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| follow the footprints |
Besides, a journey cannot be a journey without a beginning….
I remember ice. It was a winter’s night we walked across the
car park of Oslo’s old Fornebu Airport, when I was eighteen. Oslo
had a light as I’d never seen, of a soft cloudy grey variety delivered in small
parcels by the illumination of the lampposts.
It was a light of punctuation rather than words. The trolley slid and I slipped a bit as I
followed my new host father to the space he’d found for the car. I felt my chin freezing. Along with the astonishment of being for the
first time beyond Australia
I held a minor measure of disappointment.
My host father was old.
All the Rotary exchange students from Australia had been met by their families, where
we would billet for the first three weeks in an Oslo satellite town, Lillestrøm, in order to
attend an introductory Norwegian language course before travelling to our final
destinations across the country to spend the year. I was the last to be met and I wondered if
they’d forgotten me, whoever they were.
When he did arrive he was tall and slim, Olav, with cotton thread hair
in white and a red glow about his cheeks.
He was the clean cut younger brother of Santa Claus. Olav wore glasses and must’ve been in his
seventies. I imagined playing bingo in a
retirement home.
He’d brought a jacket I had to put on, doing up the zipper
then the outside studs until the collar pushed the underside of my chin. He’d arranged my scarf and there was a beanie
and ski gloves. I was more clad than at
anytime previously for that journey across the car park. We loaded my belongings into the boot and I
walked to the front to get in. There
were barely words in any of this for Olav spoke little English, though he
tried. When I opened the car door he
abruptly stopped, eyeing me with surprise, and upon looking in, I realised that
by instinct I’d gone to the driver’s side.
They drive on the right here, I scolded myself. Finding the other side where Norwegian
passengers sit I unrobed for the heating.
Off came ski gloves and beanie, jacket studs were unclipped, jacket
zipper undone and scarf unwound.
The first glimpses of Oslo
were enticing. There were old buildings
of large stone blocks, grey or painted in pastel yellow or light blue and the
footpaths were made of bitumen; they needed round blue street signs with
walking people outlined in white to direct cars not to go there. Suburban houses were wooden and starkly
painted in red, yellow, blue or black and the road tunnels under the city
centre were not neatly tiled like the small number of examples that Sydney had, but rough,
cavernous and suitable exactly for the inhabitation of trolls. The simplicity of train platforms, the ice on
the Oslo fjord
and the billboards of foreign disposition, especially if they featured the
extra letters, with an ‘æ’, ‘ø’ or ‘å’
in them, were marvellous. There would’ve
been a conversation of interest with Olav had there been the means.
But the excitement of the evening scenery was outdone by something
unexpected: the driving. On icy roads it
is to be imagined the car would slide a bit but it soon became apparent that
the unsteadiness in the weather was more than matched by the unsteadiness in
Olav’s steering. In the forty minutes it
took to cross the city we nearly had a few accidents and when Olav changed
lanes other cars honked at us, the ones we were set to collide with, causing
him to get nervous and swerve jerkily back the other way. I found myself holding onto the door, no
longer embarrassed about having gone without thought to the driver’s side. It might’ve been the best option.
I wondered if his lenses were sufficiently thick, not
knowing he was an optometrist.
My new home in Rælingen, across the Nitelv River
My host mother Gunborg waited. She had a wrinkly round face and permed brown
hair such that she could’ve been Santa Claus’s sister-in-law; and she wore an
apron when she cooked. She spoke no more
English than her husband; I suppose it wasn’t the lingua franca of the North
Pole.
As usual she’d whipped together some culinary masterpiece in
anticipation of our arrival; soon enough I looked forward to every meal. There were boiled mountain potatoes as a
rule, dripped with melted butter. There
was fish or meat, sometimes both, with matching creamy, garlic or gravy
sauces. I liked that the soft drinks
were chilled on the veranda to save fridge space. I liked the taste of deer.
Apart from the white walls, the living room was of deep
colours, burgundy leather, heavy cream and browns. The rich patterns of rugs and the art: the
photos, handmade woollen tapestries and prints of classical Norwegian paintings
on every wall wherever there was space, gave to the house warmth. In Australia our living room was
painted yellow and had just one painting in it.
At meal times Gunborg lit a candle in an old candleholder
they’d bought in Pompeii ,
a Roman replica. In Australia most rooms were lit by
just one or a few ceiling bulbs that cast undeniable light across the breadth
of space and in Hatiya, I would see later, kerosene lamps and candles held
ground from their being no other option.
But in Norway
each room had numerous light sources.
There were lamps with metal skeletons that could be bent in strained
configurations for reading or sewing, table and free standing lamps in
classical or modern design, of ceramic, copper or glass, and candles, regularly
lit, on shelves, tables and windowsills.
On the ceilings as often as not were no lights at all. My Australian father was forever telling us
to turn off lights as we left each room, to conserve electricity. It wasn’t the environment he wished to save
but the bill, and candles were out of the question save for blackouts since
they would burn the house down when we forgot about them. In Norway nobody cared about
either. ‘It is dark in winter,’ they
said, ‘We need light.’
The Norwegian way of light was initially annoying, absent of
the convenience of a single switch, especially when looking for something in
luggage for example; and because every lamp seemed to have its switch in a
different place. But after a while I
reconsidered. The grades of shadow from
lamp to lamp, the meeting of light arcs and the flickering ceiling patterns of
the candles were like people gathering, mimicking the changing shades and
arrangements of life. Light in Norway was a
continuous conversation. Outside, with
the night sky turning a soft pink from the reflection of the snow, to such
arrangements Norway
gave a nod.
Snuggled under the doona on that first evening in Rælingen,
on the fold down velvety couch that was my bed, I was ecstatic. Picturing a globe in my mind I was quite in
awe I was now at the top of it. ‘Norway ,’ I repeated to myself, ‘I’m in Norway .’ It was reassurance I really was.
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| We need light |
fire dance water snake
the scientific centre
cloud mountain green life
Like a Portuguese explorer
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