Luster Sanatorium... again.

Soon after my first visit to this peculiar building, I decided I wanted to go back again. Fall was nearing and time was pressing since I was moving away for school, so just over a week later I’m on the road again, ice coffee in hand to compensate for my lack of sleep the night before, also ‘again’. This time I have brought a friend of mine along. Though I expect she is not as entranced by this place as I am, she seem to have some level of genuine interest.

It was only this summer that I happened upon the term “Urban Exploration”, though I have been aware of the phenomenon as a somewhat unusual pastime before. It sort of came to me in the form of a radio documentary on the subject. I realize that what we are doing can hardly be described as such, as this place currently has an owner who has not abandoned it and we even had an appointment with him. This was hardly exploration of anything, except of the mind. I wanted to see who I would be in this sort of place. I expected I would be scared shitless to be frank. After my first trip to this place I had played with the idea that I would be unafraid and unfazed by the undeniable inherent creepiness of an old, decaying hospital. I quickly dismissed this idea though, reminding myself not to get all high on my little victory of last time. “I know myself better than that” I thought.

Back on the subject of Urban Exploration (UE), the documentary (which you can download from P3.no) thrilled me immensely. I have been a sucker for photography ever since I was a little kid and knew nothing about it, but lately it has gotten a bit old. When I first got my beloved Canon D40 4 years ago, I took a lot of pictures. A lot of nice ones even, but mostly they were quite plain. It was pictures of sunny days and flowers, the stuff the general public love to see depicted in great quantities. My style soon got darker. I would take sunshine photos too, but the ones that pleased me the most was and still is the darker ones. Now days I mostly take my camera out for rain, fog and storms. When I first heard this documentary I could easily relay to the idea that decay and imperfection can be some of the most exciting and beautiful things you will ever see. I believed it so much that the depictions of Detroit in said documentary moved me to tears. I might be a bit touchy feely, but at least I won’t lie about it. These things can be surprising and shocking and disturbing in a way that is quite mentally stimulating. It makes funny things happened in my head. There need always be some disturbance in your life or you will surely be bored out of your mind. I once hear that the human brain is so nicely suitable for problem solving, that if you don’t present it with any, it will happily make them for you.

Once we arrive at the Sanatorium our car is nearing the boiling point. The fan is working furiously to cool the overheated engine long after we’ve stopped it, similar to the time when my late Hyundai Getz was leaking coolant. We are driving my parents’ Citroen Berlingo, which used to be a descent car before someone messed up the engine and which they have now forced on me to spare the Ford Focus another go at the messed up road. After having a look under the hood to assess the state of things, we decide there is nothing we can do to help it out of its misery (this car is a bloody mess) and finally take off to locate our guide.

A little while later we enter the basement of the building. After the sunlight outside, the basement appears almost pitch black. Ahead of me I can still see the contours of the guy we are trying to keep up with. Being surefooted and all, I manage pretty good, but I keep peaking over my shoulder for my friend Janne as I am worried she will fall behind. The guy ahead of me says he will show us where not to go and where not to photograph and then we can have a look around on our own and take pictures, and this worries me even more. This is, as expected, quite scary, at least for a little while, and I hadn’t expected that we would be alone in here. The seemingly extremely relaxed nature of our guide soon wears off on me to my great surprise and when we enter the higher levels of the building it shows a softer side as the sun enters trough the big windows and breaks the ice. I have been in places that have unsettled me deeply for no apparent reason and places that have felt strangely soothing. This place belongs in the last category. It actually felt unbelievably calm and quiet in there. I don’t know why. By the time we are left on our own, after having promised to stay out of the buildings soft spots quite literally, my nerves has settled in the corner after having to give way to my curiosity, which is a force to be reckoned with. After having been made to check out one of the soft parts of the floor, I was excited enough by the feeling of it that I still can’t help but giggle stupidly every time I remember it, though I expect it is quite exaggerated in my head by now… I can almost feel the whole house wiggle though I’m sure it didn’t. I could now see that this would be worthwhile, even if I had freaked out and had a panic attack (which has been known to happened though it has been years) in which case I might have gone through the floor. This experience was looking to be very bright and colorful in my mind, and not something I would be without if I could help it. We trothed around cheerfully and just a bit astonished by the look of it all.

The feeling is like that of the apocalypse. This massive structure that was once invested a lot of money and work into, is now crumbling in slow motion all around us. Not even something as vast and strong as this can hold up forever on its own. People often say that things don’t last, but do they truly understand the gravity of it or is it just another fashionable thing to say? Some would say this is ugly, but there is something undeniably true, raw and real here. No one planted the mold and the moss. No one pealed the paint. Decay is the truest story to be told because nobody has bothered to cover it up. Still we are here to marvel at it because it is nothing but the undeniable truth. Outside, a few stories down, more people have arrived. More people come to see, to take it all in. As I’m looking down at them from a third (?) floor window I remember standing down there, staring in amazement a week earlier. This is so surreal. A woman spots me I think. Wonder if she thinks I’m a ghost?

I guess people come for various reasons, but quite a few of us come here to find new stuff, to dig something out of the undiscovered corners of our minds. To see something that isn’t there. Not in the house anyway, and not in us probably, but somewhere in the interaction between the two. I had decided in advance that I would do so, just not in such thought trough terms. These things always come to me in retrospect, when I’m curled up in the soft sofa by the open window in the cozy room that I rent in an old mansion. Inspired by the bright pink paper bag of candy from Sweden and my massive Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary on the table, I put it all into glossy words in an attempt to be very poetic about it. I used to think I should be able to come up with this shit on the fly, but it always comes after.

As we reach the attic we are getting a bit worried about the floor, as it was said to get increasingly bad further up. Out of old habit, I’m a little unsettled by the looks of the long corridor, but it loses its grip almost at once when I set foot inside it. We walk slowly, carefully assessing the state of the woodwork under our feet as we go along. Now we just look through the doors and instead of entering the rooms. Suddenly, I feel a light, cold breeze. We’re all thinking it aren’t we? GHOSTS! But strangely, somehow this was only a lazy afterthought to the more rational “gjennomtrekk” (a quick Google-search turned out the word “turnover” for this expression, but it basically means wind that goes through something, like when you open two window and you have a wind tunnel on your hands). I almost jump in astonishment as I don’t recognize this cold rationality. It might be a call for action (or institutionalization) that I analyze my own thoughts like foreign objects, but this was unbearably peculiar. This should be scary… it really should! I mention this to Janne, and she agrees. Either we have actually taken on the personality of the guy who left us on the second floor an hour earlier and who seemed largely unafraid of anything this building has to offer, or there are something severely calming stuck in the walls… or it’s just nothing, absolutely nothing. No scary things come to mind.

I wanted to see new stuff when I looked through the over 300 pictures I had taken. At first it was a bit of a struggle. Then things started happening, slowly but surely. Little twinkling stars of ideas started to appear. Little sparks that soon started to catch on. I will not be so bold as to say that my pix are great, but to me they are stuff that I have not seen before, which is good. When I start to inspect them and work on them, so much movement and life appear in dead things. There are no ghosts in them though; I don’t even bother looking for them.

All the pictures below has been edited quite heavily.

Luster Sanatorium

Last summer I was driving. It is late, it is incredibly warm and we are on a summer holiday. My mum was in the passenger seat, my dad was sleeping outstretched in the backseat. Suddenly, I spot something. I pull over. What on earth is that?! I’ve spotted something massive and white on the hillside across the fjord. It appears to be a building of sorts, but I cannot imagine what it would be doing up there. After all, we are in the middle of nowhere in one of the least densely populated areas in Norway... by my estimation at least, and this thing is in the middle of the forest up on a mountain. I grab something from the backseat that turns out to be my dad’s leg and not the 55-250 mm zoom-lens for my camera that I had meant to get. Having awoken him anyway I start to question him about this building he was on about earlier, that I had paid little attention to. Hadn’t he said there was a Tuberculosis sanatorium turned mental institution turned home for refugees in a remote location somewhere around here? Could that be the place I wonder aloud as I carefully mount the more appropriate lens on my camera. He agrees that it probably is. I point my camera in the right direction and zoom in to get a good shot of what looks disturbingly like the Overlook Hotel, straight out of the Shining, and so terribly misplaced that it is in fact wildly fascinating.

For the remainder of the evening and the following day I talk enough about this to inspire my mum to ask the manager of the nearby hotel we stay at if he knows what building it is. He identifies it as Harastølen aka Gamle Luster Sanatorium and I get something to go on, water on my mill if you will.

As soon as we get home and I am reunited with my beloved computer, I start to research this place. I come upon massive amounts of images and quite a bit of information on the history of the place. Almost a year later (in May I think), I still haven’t forgotten about it, and neither has a friend of mine who’s ears are probably still recovering from my talking about it and the surrealness of it. She sends me a link on facebook. It’s a news story about how the sanatorium is going to be demolished. Now we need to get a move on if we want to see it.

By the end of the summer the sanatorium is brought up again, and still not by me. I’m really stressed out after having to be the boss of my lazy brother at work all through the summer, which starts with him actually doing as he is told, goes on to him being rude and obnoxious and me being a total doormat, before culminating with me telling him to fuck off and do as I say and ignoring mean comments on how I handle things. Quite a bit of growing up in other words. This leaves my mum very uneasy and a bit desperate to pull me out of the bad mood that I have settled in. She finally comes up with a solution. We are to go on a road trip of my choice for the holyday that I have been intending to force on her all summer. “Maybe we can go and have a look at that house even?” she suggests while carefully monitoring my gloomy face for any sign of change. “What house?” I ask, genuinely puzzled. “You know, the one we saw last summer. The one you wanted to see!”. As the realization that she is actually talking about the sanatorium start to materialize in my brain, I gradually start to light up a notch.

The next day, I start planning the trip. Someone more capable of rational thinking might think it useful and smart to lay out a plan of each day in equal amounts of detail, but not me apparently. For the second day, the plan was that I had the road memorized from last year and therefore we would go there. For the third day I had sort of memorized a few of the major shifts in direction I could see on the map and my plan was mostly to go on sheer luck and road signs as I had never been in the area before and find the GPS increasingly annoying. I can still hear it going “Sving til venstre. Sving til venstre! ...snu når det er mulig!” and “ta en u-sving!” implying that it is very wrong of me to stop at a gas station. The first day however, was not to go wrong in any way. By the help of various forums, Google Maps and NAF Veibok (the Norwegian Car Association’s Road Book, or something to that effect) I had mapped out the road in my head and calculated the time it would take to get there as accurately as possible. Google Maps gave me the estimated time needed to get to Luster and I could even decide where to leave the main road by help of Google StreetView. Though the little Google-car hadn’t bothered going all the way up, I read somewhere that the road up is about 7 km long and have suffered some serious decay. With a somewhat optimistic assumed average speed of 30 km/h, this should take about 14 minutes. Had I been as good a shrink to myself as I sometimes pride myself on, I might have seen in advance that this trip was basically over after the first day. My assumed average speed was indeed a bit optimistic as the road had an incredible amount of dents in it and our all too low Ford Focus just wasn’t built for this sort of treatment. I managed to keep my cool while my mum was growing slightly panicky in the passenger seat, and couldn’t help but smile a bit at the ridiculous road. It really was almost surreal that this road would go on for 7 km in this awful condition, let alone actually lead somewhere! It was quite entertaining.

When we finally caught sight of the large white building I was ecstatic... and was a little bit out of it after having to work so hard on keeping the underside of the car off the ground. It turns out we are not alone though. A car is parked by the building and there is a group of 4-5 people around my age that seem to have just arrived. They look as if they’ve been caught red handed and watch us verily as we pull in. I figure they are out in the same errand as us and put up an effort to act disarming and quickly get out my camera, hoping to calm them down since I’m of a very sensitive nature and their nervousness is almost painful to see and effectively wearing off on me. We all soon calm down and start to venture along the impressive length of the building. It soon becomes clear that the sanatorium had grown to massive proportions in my head and was slightly less massive in reality. I actually, quite unfounded, felt that it was a bit small, though it obviously wasn’t. Another thing that had grown out of proportion was the scare factor. When we neared the end of the main building we spot a man coming out of it. This turns of to be the owner of the building that informs us that there is no chance of having a look around inside today but we are welcome to have a look around the outside so long as we stay clear of falling tiles and bricks in order to keep ourselves from being beheaded. While my mum stays around to chat with the owner, I take off in search of something. I search around the front and later around the back for the fear that felt so tangible and real while I was anticipating it at home in front of the computer screen. It has been a year since I first lay eyes on this thing from afar and ever since I’ve been imagining how scared I would be just being in the presence of such a vast abnormality. Maybe my homemade therapy consisting of taking long walks alone in the dark on a daily basis has paid off? I don’t think that is it. As I pass by my mum and the owner again on my way to the back (this is one of the few buildings I have seen that actually has a distinguish front and back) I am told that there is no ghosts and that this place is as calm and serene as anything. No way! How can this be? But clearly the guy is right. He should know. Deep inside I know I wouldn’t be walking around on my own like this if I were as entrance by the scariness of this building as I had almost planned to be. Even the fact that the second floor lights are on is explained as easy and logically as the flick of a switch by a fully human hand. What a bummer. Despite the raw beauty of such a massive structure falling apart bit by bit, I feel strangely cheated by my lack of fear. This leads me to feel very unhappy that I would not be able to see the inside of it. This place was as serene a cemetery in the afternoon. A cemetery is only scary with darkness to go with it and properly seasoned by an imagination that blows new life into the ground and gives every movement as natural as can be a taste of messages from the beyond. Believe me, I should know about cemeteries working the summer job that I do. I even accidentally locked a woman in a church once, and she wasn’t even scared.

I still don’t think my great fearlessness is responsible for this experience that was at first almost annoying. Just a week earlier I had been getting very jumpy just nearing an old decaying lighthouse that I keep feeling compelled to come back to for some abnormal reason despite feeling so strongly repelled by it when I actually get there that it feels almost like a physical wall in front of me should I dare to venture just a few meters away from the others (I’ve found that going there alone is futile) and I am in the very annoying habit of almost immediately starting to inquire about whether we are going to leave soon.

I could only be annoyed for so long though. Now I gleefully enjoy the fact that it wasn’t scary. Especially on a day like today when everything is so great I’m almost jumping up and down. The whole experience was weird and interesting and fresh and unexplained and unexpected, like I’ve found a little glitch or a bug in the universe that no one has thought to sort out. What could be better? Just look at me writing this text! I started just past midnight and was going to write for half an hour tops. The next thing I know it’s 4 am! I feel like I could write a book about this place!

Here are some pictures that I almost forgot to add between thinking to myself what a great day this:

I very strongly felt the need to add something that might have been scary had it been real or at least remotely realistic looking:

It still almost made me jump out of my chair when I accidentally opened it on my computer and then made me laugh at my own stupidity. Those eyes are murdering me! :P

Therapy for free

I am sitting on the sofa. I feel like shit. I’m depressed like shit. Why is it like this? Why am I so unbelievably depressed? Should I feel sorry for myself? Should other people feel sorry for me? No... probably not. Or maybe they should. Maybe I’m manic depressive... that sure fits like a glow. Maybe I should be diagnosed. Where and how does one get such a diagnosis? I would probably have to go to a shrink. I cringe. I don’t want someone to tell me how to be. Wait a sec... what do I want with a diagnosis anyway? So I can feel even sorrier for myself? So I can tell myself I’m hopeless? I turn my head and spot a drawing on the wall. It’s of me, even though I didn’t actually bother to make it look anything like me. I look confused in the drawing. I give this version of myself the silliest voice and imagine her going:

“I’m manic depressive. There is nothing to be done about it. I might as well lay back and let it play out because I’m a total nut job!”

I snort. Jesus Christ! Now that’s depressing! I don’t want a diagnosis anymore. I’d just lay back and be even more depressed. They’d probably just give me meds and I don’t want meds. My head will just have to do without meds unless it gets too far out, cause meds always make me feel bad and in my book it’s a safer bet that I can deal with my mind then that I can deal with meds. I almost got myself addicted to fairly mild painkillers one time for crying out loud! So the shrinks can just keep their God damn pills. My liver is in good shape from my general dislike of alcohol so I don’t want to mess it up. I’m not that depressed after all. If I think about it real good, it’s not so bad :)

"Tripping on anaesthesia"

(the portrait in question)

Retroreflectors and elevator springs.

One day I was sent to fetch something in an old barn whose age is unknown. As I slid open the big red doors, red eyes start to open, red dots start to appear, curious as to what is disturbing the peace. It must be retro reflectors on the rear end of some sort of vehicles I decide, as any other explanation that comes to mind is highly repellent. I take a deep breath and step into the dusty, old darkness. I’ve taken a few steps inside before the angst start to seep in. The feeling is as though I slip into a dark pool that have gone undisturbed for the better part of the century, and now engulf me like starved quicksand. No questions asked, just step inside and fill the almost tangible loneliness in the air. It feels like something, maybe the building itself or whatever inhabits it, is zooming in on me, watching me. Like an old-folks-home where no one had visited for the longest time and the residents swarm around to check out the exciting outsider. Sometimes people come to the door, or even step inside, but no one goes to the back unless they have a good reason for it.

I can’t remember where the light switch is so I’ll just have to navigate through the darkness by the help of the scarce light that somehow makes it through the old structure. I can feel the atmosphere growing around me as I take in the gloomy landscape that is still growing and expanding as my eyes slowly adjust to the dim light. My panicky response is to make it even vaster by supplying every scene from every horror movie I’ve ever watched, just to maximize the experience.

Eventually, between the seemingly random collections of funny things, I arrive at the spot where the lawn mower in question is situated. It looks weathered and worn, but under the overwhelming amounts of dust and dry grass, it looks as though it’s itching, dying to get out of here, out of its idle boredom in this drop box for inadequate things. It still works and thus feels very strongly that it has been misplaced. It was almost calling for me in the silence where it might be doomed to stay for the rest of its life. Had it been able, it would have spun its little wheals and let me know with, ample enthusiasm, that it was the one under the table. I grab the other one, the one that is long gone and has no will to move, to work, and nothing against grass really. In its old days it has retired and settled in a nice spot by the snowblower and a massive set of springs that looks like it belongs at the bottom of an elevator shaft. It is slightly shocked and awfully offended by the abrupt change in plans with no opportunity for formal complaint. This can be felt in the resistance it puts up as the wheals start to move very slowly and I start to wonder what my boss is thinking. But I have more pull in me than the retired apparatus has resistance. It comes along, creaking and complaining loudly. I didn’t see the other one, almost bouncing in frustration under the table. “Why won’t anyone try me?” it wonders at the moment when it would have produced a few tears (or a few drops of oil) in great harmony and tune with some depressing music had this been a Hollywood movie.

Stryn Sommarski

When Stryn Summer-ski resort opened for the season, I was on the spot, ready to check out the conditions. Having spent enough of the spring drawling on the last spots of snow on the mountains surrounding my home town, I was ready for some more snowboarding.

The parking lot was full and people were told to park along the road. I ended up a few hundred meters further up the road from the resort. After I was done snowboarding I had to walk all the way back to the car.

The road is quite narrow to begin with, but with cars parked along it, it becomes even narrower. On one side there is about a meter of snow that gives way to the view of mountains, the blue sky and some strange glowing orb in the sky, whose name I manage to forget in the vast wasteland of gray clouds that comes between every time it bothers to make an appearance. On the other side there is a white wall that does not seem inclined to give way to anything. It reaches about 4 meters in the general direction of the heavens. In fact the only thing it seems inclined to is to fill in the gap, which is the road. It is a warm day, not the day one would feel comfortable this close to a wall of snow. Actually, scratch that! Upon closer inspection, (I couldn’t help but run my fingers along it as I was walking by) this was a wall of slush. I was wearing a t-shirt, my sweatpants were pulled up to my knees and my feet were shoeless on the warm asphalt. I reached out and grasped a fistful of slush from the towering wall. Such a vast amount of snow is a strange sight to see up close, all the while being good and warm in the summer sun. Like ice-cream served with a warm piece of apple pie, or picking summer flowers wearing mittens. As the snow is slowly dripping away from my hand, I realized that this is... what is the word? Awesome? Funny? Cool? Nice? Anyway, it’s a moment, and it’s a good one. I’m very easily moved in any sort of emotional direction, so by design, I’m smiling from ear to ear at this point. I hadn’t even noticed. I slap my hand over my mouth and nervously look around to see if anybody saw me. Already sure my lack of sanity is now an established fact around these parts of the world, I’m relieved to find there is nothing but cars, snow and more cars for at least a hundred meters in every direction. Though not very pliable, my face has now been forcefully altered and manipulated into a more suitable expression (I hope), so I remove my hand. I don’t want to come across like a total geek/freak/you-name-it. Now, I look cool, bored and generally uninterested in the world. My favourite things to do is snowboarding, drive fast and climb rocks as far as I can go with no rope just to spend an hour wondering how on earth I’m going to get back down... my point is that I can’t just go around getting so easily entertained by such stupid things. I gave myself a mental knock in the head and continued up the road. On my left side, the wall was slowly melting and slowly leaning in. But I would not be interested by this. Because even if there might be a risk worth considering, no one else was paying it any attention and there was nothing I could do to sway the outcome one way or the other. I can see my car now. I put my left foot down. Still barefoot, my skin hits something cold. Before I have time to react, I’ve put my foot all the way down and the chill spreads unevenly. Close and covering near the sole of my foot, but it scatters into individual dots of cold further up. Like something breaking into little pieces. Even before the initial shock has worn off, I have discovered the cause of this peculiar feeling. I’ve stepped into the little stream of melted snow on the road. I almost burst into laughter, being off guard, but I catch myself in time and leap for the safety of the car. Once safely inside, I sigh with relief. That stupid snow almost had me there.

Farther down the road, a buss has stopped and the passengers have been less fortunate. They are all deeply entranced, something that can easily be diagnosed by their behaviour. In one large crowd, they exit the buss and make their way over to the snow. Excited beyond belief, the all start to touch it and make snowballs, all the while grinning like the Cheshire Cat with eyes wide and somewhat bewildered. They’ve got it bad!

Languages, dyslexia and other shit.

I am extremely interested in languages. Recently, I was reading an article on Wikipedia about dyslexia and I came across something interesting. Apparently, some languages are more dyslexia-friendly then others. According to this text, I should struggle severely with English as it has very deep orthography (don’t ask me, ask Wikipedia: Orthographic depth and Dyslexia). I do find spelling in English quite backwards and unmanageable, but I always figured it was just because it’s not Norwegian...

My English is mostly a product of my inability to read fast enough to keep up with the subtitles on TV and in movies, a problem which forced me to learn to understand English much faster and better then I otherwise would have to. Still, I sometimes find it quite troublesome, so I was open to alternatives. Naturally, I would jump at the idea that English is indeed very confusing and makes no sense at all. Not for the first time, Wikipedia had shed some light at a seemingly insolvable mystery. This mystery turned out to be quite unsolvable, and surely would not be worthwhile. I figured it was best that I would stop torturing my fragile and confused brain with this weird language. Instead, I might try something more dyslexia-friendly.

I’ve wanted to learn a new language for some time, but it seems I’ve been looking in the wrong direction. English and French are among the more difficult ones (for “special” people like me) because the spelling is so.... well, messed up. Now it seems it is time to give up this language before my brain crashes, like it occasionally does with the effect that I become temporarily word blind (as my diagnosis suggests) and can’t read for a little while, or even explodes and leave me permanently analphabetic. I’m actually a little (or actually a lot) surprised that my brain haven’t come up with some kind of natural defence against it, like spontaneously falling asleep or something when I try to read or write it. The prospect is indeed dark and gloomy but hopefully there is still light at the end of the lingual tunnel.

Reading long books in Norwegian Bokmål (literarily “Book Language”) is getting increasingly dull, but I’m hopelessly hunted by the incurable feeling that things can always be done differently and better if I could only figure out how. I started easy with getting a book in Swedish (Baby Jane by Sofi Oksanen) to see if I could manage to get through it. It turned out to be easy as pie. This left me full of confidence and dyslexia forgotten along with the times when I complained loudly about being made to read a school book in Danish... which is basically the same language as Norwegian on paper. I decided it was time to try something new.

I’ve started to learn different languages before, but I could never really decide which one to focus on. This was clearly a major problem. But I remained confident that it could be done, if I could just figure out how. I can be quite persistent when I set my mind to something. Actually, it’s more like my mind take a liking to certain things with no regard to what is actually useful to know, and then I think about it nonstop weather I want to or not. It’s really annoying. Like this audio book that I’ve been listening to at work lately. It’s in Swedish, which is pretty straight forward for most Norwegians to understand, but there are always new words and phrases to figure out, so after listening to it for a while, I find myself thinking in Swedish for hours afterwards. I can’t seem to get a Norwegian thought in edgewise. When I talk, it even starts to sound a bit like Swedish, even though it’s Norwegian, if that makes any sense. Also, once when I and a friend went to Iceland, we were excited to learn some Icelandic. My head ended up totally hell bent on figuring it out and was constantly comparing it to Norwegian, with the result that I became pretty much incapable of saying even the most basic things in English (true story!). When we did speak English, we also mixed Norwegian in with the English because some words are the same in Norwegian and Icelandic (“ja”, “nei”, “takk” etc). This is where my brain draws the line at lingual oddities and refuses to follow. Just to top it up, some of the shopkeepers and guides unexpectedly spoke Norwegian to us, which left me unsure if they spoke Norwegian or just some particularly understandable Icelandic words. If I hadn’t been concentrating, I was sometimes even unsure if it hadn’t been English. Having just reminded myself of all of this, I start to wonder if learning more words in strange, foreign languages is a very bad idea. Why, oh why can’t I get a brain-transplant? I’ll take one that doesn’t want to learn anything and doesn’t get itself into problems like this.

I decide to listen to Wikipedia. One of the languages that were listed as being more suitable for people like me was Finnish of all things. I always thought Finnish sounded funny and have been interested in it ever since way back when I used to watch MTV with Finnish subtitles whenever there was nothing on Norwegian, Swedish or Danish MTV. Considering how similar the languages of the other Scandinavian countries are, one might wonder if Finland has been adopted and moved here from somewhere far away. In school, we were told long ago never to even think about trying to learn Finnish or Sami because it is apparently way too difficult for anyone to work out. This could only be viewed as a challenge. Finnish sounds just funny enough, is just difficult enough and dyslexia-friendly enough that it can only be viewed (by me at least) as the perfect challenge. Also, it is just useless enough that there is no pressure on me to ever really figure it out. When will I ever need to know Finnish? It’s just a bonus if I do.

Finnish is indeed challenging, but it’s actually going better than expected. I haven’t memorized a whole lot of words yet, but I’m starting to get a feel for it. And more importantly, I’ve managed to keep up the enthusiasm! Which is by far the most important thing. I started out at PurposeGames.com to learn a few words to start with (numbers, months, weekdays, colours, names of European countries etc). Asides from that, my vocabulary (it feels a bit bold to call it that) is mostly restricted to what I have been able to decipher from Finnish news. One of the first words I learned was “lumilautailu” (snowboarding) and that trend still sticks, so now I can understand quite a bit when I read news stories... as long as it’s on snowboarding. It is pretty easy to learn the spelling too because it actually makes sense! My brain doesn’t protest violently the same way it still does every time I write English. I thought Wikipedia was a bit off, as it seemed to good to be true, but it turns out they were spot on... or at least whoever wrote the article was.

The other day, I finally managed to get my hands on a little Finnish – Norwegian dictionary. So now I look up all kinds of stuff that pops into my head.

There will probably be more on this later as my enthusiasm flourishes and the people around me become increasingly bored with listening to me :P

One thing that particularly annoys me about English is this business with dividing words that in Norwegian would be written in onewordlikethis. In Norwegian we call it “orddelingsfeil” (word dividing errors?) and it makes all the alarm bells in my head go off even though I know very well that it’s not the same in English :P

My epic fail.

I’m sliding down a hill with a slightly worn out board still separating me from the wet slush. Throughout the day, I have worked up my courage the way courage can easily be manufactured given the right circumstances. At this point I was sure I could handle whatever the semi-natural (or shall we say “accidentally man made”) feature ahead of me can throw at me. How I came to think such a thought is unknown to me, as it was only this winter that I strongly preferred to keep the entire length of my board on the ground at all times. Still, boldly certain, I crouched myself together as tight as I dared and picked up enough speed to make it up the hill ahead, and then some. The uphill bit passed in an instant as I eagerly awaited the view of the other side of this corner-thingy. I hadn’t actually bothered to check, though I had passed by it several times. I can imagine my jaw dropping as I glide off from the top and into thin air, looking for my landing. I say “imagine” because at this point in time there wasn’t room in my head for much else then the cold revelation that there wasn’t really that much on the other side of that corner. Epic! There is no other word in my (English) vocabulary that quite describes this moment. I was flying, I was falling, I was crashing and there was nothing I could do about it. Just to top it up, I had actually put myself in this situation of my own accord. As much as my brain twisted and turned, I couldn’t find anything even remotely similar to an explanation.

The landing had probably been worn down from excessive use or melted away by the sun. Whatever the cause, it had been replaced by a 2-3 meter drop and a landing as flat as a pancake. Maybe this was the make shift halfpipe I had overheard someone talking about? If it was, they probably hadn’t meant for it to be entered from the air. When I hit the ground, my poor legs didn’t stand a chance in their feeble attempts to withstand the force of the impossibly flat spot I landed in. The fact that I land with my board in the wrong direction and flat based didn’t exactly help. They gave way like jello and I was forcefully lined up with the ground. This somehow didn’t hurt. Relived, I rolled myself around to face skywards and sat up for a moment. Then I bounced back onto my feet, suddenly hyper aware that a bunch of people were in view farther down the hill, and some of them were watching me. I started to slide slowly downhill, checking if my body and mind still worked. Then I made a few slushy turns and even got in a few tiny jumps to take the edge of what had just happened. It was actually quite unbelievable. I had barely jumped before so this was by far my most dramatic and worst looking fall on a snowboard. Still it didn’t hurt at all, at least not right away.

It was only a little while later that I started to notice how much more troublesome the slush came to be all of a sudden. How I could barely walk in a straight line and how I almost fell over twice while changing into some dry clothes. My head wasn’t on quite straight apparently and suddenly I understood the feeling of being here and bin a dream at the same time. I was wearing a helmet and my head didn’t even touch down, but it haven’t been the same ever since my concussion.

I’m still morbidly fascinated this whole situation. I was thinking I’ve manage to change my mind set a bit since the two car accidents this spring, but I felt it was a bit forced and would take some time to settle if it ever did. To be honest I thought it would wear off quickly. It seems my lack of faith in my own brainwashing abilities is quite unfounded. Just the concept of me doing something like this didn’t fit in anywhere in the known reaches of my twisted mind. This is a bit worrisome to me, even though I did indeed set out to brainwash myself after the first accident in April. I didn’t actually thing it would work, at least not as good as this. I did not recognize myself in this situation. Even that same morning I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that I would go and do something like this. Creepy! Had I not still had a healthy dose of self-restraint and fear still intact, I might already be plotting my next move. Maybe I’d make myself into a duck or something.

In the sketch below I am apparently falling on top of a completely unrelated copy from a book about languages and a section about cases. “NORSK ER ET LITE SPRÅK SOM ER I FERD MED Å DØ UT og andre myter om språk” by Guro Fløgstad and Anders Vaa. Really good book actually, go get it!

It started to rain just as I was about to leave. I took this while just sitting around on a rock, waiting for my head to level itself out enough for me to drive back down to Stryn at the very least.

I managed eventually, but I was grinding my teeth the whole time, taking a lot of breaks and constantly analysing my own driving to be sure I would catch even the slightest sign that I should pull over. I had the funniest feeling that I needed to be really careful not to drift away mentally.