kareina

 - woke at 07:30, did half an hour of Pilates

Thanks to those of you who made helpful suggestions on my last post. I have now updated it (results below, behind the cut).

If anyone is willing to offer comments on the CV, I have put it onto google drive here.

( I have also done an English translation of the Job announcement )( my revised application form text )

If you have any feedback on the CV or further feedback on the application text, I would love to hear it. I feel that I clearly demonstrate my English fluency, experience as a craftsperson, related experience, and knowledge of the Viking Age do you agree? Elsewhere on the application form I explain that my Swedish fluency is enough to usually understand Norwegian as well (but sadly, I can't claim any other languages). I have not explicitly claimed to be service-minded, tidy, or reliable, though I feel that all three apply to me. Do you think that they are implicit in my CV as written, or do I need to say anything further in either the application form or the CV to get those traits across? If so, how explicit do I need to be in that?

Saturday was a travel day. David dropped me at the airport at 06:30 and I flew to Stockholm, where I had a four hour layover for my flight to Bergen. Since the University bought tickets that permitted checked baggage, I opted to check my little carry-on size suitcase on wheels, which left me only a backpack and coat to deal with in the airport. I had noticed that my ticket had "fast track" stamped on it, and was looking forward to getting to take the shortcut between terminal 4 and 5, but oddly enough the flight from Luleå, which had been scheduled to land at terminal 4, actually parked at terminal 5, so I didn't have to go anywhere. Of course, when I came in there was not yet a gate assigned for my next flight, so I found a counter with room and outlets and settled into my computer for a while. When I reached a good breaking point, around the same time the airlines sent me an SMS saying that we would depart from gate 12, about an hour before my flight, I packed everything up, and stood up to go find my gate, and realised that, actually, I was already at gate 12! I just went to the loo and returned to the same gate.

When I arrived in Bergen I saw from the signs that to get to the city center I could either take the Airport bus, which would get to town in 20 minutes, but cost ~115 NOK, or I could take the light rail, which would take 45 minutes, and cost 38 NOK. Since I knew already that I would be taking the light rail on Tuesday to get to the craft's night for the Bjørgvin Handverkslag, It seemed worth it to spend the extra time (and less money) to scout out where I would be going.

I had hoped to meet up with someone from Bergen's Acroyoga group already on Saturday afternoon, but the last post anyone there had made in reply to my query was "it looks like it might be raining on Saturday, we should wait and see". Of course, when I arrived it wasn't raining, so I posted an "it isn't raining now, want to meet up?", but got a "sorry, busy now, how about tomorrow?", to which I replied "ok, if it is early morning, as I am meeting a friend at 10:00 to go to museums". She relied with a yes, and we agreed to meet at 07:40 in my hotel lobby.

So instead I went to the gym that the hotel has an agreement with and did a short workout, followed by my yoga, since my room is a bit small for yoga, and has only a hard floor. While I was doing yoga a young man came in to take some selfies in the mirror and do a bit of stretching, so I did a quick roll against my shyness check, and got a high enough number to ask him if he by any chance does acroyoga? Would he like to try? He gamely tried balancing me on his feet in the basic bird/airplane pose, but didn't get the hang of it enough to let go of hands, and couldn't be talked into trying the flying himself. He then gave the excuse of being tired and thinking he is just going to go home instead of working out, so I thanked him and returned to my room. But I am feeling quite proud of myself that I was able to approach a random stranger.

I wound up going to bed just after 21:00, and slept for 8.5 hours. After tidying up my room I went down to breakfast (which, on weekends isn't served till 07:00), and then settled in the lobby with some sewing to await the acroyoga person. After a good bit of time she was late enough that I turned on internet on my phone, to read a message from her that she wasn't going to make it after all as she needed more sleep. So I went back to the gym on my own and did a bit of a workout.

After my workout I walked over to the Bryggens Museum, where I met Espen the historical re-enactor. We went through all of the displays together, and he was able to explain them all to me (in Norwegian!) and tell me details that I might have learned from the text that will be set up next to the displays, when they are finished setting up the new exhibition. However, I suspect that many of the details that he gave me won't make it to the text they wind up displaying.

He tells me that their last display was an old fashioned one, in the style used since the 1940's, but the new display is totally modern. The museum mostly contains things found in excavations from Bryggen--one of the oldest parts of the city of Bergen. One of the things they have on display, up against a wall, is a large timber from the base of a ship. On the wall behind the timber they have a projection, which shows the framework of a ship, which then rotates and moves forward, with the front bits vanishing as they come forward, till one feels that one is standing in the middle of the ship, and can clearly see where the timber came from, since the rest of the ship is being projected, in white outline, around it, perfectly to scale.

Another display they have is a 3-D sculpture of the topography of the Bergen city center area, onto which they project the history of the town, starting with the buildings that were there in the early middle ages, and then gradually more and more, and, as the film progresses, each time there is a major fire destroying part of the town, one sees it start and spread and die out, with the year written next to it in the water. Major fires happened roughly once a generation. Near as I can figure watching those numbers scroll past, the tiny children who managed to survive the fire (probably with PTSD) could well have been alive for the next, and I can't help but wonder what percentage of those who survived one also managed to survive the next? The film ends with a modern, GoogleMaps view of the city. I really love living in the future. It is one thing to read things like Gitte Hansen's PhD thesis on the emergence of Bergen as a town in the early middle ages, and quite another to actually see it unfold from a bird's eye view. If you get a chance to visit Bergen make time to see this museum!

However, the highlight from that museum I was really looking forward to seeing was the 12th Century shoe embroidered with runes, in Latin, that say "love conquers all", which shoe is part of the reason I am in Bergen at all just now. I first heard of it years ago when someone sent me a pdf of this article:

Hansen, G. 2015. Luxury for everyone? – Embroideries on Leather Shoes and the Consumption of Silk Yarn in 11th-13th Century Northern Europe. In: Jahnke, Carsten and Huang, Angela /Eds.), Textiles and Economy. Ancient Textiles Series. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 86-103.*

I was so enamoured at the thought of a shoe with Latin Runes on it, especially with that slogan, that I emailed the Bergen University museum asking for a better quality photo than the bad photocopy pdf I had. They were kind enough to send me a good quality image, and suggested that I contact the author for more information. I did, and Gitte was kind enough to send me this article:

Arne J. Larsen 1992, Footwear from the Gullskoen area of Bryggen. V 4 of The Bryggen Papers Main Series, Scandinavian University Press. Oslo. ISBN 82-00-21533-4

and an introduction to Espen (see above), who has done who has done his own reconstruction of the shoes and sent me lots more useful information. The shoe sitting there on its glass shelf looks exactly like the photo, but it is 1000 times cooler to look at it in person than see a photo, and delightful that one can look up at the bottom side of it, too. There are also other shoes, some far more elaborately decorated, in the next display case. I need more pretty shoes to wear with my medieval costumes!

From that museum we went over to The Rosenkrantz Tower, where I enjoyed going up and down narrow stairways and spiral stair ways, admiring the various types of stone used, and hearing all sorts of details about the building construction and history, and about the Kings and other important people who have lived there.

Then we went across the way to Hakkon's Hall, a site where I really and truly want to see a Coronation feast event--it would be perfect for it! Of course, I have no idea if there are kitchens anywhere nearby where one could cook such a feast, but oh what a hall to eat and dance in!

After that we wandered through the Bryggen area--the old wooden Hanseatic trading center of Bergen. While none of the buildings there now dates back to the middle ages, Espen assures me that every time the area was destroyed by fire they rebuilt in the exact same spots, and probably in the same style as what they were replacing.

Then we took a break to enjoy coffee (him) and water (me) and some yummy pastries at a cafe before hopping in his car and heading to his museum, Hordamuseet. Oh, what a beautiful place! The cute grass-roofed houses in their main web page are orginal farmhouses from the site, and only a tiny portion of the museum. On the site they also have some modern museum buildings, one of which house displays of old boats, another of traditional household objects and tools from farming and fishing, etc. They also have a site of Norway's biggest long house for storing a long ship, that dates back to the Iron Age (before the Viking period), which was excavated in the 1970's. Even today one can clearly see where the building used to stand. The water is a couple of meters lower today than it would have been back then, so it is clear why the house eventually went into disuse as a ship storing place, when it was clearly used for hundreds of years.

I enjoyed the whole day, but I think I fell in love with his museum, and would happily live there (not that living there is an option for anyone, but still!)

I have often commented on how hard it is to become fluent in Swedish living in Sweden, as so many people there want to practice their English with me (and often are so good at it that it is easy to forget that it isn't their native language). If I move to Norway I don't think I will have that problem. Espen spoke only Norwegian to me the whole day. The Bergen dialect is enough different from the rest of Norwegian, and Norwegian is enough different from Swedish, that I had to really concentrate hard to understand him, and occasionally I needed him to repeat himself, and, no doubt, I missed a few details here and there, but there were not more than four times all day where he used two or three English words to clarify things when I was really confused, and then he switched straight back to Norwegian.

After this amazing day I am even more interested in getting that job for which I will be interviewing, with Gitte (see above!) tomorrow.

We arrived at the school which serves as the main base for the event at 16:00 on Friday, and spent some time hanging out in the entrance area waiting till the people doing check in were ready to take our money. (We got a really good deal on the weekend--not only is the Luleå Hembygdsgille paying for bus rental and petrol, they also organized us a huge discount on the entrance fee--instead of the advertised 950 NOK, we paid only 350 each.)

After checking in a couple of us hurried off to the concert that started at 17:00 at another venue, while the rest of us moved into our classroom, ate some dinner, and relaxed. I was disappointed to discover that the cute little loft play area that I slept in last time I was here (year before last) has had its stairs removed and the entrance nailed shut, so I had to sleep on floor level like everyone else.

The next official thing on the programme was the concert in the gym across the hall from our room, at 19:30. The performers were a trio I have seen and enjoyed on other occasions, and four of their numbers are songs I have heard before , and also the ones with choruses, so also the ones they encouraged the audience to sing along, so, of course, I did. Sadly, the guy running lights and sound turned off even the along the side of the hall lighting that I had been using to work on my embroidery project while waiting for the concert. Gee, I move a lot when not working on a craft project. I massaged my own feet, hands and arms, re-braided my hair, drimmed along to the music, etc. Luckily, I was sitting at one edge of a row (so I had the best pre-concert light for my sewing), and no one sat next to me, so my constant motion didn't disturb anyone.

After the concert I changed into my dancing skirt and grabbed the bag with my dance shoes and joined the folks out front of the building waiting for a ride to the dance hall. After what seemed much longer than it was the bus finally arrived and took us the 6 minutes up the road for the dance, arriving right at 22;00

I spent not quite three hours dancing (often with others, but occasionally alone when I couldn't find someone to dance with), till my feet were really hurting. Then I and one other from my party (and a few people I didn't know) got a ride back to the school where, having done my yoga before the concert, I went straight to sleep and didn't get up till 10:00! (Not counting going to the loo about every two hours all night, having drunk plenty of water whilst dancing.)

That gave me time Saturday morning for breakfast and paying for the song course (classes cost extra), before it started at 11:00. I really enjoyed the course, which was taught by a couple of the ladies in the group Kongero. I wound up buying one of their CDs and their songbook, since the songs they taught were featured therein. I am thinking that it might be time to try to find some friends to sing folk songs with regularly. I keep attending these workshops once or twice a year and then never singing those songs again (most have parts, so sound better with enough people to cover the parts).

After class was a long enough break for a quick lunch before the afternoon concert, which included performances by the talented school kids who have been doing music workshops over the course of the event (which had been running a couple of daus before we arrived). Another of the afternoon performances was a couple in traditional Sami dress performing some very nature inspired pieces. The first was the man playing an etheral tune on a flute while the woman sang sounds that managed to be both lovely to listen to and also sound like a mosquito. During that piece the littler school kids ran gleefluy through the audience prending to swat mosquitos between their hands, often pretty much right in the faces of the audience members. The kids sermed to really enjoy that. Another of the Sami nature songs the children paraded through the audiance with their faces covered by leaves/branches (a different sort for each kid).

Then there was another break before the next performance, which was part of the Family Day of the music festival. This was two women who portrayed a story through the use of song, words, interpretive dance and violin playing. My Norwegian isn't good enough to have followed all of the little nuances of the tale, but I had no problems following most of it (and could have understood a fair bit of the story even if I hadn't understood any of the words).

After that show I had a quick dinner and a half hour walk to enjoy the beautiful mountain views. I also laughed to notice the one peak with a flat top that kinda reminded me of Flattop mountain in Anchorage--what got me to laugh is that Flattop (and all of the peaks of the Chugach Range) are to the east of the city, which means that the sun rises either from behind them, or, in mid winter, to the right of them. To see something that looks kinda like Flattop with the evening sun just to its right was a bit disconcerting.

The concert Saturday evening started, as is traditional, with the allspel(everyone plays), followed by performances by pretty much every group on site, all of whom are good. Then, after intermission, was the performance by the featured group, MäSä Duo who had flown up from Finland just to perform for us, and perform they could! One plays violin, and the other a tiny accordion, both with amazing energy, tallent, and impressive speed. They tended to start many of their numbers slow and dreamy, and after a lovely intro, kick it up several notches in speed/energy, and then do it again a couple more times. I couldn't sit still, but was pretty much dancing in my seat for the hour they played. Then there was a short break to clear the chairs out of the way and set up some tables in the back half of the gym before the dance started. The Finnish duo played the first dance set, and were kind enough to keep the music at a medium tempo (for them, which meant nice, fast dancing). They also played more repeats of each dance tune than is customary in Norway, which I really appreciated. After there set all the other groups took a turn playing for dancing, which meant lots of beautiful music all night long. Once again I only managed not quite three hours of non stop (unless you count running to the loo when they changed bands) dancing before my feet couldn't take any more, so I walked across the hall and went to bed around 01:30.

I woke at 07:00, which gave plenty of time to pack up, have breakfast, do some yoga, and just hang out with my travelling companions before our bus picked us up at 09:00. The trip home took just over 10 hours, some of which I slept, of course, some of which I typed much of the above, and the rest we sang songs and just enjoyed the travel.

We had decided to focus on the earth cellar and other yard improvement projects this summer, so I am not at Visby's Medieval week with a huge number of my SCA friends in Sweden and Finland. Nor am I at Ffair Raglan with many of my SCA friends in the UK. Nor am I at WorldCon in Helsinki with hrj and E., another friend visiting the Con from the West, anot to mention some of my SCA friends in Finland.

However, this weekend is the one wherein the Luleå hembygdsgille does a bus trip to Norway, to Kalottspel. I wasn't certain if I would be able to go. When the announcement first came out I sent a message to the organizer saying "Would love to, but no idea if we will be done enough with the Earth Cellar for me to go, will check in later". Then I didn't think of it again till today, a full week after the registration deadline. So I sent him another message saying "any room left on the bus? No worries if not". He replied "No worries, I had a feeling you would join us so I have you counted in. I will send out some info tomorrow" So, despite being a flake and not actually registering on time, the fact that I sent the "can't register yet" note means that I get a (mostly) free trip to Norway, with good friends, where I will spend my time dancing.

While it does mean that I won't be available to help David with the next step on the earth cellar on Saturday (creating a level platform on the tree-trunk supports we have set up in the the earth cellar, upon which we will build the arched supports, on which we will do the stone and cement arch of the actual roof), he tells me he is good with that, and he isn't available on Sunday anyway, as he will be helping his dad do some work on their summer house.

I have been itching to see some mountains (not that they are so visible from the site of the event, but one drives through them to get to the event) and get to Norway, so I can't really pass up the chance, and it does make up quite a bit for all of the other fun things I am missing this week. (Why do we get only one body in any given day?)

I spent the day Thursday alternating between cooking food to take with us on the drive, and finishing up slides for my talk in Tromsø on Friday. archinonlive got home from work later than he might liked to have done, so it was around 20:00 before we finally started driving. From Luleå to Tromsø is predicted by GoogleMaps to be a 9 to 10 hour drive. However, it is winter, so we rather expected it would take longer than that. The roads were clear, cold (as low as -30 by the car thermometer), and beautiful for much of the drive; it wasn't till we got well into Norway (north of Narvik) that we hit warm, snowy weather. By "snowy" think 10 to 20 cm deep and falling fast in thick, fluffy flakes. By that time it was after 05:00, so there were more lorries on the road than had been earlier in the morning, and, of course, each time one passed us heading the other way visibility disappeared totally unless we slowed waaaaay down. Needless to say, we didn't actually get to Tromsø till after 07:00.

So we went to uni and found a couch in the geology department and took a couple of hour nap (I'd had a bunch of short naps during the drive, but he drove the whole way, so had been up for over 24 hours at that point). We got up on time for my 11:00 meeting, and he came along to the part where I did my talk describing the research I did in Tassie and the research I did in Italy. Then he wandered off for another nap and I spent a couple of hours discussing the research they are doing in the Kalak Nappe Complex and what I could do if I can manage to get funding to join them.

After the meeting we checked into the hotel and got another nap before meeting the geologists at a pub. That pub closed around 18:00, and the others said that the plan was to go from there to another pub for one more drink, and then off to dinner. If plan A had happened I might have been able to join them in food, but instead of one quick drink they happily chatted over several (I, of course, drank only water). Eventually archinonliveand I called it a night and went back to our room, leaving the others happily chatting at the pub. I did yoga and he had a late dinner (it was after 20:00 by then) and we went to sleep by 22:00 so that we'd be able to do the return drive during daylight hours.

Saturday's snowfall in Sweden was no where near as heavy as Friday's had been, and the plows had been out, so the roads were in reasonable shape. As a result we managed to take some photos of mountains on the drive, though many of the peaks were hiding behind clouds. I'll try to find time to upload some of the photos later. We managed the drive in just under 8 hours, so we had plenty of time to unpack and relax before getting to sleep early again.

Sunday we normally do SCA fighter training between 10:00 and 12:00, but this week we opted to sleep in, instead so as to better recover from the road trip. In the afternoon we went out shopping, acquiring useful items like a beard trimmer for him, a popcorn popper for me, and a wake-up light. We could have gone to Swedish folk dancing at a local restaurant this evening, and considered it, since we had so much fun last time. But the lure of a relaxed evening (testing out that popcorn popper!) won out this time. Fortunately, we have folk dance class tomorrow night, so there will be some exercise.

Progress report:

Norway trip: lots of hours of “uni work”, but no progress on any uni related projects. Instead I attended many interesting talks given by my colleagues in the Marie Curie Crust to Core (Fate of Subducted Materials) research group and spent a couple of days in the field, looking at the world’s best exposures of (ultra)high-pressure metamorphic rocks. Much fun, but still I’ve not finished writing up the paper from my PhD research, and starting to worry about not having done so. I’ve long thought that Norway would be a nice place to live—all the advantages of Alaska, plus all of the advantages of Europe in one tidy package. Now that I’ve seen the metamorphic rocks in Norway’s western mountains, I also wish to do field work of my own up there. Our field trip leader, a researcher based out of the University of Oslo, told us on many occasions how wonderful this area is for field work, and how much is yet to be discovered about the high-pressure rocks in this area. Yes, I have sent him an e-mail asking if he or anyone he knows is interested in hiring a post-doc to do field work on these rocks.

I didn’t accomplish anything with Monday other than flying back to Milan (where summer’s heat is starting, but hasn’t yet reached the oppressive levels it will likely achieve later in the season). Tuesday during the day I didn’t do much in the way of work, either, other than to note that my experiment, which we couldn’t upload before I left due to a damaged piston, was, in fact, started by my boss (using a new, undamaged piston in the machine) while I was gone, and at an even higher pressure than we’ve dared hitherto. However, Tuesday evening I got inspired and started working on the talk I’ll be giving at the Marie Curie conference later this month. Unlike other conferences, I’m not meant to be reporting on my own research, but rather making a presentation on one of a list of topics. I chose the one focusing ways in which one can do interdisciplinary research, and will be presenting case-studies of people who get to use geology to identify the source mine for things like garnets in Merovingian jewellery or gold in Visigoth coins, and a person who is using Sr isotopes in wool from textile fragments to determine where the sheep were grazing. Getting absorbed in that project meant that I lost track of time, and worked till after 01:00.

Despite staying up late, I still had to get up this morning, as I was scheduled to use the microprobe both today and tomorrow. However, when I arrived my boss met me and explained that I could only use it today, as something came up and he needs it tomorrow. However, he then said that he’d freed up the time today to show me the controls for the probe, so that I would be able to use it on my own in the evenings or on the weekends when it isn’t otherwise booked. This is really, really good news—we’ve only been waiting for him to have time for that since I started here, nearly one year ago. In the mean time I’ve only been permitted to work with our microprobe operator, who is not confidant enough in his English skills to be willing to show me how to use the controls. This hasn’t been a problem, in that it is quite efficient for him to select the points for analysis, and for me to record on a photograph (separate computer) where the points are. But he won’t work after 5pm, so I’ve been limited in the time available.

Now that I’ve had the quick lesson, I’m happily working on my own this evening. 12 hours and 43 minutes uni work so far today and still counting. Good thing I’m not scheduled for the probe tomorrow—I intend to sleep in!

My schedule for late August/early September is really, really full. I already planned to attend a conference in Budapest for a week, followed by a week in Vienna for a short course, followed by a week in the Alps for the Textile forum, and today my boss tells me he wants me to submit an abstract for an Italian mineralogical society conference the three days after the textile forum! However, I don’t suppose I’ll mind being out of town—that time of the year is when Milan is closed due to everyone leaving for their holiday to avoid the oppressive heat.

In other news, I’ve pretty much finished the nålbinded slippers I was working on—just a bit of embroidery left to do. I’ll try to take photos, later. I have found that as much as I love hand-sewing, nålbinding is even more fun/better suited to doing whilst travelling, particularly when working with a thick yarn, since the stitches are so easy to see in a quick glance while my attention is focused on the lovely view out the bus or train window.

Loved the drive from Trondheim to Florø.

Wonderful two days of geology excursions--lots of really pretty high pressure metamorphic rocks here.

Haven't had internet till today.

Leave on the boat for Bergen in the morning, train to Oslo the next day, flight back to Milan the following day.

Worried that Milan will be HOT by the time we get back; wishing I could stay in Norway.

Lots of photos taken, but no time to share them, yet.

Having a wonderful time in Trondheim! Got in yesterday morning; took the train from the airport to the city, passing through a station labeled "Hell". Looked like a nice place, I could live there. Our host had the day off of work, so he met us at the train station and brought us back to his place, where we played Who Killed Dr. Lucky before going to a grocery store and purchasing some things to make lunch. What a joy it was to eat my own cooking after four days in Oslo surviving on things we could find in stores that could be eaten without cooking! I even baked a lemon cake. Yum! Then clovis_t and I explored Trondheim a bit before returning to where we are staying an catching up on internet reading a bit.

Managed to go to sleep early, which was a good thing, since we'd gotten up at 02:30 to catch the 04:00 bus to the airport, and so woke up refreshed and ready to go. Enjoyed the day at NGU, where the c2c meeting was held. Some interesting talks, and a nice walk out to the the fjord during lunch. After the meeting clovis_t, our couch-surfing host, and I went to the home of a friend of mine for dinner. She is the one we met in Stockholm at the music/dance SCA event we went to in December--she happens to also be a geologist and works at NGU. Therefore we skipped the c2c dinner at a restaurant tonight in favor of visiting her. Met her finance for the first time, and enjoyed his company as much as hers. It was a wonderful evening full of good food and good company, and we didn't want to leave.

Tomorrow's plans have changed. We were going to leave on a boat to the town of Florø. However, the boat broke, so the meeting organizers wound up missing many of today's talks to try to come up with Plan B. It being high season it wasn't possible to find another boat (they'd booked this one a year in advance for good reason), but they managed to find a bus that would take the entire group. So instead of needing to be at the dock at 09:30, we need to be at the bus station at 08:30. Therefore I should turn off the computer, do my yoga, and get some sleep. Sure, I can sleep on the bus, but I'd rather look out the window...

Today we did only a walk around the Vigeland Park and the Oslo City museum before returning to the recording studio at which we are staying to take a nap and fall into our computers to catch up on e-mail, LJ, facebook, etc. After so many museums and so much walking the past couple of days, it is nice to just sit in one place for a while and read what others have been up to. I think I'm going to do my yoga and try to get to bed early tonight, since we need to catch the 04:00 bus to get to the airport on time for our 7:00am flight to Trondheim.

I feel vaguely guilty that I've done no uni work since leaving Milan, other than still reading my 1000 words from the geologic literature each day (I'm up to 144 days in a row this time--this is a record for me), but I don't know when I would have been able to squeeze it in.