished the night with a street concert in town, basking in the evening sun. I hoped the weather would hold for a swim the next day.

The rain still came in bursts after we woke up. Yeganah had to work for a few hours, so we limited our adventures. Alija took us around the city for a tour. We saw Odderøya, a peacefull island jutting right from the center of the city, that featured beautiful seascapes and old WWII battlements. We then walked to town and confirmed our reservation at the hotel (Michael, my father-in-law, had an expiring gift certificate for two free nights). It had no pool.

Our next stop was an open air museum with old-style wooden houses preserved in their 18^th century glory. Just as Yeganah finished work, the rain started again. It cleared enough to grill, but we didn't dare venture far from home.

I'm used to the rain. I live in one of the rainiest places in Europe, but Bergen sees more of a sustained drizzle. Downpours are rare. Kristiansand was something different. Whenever the rain hit, it was a barrage.

We were lucky at this point to have never been out in it, always being close enough to shelter to avoid the worst.

Our third day was the big one, the excursion. The beach trip. I'll let the foreshadowing stand.

I wore my swim trunks as underwear and the day started fine. A bit cloudy, a touch of drizzle. The second we hit the road, the downpour started.

Lindesnes lighthouse stands on a peninsula jutting out towards Denmark. The whole area was lovely, stereotypical Sørland. Little coves with red boathouses, tethered sailboats, and wooded hills. Its charm popped out from the rain. When we reached the Southern tip of the country, the rain had stopped. We wandered out onto the wind-battered coast. The ocean was oddly silent. Everything was a wasteland of bare rocks, green moss filling the narrow cracks.

We warmed up with some coffee and waffles and it began to rain again on our walk to the car. Our drive back to Mandal was in a torrent that wasn't any better by the time we reached the beach. I don't know what possessed us to walk its length in pouring rain, but we had made a plan. It would be a shame to abandon it.

Only Yeganah had an umbrella. Both Michelle and I had but light jackets. The beach itself was lovely, backed by a strip of woods, the whole stretch a good kilometer. We only made it halfway before everyone agreed it was folly to continue. The rain was becoming a storm and the waves whipped the sand. I was soaked all the way to my shorts. My jacket did nothing but weigh down on me. We all turned around and headed back to the car. I wasn't satisfied.

I began stripping down, handing my sopping clothes to my wife and ran for the water. Alija followed suit.

I'd brought my shorts. I was going to use them.

I met face first into a wave. I gave myself no moment to adjust to the water or turn back. The cold of the Atlantic hit like a truck, then instantly became bracing. Elective wetness is always preferred.

Alija screamed as he hit the water, then also agreed. It felt warmer in the sea, then to be battered by rain on the shore.

I walked back along the waves, letting the invigorating rain wash the salt from my skin, happy I'd not brought my shorts for nothing.

Slått

My forearms ache so much, I can hardly write. I spent four hours yesterday spraying caked cow crap off  every conceivable surface of a stable with a high-powered water blaster. I feel great.

Yesterday, it was my legs that were sore. We huffed up and down steep hills, raking row after row of hay down to where the tractor could ball up everything. Before that, I spent three hours with a weed whacker, mowing out dips and swamps that their giant push mower was unable to reach.

People in our harvest team are complaining about their backs. I feel fine, if not a tad sore. It wasn't the raking that was hard, it was moving the masses of grass with pitchforks into neat rows along the flats that really laid the hurt on. Still, everyone is smiling and having fun.

We've been playing farmers in Western Norway. This is our second year of doing it and hopefully not our last.

Michelle and I have wanted to live on a farm for nearly all of our relationship. It's one of the things that helped us bond. Now, we don't want to be farmers, I think those illusions died not long ago. By the time Michelle finishes school, I'll be 37 and it isn't wise for a middle-aged city guy with just a love for nature to suddenly become a farmer. Especially without any real knowledge of agriculture (reading Mike Pollan and Jim VanDerPol doesn't count. SIDE NOTE: If you want to read a great book about agriculture and the romance of living on a farm, please read Conversations with the Land by Jim VanDerPol, a collection of nature and political essays pertaining to life on an organic farm in Western Minnesota. Beautifully written. https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Land-Jim-VanDerPol/dp/098395030X  SIDE NOTE FINISHED.)  or a slew of kids to work for free (We're still reluctant about when to have the first). Yet, we still want a farm. They call it hobby farming, of course, and it's nothing novel or groundbreaking. We just want some chicken and bees, maybe a goat to make some nice chevre.

As a society, we've gotten so separated from this kind of life, when in the past, this was all there was. A hobby farm is actually missing the point. Sure, there is something therapeutic about hard work and raising up animals and plants, then eating them, but farming doesn't equal happiness as many millennials have romantically deduced. If this were true, the stereotype of the depressed farmer wouldn't exist. Sadly, there's little money in the life and tractor culture has made farming a lonely endeavor. Even Solveig and Dag Kenneth, our farmer friends we've been helping, would not be doing nearly as well had they not the help of their neighbors or Dag Kenneth's side income.

Things are different, though, out here in Western Norway. They don't have miles upon square miles of flat land to plow. Most crops can't thrive in the constant rain and rock slopes. But rain makes grass and wildflowers, clover, sweet gale, meadow sweet, and other goodies that show up incredibly in meat. So lamb and dairy cow are the primary agriculture out here, though some harvest berries, cherries, or other fruits. Farmers toss their animals onto the unmowable mountains and harvest grass from the rest of the land to feed them over the winter. This is nothing new for livestock farmers.

The difference is the climate and landscape. Tractors don't love hills, so much of the work must be done by hand. The bails can't be too wet either, so everything must be done on sunny or overcast days, which happen in little spurts, sometimes only a few the whole summer.  So the community comes out, works 12 hour days (ours were only 9, since there were quite a few of us) helping themselves and each other to mow all they can before the rain returns. They call it the "slått" and when it's finished, they often finish with a wild party, drinking whiskey and beer while staring at the fields as they get sopped by rain under the shadow of the mountains.

It's beautiful to see cousins, siblings, neighbors, and friends all working together in a mad race to ensure there's enough food to winter the livestock. This is how humans work best, all as one, for a common, concrete goal. Even here, in one of the most developed countries in the world, people still live with these old-fashioned customs (albeit with tractors). And nothing feels better than looking out at the mountains towering above as if from a postcard, but this isn't a vacation (well for my wife and I, it is a bit). This is life for the bone-hard (beinhardt) farmers of West Norway. They're not all happy. It's not a perfect romance, an ideal picture of life's pinnacle, but you couldn't convince me otherwise while sharing that first beer with shaky, blistered hands after a long day of backbreaking labor, looking over the freshly mowed fields, knowing we did it all together, as people have done for thousands of years.