Norway to Billings… and Covid

Since my last post two weeks ago, we finished term, we packed, we journeyed down to Bergen and over the ocean, eight time zones across to Billings, Montana, visiting my husband’s parents. Travel went smoothly, but after a few days here, I began running a fever. I tested positive for Covid-19. For the last few days, I’ve been isolating to avoid spreading it to the rest of the family. So it’s been a bit of a strange Christmas holiday so far. But I’m doing much better. Today, I’ll share a few pictures from the journey.

I took one more walk in fresh snow before departing Norway–with mist and sun and… something I had never seen before: snowflakes caught in lines of spider’s silk. It made for a marvelous send-off.

*Just outside our flat, a bird swooping. The sun is just trying to break through the clouds there, and it is catching a thin band of mist over the fjord.*

*Before hiking up onto the mountain, I went down, to “Teachers’ Beach.” Passing through these trees on the way down to the fjord, the glowing sun was peaking through.*

*At the fjord, clouds filling back in. Come back, sun!*

Beginning my hike up, I was struck quite early by these incredible little sculptures. I didn’t know what they were at first, but quickly I saw the spider’s silk glinting, suspending these trapped snowflakes. I passed dozens of these, like little mobiles or ornaments hung from the trees. Many were in shadow, but a handful of them caught the sunlight.

*Sorry, spiders. I know this wasn’t what you were hoping to catch.*

*Higher up on the trail, the mist below stood out brilliantly. The sun kept popping in and out of cloud.*

*You can still see the line of mist behind the trees there.*

We journeyed down by boat to Bergen. Normally we pass through Bergen quickly, straight to the airport for a morning flight the next day. But this year we scheduled things so we would have a full day there. We visited the Christmas Market, where we ate a lot of free samples of cheese and lefse and smoked salmon, and then we visited Bergen’s famous annual “Gingerbread City” or, in Norwegian, the Pepperkakebyen.

Wow. I’ve seen a few nice gingerbread houses in my time, but nothing compares to this. In a high-ceilinged room about fifty by fifty feet, hundreds of gingerbread houses had been assembled into a great, edible city.

Local families, as well as organizations and businesses in Bergen, contribute the gingerbread houses, some of which are two or three feet tall. Replete with gelatin-sheet windows, frosted decorations, and interior lights, these were serious constructions, and the effect was really charming.

The whole display was flooded in bright blue light, to make it seem like night time. This was okay, but it made it difficult to see detail in a lot of the houses, and also difficult to photograph. I’ve lowered the saturation in these images, which helps make the houses more distinct, but I did wish we could have seen them more clearly.

*Norway does Christmas pretty well. But off we went, from Bergen to the airport. So long! Vi ses!*

We flew from Bergen to Amsterdam, then over the Atlantic to Minneapolis. This photograph that my husband took is of our first sight of North America, along the coast of Labrador. After this, we had one more flight on to Billings. We made it there in the late evening, had a hot bowl of mushroom soup, and headed to bed.

We had a wonderful few days before I got sick. We put up a Christmas tree and went through old family ornaments. I enjoyed hearing the stories of where they had come from. Ironically, I also got my Covid booster shot. We also made the Swedish Lussebullar, delicious buns flavored and colored with saffron, made for Santa Lucia day. Before moving to Norway, we had never heard of these, but every year in the final days of term, Swedish students organize a Santa Lucia celebration with these buns and a candlelit concert at breakfast.

We had fun shaping the buns, mostly into traditional shapes that we found in a YouTube video and which you can see in the blog post linked above, but we also made a few innovations, such as the “snail shell” ones, which my father-in-law said looked like something left by a dog…

We innovated a bit. My husband, who is anti-raisin, made a tray of the buns shaped with dried cranberries instead. He also sprinkled cinnamon sugar on some, which was delicious! I can’t get over how beautiful these are. The yellow is so bright. These perhaps got a little over-done, but the gradient of yellow into brown that it makes is lovely. The way they puff up, the shapes of the spirals–I had to stop photographing them to eat a few before they got cool.

Out for a walk, we saw this flock of wild turkeys! We counted 26 of them, wandering together through the neighborhood and availing themselves of the bird feeders, pecking through the garden, and watching us warily as we watched them.

And then… it was when we came back from this walk that I had a bit of a runny nose. I thought it was just from being outside in the cold. The next morning, I had a fever. I did a covid test. So it goes.

I’ve been isolating since then, and the number of photos I’ve taken has dramatically decreased. I’m feeling fine. My fever lasted only a day. At this point, if I hadn’t gotten a positive test, I would have no indication that I was sick. So it’s mild. It’s passing. And we’ve been doing activities outside a couple of times a day, so I’m not totally isolated from the family. I’ve been able to do some good writing stuff as well, which has been a silver lining. But I’m hoping to test negative soon so I can emerge. In a couple of days, we hope to be able to head to Minneapolis to see friends, but precisely what happens will depend on whether I’m still infectious. We’ll see.

For now, wishing you all a happy holiday season. Best wishes, and stay well,
Jimmy