What a marvellous day

Today when i woke up, the sun was shining in trough my bedroom window, at least it tried. and I tried to make it stay out. I'm using both blinds and drop downs to avoid the light from coming into my room during night time, Not good enough. All night long it's quite light inside and I usually don't have to worry about oversleeping. Today I was up at seven and what a pleasure to get up so early today. Splendid weather, no wind and a sun that almost made me think of the warm sun from last summer in Crete. I had no other choice than to use it, to get out and enjoy the nature.

My trip took me up to Storfjellet, a popular place for the people in Hammerest to walk. On my way up, there was already three or four other people struggling to get up, and a crazy came jogging by, up the hillside. I walked on, past the top and further in to the mountain area. Never far away from settlements, but it felt like I was alone and could be so for days. My phone got bad connetion and I tried once, twice and three times to send a short message, before I succeeded.

Up in the mountain there was still some snow, espcially in the slopes where the snow had been piling up during stormy weather. And on many of the small lakes the ice still hadn't disappeared. Further in I came across a small flock of reindeer, trying to get fat just for us to slaughter them in the autumn and eat them. The reindeer belongs to people from the sami people and are neither tame or wild. With my camera I managed to get some nice pictures of them, Two of them was very curious but with any sudden movements they ran away; just to come back a few minutes later.

While taking them I layed on the ground and I slowly started closing my eyes, wanting to sleep. It was such a pleasureous moment, curious reindeer, a warming sun and a lazy Roy. But for more pleasent nature watching I had to get up and walk on.

A further closer I started to walk back, this time along some really stony barren slopes. Suddenly a male ptmarigan took off, scared me with it's sound and flew away. I managed to get a few photos but really not so very good. As I was about to leave I discoverd a female also. Thanks to her nervous behavior I was able to see her head. If not I might have just passed by her, made her fly away, without me manage to shoot any photos.

 As you can see from my first picture of her, she's not easy to see, she is very well camouflaged for living in this stony area. The best picture I got is the one I use on the heading of this blog.  When I got to close she flew off and it left me thinking; should I pursue her, hoping to secure more photos or just leave them alone. Just not disturb them here, in a suiting place to mate and breed. I walked on a little, discovered the male again, tried to get closer to him, but gave up when he ones again took to his wings and flew away.

After some hours and this encounter I felt satisfied and began on my walk back home. After a short shower, I waked out and joined my friends at a cafe.

My first trip to "tyven" this season

Yesterday I met an old friend of me downtown. After a few minutes of talk we decided to walk to the top of "tyven". Tyven is a small mountain, just outside Hammerfest and is a popular goal for walks during the season. Some people don't care about huge loads of snow and walks up and down the hills to get there, all year around.

 This is a picture from a couple of weeks ago. My friend is pointing towards the mountain "Tyven".

I'm a little more lazy so the trip today was my first this year. There is a road up to the top of the mountain, and we decided to walk the road. The distance along the road is much longer than just up the hillside, so we did it to get some exercize.

After a few kilometers we came to a lake where the Ice still hadn't broken up. We got tempted, we had to try it. It had in fact broken up a little so we had to jump out onto a big piece of the ice. When I was standing on it, moving back and forth the ice started to move also. Cold water started to come over and I got nervous thinking the Ice would tip over, and with me still standing on it. It did not.

The piece of ice I was standing on

A little further up the road and we finally arrived at our goal, Tyven. We stayed there for half an hour, enjoyed the great weather, drank a little coffee and ate some fruit. The view is really astonishing. We have a great 360 degree view. To the south we can see the Island Seiland. It's still filled up with loads of snow and we can also see the glaciers on the top of the Island. Over to the west and north we can see the occeand reaching into the sea. It's the polarocceans and next stops would be Svalbard/Spitzbergen, Greenland or the North pole. Maybe that should be my next expedition. Probably not, I prefer my comfort zone.

The view from the top of the mountain "Tyven"

On our return we walked down the hillside. For a short part it was packed with snow, we used it  to slide down on , and the return lasted to short. But at least a great trip together with my friend Knut.
  

Changing name

My blog was formerly called, "the arctic view", but as the title already was taken I wanted to change it.
I stil wanted to have  name that's representing the life viewed from where I live. It's close to the arctic, If I use half and hour, on foot, I'll be totally in the arctic zone. Being so far north, makes life, in many ways reall different from living other places, just come and see. From here you will find no big forests, almost no trees. Wounds made in the nature takes really long time to heal. Few vegetables grow here and the flora itself is scarce. Few species, just grows close to the ground.

Hipp hipp Hurray

Hipp hipp Hurray, it's Norway's national day today. We are celebrating the day when we got our constitution., 17.may, 1814. The historic situation is that after the Napoleon wars, Norway was independent for a short while. But Sweden claimed Norway as a reward for being on the winning side. We tried to fight the Swedes to keep our indepenence, but in vain. We lost and had to accept a union with Sweden. But the union was based upon a common king and a common foreign policy. We were accepted to have our own constitution and our own domestic laws. The first time we actually celebrated our national day as a national holiday was in 1836, but in the years before it had been more and more common to celebrate it around the country in many muncipalities.

These days it's a very joyful celbration with parades in most places and happy people walking around talking and cheering. The parades are, in the morning, parades for the children and it's common that they are centered around different schools around the country. Many places there are also parades for all the people of the place. In Norway, we do not celebrate our national day with military parades, it's a day for the people.

Here's a short clip from the 17 may celebration in the city of Skien, the neighbour town to Porsgrunn, where I come from


There are many songs that are a tradition to be sung on the 17th of may. among them are "Ja, vi elsker" ( Yes, we love ) ( here I must say that in Norway we don't use the word elsker as easy as they use "love" in english )


Our national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet".

My celebration will this year be almost not excisting. I'll be coming off work in the morning and will go back to work in the afternoon. The time in between, I needl to sleep and rest. Most times I celebrate with my friends, but if I'm in my hometown I celebrate with my family. And all over the country it's mostly a family or children celebration. The youth of Norway start celebrating the day mainly on the 16th of may, with going out, meeting friends and drinking. On the 17th of may this group is often more quiet and not dominant in any way.

Welcome to the international year of biodiversity

It's not really me that wanna welcome you all to the interntational year of biodiversity. It's the UN. I just wanna share this UN year with you all. It's important for me. We all need to do something for our enviroment and all the living creatures on the globe. UN's general secretary is better to open it than me, so here he is;


UN Secretary General Welcome Message for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity from CBD on Vimeo.


Quite a few times I will write about the international year of biodiversity. But since I'm a thief and steal the most I wanna say, you may all go directly to one of my best sources. It's easy to steal from, but I hope we both get a benefit from my stealing; convention on biological diversity

Please stop, don't be greedy

I live in one of the worlds richest countries and I must saay we are lucky to have so high standard of living as we do. Most f it thanks to the oil drilling along the norwegian coast. But now the oilcompanies and some of the biggest political parties in Norway wanna start drilling offshore for oil outside Lofoten or outside Finnmark.

Welcome to my world

This is the second blog I'm making, and while the first one is focusing on turtles, the people that work with the turtles and myself, this one is concerned with living in the arctic, the fun, the tragic, the good, the bad. All about living in the Arctic. But since I'm a man that's concerned with nature and the best for our nature and all the living beings in it, I guess there will be a lot of stuff about that.
Right now I think what's on most peoples mind is the weather, once again.. After a fabolous April, the weather has turned around and it has blown a wind from the north day after day. Buses have blown off the roads or have gone sailing out of them cause of icy slippery roads, planes have not gone cause of the win Yesterday I almost got lost on the way to work, cause of almost no visibility.