The Weather and Sausage Report

Yesterday was a pretty stormy one, and the first fall of sleet. It fell hard and when it wasn't there was plenty of rain to do the same. Thankfully, Anne Brit offered me and Martin a lift to KKU. KKU is the name of the Tuesday night church youth group and stands for the Norwegian for "Coolest Night of the Week." After the meeting the youth worship group had a practice and I stayed around as I've just taken on the role of helping them along. I am essentially Obi Wan Kenobi. Or Gandalf, if you like. But those old guys never rocked the bass guitar! Oh no. The group didn't have a bass player and so I'm winging it until they find one or I attain enough skill to not need to wing it. Jesse, Sammy, Rob - watch your backs. The main song we played last night was a Norwegian translation of the song "Ancient of Days", made famous by Ron Kenoly's "Lift Him Up" video, a film of live worship from somewhere in America. For the concerts, Kenoly had assembeled an astounding array of Christian musical talent including percussionist Alex Acuña and, almost outrageously, Second Chapter of Acts' Matthew Ward on backing vocals. I did my best to emulate the unforgettable bass player, surely the highlight of Ron's band for anyone who's seen the performance...

Before KKU (which is one letter away from being a distinctly less cool club) I ate with the family. Not Ron Kenoly's family, of course, but the Dalseths, who I live with. When I wrote about how Norwegians peel potatoes at the table I had no idea that just over a week later I would be sat at the dinner table peeling a rather large hot dog sausage. But that is the very thing that I was doing and I learned that it takes no small amount of skill to skin a hot dog cleanly. The most profound lesson I've learned, however, is that when in Norway, never accept a "merrabitt" when offered. It translates as "the bite of a female horse" and involves the perpetrator grabbing a fistful of the victim's inner thigh, as hard as his strength allows. It's less than pleasant and I bet they don't put that information in the "Lonely Planet" books.

Amen, Amen, Lego Humin

To say that I've experienced a language barrier in Norway would probably be a slight oversatement. Possibly more like a steep language curb, I reckon. Most people here are fluent in english (even if they almost all tell themselves that they know next to nothing of the language) with only the very young and the very old being hard to talk to. However, my lack of Norwegian is a slight problem during meetings. I can't expect the whole church to speak english on Sunday mornings just to make it easier on me. I've asked them and they said no. I accept their decision. So tomorrow I'm catching the train to Bergen again to sign up for Norwegian lessons at a school for foreigners entering the country. Apparently they assess you as to whether you should be in the slow, medium or fast group based partly on how you've managed learning other languages. I'll be taking along my New Testament Greek pass certificate, for sure.

Unfortunately, I don't know how long it will be until I can start my lessons as they have to wait for the course to be filled up before it goes ahead. So if you wouldn't mind praying that things get a move on, I'd be most grateful. There's been talk of getting me a Learn Norwegian CD-ROM but other than that my only current aids are a phrase book (thanks go out to Tim Stone) and some infants picture books. That's not a joke.

Amen, amen, lego humin... I have, clearly, still got it. But please, for the sake of consistency, may all comments on this post be made in English. Thank you.

Songs (Protest and Otherwise)

Last Saturday, at the Annual Scout Jamboree Day, there was karaoke action on the PS2 and one of the available songs was A-ha's seminal pop hit, "Take On Me". Surprisingly, I had to push for its first play (probably not a song from the average scout's era, to be fair), but once they'd heard the music that will surely one day become their national anthem, they knew they'd struck oil. Rich, eighties oil with a then-groundbreaking video and still-hyperactive synth solo. The tune endured numerous plays that day. What a coincidence then, that when I took the train to Bergen on Wednesday evening I was shown a sculpture and sometime fountain designed by Morten Harket, lead singer of A-ha!

Marthe did quite well to hide her immense pride as she pointed it out. Scandinavian cool. At the time I was queuing up with a few of the youth from Arna to get into a free Kings of Convenience gig. Kings of Convenience are probably Norway's most successful indie duo, sound very much like Simon and Garfunkle and are comprised of Napoleon Dynamite and Frodo Baggins, as this picture goes some way to prove.

The gig was free because it was being held in protest against the infamous Clear Channel Outdoor's recent attempts to have adverts allowed at Norwegian bus stops. However, the Ringbearer said that the Kings of Convenience weren't there to protest, but to celebrate in anticipation of it not going ahead. Norway is hilarious.

Cultural Differences, Part One - Time and Potatoes

After one week in Scandanavia a few distinctions have become apparent between the way of life I'm used to and how things are now so I thought I'd share the less obvious ones with you:

1) TELLING THE TIME - In England, if I was to say "see you at half four", you would understand that we were to meet at 16:30; that "half" means "half past". But in Norway, "half four" means "halfway to four", that is, 15:30! It took a couple of separate explanations for me to understand this.

2) MEAL TIMES - I still haven't fully grasped the eating schedule here, but my current understanding is that you have breakfast first thing, lunch at 12 noon, dinner at about 4pm and tea roughly at 8pm. Tea could be a sandwich or two, waffles, something like that.

3) PEELING POTATOES - Whereas the english way of serving boiled potatoes is to peel, boil and dish them up, the norwegian way is to just boil them. Then, at the dinner table, everyone stabs a fork into a potatoe and skillfully peels it with their table knife. Never in my life had I witnessed such a dinner-time act.

With your new knowledge you should be able to navigate Scandinavia without looking like a foreigner whatsoever. Congratulations.

Sim Cards, Waterproofs and a Scout Marathon

I wasn't going to write this post. If I update too much, Dan In Norway might turn into a flabby beast like satellite television (or any other kind of television, for that matter); a lot of nothing. It's best if I keep the blog lean. But today's scout activitiy brings with it fifteen hours of broadband access; I think I'll make the most of it.

Regular readers will be relieved to hear that my shopping yesterday was an all-round success. I'd bumped into a couple of the youth at Arna station who were going into Bergen for hats and a film. Hats made sense - although the rain's stayed away since the twenty-four hour downpour on Thursday, the temperature's really dropped (-2 today, I think). But they showed me to a sports shop I wouldn't have found otherwise and got rain trousers and uber-wellingtons for not much money. Good. I also got a bit of a guided tour of Bergen (fish market, blue stone meeting point, record store, et cetera) and made my way back to Arna, where I found the sim I needed.

In the evening we had the first Casa Feliz, an evangelistic youth group that went down really well. Plenty of non-Christians there and while it was mostly fun and games (a murder mystery...) they all stayed for the worship time and bite-sized preach.

Today is the day of the International Scout Jamboree. In Arna that means that we've all come down to a local secondary school for continuous movies, video games and internet, starting at 11am Saturday and finishing at 2am Sunday. I've qualified for the second round of the doubles dance mat tournament and look forward to some Indiana Jones at 1am. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all-time favourite films.

Right. Tomorrow I'm going to Torbjorn's to watch Brann, who are my new Norwegian team. They're the local team, sort of mid-table but still the best-supported team in Norway (so I'm told) and their name means "fire". But for now I think I'd better try and hook up to the Arsenal commentary before they call me for karaoke. The question is: which will be less torture?

Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy

Well, the flight was safe, early and cheap as the lady at the check-in desk knocked loads off the price of my overweight baggage. The first couple of days in Arna were unusually warm and then the rain came. It rained for the whole of last night and all of today. It's due to get better but try telling that to my socks. My host family, the Dalseths, are lovely and the cooking is good. I'm straight into the thick of meetings already and yesterday travelled with Terje to Vos for a cell group/potential church plant meeting. It took about an hour to get there but the route was amazing. Lucky for me, one of the tunnels is having work done on it so we had to take the scenic route. I saw Norway's largest in-land island and lots of fjords. The whole car journey was stunning. We went through loads of tunnels, too. At the entrance they say how long they are and the longest I've been through so far is 2,770 metres, getting on for two miles! I'll keep you updated on developments in the area of Dan Record Tunnel Length as much as I can but Norwegian keyboards are taking some getting used to (extra letters: å, ø, æ).