Rodent Tourism

She had a dainty nose, small and pointed; her eyes were chocolate brown and shaped as watermelon seeds.  Through the brown silk of her hair could be seen the pink flesh of her small, rounded ears.  Her body was a little plump, overweight; but she was loved.  As she flitted about, like a bridal party attending to its bride it followed her: that long earthworm of a tail.

I’ve never had any particular affection for rats, but this one was the pet of some friends of a friend, many years past in that town of islands, Kristiansund in Norway.  She had free run of the house, the rat, and they seemed not to mind as she scurried up their arm or circumnavigated their necks.  Rats only live for a year or two, they said; so a life-long friendship for a rat is but several seasons.

People are never alone in this world: naturally enough there are other rat admirers amongst us, people enamoured of rodents.  This article is for them, for should one find oneself desirous of rodent-company whilst on holiday, there are options.

Entrance gate to the Kani Mata Temple, Deshnoke, Rajasthan

Deshnoke is a small town of around 15,000 people about thirty kilometres from Bikaner in Rajasthan.  It’s not a town that’d attract much attention, being not dissimilar to any of the other small towns in the brush country of the Thar Desert, if were not for the Karni Mata Temple.

Born in 1387, Karni Mata was a mystic believed to be a reincarnation of Durga; it is said she performed many miracles.  When her stepson Laxman drowned while attempting to take a drink from a tank, Karni Mata urged the god of death Yama to bring him back to life. 

Yama initially refused, but later allowed all of Karni Mata’s male children to be reincarnated as rats.  Alternatively, the 20,000 mostly brown rats that are fed, protected and worshipped at the temple are said to hold the souls of traditional bards called Charans.  Karni Mata is said to have been 151 years old when she died.

Removing one's shoes at the grand silver gates that mark the entrance, it's quite a novel experience to wander a courtyard populated by rats.  At the altar it's possible to seek Karni Mata's blessing, consuming Prasad, the edible offerings shared by the rodents.

The temple is said to reinforce a simple truth: all life is sacred, even rats. 

It is auspicious to see a white rat.  It is auspicious if a rat runs across your foot.  And as I was once told, when bubonic plague caused many human deaths in the towns of Rajasthan, in Deshnoke not a single person died, thanks to the blessings of Karni Mata and her temple of rats.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel, St. Lucia

Across the world in the Caribbean, and it may not be there now for there were plans for it to close, there is or was a budget hotel set amongst a lovely rat garden.  It’s a beautiful establishment in the lush subtropical hills above Castries, the quaint capital of St. Lucia.  The rooms are clean and spacious, food delightful, particularly as the reception area and dining table doubled as the living room of Cherie and her family, the local hoteliers.

A laid back French St. Lucian, there was no question Cherie had a soft spot for animals.  The multiple dogs and cats wandering about were additional family members, so the rats should have come as no surprise.  It was while sitting on the balcony enjoying breakfast, with the paradise of the St. Lucian Caribbean spread out like a blanket beneath, with views all the way to the horizon, Martinique, that they could be seen scurrying about in the garden immediately below: large, well-fed and clean.  ‘People said I should poison them,’ Cherie said, ‘but I didn’t have the heart to.’  If St. Lucia is paradisiacal for human beings, Cherie’s garden is the equivalent for the rats.

And if the St. Lucian pedigree of rat, significantly larger than the Deshnoke and Norwegian varieties, proves insufficient, then far to the south of St. Lucia can be found the capybaras, the world’s largest rodents.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel to Martinique

The Argentine wetland of Estero del Ibera abounds with wildlife, monkeys, deer, caimans, which are an alligator relative; and for me the star attraction: the capybara.  As large as a small goat and tail-less, even for the rat-non-lover this marsh-dwelling rodent is something special.

Capybara wades

As usual I’d imagined hours of weary search and maybe slight danger in the quest to locate the species; in the hope of the sort of fleeting glance that would more than satisfy the visitor to the Sundarbans in search of tigers.  Safaris should be like that, but it wasn’t.

It’s possible to hire a boat from the small town of Colonia Pellegrini to navigate the short distance across the lake to the Ranger Station, headquarters of the National Park.  The boat comes with a guide, who with some luck could be named Gaston, for Gaston makes his living that way.

After not more than several minutes, stepping off at the wharf by the Ranger Station, the expedition was done.  There on the grassy lawn was a capybara.  The creature didn’t bother to look up as we walked close enough to punch its broad flat nose; it was terribly busy doing nothing, what capybaras do best; an almost-statue but for the odd grind of the teeth.  It ruminated on grass as an elderly mother-in-law in a Bangladeshi village might chew paan or betel leaf.

Capybara chews

That capybara was seriously so unfazed by human presence I thought it might be a fraud: that some ranger had tamed one to impress the tourists, that it’s probably called Antonio and sleeps at the end of the ranger’s bed.  I wanted a real, wild, useless capybara.

Soon back on the water, after checking-in at the Ranger Station, with the silence of an oar Gaston sidled the dinghy to within inches of a caiman, the crocodilian as long as the boat.  It floated as though dead: but its eye moved.

‘Australian crocodiles can run as fast as horses on land over short distances,’ I told Gaston.  Actually I’ve no idea if its true but I think I might have heard that on TV once.  He was suitably impressed.

Continuing through the reeds two things became apparent.  At Estero del Ibera there were seemingly-lifeless caimans all over the place, their hardy scaled bodies and jagged long jaws floating about here and there, the reptiles completely fearless of the boat.  And there were genuine wild capybaras, different sizes but inevitably fat, and completely fearless of the boat.  It was incredible.  Giant rat swims, giant rat chews something, giant rat does nothing much in particular: all could be seen at incredibly close range.

Capybara wallows

Completely satisfied with my capybara encounters, I was in a better position to enjoy the overactive river otters and the bird life, the most impressive bird being the ungainly southern screamer, something of a cross between vulture and turkey that nested in reed clumps and though I didn’t hear it, must be in the habit of screaming now and then, presumably in a southerly direction. 

A swamp deer watched with this, ‘yeah, whatever’ look, as we paddled close.  What was it with these Argentine animals?  None had the least fear; had they not met humans before?

Capybara does nothing much at all

The great thing about Gaston was his genuine interest.  He must have done that tour every day and probably still does, but he really seemed to love those wetlands, his backyard.  I imagined his life with slight envy, how tranquil it would be if the most stressful event in your workday was a caiman closing an eyelid, or maybe that gets to you after a while?

For rodent enthusiasts and those who are not, the Estero del Ibera experience can only impress.  There must be few safaris in the world where contact with wild animals is so easy, where you could just about reach out and touch them; and its surprising really, because while it’s illegal to eat capybaras in Argentina, so I was told, they are hunted for their leather: capybaras sometimes become the belts worn by the gauchos, the Argentine cowboys.

Capybara, king of the rodents

Of course there's more to the Caribbean than rats.  And for more adventure, tracking rodents can't compare with tracking fearsome, wild beasts in Eastern Europe or wondering if the wolves will come...

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Metro Dreaming

Now that it’s apparent that CNG drivers were only using the meter as a special tribute to the Cricket World Cup and Dhaka’s back to her usual self, it’s hardly surprising when inching through the jams that one’s thoughts are sometimes given over to the metro dreaming.  With the regularity of newspaper announcements on the subject I can’t be the only one.  But what sort of metro will it be?

The number and width of the rails, the carriage and platform dimensions, above ground, below ground: let the engineers tackle such trivialities.  More important are the cultural dimensions, for in any city the nature of the mass transit system is a window into the community’s psyche.  A metro system is far more than transport.  It’s a cultural statement.

In Switzerland trains have a habit of leaving early while Tokyo is renowned for employing ‘pushers’ whose job is to shove more people into each carriage before the doors close; and in Stockholm’s tunnelbana the stations are so imaginatively decorated they’ve become a tourist attraction.  It’s said to be the longest art gallery in the world; the Moscow Metro disputes this. 

Will Dhaka’s version resemble Sydney’s trains where businesspeople sit in neat rows ignoring each other or incline towards Kolkata’s trains where groups of commuters pass uncomfortable hours by playing cards, chatting and sometimes thumping out a drum beat on their books or briefcases while singing aloud to entertain the whole carriage?  It’s not only passengers who can sing.  There was one occasion, highly unusual, when a conductor in Sydney decided rather than simply listing the names of the coming stations over the PA system he’d sing them operatically.  It got everybody smiling; though being Sydney there’s every chance he got in trouble for not being sufficiently mechanical.  Could singing conductors work in Dhaka, perhaps with tabla and harmonium?  How about rhyming station names to promote poetry?

In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv there’s the history of the Cold War in the metro, with the Soviet-constructed stations built to double as bomb shelters in the case of nuclear attack.  The escalators are long, steep and rapid; the platforms far enough under the earth to wonder if it shouldn’t be getting a little hotter down there.  One of the deepest stations in the world is in Kyiv, Arsenalna at 105.5 metres below ground.  For a cheap set fare for which a blue plastic token is purchased, any length of journey is allowed.  Now that’s equality!

In Ukraine commuters were chivalrous.  For gentlemen to stand up for ladies was expected behaviour and any sitting male risked being publicly rebuked if they made a woman stand.  A chauvinistic practice to be sure, and I made that point on the bus with my friend Tanya, when I’d stand at the stairs as we got out and extend my hand for her to help me down, just to show it could be done the other way around.  But in actuality it was quite impressive, chauvinistic or not.

On the other hand, one of my colleagues in Kyiv, Valery, complained that on the metro people played music so loudly he couldn’t concentrate on his reading.  I thought he was being oversensitive, imagining a Sydney scenario with someone listening to their headset at high volume such that the drum beat resounded slightly in the adjacent seats.  But no, he meant a guy with a ghetto blaster, no headphones, pumping Russian rap at a deafening level, so I discovered.  In general Ukrainians had a high level of noise tolerance; and in Dhaka too I can’t imagine many music-related complaints.  People might tend to enjoy it.

Dhaka possibly doesn’t need the peak hour Kolkata train scenario: those passengers hanging out the door, hanging onto other passengers, one of whom in the inevitable chain has an actual grip on the train itself, though already here the trains feature the air-conditioned top class passengers perched on the roof.  Sydney trains meanwhile document changes in national dietary habits over the decades, in the form of the three-person seats which have somehow reduced over time to fit approximately 2.5. 

The underground metro of Kolkata is a little like Stockholm’s, a tourist attraction, be it for a very different reason.  There’s a really interesting human phenomenon which occurs at the terminus stations.  I saw it several times, what could be called the Dum Dum Phenomenon.  Along the platform at the precise points where the doors of the carriage of the new, empty train are due, people cluster like grapes on an otherwise empty platform.  For the most part they stand politely and quietly.  The train arrives.  At the split second the electric doors open the businessmen commuters transform into something of a rugby scrum, pushing and tiger-wrestling into the carriage in a seat-finding free-for-all.  The best part comes at most fifteen seconds later when the participants are sitting upright and sedate, unfolding newspapers and reading glasses, the absolute model of gentility.  There’s a kind of instantaneous collective amnesia about it: the just completed seat-scramble simply did not happen and is visible only vaguely in the resigned despair on the faces of the businessmen who didn’t push quite hard enough and have to stand. 

The Dum Dum Phenomenon may be a comment on colonialism: the scramble for resources followed by the victor suddenly behaving like an aristocrat.  I suppose it’s better to be orderly but those brief metro scrums are mildly hilarious so perhaps in Dhaka something could be organised irregularly, like a Scrum-Sunday tradition when train boarding decorum is outlawed, to keep things a little boisterous and fun.

In Kolkata they try to keep it clean, the metro, be it a kind of subtropical-clean; and it can’t be easy when you’ve got an enormous black bull taking a rest beside the ticket window.  I certainly wouldn’t like to be in charge of sweeping around him. Clean is an uncontroversial desire for any metro.

I’d like to walk under an inspiring quote from Nazrul, Rabindranath, Sufia Kamal or their fellows at every station entrance; and it’d be nice if the stations featured Bangladeshi architecture on the outside and village-style interior décor.  How about bamboo thatch decoration along the carriage ceilings?  Could there be a section with a tin roof to catch that monsoon rain sound that’s so divine?  Would it be at all convenient to have sitalpati or woven mat upholstery on the seating, which would certainly be cool on the hot days?  And if spitting is not to be banned perhaps each carriage could feature ornamental made-in-Dhamrai brass spittoons in the corner? 

Outside the station entrance it would be nice to see some permanent well-spaced tea shops, also selling fuchka and chatputi snacks, to make the metro a social place, and perhaps each station could reserve room to provide a number of real beds for Dhaka’s homeless people such that they don’t need to sleep on the ground.  Whatever the eventual model, there’s one characteristic from the Tehran metro that doesn’t need emulation.  It’s up and running now and most probably fine.  I’ve not seen it but I do recall in the mid-90s the only thing running in Tehran was the joke about the city’s metro which had been ‘under construction’ for several decades! 

In Tehran they finally got there and so one day will Dhaka.  It’s going to be a tough job trying to incorporate the enormity of Bangladeshi culture into several hundred square metres of platform and a fleet of carriages.  The engineers have it easy.  But for now there’s little to do but head out onto the roads.  For now, there’s only the metro dreaming.




Announcement: "The following metro service is an express service.  First stop is with the knitting ladies in the bowler hats, thence all stations to a promise is a promise, followed by the Russian kitchen revelation.  This metro service will terminate at the village of changing perceptions.  Please enjoy the journey."

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Metro Dreaming

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The Arguments for Winter

Winter Sunset, More og Romsdal, Norway

An Open Letter from Dhaka to the People of Norway

To the people of Norway,

I know what you’re thinking: in Bangladesh there isn’t any Winter.  I know this because when I lived in Norway many Norwegians said the same thing about Sydney, a city where Winter is marginally colder than in Dhaka.

I want you to know, things are relative.  It’s not that I don’t remember that first week in Oslo, when I got used to wearing what felt like my entire wardrobe at the same time just to step outside the house; or that I’ve forgotten the preparation: the multiple socks, the boots, the gloves, taking off gloves again from having forgotten to do up shoelaces first, re-putting on gloves…  I recall how, with so many layers of clothing, bending arms and legs conjured the image of a tin man in need of oil and yes, I learnt to tap the snow off boots before drawing them into a vehicle.

There was that morning in the first week when my hosts said in English it was ten degrees outside.  It’d sounded good: occasionally Sydney can be as low as ten and I’d expected worse from a Norwegian Winter.  You know of course they meant minus ten, which I discovered on stepping out the front door; that in your country the minuses are often just assumed. 

Swans on a soon-to-be-frozen River, Oslo

And there was that problem with my hair.  As usual I’d styled it in the morning using a little water.  How was I to imagine that after several outside minutes I’d have a hairstyle of ice?  I remember slipping along the footpaths, trying to find the sprinkled gravel you use in public spaces to create grip.  I remember walking home from school across that frozen river, following somebody else’s footprints.

I learnt the meaning of your temperatures: up to minus ten was okay, towards fifteen meant icicles on the chin and loss of feeling in the cheeks and nose; beyond that the pain in one’s frozen ears really set in.  I don’t remember you having the flies’ eyes like they do in Dhaka; maybe you should.

As said, things are relative.  How else could it be that in my first Australian Winter thereafter I barely bothered with jumpers?  The reverse happened: after most of the year in Bangladesh I once found myself wearing a jumper during the Australian Summer.  It’d been over thirty degrees and I noticed people around me were in shorts and t-shirts; but to me it’d felt a little nippy.  It takes time to adjust, climatically speaking, please understand.

I want you to know that despite the lack of minuses, and the usual Winter sports like skiing and shovelling snow off the roof, the Bangladeshi Winter is real. 

Don’t consider please the middle of the days, without the evening to morning chill in the air, the time of day you might be tempted to label ‘Summer’, if not a particularly warm one.  Forget that it may come to pass in January’s Dhaka that you consider swimming around noon. 

Winter Mountains, More og Romsdal, Norway

Just know that in Sydney, if you made one of your ‘this is not winter’ comments in the middle of August, on one of those gusty, rainy days, nobody would be amused as they slipped on their caveman-inspired Ugg boots, an Australian specialty, and turned up their electric heaters. And neither would people be amused in the Dhaka of January.

For while I am not in the habit of speaking on behalf of Bangladeshis, I would take a risk on this occasion to let you know: we feel cold.  Just look around Dhaka and you’ll see it, the public rugged up in intricately embroidered chadors or shawls, with scarves surgically bandaged about the head; or western-inspired in jumpers and jackets.  There are all those beanies, sometimes gloves and scarves, items that true, aren’t common in Sydney. 

It may look sometimes as though many Dhakaites are prepared for the impossibility of imminent snow; for we who live here, impossible is not how it feels.

Then there are the flies’ eyes, those thermal earmuffs that fit like sunglasses only around the back of the head, and lend a person a look from behind that’s slightly reminiscent of an insect.  I am liking those flies’ eyes: in blue with white polka dots, in tartan straight from the Scottish Highlands, the military camouflage variety or the leopard skin.  And as they’ve multiplied across Dhaka of late we cannot doubt that Winter is with us.  Nor can you.

A Mild Winter in the Trondelag Mountains, Norway

And just on the side, I tell you I bought a pair of fly’s eyes, in urban grey camouflage for thirty taka from a vendor at Farmgate.  I mention this thinking you could pick up a pair or two for home, though the material might not be thick enough for your Januaries.

While it’s true in Dhaka nobody has to change their car tyres to cope with the slippery conditions on Winter roads; while the days are not short and dark as occurs in what you call Winter; and while I understand the reason you talk so much and often about the weather is simply because there’s a lot of weather to talk about; please bear in mind that in Dhaka also, we have our ten degrees, we have our fifteen.  The pluses are assumed, absolutely, and the trees keep their leaves, but of course the CNGs and rickshaws are not enclosed vehicles, remember that, so as we get around there’s a wind chill factor to be accounted for.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the water.  It was actually my grandfather who pointed it out; he was more practical than me.  Back in Sydney after Norway he’d asked how you stop the water from freezing in the pipes during Winter.  I believe you spiral a small copper wire around the pipes and send a low current through it to prevent the water freezing, is it so?  

The Mountains of Trondelag, Norway

And in the mountains I recall such a system can be unavailable such that the water does freeze and it becomes necessary to find fresh snow to boil down for drinking.  But this alone is not the measure of Winter and besides, there are many in Dhaka who know the feeling of turning on the tap and nothing comes out, be it for different reasons.

So don’t mind as we find ourselves rugged up under a blanket at home in the night, in my case with the ceiling fan running on full to keep the mosquitoes away.  They are indeed less at this time of year.

In Bangladesh many people look forward to Winter as their annual hill-station away from the heat, but still, you mustn’t scoff as we shiver at the tea shops holding our tea cups with both hands, as in Christian prayer, to promote heat transfer to our palms, or as we devour those piping-hot chitol pithas or rice-flour cakes from the roadside stalls in the foggy evenings.

Try to understand our Winter in Dhaka, though it may slip in and out of the city as readily as a foot into the bindings of a Telemark ski.  It is Winter.  Perhaps you might even find room for sympathy.  Enjoy your snow, skiing and rømmegrøt or sweet cream porridge; and spare a thought for the people of Dhaka as we face Winter, we too.

Best Regards, Yours Truly, etc. etc.




If you're into seasons, you might like the monsoon. Or you could just take it easy in Barbados, or maybe on a smaller scale in Lilliput.


Also published in Star Magazine, here: The Arguments for Winter

Advent Lights, December, Norway

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In the Northern Room

Norwegian mountain road

From each of three red candles on a table, rises a sinewy line of smoke. Each smoke-line curves ever so slightly, in perfect unison with the other two, bending, turning slowly in a meditative dance choreographed by the opening of a cupboard door, a puff of wind, the slightest movement of people. The table is pine and polished, plain, and there’s a narrow linen runner of red squares down its centre. On it there’s a simple basket of red napkins ready for crumbs and spills, and a few plates with unfinished gingerbread and morsels of home-baked biscuits that dissolve with buttery sweetness on the tongue. There’s a plain sofa in cream, with a blanket folded lovingly over one arm, neat and ready for a nap or to cover cold. Later there’ll be coffee, in petite cups, for it will be filtered, strong and biting; later there’ll be chocolate, quietly removed from that small china dish which is mysteriously always full. The northern room is a little inviting, and warm.

The floor is timber, covered only with the odd rag-rug. The walls and ceiling are wooden too, tightly fitted to ensure insulation, with the miniature eddies and swirls of the elements of nature visible in the grain. There is a white fireplace, angular and straight, with a few logs stacked in formation waiting to be burnt; and the metal instruments of flame-stoking hang from a small iron stand, awaiting the delicate craft of a fire-surgeon. Yet even with the warmth of the fire, we need woollen socks on our feet and slippers: for the Norwegian mountains know the meaning of winter.

The warmth of winter

The fire, the candles on the table, smaller clusters of candles around the room and a few lampshades speak softly: painting the room in dull yellow, radiating shadow-patterns, flickering, fluttering in a conversation of light.

The many ornaments speak of a time before time. There’s that creature of legend the troll, tricky, malevolent and humanlike. Here, it’s a small statue hewn from wood: with a big belly and a foreboding brow, shaggy hair almost as a lion’s mane and oversized furry feet. The many types of troll belong to Norway. They are said to lurk on its hillsides, behind its waterfalls and in its caves: this one wears overalls with basic patches on each leg and a tiny hole at the back to accommodate its stocky fur-tipped tail. One wall is guarded by a witch, a hideous wart on her hideous nose. She sits on a broomstick, riding upwards, looking determined, and on another wall is a tapestry in white and brown, catching in its weave tempting shapes of ancient form.   

The windows each have two glass panes, for halfway up their length, outside, a wavy line of snow exhales silence. Beyond them, in the black thickness, you can just make out the scarred white trunks and scraggily stark fingers of a few bare birch trees. It feels as if the world is not yet born.

Among the birch trees

The room is small, with just enough space for a dining table and a sitting area, for the cabin it belongs to, what Norwegians call a hytte, is, by tradition, small. Hytter can have no electricity, a basic water supply and often feature a toilet that is just a hole in the ground with a seat built over it: but of course the bathroom is inside the building because of the winter cold. It’s not that Norwegians can’t afford conveniences – Norway indeed has one of the world’s highest living standards, but in their hytter they choose not to have them. Like Bangladeshis, Norwegians have it easy to remember tradition and the natural world around them: a touch of the essence of where they are from and who they are.

The small hours of night are filled with talk of northern things. There’s discussion of the day’s hiking or cross-country ski trip along the valleys, over the hills, across the frozen lake. Perhaps there were reindeer, or a shy fox. If it were autumn there could have been a brief pause to feast on a small bush of treasured cloudberries, those diminutive clusters of yellow delight. Such discussions are shaped in the undulating melody of the Norwegian language, with its many valleys and hills of accents, enough to rival even the variety found in Bangla. 

There’s a catalogue of life that’s spoken of: the incrementally always-changing seasons, the colour of autumn or the heat of summer; of dinners at the usual 4.30 p.m.; of careers and concerns and absent family members held dear. There’s talk of the world too, from a Nordic perspective, in peaceful mountains even the smallest daily annoyances can’t seem to scale. And of course, there’s always analysis of the weather: colder this year, more snow, less snow, the need to shovel snow off the roof in the morning, and the exact degrees-Celsius right now (minus the minus, which in winter need not be said). Outside the window hangs a thermometer for conversational precision in such matters.

Shades of light

It might sound strange, but even in the northern room it’s easy to remember the Bangladeshi south; it’s easy to think of other rooms back in the gram. For just as Bangladeshis travel to their gramer bari whenever there is time, Norwegians use their hytter in the mountains for memory making, storing family lore, for passing weekends and holidays and festivals, like Easter with its daffodils and decorated eggs, or the freshly cut pine trees and colourfully-wrapped presents of Christmas. For Norwegian families, hytter can create a necklace of tiny precious moments, reminiscent of the long histories of family and community you can find in the gram.

In the gram, conversations can be bright and bold and boisterous, like the Bangladeshi sun, with liveliness and expression to float across the sky, and in the Norwegian hytte, conversations can equally inspire with their subtlety and curiosity: the stillness of a snow blanket across the land.

The Norwegian language is a little overflowing with understatement: great things are ‘a little good’ and moments shared are ‘a bit fun’. For if everything was fantastic, how could it be expressed it if things got even better? Let fantastic hold its strength, a word for rare use, and for all the many good things, those quiet hytte-evenings, let’s keep it small. Hytte-talk is three red candles on a table. It’s a little illumination to turn the coldest night a bit cosy.

The northern room

Some of us are lucky, in the twenty-first century, for we can build a modern house, Bengali style, with the heart. It’s a type of home that rests not on walls of brick or tin or mud; it needs no mortgage or ownership certificate and has a value money cannot measure. With foundations that lie within us, and passports and planes to take us and bring us, the modern house can span continents; it has endless rooms waiting to be discovered and re-discovered. One of the finest rooms in the house, as I have yet found, is the northern room.

Of course there are people who don’t appreciate the modern house. There are those committed to impenetrable walls, who seek self-unity in others’ division. Sometimes they bear slogans like security and national interest, mantra like the ‘clash of civilisations’, but at the end of valid concern remains the usual, age-old intolerance. I suppose it’s a base fear of stepping into an unknown room. It’s a pity, for the beauty of the modern house (with its hole-in-the-ground northern toilet) is great, and it might be a better aim for the world to increase the number of people who can enjoy it.

Outside, if you brave the minuses, wrap yourself in soft jumper, thick jacket, striped scarf, waterproof gloves and woollen hat, if you step out of the hytte, the sky above can dazzle: fifty million stars gaze to Earth in wonder at our smallness. The crunch of snow beneath your feet sounds as a lorry in that place thick with silence, and sometimes the sky grants an added surprise: the aurora borealis, those sheets of Arctic light that curve and twist through the night, slipping away again without notice into the darkness at their desire.

With a dart of breath the candles are out and the hytte is dark. The bedroom windows are open, for the minuses to creep inside and grant sound sleep, under the warmest of blankets. And after the eyelids close, the mountain imagination is a little free to send small and pleasant dreams.

Winter sky

If you like north, see just how far north Norway goes.  Or perhaps a little more haste is in order, in a jaunt across Scandinavia?

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: In the Northern Room







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