Walking on Ice

It's sad that I was only able to blog daily for about a month, but there has been a reason for it. Matt and I have been busy painting one of the apartments, and it's beginning to look a lot nicer. It's amazing what a coat of paint will do for a room! So a lot of the last few days have been pretty much the same.
In preparation for my leaving, however, we have been doing a few different things. Yesterday we went with Dave and Liv Marit to a craft show in Jondal, northwest of us toward Bergen. We traveled up the West side of the fjord to Utne, and then took the single-lane, old road over and through the mountains to Jondal. It was pretty scary in some parts, especially as we had to pull off several times to let big buses and other cars going the other direction pass by. We stopped to look at some old rock pictures (petroglyphs) from the beginning of the Christian era, though probably made before Christianity arrived in Norway. We did our best to interpret whatever story might have been displayed there.
In Jondal we wandered around the craft show and looked at various handmade work - a lot of great woodcarving and fabrics, as well as jewelry and painting. It reminded me of various craft shows I'd been to in the US. I managed to find a good Norwegian cheese cutter (my Mom made me promise to bring one back, since they are some of the best cheese slicers in the world), and Matt got a wooden toy for his daughter.
There was also music to listen to on the bandstand - the Hardanger Big Band was a highlight. We ran into Lajla Storli as well, a local folk musician, who together with her folk musician husband John Ole Morken recorded with Ove and I last week. Lajla's main instrument is Hardanger Fiddle, a particular type of violin that has four under-strings strung below the regular strings, which are tuned as sympathetic strings and resonate when the top strings are played. It has a really unique sound, one instrument that I've never heard before - it sounds like a couple violins at once. BUT it also means it can only play in certain keys, because of the harmonic resonance of the under-strings. It was really neat to record them - John Ole's main instruments are the viola and violin, and he just completed an album of Norwegian folk tunes, which sounds quite good. Here's a picture of Lajla recording with us last week. Some great musicians around here.
Before we left Jondal to go back home, we decided to drive up the mountain to the glacier, Folgefonn. This is the glacier that sits between Jondal and Odda, and on the Jondal side they have a summer ski center on the glacier. We drove up to 1200 meters (on a road much smaller and more windy than the one between Utne and Jondal), right to the edge of the glacier, and stood on the frozen snow at the end of June. Pretty crazy stuff! Matt, having grown up in Florida, was excited to be on so much snow. It was a pretty incredible experience!

The Bunker

So once again I have been lax in blogging. The past couple weeks Matt and I have been working on the buildings and staying busy. We've also done a few other things, but it has been raining almost constantly for the past two weeks. So here are some pictures of what we've been up to - not the work, but the other things. This past Monday was midsummer night, and they celebrate it around here by having a 'child wedding'. Kids get dressed up and go through a 'ceremony' and dance together to celebrate the longest day of the year. It was a cloudy day, but that didn't stop the ceremony.
Yesterday was finally a sunny day, and after working Matt and I took a walk along the old road north of Tyssedal. There's a German bunker there that dates from WWII when Norway was occupied by the Germans. Odda was a strategic location because of the factories here, and this bunker covered the approach from the north.

Skjeggedal

Matt has been here for the weekend. He arrived from the US on thursday before I left for Tønsberg, and spent the weekend here in the apartment, meeting up with Warren and getting settled. I arrived back from Tønsberg yesterday and it has been really cool having another American around.
We decided to walk up to Skjeggedal today, along the Kaiser's Way which starts right outside our apartment here in Tyssedal. I had never been up it the whole way, so it was an adventure. The weather started out rainy, but just got better and better as we went. Here you can see the insignia that was carved in the stone to mark the path, which was the only way up at the turn of the century. This was where all the workers came up, with their horses, and where the Kaiser came up with his entourage in order to view the dual falls that have now been diverted for electric power.
We wandered up to the dam in Skjeggedal, which was built to generate hydroelectricity at the beginning of the century. All hand-cut stone. Pretty crazy. We went over to the lake that is fed by rivers off the plateau, and it was so amazingly clear - we could see 30 feet down to the lake bed near the shore. There is actually a giant intake for the hydroelectric plant below the surface of the water, and it draws the water through a 2-mile long tunnel under the mountains, coming out right above Tyssedal, around Lilletopp. That explains why no water was getting through the dam, and also why the water level of the lake was so low.
On the way down we met some German tourists, who kindly gave us a ride home in their minivan. By then our feet were pretty tired, so it was nice to have a break.

World's End

It was a beautiful day in Tønsberg. I arrived here yesterday and straight away was whisked to the youth party - the last event of the year, since school is ending for the summer. Had a great time playing volleyball, chatting, eating and reconnecting with people from when I was here last. There was an interesting game they translated as 'the block game' in which two teams have a row of blocks standing, and the object is to knock the others' over by throwing wooden pegs underhand. It's harder than it sounds. We got home pretty late and slept in this morning.
I went out to the Tønsberg center with the girls. The Mørken's cousins are visiting from England, so I wasn't the only foreigner - that's what they kept calling us the whole weekend, as a joke - the 'foreigners'. I walked up to the hill that made Tønsberg defensible, and thus part of the reason why it is the oldest settlement in Scandinavia. Not much to see, but a nice spot for a picnic if it hadn't been so windy. Mostly ruins and a memorial tower currently under renovation.
Then Knut and co picked us up and we went out to Verdens Ende - the end of the world. It's a spot south of Tønsberg out on the last island that kind of reaches itself out into Oslo fjord. If you keep going that direction, the next stop is Denmark. Sara and Knut went swimming, and the rest of us just sat on the rocks and took pictures. Fiona and Hamish agreed with me that they were rather mad to swim with it being so windy - we were cold enough out of the water! But Knut insisted that the water was probably about 17 C, so it really wasn't all that cold - I guess not, compared with the arctic ocean.
We were getting close to when I had to be at the youth meeting to prepare for the concert, so we drove home, picked up some pizza, and then went to the spot where the youth event was going to be. Discussions ensued about where they would have the concert - I deferred to Kristoffer, the youth pastor. They eventually decided to have it outside, with the hope that the wind would die down and the sun would remain outside enough to warm people up while they sat. It was a pretty good concert. A bit hard to hear myself without monitors, and eventually it got cold enough that my strings started going out of tune, but people really enjoyed it. I think next time we'll probably have it inside. =)

Hammond Organ

I just got back from a recording session north of Tyssedal, in the farm country along the fjord. That's where Geir Aksnes stores his Hammond B3 Organ (dual manual) with its accompanying Leslie amp, a trademark sound of rock, blues and jazz from the 40s, 50s and 60s. It sits in a side room of the community building there, and we went in and set up on the stage.
The roads are very steep and narrow around here, and a helicopter was transporting building materials just outside the building. Ove told me that all the farms have hunting rights up on the steppe, and that they use helicopters to travel to their hunting cabins and also to take their game out and back down to their houses. So as we waited for the helicopter to finish, we set up the organ and my recording studio and got familiar with the songs.
Geir is an electrician, and when he got the Hammond organ it was in bad disrepair. He fixed it up himself many years ago, and has since used it all over Norway. He plays in several local bands and is an extremely skilled piano player and, obviously, organist. The crazy thing about the organ is that you have to know it pretty well. You have to be able to use your feet and hands to switch buttons and press dials at the same time as you are playing chords and the bassline on either the top or bottom manual (keyboard), which I assume means you are playing two different registers or tones, though I'm sure that's all configurable in multidimensional ways. Needless to say, it's not something I can do, and that's why Geir was there.
The two songs we worked on: Living Water and Voices. After a couple run-throughs and me explaining what I wanted, we were off to the races. We got some great takes that I'm looking forward to revealing in the final mix. This album is just getting better and better. =)

Rainy Day

Today it rained all day, off and on. Here's a few pictures from my balcony, in succession, several minutes after each other. You can see the rain coming in the first, then it obscures the view (but I still have some sunshine), then it passes by and the next cloud comes into view. It was really windy too, so sometimes the rain would go sideways.
I'm continuing to prepare for Matt's arrival - doing some cleaning, sorting, and organizing. Warren has a lot of papers to go through when he gets back. I need to find a place to store the tools and finish up a couple of small tasks around the place.
I also went shopping in preparation for the weekend. I'm beginning to use Norwegian a bit more as I shop and interact with people, and I can understand more and more.
I also helped Ove set up his Myspace so we could get some songs up in a public place for people to listen to. We listened to some mixes on his surround sound system, and they sound pretty good. I have to send out an email to all my friends letting them know they can listen to them: www.myspace.com/ovedanielsen
The rest of this week is going to be pretty busy. Tomorrow I'm recording some Hammond B3 organ (with a Leslie amp), then Thursday Matt comes, and Friday I travel to Tønsberg for the weekend, where I'm playing for a youth event. Hopefully I can get Matt settled before I leave. Warren missed his flight from Frankfurt, so we're praying he arrives safely today and is able to make it to Bergen for his dentist appointment. Crazy things.
Oh, I met an Afghani on the bus on my way home from Odda. We spoke some Dari together, though he is actually Pashtun, a language which I don't know, unfortunately. My language was a bit confused, what with all the Norwegian I've been trying to learn, but I was able to communicate pretty effectively. That was really cool. I couldn't quite catch whether he was here for a long time, or just temporarily working a job before he returns to Oslo. Hopefully I'll meet him again.

Sabbath Rest

Today being sunday, and having gotten a good night's sleep last night, I hung out at home and read and played music, listened to John Piper and did a slight bit of recording. I borrowed a friend's bass last week, and just now got around to recording it on a couple of songs - Play Switch (I wasn't happy with the tone of the earlier bass) and Ove's song I Will Hope Continually. I'm not sure I'll keep the bass on that second one.
You can see me in this picture playing the bass. I relocated my desk to the living room of the apartment, in preparation for Matt's coming this week, and I think the new location is pretty nice, actually. Gives it more of an office feel when I sit down at the computer.
The bass belongs to Jan Olav Andersson, and is pretty nice. It's an old Ibanez (they like the Japanese-made instruments around here) from the 70s - an Eagle bass. Has a nice growly attack and a smooth sound and feel. I recorded direct through the Mbox and am really liking the takes I got.
I also did some laundry, the dishes, and a few other things like nailing nails into a board so I have somewhere to put all my Uncle's keys other than in a pile. I also played around a bit with GarageBand. It's a pretty cool program, but as always I have issues with it. ONly because I dual-partitioned my hard drive, though. So I had to figure out the Mac OS X file structure and copy the files onto the second hard drive so Garageband could find the loops. I don't know why they don't just have an option in preferences that lets you select WHere to look for loops, rather than forcing you to copy the files on a dual-boot system. I think that was an issue they didn't think of though.
It just started raining, so after I post this I'll probably call it a night and crash early. Tomorrow's a busy day. I'd like to watch a DVD, but that means I'd have to change the DVD region on my player, and I'm not interested yet. I need to see if I can find a player online that lets you bypass the region. Though with Mac it might be a hardware lock...

A Bad Night's Sleep

Last night I went to bed around 11:30pm. Which is normal, given that the sun doesn't really go down until 1am. What isn't normal, though, is that I lay in bed until 5:30 am before I finally fell asleep. I don't know if I was just thinking a lot (sometimes my mind just spins incessantly, but maybe I was trying to process all the norwegian I had just learned) or I had eaten the wrong kind of food just before bed (spaghetti and hamburger meat in sauce), or it was just so warm (even though I had opened all the windows), or it was too noisy outside (cars revving their engines outside the apartment at 3am and kids yelling, not to mention the birds that started up a racket at about 4am when the sun rose), or what. Kind of strange.
Needless to say, I didn't feel all that well-rested when I got up at 10:30. I then went in to Odda to record some saxophone with Ove. That was fun, but tiring. Jazz sax - a little gospel feel for the one song, and then more pop-oriented for the other. It's been great to work with Ove as a co-producer, to give suggestions and help steer the ship, as it were. Perhaps not as much creative control, but after all, it's more his vision than mine. I think we got some great tracks today - now we only have three more that Ove wants other instruments on. We have the rest of this week to record, and then the schedule calls for mixing from then on. It's good to have deadlines sometimes.

Shopping Day

Today was a shopping day. I went in to Odda in the early afternoon, brought my computer along. I returned some books to the library (2 of the 3 language courses) and did a few other things - bought some more minutes for my cell phone on the pay as you go plan. I discovered that all the language courses teach the same dialect of Norwegian, which happens to be the dialect around Oslo. So if I listen to the CDs that come along with the books, I sound very different than the people around here. But at least the language is written the same in both places, so I can learn vocab through the books.
I spent some time at the Filadelfia on their internet, checking email and trying to make contact with people to plan out some concerts for the later summer, early fall. Somewhat unfruitful, but maybe that's what happens when you leave the country for a few months.
I then went to meet with Knut Dale to study some more Norwegian. He was very helpful with the short wordlist I had compiled, and was able to give insight on some things I had noticed: the word 'lære' means both 'teach' and 'learn', depending on the context - also the dialect here differs from Oslo with a lot of the common question words, saying 'kå' instead of 'hva' (means 'what'). He also really helped me with pronunciation of Nynorsk as we read from Proverbs. I tend to have trouble with the 'u' and 'o' sounds, with making the vowel sounds right in multi-syllabic words (I want to keep the same mouth shape and just move my tongue), and also with putting emphasis on the wrong syllable (emphasizing the first syllable is generally the rule in Norwegian). To name a few issues.

Norwegian Wood 2

The other day Ove asked me to play a few songs in a concert that was happening in Tyssedal's church. The place he leads worship (Bedehuse) was sponsoring it. So yesterday and today we were busy setting up and playing. I borrowed the key to the church yesterday evening, and overnight I recorded some vocals in the sanctuary. It's a great place for vocals - natural reverb with the high ceilings and natural wood, but not too much bounce. Actually, the guitar tracks I recorded in there sounded pretty good too. Something about all the space, I guess.
Here's a shot of my recording stuff all set up in front (computer on the right), with the sound system up as well. I got some great takes. I was a little worried because earlier in the day, when we were setting up, I discovered a nest of birds just on the outside of the wall, in the eaves. Every now and then they would send up a chorus of 'cheep! cheep!' as the parent came with food. And it wasn't something you could predict, so I wasn't sure how that would go. Luckily, at night they were silent. Of course, night doesn't fall until midnight now, here in Norway. So I was recording from about 11:30 to 2:30. At least I can sleep in. Except for the sunlight coming through my window at 6am. But despite that I managed to stay in bed until 11 or so this morning.
But the concert went well, I thought - lots of people there, and most of them didn't speak much english. They listened well though, and seemed to appreciate the songs, especially the one I wrote in Nynorsk. I have my doubts about how much they understood of that song either, though, what with my accent and all. I've also learned that a lot of Norwegians don't understand Nynorsk anyway. It's like a strange dialect, and you have to study it to really know it. It's probably easier to understand than English, though.

Behind the times

So I guess I'm a bit behind on my blogging, so I'll give a quick overview, though no pictures, unfortunately. Sunday I hung out at home - listened to a sermon by John Piper, did some mixing. I wrote a couple songs as well, which was pretty cool! I'll unveil them at some point, but you guys have to be patient.
Monday and today I've been doing more of the same, as well as doing some fixing up of apartments and chasing down electric companies. I met with Ove a couple times to do some overdubbing and continued to work on mixes. I'm also re-ordering my apartment to get ready for Matt's coming - just a week or so away, pretty crazy. Time is flying.

Smelteverk

The Smelteverk used to be the largest employer in Odda and the area. At one point it had between 500 and 800 workers. Don't quote me on that. =) But there were a lot of people working there. I think this was around the turn of the century. It was the largest Calcium Carbide factory in the world, according to my Uncle. The following story is also according to my uncle:
There were two American brothers who owned the second largest calcium carbide factory in the world, at the time, based in Germany. Through various means they bought the Smelteverk and ran it into the ground. Their purpose was to drive up the price of calcium carbide by limiting the supply (they must have read Mr. Smith's book on economics), and they succeeded. In the process they decimated the local economy and the government here in Norway didn't do anything to stop them. Eventually they just left, the factory mostly in ruins and the ground contaminated, and most of the workers left as well. The land now belongs to the government by default.
If you go around Odda, most of the old buildings are somehow connected to the Smelteverk - many of them built by the original owners of the factory to house workers or provide places of entertainment, shops, a library, etc.. There is actually still a performance hall located on the premises of the factory that gets regular use. It seats about 500 people and is usually full for a performance. But most of the land and the buildings are in disrepair.