Hmm!
Well I said I would be back 'soon' but Life got in the way ~ some good and some pretty awful.
The rest of the Lapland trip was AMAZING too. We travelled to the North Cape which was totally thrilling ~ vast areas of snow and beautiful views of sea, snow and mountains. The North Cape is the northernmost part of mainland Europe ~ and it felt like it ~ although there really were heaps of other people also trolling about in the snow.
On the way back south we called in at Tromso where we went to a Midnight Concert at the Cathedral. Wonderful!! It was a bizarre sort of experience though ~ the music was beautiful with a singer, a cellist and a violinist (I think! hard to remember now) who did quite literally present their concert at midnight. But ships call in every day ~ lots of them ~ so there were far more passengers at the concert than just from the Kong Harold ~ and it was strange to think that these musicians tun up every night, play for an hour or so and then go home. I wonder if they ever think of having just an ordinary 9 to 5 job? Which is rather prosaic view I suppose.
Then further south again and a snow-mobile trip. I'm glad I got to actually drive it as it was very exciting speeding over the frozen lake. Very cold too but oh! I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It is more difficult than it would at first appear but we had quite detailed instructions from our Sami guide before we togged up in suits,boots, gloves, hat etc so that we all looked like versions of the Michelin man. When we arrived back the guide took us into a Sami hut, gave us hot drinks and caake, related tales of Sami life and sang a song. I have recently watched a documentary on herding reindeer in Finmark which was fascinating and I'm so pleased to have experienced the cold and the arctic vistas at first hand. I feel very privileged!
Our last call was at Trondheim where I took the trip to the Cathedral ~ splendid! and on our last night we had the most stupendous blizzard and there was talk of the Beast from the East which had apparently arrived in England and would we actually manage to get home! We did! although the journey home was not one I would wish to repeat.
I do have photos which maybe I will post next time I am here.
I have not visited the blogosphere in ages ~ not since the last time I posted in fact so I have a lot of catching up to do. Life has been so busy that it has been hard enough just finding time to read emails so I apologise for not visiting my fave blogs in aeons. Hopefully 2019 will return to some semblance of peace and tranquility.
Back soon (hopefully!)
Po x
2 comments:
There's a quiz show in the US called "Jeopardy" which every so often has questions about 'this tribe in Scandinavia' and I always yell out 'who are the Saami?' and I am always right! I only know about them since an independent yarn dyer, wollmeise, once did a Saami colorway!
Here is the link so you can see the colorway:
https://www.rohrspatzundwollmeise.de/en/pure-100-wolle-saami/a-511/
Nice to see you back!!
Thank you, Kim! I looked at the link and those are exactly the colours of the clothes of the Saami people whom we met. So bright and warming.
I liked Norway so much that I want to tell everyone to go. I think it would be a great place for the oldest granddaughter to spend her gap year working haha. (If she even wants to do a gap year that is).
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