This winter my town became an island, and for the first time in my life, there was no way of escaping - but by boat.
People in this part of Western Norway love their mountains. They remember their names, they worship them through paintings and photographs, and they go hiking on them all year round. But there is a tragic note to this love. Without it we would have few means of explaining to ourselves why we risk living here at all, as dangers abound.
A strange chapter in the history of my town was over just yesterday, when the road between the town where my parents live and the town where I now live and work, was reopened. This was after nearly five weeks of planned and unplanned permanent closures which rendered people roadless and carless (unless they took a 3-hour detour out of there on car ferry). Some people were "lucky" to have their car stuck on the other side of the closed part, where the boat dropped them off. Others had to rely on buses to get to the other town. I should add that although both towns are small by almost anyone's standards, hundreds of people now had to channel their daily travelling through the bottleneck of a boat and a bus.
But why close the road? Simple. It rests beneath a mountainside full of surprises. The road needed securing, so that one could even think of digging a planned tunnel under the dangerous part of the mountain side. The securing process, however, involving a lot of dynamite, made the mountain side more dangerous. And so hundreds of people, whose lives are split between the two towns, found themselves transformed into sea commuters.
I must admit (in the deepest secrecy, of course) that I actually
enjoyed this sudden back lapse to the pre-1960s, where old quays (formerly busy stops along the fjord "highway") bounced back into use again. Despite their moaning, I think everyone did, a bit; the odd slagging-off of the road authorities worked miracles on people's sense of community - not only in my town but in the neighbouring ones too (and we rarely bond across towns if it is not against the evil capital, Oslo, or the even bigger devil, the EU - believe me). Also, the forced waiting and travelling together brought shy and secluded locals into touch with each other for the first time in years. Suddenly, involuntarily, we all realised to what extent we have become hermits, captives of our own wealth: We never see each other anymore. We drive everywhere, and so we only see cars, or silhouettes behind steering wheels.
So to commemorate this time of forced encounters, a series of photos from travelling to work one morning February with my Mum.
On some days, nearly a hundred people crammed into the boat each way. Most of them are work commuters and upper secondary school students.
Heidi (my Mum's friend) and my Mum met frequently during the closures, as both commute to and from work in Sogndal (big brother town).
Heard of bird watching? Welcome to mountain watching. My Mum is trying to figure out what fell down where to cause road closure
this time.
Scarping snow off the car window was a frequent factor of delay. About a minute later, the photographer fell subject to strong group pressure to take part in the desperate scraping effort.
One doesn't always succeed in getting ALL the ice off. Driving is still quite safe, if you ignore the risk of avalanches and freak rock fall. I didn't mention the
other dangerous stretch between the two towns. This one is called Stedjeberget (the first one being Fatlaberget). It is said to be even more dangerous, but we actively ignore it because the opening of the new tunnel under it is near (the coming Friday).
(I told you about the worship? I guess I do it to).
We all make our pilgrimages. At Vår frelsers gravlund, I found my hero - Ivar Aasen, the Father of Nynorsk.
Sunday, June 3rd 2007: Idun swims in the Sognefjord for approximately 4 minutes. She is still not sure if her body temperature has returned to normal.
It is 5.30 am. I'm standing on the pavement outside Daymon's flat in Battersea cursing myself for booking such a ridiculously early flight AND relying on the local minicab service for transportation to Heathrow, instead of a black London cab with at least some sort of reputation to protect. 10 minutes late, a blue car without the faintest resemblance with a cab appears. It comes with a fat, little Tamil driver. I jump in - no choice.
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