Walpurgis Night Bonfire

I’m writing this shorter post this week on the first of May, a bright and sunny Saturday in this string we have been having of sun and brilliant blue sky days, despite continued cold. Today, I’ll be joining the first year students for the yearly hike up Jarstadheia, the local mountain, about 1900 feet. So I’ll take a few minutes here today and write this post, just a few small updates. Then I’ll be off.

Bonfire preparations Friday afternoon. The campus maintenance team assembled wood scraps, old pallets, and a general call was put out to staff for any old furniture they’d want to burn. I’m not sure any actually got added.

Classes have finished for our second year students, and exams began on Thursday. After last year’s worldwide canceling of IB exams and so many schools around the world still unable to meet in person at all, we are so fortunate to have been able to give our students a relatively normal school year. Although many of them say they wish exams were canceled again, I’m glad that they are able to finish off their two-year program the way they originally planned.

The beginning of the bonfire at sunset, 9:00pm. Just in the last week, nighttime has contracted with abandon. I go to bed typically around 10:30pm, and the stars are not out yet. I wake up many days around 6:00, and it is already bright. Such a far cry from our long winter nights, when the sun comes up for only a few ours. *I see that I have missed another season to see Northern Lights.* Perhaps in October, when full nighttime returns.

With the beginning of exams, the feeling on campus has transformed into a kind of rippling excitement, as the students recognize the end is near, that soon they will be leaving this place forever. We are entering the season of the lasts, and with it has come a readiness to do everything they have been wanting to do these two years here and never found the time. There is an atmosphere of freedom, no doubt buoyed by the beautiful sun.

*Cold evening swimmers. Nobody stayed in for longer than a few seconds. They ran back screaming to warm up by the fire.*

Last night, April 30, we celebrated Walpurgis Night on campus with a billowing bonfire on the banks of the fjord. Students gathered and sang a few songs, hauled out a table and a waffle iron on a long extension cord, and ran with increasing boldness into the still frigid fjord to loud cheers from their friends. It was Friday night, low-tide, and for the staff too there was an, albeit less exuberant, feeling of release. We took the time and stopped to just talk to each other about our future plans. So often in this hectic place, at least I find, I just rush by my colleagues without much stopping for a chat. I have so much to do.

This medieval fire festival celebrates the English Saint Walpurga, a missionary and medical worker who lived in the 8th century. Walpurga left her home in England to Christianize people in what is today Bavaria, curing illnesses and expunging witchcraft on her way. The oil that is still produced by her tomb is said to have healing properties. People all over northern Europe still celebrate Walpurgis Night, and the version we reenacted here at the school was its Swedish incarnation, Valborg, a spring-heralding festival with long traditions in Sweden’s university cities.

For us, it was really just the bonfire, but what could have been more beautiful than that great spectacle of fire rising up against the dimming sky beside the rippling fjord? Flames rose fifteen or more feet into the air in the first rush of the blaze, so hot we all had to back up into a ring five yards away. Still we could feel the heat.

Our friend and fellow potter snuck a couple of ceramic pieces into the blaze for a test firing, and we circled around, searching for a glimpse of them as that pile of burning lumber slumped and shrank. He pulled one out, a bowl still blazing with cinders inside it. It had cracked down the center in a great rift.

Exams will be marching forward in the coming weeks. Next weekend, although the weather may have turned sour once again, I’ll be doing a two-day kayak course that will enable me to take students out in the boats in the future. I was teaching all second-year classes this year, so even though school continues through mid-June, I am done with official teaching for the year. I’ll still be working, having support meetings for students, helping with a couple of new hiring processes, working with students on their independent research essays, and I hope making some concerted preparations for next year.

But for now, my mind is on that bonfire and the free feeling of that night. I hope to keep that feeling burning in the coming days, to enjoy everything around us here that we are so fortunate to have.

Best wishes for the week ahead, and do keep writing,
Jimmy