Soldagen

Winter still feels like it will be a long time leaving, but the dark times are over in Norway. Living in Oslo this winter, the darkness was less dramatic with short days just a couple hours shorter than winter days in New York. But in the north, the return of the sun is both noticed and celebrated.

From what I understand, the holiday "Soldagen" can vary date-wise for different places, depending on how far north and how many mountains are around, but it is literally marking the appearance of the sun over the horizon, generally around the end of January. It is actually a noted holiday in the north - children have the day off from school and families bake special cakes/pastries for the sun's return. After Soldagen, it becomes more and more comfortable to drink the midday coffee outside and layers can be lessened on the ski trails - the sun directly warming you even while air temperatures remain below freezing.

It's interesting to me that this drastic, recurring phenomena of dark and light times remains so interwoven with the culture. Living here, I've also found a much greater recognition of and appreciation for the sun - never mind the vital need for Vitamin D in the winter months. It's nice to stop for a minute and remember that natural cycles impact us significantly - even when we inhabit cities and overlook the subtleties of season change.

Slightly cheating, this is still from my Copenhagen photos, one of many communal spaces I visited and have yet to write about. When the clouds lift in Oslo I'll get my camera out once again.

What a difference the sun makes..

I've never thought to ask Norwegians if they find an unhealthy tendency of staring into the sun when travelling to places more south during the winter. The darkness has been something I noticed but did not dwell on - it simply seems like a fact of winter life. That is, until you go somewhere with sun and are reminded. In this case, I didn't have to go very far - just hopped down to Copenhagen, but the sun here is stronger already - a few weeks before it really comes back up in Norway. I walked around yesterday squinting and seeing spots, but it's a wonderful feeling to recognize direct rays of light and a bit of heat from those.

The danes seem to have noticed the sun too - it's only around -4 C outside, but the sun on the benches by the water make public spaces habitable again.

Other notable first impression differences between Denmark and Norway..

The letter 'c' has returned to language, rendering words like center (Nor: sentrum, Dan: centrum) a bit easier to comprehend.

Wine and alcohol are sold at grocery stores - no more nationally regulated special shops with limited hours (guess it's harder to control when you share a border with Germany).

Everything is organic (or økologisk) - even the hot dog stands...

Topography and Weather

It's easy to be deceived looking at a map or in the experience of traversal, but the entire country of Norway (~149,000 sq mi) is a little smaller in land area than the U.S. state of California (~164,000 sq mi). Despite it's size, a 16 hour train ride (or drive) will only get you from Oslo in the South to about half way up its length (to Mo i Rana, just below Arctic Circle). This phenomena is attributable to a general lack of high speed infrastructure resulting from the wild topography and un-accommodating weather found throughout the land. The results of this have historically been the isolation of communities and the development of hundreds of drastically different dialects among the here).

On a "short" drive, just reaching three hours (110 miles) into Telemark's mountains from downtown Oslo, some sights illustrate these points.

GPS gave us this as a main highway.

Happened to be mostly a trucking route, and they were widening the road.

People actually live out here.

The sun reached this part of the valley around 11am.

This hydro power station started the town of Rjukan in the early 1990s - located in a valley that is too deep and steep for the sun to reach 6 months out of the year.

Core-ten and Concrete

A handicapped ramp turned public plaza at Schandorffsgate in Oslo. 

Oslo in the Autumn

Early Autumn in Norway finds a lot of colors - the most dreary of places on a dreary day can be beautiful. Above is an old cemetery for statesmen found while rambling around northern-central Oslo. 

Eventually the cold and wind take over and the city cleans up the leaves, leaving people trying harder to keep some color around. A small testament here to the either the huge consistency of taste in Norway, or perhaps to the limited variety for cold weather plants - at the city flower market, everyone is selling and buying heather now. A couple months ago, this plaza was covered in juniper and other evergreen shrubs. 

Identity

I've been doing research over the past few months, trying to understand what aspects deter (or can help) residents to identify with urban spaces. A weekend walk through of Oslo reminded me of a larger problem - the city, much as any other in the globalizing world, seems to have an identity crisis of it's own. Now instead of asking how we can identify space in a city as "our own", I ask instead, what are cities defining themselves as? What is Oslo?

Un-learning, Re-learning

It's been more than a year now since I left the U.S., and I realize I have come to take a lot of aspects of my 'new' surroundings for granted as 'normal'. It is interesting how one begins to forget the differences, or simply assimilates new phenomena over time in a different place. In this regard, I find that Norway sometimes deceives me. 

I remember in my first impressions of the country being rather surprised that things don't look much different here than in many parts of the U.S. Most houses are made of wood, apartment blocks still follow modernism, a large percentage of people drive (compared to the rest of Europe) because the towns and cities are relatively low density and subject to sprawl (where geography allows). The culture can seem peculiarly shy, or keeping to small circles of friends but having lived in New York the anonymity does not seem so new (when do city dwellers ever meet their neighbors anyways?).

Despite many apparent similarities, there are, of course, differences - even when masked in subtleties. These differences become all the more important entering the second year in this country - as I attempt to insert myself into the legal system here obstacles continue to appear reminding me that I am not from here and that I do not always have the most clear or complete understanding of my surroundings that I was used to in the U.S. - from social situations that are at the easy end to adjust to, to navigating the infrastructure I interact with every day to various degrees of success. 

A very humbling experience yesterday brought this to light when, despite 13 years of holding a driver's license in the U.S., I managed to fail the practical driving exam in Norway. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the major fault in the exam was a matter I find to be a shining example of the very subtle differences between the countries. In Norway, a driver does not stop at an intersection - rather they slow down and apply a 'right hand rule' for determining the right of way. Having been explained this rule, and thinking I had understood it I realized to be a very different from practicing it. I find it simple enough to watch to your right as you drive and allow people to go in front of you, but when I approach and intersection it is too bred into me to stop and wait for the traffic to clear before continuing. Maybe it can be the fault of having been a New Yorker (or Bostonian for that matter), or maybe it's simply coming from the U.S. Directly or indirectly, we are taught not to trust other drivers and we operate in a system with limits to prevent interaction when possible. I certainly don't have the experience to judge if one of these is somehow better than the other, but I find it to be potentially an interesting commentary on the link between very basic infrastructure (form and rules) and culture.

Image found in Norwegian traffic discussion thread: 

http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=641518