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This year's Norway trip
Edited to add a photo by Stellan:
The Luleåhembygsgille (folk music, dance, etc. group) went as a group to Kalottspel, a folk music gathering in Målslev, Norway (around half way between Narvik and Tromsø) this weekend. Eighteen of us did the 10.5 hr bus drive together, and another met us there, preferring to take his own car and arrive earlier. We had a very good mix of ages--three young children, a couple of teenagers, and adults ranging from probably twenty-something to likely sixty-something. Gender balance, on the other hand, wasn't really present. Two of the kids were boys, and three of the adults in the bus were men.
As to be expected on such a trip, the journey was part of the fun. We gathered early for a 06:00 departure from Luleå, which meant that I had risen at 03:30 so as to have time for a brief workout and packing the little ice-chest before the taxi came to take me to the meeting place.
Like some of the others, I took a nap for the first portion of the trip--I have seen that part of the highway before, and wanted to be awake when we reached the mountains. We did a couple of short stops early on to pick up people who live an hour north of town then stopped in Kiruna for a lunch break, so the driver could have his mandatory one-hour rest break.
The others all went to a restaurant with a buffet, but whilst it would have been nice to join them for the company, I didn't see anything on offer that I wanted to eat, and I had lots of yummy food with me, so I waited at the bus (such restaurants usually don't care to let you in if you don't pay, so I didn't even ask).
Kiruna is located along the eastern edge of the Swedish mountains, so from there the drive becomes even prettier. Much to my delight, soon after leaving Kiruna a bunch of us broke into song, giving me a perfect mix of lovely sights to see out the window and sharing one of my favourite activities with others. We sang many Swedish songs I already knew (or had at least heard before), and many more that were new to me.
We arrived at the site just before 17:00, which gave us time to settle in and pay for courses before the evening concert. Our home for the weekend was a conjoined pair of school classrooms, obviously for little kids, judging by the books and toys available. One of the rooms had a small loft, which I claimed for my nest--it was just big enough for my camping mat on the diagonal, with my bag of stuff in the corner. Luckily it wasn't a hot weekend, or the loft might have gotten too warm, since there was no openable window at that level. But it turned out to be a perfect place for me to sleep, even if it wasn't tall enough to sit fully upright.
As it turned out I had too much stuff. I had been expecting something like our Spelmanstämman, which is held mostly outdoors, and open to the public (for an admission fee, of course), with performances all day and even some craft booths. Instead it was more like our trettondag kurser (13th day courses), with workshops during the day, concerts in the evening, and folk dancing all night, but all indoors. So I didn't need my folk costumes nor did I need most of the other warm clothing and rain gear I had brought. On the other hand, I could have brought my hammer dulcimer, which I wouldn't have wanted along at an outdoor thing, but would have been find to have in the classroom we called home.
Friday evening's concert was three guys who were really good (I bought their CD). Two had a relaxed performance style that included a normal level of audience interaction, but the guitarist played with his eyes closed and really focused on what he was doing. Especially for the song he did as a solo (which he afterwards said wad mostly improvised on the spot) it felt almost like an invasion of his privacy to watch him doing something so personal, but oh, did it sound fabulous!
Friday evening's dance was held at a small hall a few kilometers away, so there was a small buss available to transport people back and forth. I danced every dance for the first two hours, then was both getting sleepy and having more problems finding people to dance with as everyone who wanted to dance were already on the floor, and the others seemed to be there just to watch, judging by their refusal when asked to dance. Therefore, when I saw the bus about to depart with the kids who had been the musicians for one of the early dance sets, I took the chance and went back to the school and got some sleep.
Saturday morning I had time to take a walk and enjoy the views to be had in a broad Norwegian valley with a meandering river surrounded by a nice mix of farmland and forest, and even a couple of grass-roofed houses. Then it was time for the workshops—some of us went to dance, others music, and five of us went to the workshop for Norwegian folk songs. We made up the bulk of the class—the only other people in the room were the teacher and a Norwegian woman she obviously already knew.
The format for the class was that the teacher would sing a song, then I took a photo of the lyrics from her print out, and while I looked at the photo and copied out the text by hand onto a blank sheet of paper the teacher read the text out loud for the others to hand-write their own version (the teacher is a firm believer in the fact that one remembers better if one writes it out oneself). During that part she also clarified the meaning of words as needed. For the most part a Swedish speaker can communicate just find with a Norwegian, each speaking their own language, but some words differ quite a bit.
Then she would sing the song again, one phrase at a time, and we would echo the phrases. Then she would sing the harmony and a couple of us would learn that. Finally we would sing the song through together a number of times before we all took out our phones or other recording devices to record the whole song so we could listen to it and remember it later. This approach doesn't give time to learn many songs (we did only two), but it does increase the odds of us remembering the songs. Perhaps it might have gone faster if most of the students were Norwegian instead of Swedish and they could have skipped the part where we discussed the meaning? I don't know.
Then we had some time to relax before the evening concert, and we decided that our group would contribute a performance of handskarna du gav mig,one of the songs we had sung on the bus during the drive over, so we spent some time practicing that, and deciding how best to blend the singing with the bass and clarinet playing. The concert started with the traditional allspel (everyone plays), and our group was the fourth act. It is tough to say from the stage how it sounded to the audience, but it sounded really good from where I was standing. I really enjoyed most of the concert, which had enough acts that there was in intermission before the last few. The last act of the evening, however, had the sound turned up way too loud—at first I simply turned off my hearing aids (which is enough to let me work in a workshop with a variety of power tools running with no discomfort), but then the volume rose again, and I was forced to also try covering my ears with my hands. When even that didn't help I gave up and left the room. Our class room was right across from the performance room, and even with the door shut the hand full of us who had left the room because the noise was too much for us, could still hear some of the sounds from the speaker system. I wasn't surprised that I wasn't the only one who fled from the high volume, but I was surprised how many stayed.
After the concert it took just over a half an hour to clear the chairs out of the way to create a dance floor, and once again I danced every dance for the first two hours. At which point I was once again feeling sleepy, and, once again, hit a point where everyone willing to say yes to dancing was already on the floor. Therefore, once again, after getting a number of "no"s in a row, I gave up and returned to my loft for some sleep. I am told that for those people willing to sit and talk for a bit before getting up and dancing again that the dancing went on all night. The teen girls in our group tell me that they stayed up all night, then had breakfast and packed up before boarding our bus home. I don't recall being able to do that at their age—I have always been too fond of sleep to miss out entirely.
The only thing on Sunday's schedule was the trip home, which was a lovely mix of singing songs and enjoying the views, interesting conversations, taking naps, and reading. We again stopped in Kiruna for a long break, but we did fewer other stops, so we were home pretty much exactly 10 hours after we departed.
I was pleased that I managed to do so well speaking Swedish all weekend. Before the journey started the man who organized the trip told me "Du få inte prata engelska på bussen, bara svenska!", and indeed, I did manage to carry on conversations only in Swedish for both bus trips, and more than 90% of my conversations on site. I did revert to English a few times, and not only to speak with the woman who attended the event from Germany and couldn't speak Swedish or Norwegian, but it felt good to actually be able to participate in normal, every-day conversations in Swedish, and not just with the two people who normally speak Swedish to me.
The Luleåhembygsgille (folk music, dance, etc. group) went as a group to Kalottspel, a folk music gathering in Målslev, Norway (around half way between Narvik and Tromsø) this weekend. Eighteen of us did the 10.5 hr bus drive together, and another met us there, preferring to take his own car and arrive earlier. We had a very good mix of ages--three young children, a couple of teenagers, and adults ranging from probably twenty-something to likely sixty-something. Gender balance, on the other hand, wasn't really present. Two of the kids were boys, and three of the adults in the bus were men.
As to be expected on such a trip, the journey was part of the fun. We gathered early for a 06:00 departure from Luleå, which meant that I had risen at 03:30 so as to have time for a brief workout and packing the little ice-chest before the taxi came to take me to the meeting place.
Like some of the others, I took a nap for the first portion of the trip--I have seen that part of the highway before, and wanted to be awake when we reached the mountains. We did a couple of short stops early on to pick up people who live an hour north of town then stopped in Kiruna for a lunch break, so the driver could have his mandatory one-hour rest break.
The others all went to a restaurant with a buffet, but whilst it would have been nice to join them for the company, I didn't see anything on offer that I wanted to eat, and I had lots of yummy food with me, so I waited at the bus (such restaurants usually don't care to let you in if you don't pay, so I didn't even ask).
Kiruna is located along the eastern edge of the Swedish mountains, so from there the drive becomes even prettier. Much to my delight, soon after leaving Kiruna a bunch of us broke into song, giving me a perfect mix of lovely sights to see out the window and sharing one of my favourite activities with others. We sang many Swedish songs I already knew (or had at least heard before), and many more that were new to me.
We arrived at the site just before 17:00, which gave us time to settle in and pay for courses before the evening concert. Our home for the weekend was a conjoined pair of school classrooms, obviously for little kids, judging by the books and toys available. One of the rooms had a small loft, which I claimed for my nest--it was just big enough for my camping mat on the diagonal, with my bag of stuff in the corner. Luckily it wasn't a hot weekend, or the loft might have gotten too warm, since there was no openable window at that level. But it turned out to be a perfect place for me to sleep, even if it wasn't tall enough to sit fully upright.
As it turned out I had too much stuff. I had been expecting something like our Spelmanstämman, which is held mostly outdoors, and open to the public (for an admission fee, of course), with performances all day and even some craft booths. Instead it was more like our trettondag kurser (13th day courses), with workshops during the day, concerts in the evening, and folk dancing all night, but all indoors. So I didn't need my folk costumes nor did I need most of the other warm clothing and rain gear I had brought. On the other hand, I could have brought my hammer dulcimer, which I wouldn't have wanted along at an outdoor thing, but would have been find to have in the classroom we called home.
Friday evening's concert was three guys who were really good (I bought their CD). Two had a relaxed performance style that included a normal level of audience interaction, but the guitarist played with his eyes closed and really focused on what he was doing. Especially for the song he did as a solo (which he afterwards said wad mostly improvised on the spot) it felt almost like an invasion of his privacy to watch him doing something so personal, but oh, did it sound fabulous!
Friday evening's dance was held at a small hall a few kilometers away, so there was a small buss available to transport people back and forth. I danced every dance for the first two hours, then was both getting sleepy and having more problems finding people to dance with as everyone who wanted to dance were already on the floor, and the others seemed to be there just to watch, judging by their refusal when asked to dance. Therefore, when I saw the bus about to depart with the kids who had been the musicians for one of the early dance sets, I took the chance and went back to the school and got some sleep.
Saturday morning I had time to take a walk and enjoy the views to be had in a broad Norwegian valley with a meandering river surrounded by a nice mix of farmland and forest, and even a couple of grass-roofed houses. Then it was time for the workshops—some of us went to dance, others music, and five of us went to the workshop for Norwegian folk songs. We made up the bulk of the class—the only other people in the room were the teacher and a Norwegian woman she obviously already knew.
The format for the class was that the teacher would sing a song, then I took a photo of the lyrics from her print out, and while I looked at the photo and copied out the text by hand onto a blank sheet of paper the teacher read the text out loud for the others to hand-write their own version (the teacher is a firm believer in the fact that one remembers better if one writes it out oneself). During that part she also clarified the meaning of words as needed. For the most part a Swedish speaker can communicate just find with a Norwegian, each speaking their own language, but some words differ quite a bit.
Then she would sing the song again, one phrase at a time, and we would echo the phrases. Then she would sing the harmony and a couple of us would learn that. Finally we would sing the song through together a number of times before we all took out our phones or other recording devices to record the whole song so we could listen to it and remember it later. This approach doesn't give time to learn many songs (we did only two), but it does increase the odds of us remembering the songs. Perhaps it might have gone faster if most of the students were Norwegian instead of Swedish and they could have skipped the part where we discussed the meaning? I don't know.
Then we had some time to relax before the evening concert, and we decided that our group would contribute a performance of handskarna du gav mig,one of the songs we had sung on the bus during the drive over, so we spent some time practicing that, and deciding how best to blend the singing with the bass and clarinet playing. The concert started with the traditional allspel (everyone plays), and our group was the fourth act. It is tough to say from the stage how it sounded to the audience, but it sounded really good from where I was standing. I really enjoyed most of the concert, which had enough acts that there was in intermission before the last few. The last act of the evening, however, had the sound turned up way too loud—at first I simply turned off my hearing aids (which is enough to let me work in a workshop with a variety of power tools running with no discomfort), but then the volume rose again, and I was forced to also try covering my ears with my hands. When even that didn't help I gave up and left the room. Our class room was right across from the performance room, and even with the door shut the hand full of us who had left the room because the noise was too much for us, could still hear some of the sounds from the speaker system. I wasn't surprised that I wasn't the only one who fled from the high volume, but I was surprised how many stayed.
After the concert it took just over a half an hour to clear the chairs out of the way to create a dance floor, and once again I danced every dance for the first two hours. At which point I was once again feeling sleepy, and, once again, hit a point where everyone willing to say yes to dancing was already on the floor. Therefore, once again, after getting a number of "no"s in a row, I gave up and returned to my loft for some sleep. I am told that for those people willing to sit and talk for a bit before getting up and dancing again that the dancing went on all night. The teen girls in our group tell me that they stayed up all night, then had breakfast and packed up before boarding our bus home. I don't recall being able to do that at their age—I have always been too fond of sleep to miss out entirely.
The only thing on Sunday's schedule was the trip home, which was a lovely mix of singing songs and enjoying the views, interesting conversations, taking naps, and reading. We again stopped in Kiruna for a long break, but we did fewer other stops, so we were home pretty much exactly 10 hours after we departed.
I was pleased that I managed to do so well speaking Swedish all weekend. Before the journey started the man who organized the trip told me "Du få inte prata engelska på bussen, bara svenska!", and indeed, I did manage to carry on conversations only in Swedish for both bus trips, and more than 90% of my conversations on site. I did revert to English a few times, and not only to speak with the woman who attended the event from Germany and couldn't speak Swedish or Norwegian, but it felt good to actually be able to participate in normal, every-day conversations in Swedish, and not just with the two people who normally speak Swedish to me.